PJ Lifestyle

Clarice Feldman

Clarice Feldman is a retired litigation lawyer who lives in D.C. She’s a news junkie addicted to the internet.

Ghost Stories

We were driving from Sanbona Reserve– which is just outside of Montagu, South Africa, and about 100 kilometers from Namibia– to Cape Town on Route 62. In the van were my husband, son and daughter-in-law, and my 6 year old grand daughter who had nodded off almost as soon as we hit the highway. “Did you drive here at night?” the driver asked. “Yes,”I said. “Did the Berryville ghost ride with you?” he asked. “No, what’s that?” I,a firm unbeliever in ghost stories,responded.

“Some years ago,” he replied, ” a young women was riding on this road at night, a passenger on a motorcycle. There was an accident and she was killed. Three months later the operator of the cycle, who had been badly injured in the incident, also died. She’s regularly seen on this road at night, usually she hitches a ride on a motorcycle or passing car, the driver sees her in back of the vehicle over his shoulder, but the next time he looks she has vanished.There have been twenty confirmed sightings.”

“Interesting,” I replied, not at all convinced that this was true.

My daughter-in-law every bit as chary of the fantastical as I spoke up.

“I was always skeptical of ghost stories myself until my friend had such an experience. She and her husband were looking for a house in Los Angeles and this wonderful house, fully furnished, was offered at a great price and they contracted to buy it. Before they moved in they went to the house to measure for window treatments or some such thing. They had brought with them my friend’s mother. She had just had a stroke and was now blind. They seated her in the living room while they wandered through the house. Upon their return the mother asked,’Who was that young man who was just here? Did you see him?’ They hadn’t seen anyone. The mother went on to describe the visitor, an event peculiar in itself since she could no longer see after her stroke.
Later that day they asked the real estate agent for the seller if she had admitted anyone to the property and relayed to her the information about their mother’s account. The agent admitted that she had not fully disclosed the background of the property. It seems that the young man who lived there (perfectly described by the mother) had killed both his parents and then murdered himself, and the surviving brother had placed the house and its contents up for a quick sale.”

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Posted at 11:22 am on December 29th, 2011 by Clarice Feldman

Skycap, Where Art Thou?

Is it just me or are airport terminals getting longer and more difficult to navigate? And, at the same time is the area that skycaps are available to help passengers shrinking?

For Thanksgiving we made our usual trek to our children’s home in Los Angeles using the recently renovated facilities at Dulles. On our previous trip I noticed that the walkway from the end of the new rail system to terminal C was unusually long and largely uphill, a strain on a back that needs some tender care these days. I called the airline (United, if you want to know) and was assured that there were skycaps available, and I went to the Dulles website where I was assured that skycaps were available “throughout the terminal”. This was news to me and when I arrived at Dulles to the skycaps as well.

It seems that even in the absence of people movers at that terminal, skycaps are not allowed beyond the security checkpoint. In fact they seem to simply be available to take your bags from the entryway to the airline check-in area, a matter of a few yards . Given the easy accessibility of rental carts, that’s something few people really need.

That left me, and most others for whom carting bags about one mile often up an incline or on carpets which create enough friction to require substantial yanking to pull rollaboard luggage over them, two choices: a wheelchair ride up to the gate sans everything but an under the seat bag or checking luggage and trekking to the gate.

I don’t know about you, but the notion of checking my suitcase for a short trip on the heaviest travelled days of the year, fills me with  almost as much dread as another sciatica attack, and fortunately my husband (who also has a less than perfect back) helped me out.

But isn’t this ridiculous?

Doesn’t the Department of Transportation have an obligation to help travelers at Dulles? Surely if the airport facility were a private operation, you can be certain it wouldn’t avoid lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Why can’t skycaps be allowed to work in the ever greater distance between the security checkpoint and the departure gates?

(Thumbnail image on Lifestyle blog homepage by Shutterstock.com.)
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Posted at 1:04 pm on December 1st, 2011 by Clarice Feldman

If It Zips, It Fits

The wonderful Michelle Obama’s Mirror provides us with photographic backup to the list of Michelle Obama’s latest offered fashion tips.

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Posted at 8:55 am on October 22nd, 2011 by Clarice Feldman

Missoni on Target

Missoni and Target apparently came up with a winning partnership. The Washington Post reports the demand was unprecedented for the line of clothing and accessories Missoni produced for sale at Target at prices markedly below their usual ones.

In California, my fashionista designer niece Jodi Been Isaacson says the Culver City Target sold out the line in fifteen minutes. And a friend of her posts, “I drove all the way to WeHo’s and was – no joke – 250th in line to get in AT 7:45AM!!!!”

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Posted at 3:41 pm on September 13th, 2011 by Clarice Feldman

‘Bgates’ On the Culture War

I find that some of the most interesting analyses of the daily scene  are by regular internet commenters. Take bgates who frequently posts at Tom Maguire’s Just One Minute Weblog, though I’ve seen his work elsewhere.

Here he is today on cultural values:

I’m in favor of the culture that says America and its armed forces are tremendous forces for good in the world, immigrants should be as grateful to be here as the natives are, there’s nothing wrong with firing an unproductive worker even if he shares some racial affiliation with the President of the United States, “tolerance” is a synonym for neither “celebration” nor “subsidy”, Shakespeare was better than Toni Morrison, Frank Capra was better than Michael Moore, and America is better than anywhere else, not because of anything in our blood but because of a virtuous cycle between a system of government that allowed more liberty than anywhere else, the kind of people who were attracted to live under such a government, and the kind of society built by such people.

Every bit of that sentence is part of the culture war. And I’m not doubling down – I’m all in.

In response to another poster who attacked a candidate who espoused traditional views on the ground they might try to impose them on others he says only Democrats do that:

The only people I see using the federal government to force their religious views on others are Democrats — sacrificing my light bulbs to Gaia, for instance, or raising taxes because “Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead — being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper”, notwithstanding that Christ never said that, when a similar phrase does occur in the Bible it’s spoken by the world’s first murderer to evade questioning, and the speaker here is a multimillionaire who has a literal brother who lives in a shack in a slum in Africa.

It seems to me you’re less concerned with using the government to impose religious views than you are with the specter of politicians who are able to quote Scripture accurately rather than hypocritically.

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Posted at 11:56 am on July 20th, 2011 by Clarice Feldman
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