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Welcome to The Feder Files. A new article/essay/story (by our esteemed editor) will appear as the spirit moves him. Be prepared for an extreme breadth of style here; these articles will range from light and not-so-light parody, to emotional personal stories, to cultural critiques and political rants. There will also be the occasional book or movie review, and more features to be added later.

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Please excuse the rambling nature of this missive.
I’m old, that’s my excuse.
How old, exactly? Well, if I actually make it to 6:49pm Eastern time this coming Wednesday, I will be sixty-five.
Let me put that in number form for you, ladies and gentlemen: 65. That’s SIXTY-FIVE years OLD.

I have not aged well.
I don’t mean in the external, superficial, the merely physical way. I suppose—aside from the myriad destructive effects of unrelenting, self-created, and self-maintained stress— I suppose I fall into a sort of middle category when it comes to that part of aging; Eyes, teeth, joints, various other parts and processes are worn or aching probably no more and no less than the average sixty-five-year-old—taking into account class, race, level of education, degree of missing serotonin at birth, etc.
I probably look 65, though I have a hard time judging that anymore—hard time telling, for that matter, what anybody’s age is. Everybody under thirty looks like they’re nineteen; anyone from their early thirties to about forty-five—I really can’t tell the difference…
I can sort of see the upper forties going into the fifties, get lost again in the mid-fifties to early sixties. But I pick up the scent again when someone hits their mid-to late-sixties to early seventies. After that, everybody is just OLD.
I know there are times when I sound much younger than I am. That might be a trick of the radio, or maybe some natural quality to the tone of my voice. People listening think I’m easily twenty or more years younger than I am, and, when I hear myself in the headphones at the station, I can tell I sound young. Maybe because that’s when I’m on the radio, I feel the most alive, so the enthusiasm and the vibrancy come bubbling through, making me sound more youthful.
A friend suggested I walk around with one of those hands-free phones that some people use on the street. I could, he said, pretend I’m on the radio all day long and I’d be recycling that youthfulness (and feel creative and useful) all the time. Not a bad idea. But then I’d become of those gross, insensitive, chatter-monsters that roam the streets and avenues of New York, and can only be stopped by ripping the phones off their persons, burning a cross into their foreheads, and pounding a stake through their hearts.
I might try it anyway. It seems to work for them…

I'm doing a show tonight (interviewing a noted immigration lawyer and expert) on Arizona's new law... Are they a bunch of rascist, proto-fascists or just overwhelmed and trying to protect themselves because the cowards in the Federal government won't do it for them.
Putting the Civil War and most of the Tea Party nuttiness aside, States do have some rights--especially perhaps when they are left helpless by the the Federal Govt. -- A complicated issue.
To me, there is, unavoidably, massive racism behind this new law in Arizona, but this is America, so what's new. There are more complex questions, politically and economically at work here.

...Anyway, thinking about the above, who poppped into my mind but my Aunt Erma--may she rest in peace; a descendant, as, of course, our entire family was/is of that happy-go-lucky gang Moses led out of Egypt.
She worshipped (not religiously) the sun and spent hours on most Spring and Summer days in our backyard, with an aluminum sun reflector under and around her face. As a result, she had a pretty deep suntan--could easily have been mistaken for someone from South of The Border or the Middle-East.
Erma was, when she dressed up, given to flashy costume jewelry and bright, floral-patterned dresses.
Governor Brewer of Arizona says she knows that there are people (presumably uniformed people) who know which people arouse "reasonable suspicion".
So, all things being the way they are out there, I would certainly advise my Aunt, if she were alive today, to avoid Arizona, or if she insisted on going there, to make sure she had her passport, bankbook, birth certificate, driver's license and high school yearbook pasted to the dashboard of her car.
If you're in any way not completely white, you need to watch yourself out there, if the cops actually obey this law-- otherwise you might wind up in the lock-up or spending a few years in Sunny Mexico.
Via Con Dios...