Switzerland

They visited this blog the other day and it was welcome. My grandmother and her kin all came from Zurich, a city I had the pleasure to visit in my 20’s.  We ate good food and I tried real fondue, not the 1970’s American version.

In my legislative life I’ve had a passion for privacy, whether it be insurance, health, banking, cable television franchising (this was 1984, in more ways than one) and other areas so I arranged a group of us analysts to put up a session where all our bills were put up at the same time. It worked. Of course the Senate voted against it. We expected that.

Switzerland was neutral in WWII and while others may call it secrecy I call it privacy as long as ill-gotten gains are not involved. Why did the Beatles move to the USA? Less taxes.

Often, Switzerland is used as a metaphor for a go-between. While my husband calls me emotional, and he is correct, I am rational and can reason between positions in an intellectual way. Of course he’s a scientist and engineer and we have different mind-sets that some of the time, work together.

We’ll be married 15 years this month. A lot of small things I did over the years multiplied into grand gestures by many, to make a difference. Retired? Too arthritic to exercise multiple dogs. Husband allergic to cats. Occasionally we take in a dog for an hour or a week or two that gets along with our old Zoe.

I cannot be neutral when countless animals were being killed by their owners and local shelters, just as I cannot be so when anything that deals with privacy comes back to abortion so no evangelist or Catholic can vote for it. Think 1973 Roe v. Wade. Of course I quit after licking my wounds and having a change of administration and moved on to more lucrative pastures. That was disastrous so I left that for a dream.

Back then there were few computers and we had none. No-one was allowed to reserve a bill number for the next Session. I was, because I’d always been nice to said office with food. Orwell’s 1984. That next year was the year the P-Team was built. Me as creator and pseudo-leader, my boss, and a great staff lawyer. We were not Switzerland. We were the USA in the Revolutionary War. Let’s make this country safe from corporations and individuals that want to steal our identities. They have it anyway and so did NSA and everyone else.

Was our Privacy Team a failure? No, it was a start. I also helped spay/neuter 2,500 feral cats and my training session for volunteers was filmed by the infamous San Francisco SPCA. I also helped hundreds of Greyhounds off racetracks come back to health and be adopted. I came up with theme names for them for singers, poets, race car drivers, presidents, scientists because they only had one name on the track. Before they were adopted, they had a temporary name.

As to privacy there was 9/11 and now everyone spies on us. This is not code for anything, kiddo’s. It is a real person that actually shares stories and recipes. Dee