I look at the world every morning, “news junkie” and former reporter that I am. At 6:00 AM the Department of Labor told us that unemployment in August rose to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent in July.

Reuters wrote that “Wall Street closed a stellar week on Friday after recent economic data, including a stronger-than-expected labor market report, bolstered optimism that the economy would not fall back into recession….U.S. payrolls fell for a third straight month in August, the Labor Department said, but the loss of 54,000 non-farm jobs was far less than the 100,000 expected by economists polled by Reuters, and private hiring surprised on the upside.”

Well, readers, don’t let the numbers fool you. Economists, for years, have been so far off in their “projections” that it’s almost ludicrous that they even bother to make them any longer.

Total unemployment last month approached 17 percent. That’s the number that, if you see it at all, is buried in most news stories. Traditionally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics primarily reports unemployment as those who are currently seekin full-time employment. Anyone who has given up the job hunt is on the margin and not counted.

Nearly ten percent unemployed is bad enough, but close 17, well, it’s really disturbing.

I’m not going to go all economics on you here, but it does scare the hell out me, as a liberal Democrat, that there’s a real potential for my party to get slammed in November; and looking at 2012, for Obama to be knocked out by, I can’t believe I’m saying, Sarah Palin or the like.

I remember a time, back when I covered the Congress, as well as the White House for a major newspaper. It was a time when we had “legislators” in Congress, rather than “politicians,” who now seek little more than sound bites and re-election.

Those legislators worked for you and me. They worked to make our life better; to make the nation better and I lament their passing the torch to the self-aggrandizing folks who are now running our nation.

I’ve no idea of a solution. There are better minds to determine that and I just wish they’d come to fore.

Enough of this. My life’s not all that bad and I’m above ground at nearly 70. My wife’s a pain in the neck and I don’t do much anymore but read, work and watch television, but it isn’t all that bad.

People have asked me why we don’t travel, why I don’t “retire.” Well, we do travel to Europe a couple of times a year. We stay Eze, in the south of France, though we occassionally visit the Spanish coast and walked the streets my parents walked when they lived there.

I enjoy different cultures, but my scope has narrowed so over the past 20 years. France is great for me, as I speak and read the language and enjoy the people in the small coastal town we visit.

As to retiring, I’ve no idea what the hell I’d do all day. I did try painting for a while and in big way. I bought a lot “how to” books, canvas, canvas board, sketch pads, paints, brushes, oils, acrylics and water colors. It is quite clear to me that I have remarkably little talent for it, if any.

So, I stick to my “knitting” as they used say on Wall Street; working with companies in trouble and writing. However, rarely a day goes by during which I don’t play my guitar or banjo for at least a half hour, in not an hour. I’ve been playing the former since I was ten or so; the banjo since about 16.

Not to sound arrogant, but I think I’m a pretty good folk and blues player, which is probably more a result of all those years than any innate talent. I just wish I had decent voice to go with it.

Have great holiday weekend all.

They got in and he started to drive.

“Where are we going?”

“Strasbourg,” he said, “we’ve got dinner there tonight. The best cassoulet in all of France.”

“Can we talk for a minute…what you mean, Strasbourg?”

“I’ve got a dinner there and you’re going with me,” he said quietly.

“We need to talk.”

“Here’s the deal. I figure you’re here for one of two reasons, either to blow me off or to stay. In any event, we need to eat and we’ve got a dinner engagement in Strasbourg.”

“I didn’t come here to dump you,” she said, becoming increasing frustrated with this man who she knew loved her but was now driving her toward Lithium therapy.

“OK, I sorta figured that. How long are you here for?

          “I’ve got a lot to do,” she said of the massive logistics that to her felt greater than the Marshall Plan.

“Nah, you don’t really. Did you quit your job?

          “No.”

“You can cable them. They don’t give a damn about you anyway.”

“That’s not the way.”

“Sure it is, what’s next?”

          “Let’s say it might be, I’ve got to sell the house.”

“We can handle that from here.”

“Come on, just take it easy for a moment. I’ve got to quit my job, the right way, pack the house and then sell it. We cannot do that from Paris, dammit. It can’t be done.”

