Idle Thoughts

Such a simple solution but one that would never have occurred to me. I’ve been having trouble with my eyes—tearing, redness, itchiness. I saw my ophthalmologist, who told me I was having an allergic reaction in my eyelids, not my eyes. She recommended lubricant eye drops and one more thing, Aveeno baby shampoo. Use the shampoo to scrub my eyelids two or three times a day. Really scrub them, without fear of normal shampoo irritation when some gets in the eyes. So simple. So effective. Baby shampoo. And here I am, eighty years old.

Hillary Clinton is in the news more and more often as the next presidential election looms on the 2015 horizon. One article even said that she, like Cher and Prince and Beyonce and other one-name celebrities, is now so well-known she’s more often referred to as simply Hillary. I think back to her years with Bill in the White House, how much I didn’t care for her then, even feared her domineering presence, much as a lot of people fear Nancy Pelosi. I was happy when Barack Obama beat her out for the Democratic nomination in 2008. And here we are again, with her being the obvious nominee for 2016. And I now admire and respect her, no longer fear her, and will, along with a bunch of other former Republicans who are put out by the dysfunction of that old elephant, vote to see her as our first female president. If Chris Christy is the best the Republicans can offer, then it should be a shoe in for her. We’ll see.

More confusion on my part. Why are we all of a sudden seeing a flood of young people streaming up from Central America to cross our border? Is life there so horrible for them that they’d take that dangerous and long journey through Mexico to get here, in many cases only to be turned around and sent back? What do they hope for up here? Jobs, citizenship, personal safety? Or do they simply want the benefits of a welfare system that offers them free medical aid and subsistence benefits such as food stamps? Are there jobs here that no U.S. citizen wants? If so, why not let those who are able come in on work visas and take those jobs. Don’t we have a system that’s able to keep track of people on visas? If not, why not? What if we allowed them in but didn’t extend welfare to them? Wouldn’t they still be better off here than in the countries from which they’re fleeing? We’re a nation of immigrants—streams of tired, poor, huddled masses, the wretched refuse who came to this country as a way to better themselves. Emma Lazarus and the Statue of Liberty, tell us she lifts her “lamp beside the golden door.” We should find some way to let these young people come in through that golden door, let them in to stay.