Parental Alienation Is Sandy Proof

8:50 pm on October 29, 2012. I just saw the pictures of Lower East Side under water
because of Sandy.  I decided to get news from my girls who live in Soho.  As I have told the readers of this blog many times, I do not have their personal cell numbers nor their email addresses. Nothing. I had to call my ex-wife.

– Hello. This is Pierre. How are you?

– Great. Speak to you later.

– Can you tell me how are the girls?

She had already hung up.

Camille and Chloé, hope you are fine. Feel free to call or write anytime.

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Albert Einstein Was One of Us

“There are no big coincidences or small coincidences, there are just coincidences” says Rava to Elaine Benes in an episode of Seinfeld. True.  I just mailed today a letter to my oldest girl (a letter from the French Consulate sent to my address) wondering if it would ever be given to her, if she was not the one picking up the mail. And forget about any acknowledgement of reception. Coming back home, I saw a friend had sent me a link to a 2008 Daily Mail article about Einstein being an early fathers’ rights campaigner.

That’s quite interesting, indeed.  One learns that in a 1914 letter to his soon-to-be ex-wife, Mileva Maric,  Albert Einstein was reproaching her not to pass on his greetings to his children, Lieserl, Hans Albert and Eduard. If she had, he would have received an acknowledgement from them.  In other words, Einstein had to deal with the alienation of his children by his ex-wife, well before the concept of parental alienation was even coined.

I confess, there are days when it’s almost a consolation to know that what I am going through is not reserved to regular Joes like me. Folks like Einstein have experienced it too. Lucky Einstein however had only to handle Mileva Maric, not a New-York- State-type family court.

Hat tip: Diego Olivé

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My Girls, Ernie and Bert, Romney and Chinese-Owned US Debt

I am having one of these gloomy days I usually have after one of these dreams with my girls. The plot is often the same: I met with them again, I am dazzled by how beautiful and tall they have become, we are immensely happy to be together again. Joy is mingled with pain during the dream, and I don’t know which is the most acute.

After such dreams, I am a wreck: I am awake and they are not there. I spend time chewing memories and that does not help.  One of these was the magical quiet moments I had with them when they were little, before diner, watching Ernie and Bert. This is perhaps one of my favorites of their episodes:

This led me to drift to the guy who wants to loosen Chinese grip on US public finance by dumping funding for public television and radio. And that’s my thought (not very articulate, but as I said, I am a wreck) about his proposal: “La, la, la, lavatory; La, la, la, laxative; La, la, la, leitmotif; La, la, la, listeria; La, la, la, lichenology; La, la, la, liposuction…”

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