Who is your favorite historical figure?
It’s not really history if you’ve lived it but I greatly admire Martin Luther King, Jr.
He always maintained a harmonious dignity and respectful rhetoric.
He was a true peace maker.
He paid dearly for his efforts on behalf of equality and social justice.
Given our current civil status, I can only hope that his martyrdom was not in vain.
What are you passionate about?
Can it be relative?
Passion, for instance, like a love for Tide detergent vs. Percil is relative.
I’m thinking “no” because that relativity dilutes passion into just a liking. It cools it.
I take many things seriously enough to be passionate in my thinking. That extends from food to politics with stops along the way to consider climate issues and civic discord.
Taking the day’s question in its best light, I have to admit to a passion for my friends and their friendship.
I am certainly passionate about the love of my life. After over 30 years together, I am still mad about him.
Passion has many guises.
If humans had taglines, what would yours be?
Are we defined by the things we say about ourselves? A tagline can be a limiting description.
I am going with The Real Tamara.
Use that both for my tagline and my nametag.
Darwin was wrong. Or only partially right.
We aren’t descended in a straight line lineage from one hominid or another.
Our ancestry, that is, human ancestry, is more complicated than that.
This is intriguing and fascinating, and I don’t have time to fully realize where this fact leads.
Send me the “for dummies” crib book. Please.
Here at All The Best, this is a positive lifestyle spot, so the pros will be of the “all in favor” variety. The “cons” will not be akin to those who offer us fraudulent claims to entice us to part with our money.
Simply put, Pros stand for yes and Cons for no.
So, you ask, what are we voting for?
Well, let’s see what we can say about immigrants that meets my positive take.
The fact remains that mass migration and nativist backlash have stalked one another for more than a century.
Idrees Kahloon, Economists Love Immigration. Why Do So Many Americans Hate It? in the New Yorker
Full disclosure is warranted: I was 6 when I arrived in Jackson Heights. My parents applied for political asylum when I was nine.
My expectation of growing up in the land of my birth was replaced by my life as an alien in America.
Oh, of course, I adapted to my new home, sporting a Queens accent with ease. For many years under all that Americanization, I still felt like a foreigner.
The plus side of immigration coming from inside the immigrant experience is the opportunity it offers to those of us “yearning to breathe free.”
It may sound like propaganda, but we of the alien persuasion tend to be extreme in our patriotism. We are filled with the desire to make sure America meets all of its promises.
Patriotism, like all things in the great divide that America has become, is a fraught subject.
Let us stipulate that the grateful immigrant is a good citizen. We work hard as a rule. We pay taxes. We act in accordance to our civic obligations.
I’ve listed four reasons to honor the contributions immigrants make.
They also often pick up the slack jobs that the second or third or tenth generation won’t work.
Jingoist considerations are the first things that come to mind. You know, retorts like “they are different” qualify.
There’s reason one through twenty to turn immigrants away.
Who do you spend the most time with?
It is a boon to have the time and wherewithal to be able to lose oneself in thought.
It is a loss that brings us many gains.
The rush and whir of even the best company can be a distraction.
I value the distractions of society.
I learn from acquaintances as we pass aphorisms and chit-chat.
Being with my love and my friends brings me pleasure and joy.
I treasure these times but need my own time as well.
Time alone is as important to me as time spent with others.
Luckily, I spend the most of my time with myself.
It gives me the happenstance, time and grace for self-reflection.
If you had to change your name, what would your new name be?
When? Why? Wherefore?
All of the above.
Describe your dream chocolate bar.
Nuts are the not so secret ingredient that meets my chocolate fantasies. Small pieces of nuts as in the Baci from Perugina are the epitome of sweet deliciousness. It’s the crunch that takes goodness to greatness.
It’s her fragility that gave her her strength
It also kept her to seem young and naive. In her film roles, she maintained a savvy innocence.
I am having breakfast. Not at Tiffany’s, but that photo makes the bathroom here at Effy’s elegant.
Audrey Hepburn definitely is an uplifting influence.
These emojis just aren’t who I am, and yet, in some ways, they are an improvement.
I speak of the suggested responses my cellphone setup offers in text mode.
I can shoot a starry sun out or a cup of hot coffee to greet my friends.
The options often brighten my day. They send a kind of “enough said” message out that represents me in my best light.
All The Best