As you may have heard, the Turkish army staged a coup against the current government. Before anyone condemns their actions, believe me, it was the right thing to do. More’s the pity that it didn’t succeed. Disappointed beyond measure that the Turkish coup failed. The coup would have been the best thing to happen to Turkey since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk! Erdogan is a dictator and megalomaniacal destroyer of Turkey, he’s already undone their constitution. It’s awful what he’s doing to the most modern Muslim state in the world 😦 My relatives in Istanbul are saying that Erdogan staged the whole coup to get even more power and clamp down further on human and civil rights in Turkey. I certainly wouldn’t put it past him! As it is, Turkey, under Erdogan, has one of the worst human rights records in the world. My mother in law, a grande dame of the Ataturk period, calls herself a daughter of Ataturk, is dismayed beyond measure at the deplorable current state of Turkey, which this Erdogan is directly responsible for. It is because of his opening Turkey’s borders in both directions, East and West that IS was able to form, he allowed that. He has imprisoned any journalist who dares say one word against him. He water cannoned, tear gassed and shot peaceful protesters with rubber bullets in Gezi Park. He has shredded the constitution, which the intelligent elite wrote at the time of Ataturk. He has built himself a $615 million mansion, he thinks he is the new Sultan, and all the while he is taking Turkey backwards in time. He is just another third world dictator, out to get whatever he can for himself, dismantling the great state that the amazing genius, Ataturk had fashioned together. It is really disgusting and a pity!

The intellectually elite were the framers of the constitution in 1776, and so have many of the American presidents been, therefore right from the inception of the US, we have been ruled by highly intelligent people. What’s happening in Turkey is what happens when the intellectually elite are not the ruling class of a country, this is what will happen to the US if Trump, anything but intellectually elite, gets elected. A horrifying thought.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samina-raza/56-today_b_10900588.html

A great man, a Pakistani humanitarian and great philanthropist.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/abdul-sattar-edhi-january1-1928-july-8-2016_us_57806b47e4b03288ddc67c1f

June 30th was my 56th birthday and I decided to have a photo shoot done for it. I enlisted my friend  Sparrow Jesse Lane, who is an artist and an amazing photographer, his contact is artsbysparrow@gmail.com.

We went to the Yew Dell Botanical Gardens in Louisville KY. I’d taken a couple of dresses with me for the photo shoot, I put on the floral one and off we went. When I had conceived of this idea, I had thought of it as something empowering for all women of my age, that age, where you are neither overly young, nor have you really gotten old yet. You can still consider yourself youthful! Not too many aches and pains, hopefully not for a long time yet, seemingly not too many wrinkles, postmenopausal, so no more reproductive issues to worry about.

Is this, could it be, that this is the time of our lives? Our children are grown and hopefully either are or will soon be off our payroll. We look pretty good, feel pretty good, we have come into your own. We’re not afraid to speak our mind, we have become our own person.

For all that, I celebrate my 56th birthday. I celebrate that I am still young enough to enjoy myself, yet old enough to be my own woman. And I did it to have fun! And it was a lot of fun, we roamed around the botanical gardens, looking for vistas at which to shoot. It is a lovely environment, and for an hour, time was suspended, the only thing on our minds was taking a picture, hopefully a good one. I think we did, out of an idea came all these pictures, and I really love them and will have them forever, to reflect upon when I do get old. Ladies, and gentlemen as well, I highly recommend it!

A little Maleficent, thrown in just for fun!

If there is one thing I totally and completely love, it is a flower! And roses are among my most favorite flowers. I also have taken thousands of pictures of flowers, and I did again today when I visited the Rose Garden in Delaware Park, an Olmstead park in Buffalo NY. Flowers are incredibly attractive to me, and it makes sense as tat is their purpose, to attract creatures that will pollinate them so the species can go on and survive. Perhaps in my past life, I was a butterfly!

Home, what is home? Coming back to Buffalo, I always feel I’m home. However, that feeling is getting less strong and anyway, this is not my home any longer. I live in Louisville now, so technically that is my home. But if home is where the heart is, then Buffalo is my home, still. I moved here when I was just shy of my 12th birthday in 1972, and lived here pretty continuously till November 2013, when I moved to Louisville. From NY to KY, believe me I prefer NY. I still have my NY license. I’ll be changing it soon to KY though, so I can vote in Kentucky this November. Terrified of these elections. Hope I don’t have to move to CA, as in Canada and make that my home. Yes it’s the running joke for everyone terrified of this upcoming election’s results. But I digress. This post is about home, the ephemeral, emotional, sometimes imaginary, always beloved construct that all of us are trying to find. And lucky, the ones who have found it and inhabit it! Where are those darn ruby slippers when you need them!?

I am in Buffalo, actually Amherst, again. Staying with my mom’s best friend, a little weird, but it is so my son can get a restful night’s sleep in his own bed rather than giving me his bedroom and he sleeping on the couch. He is busy studying for the Bar exam, 8-10 hours a day! I came to bolster him with this huge amount of studying, as well as make him home cooked meals and help in any other way I can. This is an important time for my son and any help I can give him will be well worth it! Whenever I come here, it feels like I’m home. 😊 I know Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo, like the back of my hand. Our grocery store here, Wegmans, is one of the best in the country and it is my favorite! Also seeing my son’s kitty, Leo, the adorable, giant Maine Coon, is wonderful. His chirps and meows and his purring is so sweet. Of course he recognized me immediately, rubbed himself all over me, and of course immediately went to his food cupboard. Because, after all that’s what moms do, they feed you 😻 I’m staying for about 10 days, perhaps longer if my son needs me to. I’ll be seeing all my girlfriends and having lunches and dinners with them. But most of all, of course, I’ll be doing whatever my son needs me to do. Ah yes, a mother’s work is never done! And may it never be done as long as our darling children need us.