Jess is certainly the greatest daughter I could have imagined. Well, maybe she doesn't have super powers nor can she operate on spinal columns, but she is a great little artist and a sweetheart besides. I'm very proud of her but as I look at my sweety-pie Margaret I recognize that the nut doesn't fall far from the tree. Still I will take credit for thrusting art books into her hands when she was an infant and I did advise her on the evils of men early on, giving her that cynical "show me" attitude which has spared her the worst of the creepy boys. Hopefully somebody will show up someday with a good attitude and good library. The books are important, in much the same way in the sixties I always checked out new friends' record collections. Jess's generation rips their "record" collection onto their MP3 players or hard drives and expect for the people (like Jess) who appreciate vinyl there aren't many ways to look into a person's soul except their books. Maybe their DVD's but that too is becoming tiny and digital.

Well, now the world has changed and Jess may be traveling in search of employment but we have to give Barack a few months to get things going here. Meanwhile she can spend Euros as easily as dollars and one must work to eat. It seems silly that someone as bright and as talented as Jess might have to cross an ocean for opportunnity but that is how much of America got filled up. Yes, we used to have opportunities but even a new President can't help a country as screwed up as George has left this one, not in a short time frame. He's gonna need at least two terms to filter out the legal crap Wall Street has nested itself within. Imagine the ticker tape parades with convoluted ticker tape faling from above to trickle down on us all. Yeah, maybe a few years in Europe will give Jess enough experience to come back home with more open doors to the world of design. Assuming America ever pulls out of the muck in time we should be able to see our girl fully employed, making the world a better place to live in. Now if she would just design a kitchen Margaret and I could agree on.

She's a babe, she's single but she doesn't take crap from bozo men-boys so don't apply unless you have an impressive porfolio of thoughts and dreams. It would help if you were employed, too. We have these student loans yet to deal with...