“Sure we can,” Ben said, pulling the car over to the curb.

“I don’t want to go to Strasbourg now,” changing the subject with the kind of dispatch Ben so frequently used when he was thinking far ahead of what he was saying. “I’m so tired. I’m shaky and I’m feeling full of holes.”

She was quiet when she said it. But she wanted to scream it, because she knew he could see the fear and the fatigue.

Ben wheeled the car around and pulled back to the garage without saying a word.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said now, almost tearful, “I didn’t mean it. I’m just so damned tired and there’s so much…”

“I am truly everyman’s fool,” he said, moving quickly to park the car. It was a line he loved and repeated often, too much so and he knew it.

Opening her door and taking her hand, he helped out of the car. In the dim garage, he put his arms around her and just held her for a moment.

Then, taking her hand and walking toward the street, he asked, “Hungry?”

“Yes, and so tired.”

“I know we have to talk, but just trust me for a few more minutes and the world will change. It’ll be alright.”

Maggie didn’t reply, but held his hand tighter. For the first time she was not tentative in holding his hand, she thought. She also wondered if the pressure she was applying was in fact breaking his hand. It didn’t really matter, though, she could always type for him while it healed, she laughed to herself.

They walked over to Lipp and Ben called to a waiter to bring some rolls and cheese.

“I don’t live far from here, three or four blocks. Do you want a taxi?”

“Walking’s fine. And I know where you live,” Maggie said, that great smile returning.

By the time they arrived at L’Hôtel, Maggie was feeling better, still tired, but better. Ben opened the door to his suite and saw her suitcase. He knew that it was finally home for him.

“They all know you here,” he said.

“I know.”

He punched a button on the stereo, which spit out his favorite Miles Davis CD, reached into the Pullman fridge, pulled out some bottled water, spread the rolls and cheese out on a plate and brought it to her.

She had moved into the bedroom, taken off her shoes, pulled her blouse out of her unbuttoned jeans and sat cross legged on the bed.

“I need a shower.”

“Yeah, Alona said so,” Ben replied smiling.

“Will you tell me about Alona?”

“I’ll tell you about everything, after you shower, after you eat something and after you sleep .”

“We were talking about logistics earlier, too, you know. Never finished that one either.”

“Come on, you’re tired. Eat something and rest a little.”

She deferred to him. After showering, she ate some cheese and bread. They talked about little things, the cheese, the suite and, the sweet Paris weather.

Maggie knew it was odd that in the few hours they’d been together there had been little of the depth she had experienced in their conversations and less that she had found in his letters. But it was far to difficult to think about at this moment.

It was just after noon when she lay back and drifted off. The last thing she remembered was the kiss Ben gently placed on her lips, a soft, rather quick kiss that would have seemed perfunctory had it not been accompanied with “I love you and you’ve always been with me…you always will.”

It was dark in the room when Maggie awoke. She inched her way up against the pillows and looked around. For a moment, she thought it was late in the evening. Then she saw a some of light through the curtains. She opened them and saw the afternoon sun on Beaux-Arts, the shadows across lovely ancient buildings and people on the street.

She just stood there for a few moments in what seemed to be pure wonder. “My God, she thought, I’m in Paris. I am in Paris and a few hours ago I was in Oregon. Sartre wrote it, Ben quoted it and now I’ve done it. ‘Les juex son fait.’ My money’s down, my life’s down, I’ve shot crap.”

It was a pretty good feeling for her. It was a 20 year old feeling that was lost in the armor she’d build over those two decades and it was coming back. It was coming back fast. But not quite fast enough, as she noticed three or four strollers looking up at the window and realized she was naked.

She had once complained to Ben that she couldn’t sunbathe topless in her yard. “Why can’t it be like France,” she told him rhetorically, “they’re just breasts.” And now she’d dropped this bet on the table, she turned to dress, smiling.

I do have a remarkable distaste, however, for ostentation. This thought comes to mind because of a dinner we had this weekend; actually, we went out for dinner twice. 

On Friday evening we attended a nice, middle of the road Italian restaurant with another couple and had a lovely dinner for which split the check. Saturday, however, was an entirely different story. 

We dined with friends of my wife. They have had elaborate catered dinner parties which I’ve had to attended and been extraordinarily bored; and I am frequently shown all of their new possessions, not the least of which is a second Ferrari, among others. 

Going to dinner with these folks is always a pain in the neck: The husband never allows the check to split and makes a bit of show out of “grabbing” for it, almost as if to say “this just isn’t affordable for you.” 

Making things worse is his business, which I’ll not go into at this point except to say that a Federal agency is going to tag him one of these days on a “white collar” issue. It’s happened before and from his description of his business dealings, it’s bound to happen again. And, he doesn’t hesitate to discuss how money he’s bringing in on weekly basis. 

It is with great restraint that I don’t say, “Take ten percent of that and fund a shelter somewhere.” 

It is time again for Bob Dylan’s song, “The Times They Are A Changin’” to come to fore.

I spent a portion of the weekend moderately concerned over the enormous crowd drawn to Washington, DC by Glenn Beck and Sara Pahlin, despite a modest “counter rally” transpiring at the same time.

Again it washed over me that we have come to a point where religion, dogma and an increasing lack of compassion is close to becoming the way of our nation. I looked at the Beck-Pahlin crowd and too a bit of solace from the old Andy Griffith movie, A Face in the Crowd and its outcome.

We are in a difficult place, you and I. It is a place where dollars are short and becoming shorter, as is tolerance, with anger, if not rage increasing and I worry that positive outcomes of our social, cultural and economic environments are diminishing on a daily basis; as I’ve said before, the disparity between affluence and poverty is rising and our middle class thinning rapidly.

As I became increasingly disquieted over the weekend, it occurred to me that there was a solution: I pulled my boxed set of Marx Brothers movies from the DVD rack and watched all of them.

It worked, but today is Monday, with the world beginning again as it does constantly. I have, as do we all, choices to make about how I will feel today and how I will approach my life and work today. I have not yet concluded that debate.

We got off the bus somewhere on Pennsylvania Avenue, perhaps around Connecticut, figuring, as it was 5:30 or so in the morning, we could the few blocks to the Mall. Pennsylvania Avenue was empty, completely so and blocked off to traffic and as we walked down the center of it, past the White House we saw a group in uniforms approaching us. 

We thought they were police or the National Guard out for crowd control. How wrong we were as they got closer: It was George Lincoln Rockwell and his American Nazi Party in full regalia and looking for bear. 

There was really no place to go: The White House, fully guarded and fenced on our right and Lafayette Park, fenced off on our right, so we figured, maybe we could talk our way through it or otherwise get around these dreadful folk. 

As we were about 25 feet apart another group of uniforms approached, this time they were police and the military, there to control the crowd. We continued, perhaps a bit foolishly to approach and were close enough to hear an officer request a “Parade Permit,” which these bigots could not produce. Within minutes a couple of police vans were on the scene and the Nazis were gone.

Thus began a remarkable day, one of the most extraordinary of my life. We thought there would be a pretty good crowd at the rally, though never the 250,000 that’s been estimated and we were right there, through the whole thing, within ten feet or so of the stage. 

The speech, of course, was wonderful and I’ve reprinted it here in the off chance that you’ve never read it. Beyond that, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan sang, as well as Pete Seeger and a number of others. I encourage you search the Internet for account of this extraordinary event, particularly in the New York Times and Washington Post.

He had the slim thought that she’d call back, but knew, in reality, she wouldn’t. He clearly couldn’t break the rule. If nothing else, he could break the rule or the promise. But he’d jump when the phone rang and check his several voice mails almost incessantly. Even his quotes were platitudes, “A watched pot never boils,” was about all he could think of. No erudition here. No style. His walks during the day became more frequent. He wondered always what she was thinking. Was she trying to get back to him? Or had Michael made the right moves? Could she get back to him in time? What did “in time” mean? He wondered how long he’d love her. There were fewer answers now.

And then came the cynicism. It was a vile suspicion that made him angry with himself. He was never angry at himself for being a fool. He did become furious at stupidity, particularly when it became his trait. He believed it was his now.

He should have known it was over when she left L.A. Hell, she told him as much when she talked of “getting” her third husband by marrying then divorcing him. He should have seen it. She set him up good, better than any grifter or scheme he’d ever investigated. “Essentially, I’m a stupid man,” he recalled from Islands in the Stream. Crap, not even good Hemingway. It was flabby Hemingway, like him.

But he loved her. Every now and then he’d try not to. He’d walk around Santa Monica or Brentwood surveying women. The results of the poll were always the same: There was never one who could compare to Maggie. He knew what he was feeling and he knew he had to go through it. It was all the dark alleys, all the high cliffs, all the hurricanes and all the high surf there was. You had to go through it. She was right. In the past he’d always run. He always had an exit. He kept one tiny exit in all his strategies. There was none now. Sure, he could have fashioned an out. He’d been a magician all his life and outs were important to the craft. He probably had the energy to do it, but not the inclination, not in the slightest.

Maggie had been right that night at the Bel Air. He was trying to run away from her. She didn’t know it then, but she was trying to run toward him. Another fuckup, he thought. He knew, ever so faintly, that the hiatus they’d reached that night and the following day was the only chance they had. But it was so distant it was hard to touch.

There remained no question of his love for her. None. It was the remarkable calm about him, that was problematic, as the stress point in his back had gone. He felt nothing but his love, no anxiety, no physical tightness.

For eight months his only control had been patience. He was learning this endurance in an elemental tutorial, minute by minute and it was a constant process, one that had filled him up. One that had filled him up so there was little room for anything else. His refuge at the driving range and on the golf course lost all appeal; and his sanctuary at Hamilton’s had seemed more of a catacomb than a retreat.

Progress on the book had been alright, but it slowed without her gentle discussions and comments. The rewriting was difficult and the ideas weren’t flowing as they had. And, he had partial pages due in three months. A regrouping was in order, but he hadn’t a clue as to how.

On a gray and quiet Saturday morning he surfed through the channels on television and stopped. It was about nine in the morning when he realized he’d been watching an international ping pong championship for two hours, poured himself a scotch and got into the Jacuzzi wearing jeans.

The deliberation with no breakfast or coffee and a huge scotch, sitting in a 104° Jacuzzi fully dressed early in the morning could be called deliberation led him to believe he was on the verge, but didn’t know what the hell a verge was. He couldn’t bring himself to be on a precipice, because it would be trite.

It all mattered and probably didn’t as he rehashed the past few months. He had, occasionally held back questions he had, as he knew the last thing she needed was more pressure. Probably wrong, he thought, not unethical, just wrong, as it all turned out. Maybe not wrong, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered either way, as things were turning out.

The ball was started with Allison, who now had an army of The Ecclesia circled about her tendering advice on the divorce at every turn. To ensure the advice would be forthcoming with all the force of Secretariat pissing, she’d signed up for at least three advanced courses which would be completed maybe by the millenium and far surpassed in cost the total of Stanley’s bar bills for the past 30 years.

Stanley had figured it wrong, of course. The Ecclesia preached forgiveness and making amends. What he didn’t figure on was that this ostensibly pacific group also engaged in cross and upselling better than the worst of the boiler rooms he’d exposed as a reporter. They wanted consistent attendance and the attendant cash. Their disciples, all paying heavily, would be happy to join Allison in the fray.

So the worst of the worst happened and Allison had picked up a couple of second rate jackleg lawyers from the group to help her. He thought he could orchestrate the divorce rather quietly and amicably, but for all his conducting skills, he couldn’t make it work. Trying to conserve cash, he was dealing with these lawyers himself but found that trying to talk sense to a box of stones was a bit wearing. The stress was there now. Maggie was gone, the writing was there, but she was gone and his life seemed to be moving automatically. He had thought often that were Maggie in the picture, it would have been some respite, more than that as she had always calmed him, the Bel Air night notwithstanding.

More so than when I was in the business, two decades plus ago, it seems that people are far more interested in virtually everything that’s going these days and they learn what’s going on, I suspect, more from the Internet than newspapers or television.

And therein lies the problem. I think Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes did a piece on this recently and had the same conclusion as I (Okay, I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination as witty or insightful as Mr. Rooney, but he’d agree, I’m sure, that my opinion counts).

When I was growing up we were a Cronkite family. We never missed him. Others were Huntley and Brinkley (sp?). Today, network news, to me, is far to filled with features. I mean NBC, CBS and ABC have less than 30 minutes to tell us what happened and all to frequently five or six of those minutes are features. Sure they’re interesting, but for me, they’re mostly a “who cares?”

I leave out Fox, not only because I find it overtly slanted to the right and that’s simply wrong when it comes to news. MSNBC’s talking heads go the other way, of course, and I don’t watch them much at all.

I read The New York Times online and soon I suppose I’ll paying for that privilege. That’s alright for me. Newspapers should get paid and with all the trouble they’re having these days, clearly the Internet with paid subscriptions is the way to go.

The disturbing issue to me, however, is that there are so many venues on the Internet that claim to be presenting “news” and are simply fabricators or extraordinarily biased, yet readers believe what’s posted. Great newpapers and news venues have editors to sort things out and rein in reporters. These sites that are full of innuendo, if not base canards do not and people read them.

But, as they say, at the end of the day, people believe what they want to believe.

And so ends my post for the day. Obviously, I’ve little to say.

Today I watched one I’ve seen a few times, The House Bunny, starring Anna Faris. The link noted earlier will lead you to IMDB and I encourage to read the reviews, lest you think this movie is “pap.”

My view is that there’s absolutely a place for “sweet” movies that takes one away from virtually everything that’s not so in our daily lives. In the case of this one, Anna Faris is a delight to watch…and okay guys, she is, in the vernacular, “hot,” but she’s also remarkably talented and it is beyond me why she’s not been recognized as such and done more.

That’s my House Bunny comment and I’m now watching Bringing Up Baby, with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Okay, two movies, 7 decades apart, not only hold my interest, but engage me thoroughly. I recommend them both to you.

I’m not certain if my “range,” as they say, is really that broad, or that I just enjoy diversions and I believe the latter.

This weekend, I was a bit distrubed, as I couldn’t find the DVD of my favorite movie, A Thousand Clowns. For various reasons, not the least of which is because of what I do for a living, I’ve got about 400 DVDs. A Thousand Clowns, however, has never been “officially” transferred to DVD. My copy was one I purchased on the Internet and not an especially good reproduction as it seemed it was copied from a tape. In any event, there are apparently other copies reproduced in Europe that are available so I now have to buy one of them…

And, I’m looking forward to a week in which I have to “prep” for depositions in a couple of lawsuits, one having to do with a client and the other, that nutty copyright suit.

Oh, jeez, I’m boring again today, but posting here is a discipline for me.

Maureen Dowd: “The country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown, with the right spreading fear and disinformation that is amplified by the poisonous echo chamber that is the modern media environment.” Click here for the full column, Going Mad In Herds.

 Frank Rich: “Poor General Petraeus. Over the last week he has been ubiquitous in the major newspapers and on television as he pursues a publicity tour to pitch the war he’s inherited. But have you heard any buzz about what he had to say? Any debate? Any anything? No one was listening and no one cared. Everyone was too busy yelling about the mosque.

 It’s poignant, really. Even as America’s most venerable soldier returned from the front to valiantly assume the role of Willy Loman, the product he was selling was being discredited and discontinued by his own self-proclaimed allies at home.” Click here for the full column, How Fox Betrayed Petraeus.

Sure, I could tell you about my dog’s latest “trick.” He’s 8 years old and now nudges the bedroom door at 5 in the morning when he wants to go out, as opposed to waiting for me to wake. Now, if you find that interesting, well, perhaps we should get together and bore one another to sleep.

Of course, I could tell you about not being to find the DVD of my favorite movie, A Thousand Clowns, which is very odd to me, as I haven’t lent it out and we keep those movies in one place, or The Last Boy Scout, which has an empty DVD case…

There you have it, a man lacking imagination or thought this morning.