8:39 PM

I am so incredibly sad… I just got a phone call from Johanne, my friend with whom I will be going to Boston next weekend… She wanted to know if I was going to be staying at her house next Friday night as it would be easier and save time when we head out on Saturday morning, and when that was decided, she dropped a bomb…

She said she hadn’t wanted to tell me earlier, and definitely not while I was at work but she had something to say… I couldn’t even guess, although once she told me, I knew I should have known.

Her beautiful cat, Sonny, whom she had rescued from the SPCA over a decade ago, and which had become diabetic some years ago, was euthanized.

I was speechless… and I am usually bubbly and/or profuse-no, overly verbose… I couldn’t believe it…

‘What?  When?!’, I managed to get out after what seemed like several minutes before I could find my voice again…

‘A few weeks ago.’

 A FEW WEEKS AGO!!!

But we had spoken once, maybe even twice since then, however briefly…. I guess she was still grieving herself… Anyway, she has a great way about her… She broke the news beautifully, but, still, my heart aches…

He was the last living male on earth who loved me…

Well, Sonny and my father… and my father left this world in December 1999.  I miss him still to the point of tears… How can you tell anyone that… I can write it here but it is too silly to tell…

It is like when I rushed on my lunch hour to go see my sister on the other side of town… It had been about a year since we last saw eachother… Her daughter, my niece, made her, my sister, a grandmother last month with a healthy baby boy named Matthew, within that time… I brought her some gold ‘I love Grandma’ , ‘I’m a Grandma’ trinkets and baby booties etc. but I wasn’t expecting to get all emotional when I saw her and when we hugged.  It was a lovely hug, inviting, warm, and I felt loved… and I suddenly realized how much I miss that and my eyes welled up with conflicting emotions but mostly that I missed my sister, as maddening and stubborn as she can sometimes be…

I stepped back and talked fullblast about work and all the crap going on here and I think I may have caught her up on the whole year so quick was my speech, until the phone rang a few minutes later and I had to rush out to catch the next subway back into the old part of town from the northeast side of the island… the point being that her eyes sort of welled up a bit too but we both ignored the blaringly obvious and she let me go on about the office and I let myself talk about that…

H*ll, you’d think we were Irish with the way we were being so stoic… GEEZ…

Anyway, the other day, I saw an old man, walking slowly along the side walk, slightly bent over, but determined to get to where he was going and I remembered my father walking in the same manner although that accident left him with so much pain in his knees… and the tears came fast and furiously, totally unbidden, but unstoppable… I so miss him and then I get to feeling even worse because I feel I was not a good enough daughter, that I could have done better, that I could have been more loving, more helpful, more patient, more whatever with him… It isn’t that I wasn’t these things but I could have so much more; he deserved so much more.

And  now, Sonny is gone too…

Rest in peace, dear boy.  I love you.

Obviously, (well, maybe not so obviously), but for me, the first choice would be to have these women off the streets altogether, but it is the oldest profession in the world, and, at my age, I have to put my idealism aside for a dollop of reality (even if only in the meantime until we get to having them off the streets), but would this not be a step in the right direction?

Maybe it might save them from being beaten to death and left to die like dogs on the street, or drugged to death by unscrupulous pimps (well, the government could be their pimps but at least they would get to bill their ‘clients’ and the government could collect taxes from them to help build shelters, homes, and for MEDICAL checkups once a month if not more frequently… and that is just for starters… maybe then get them to be a bit more educated to get out of ‘the life’ if they so choose….)

I mean, why not? I realize the reason that this is being done is ONLY because it is an untapped cashcow for the government, but, hey, it may, just MAY help out these girls and women a bit too…

I’d love to see husbands, using their credit cards for this one!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070924/ap_on_re_eu/hungary_prostitution

Hungary gives Permits to Prostitutes

By PABLO GORONDI,

Associated Press Writer Mon Sep 24, 5:29 PM ET

BUDAPEST, Hungary – In an effort to bring prostitutes into the legal economy, officials said Monday that Hungary will allow sex workers to apply for an entrepreneur’s permit — a move that could generate government revenues from an industry worth an estimated $1 billion annually.

Human rights groups often have criticized European Union member Hungary for legalizing prostitution — which has been fully allowed under certain conditions since 1999. Opponents say legalization does not help prostitutes.

The permits allow prostitutes to give receipts to customers and become part of the legal economy by paying taxes and making social security contributions, said Agnes Foldi, head of the Hungarian Prostitutes’ Interest Protection Association.

Hungary’s sex industry — including prostitution and the production of pornographic materials — generates an estimated $1 billion annually, said Agnes Bakonyi, the spokeswoman of Hungary’s tax authority APEH.

“It is one of the leading sectors of the shadow economy,” Bakonyi said. “With this project, APEH is trying to help a group of professionals, in what is called the world’s oldest profession, who have never paid taxes in their life.”

Prostitutes in Hungary, can work legally only within certain zones — distant from schools and churches — and must get regular medical checkups. Pimping and bordellos are banned.

Prostitution is legal in most of the EU with a few exceptions such as Ireland, where it is banned. The Netherlands has legislation comparable to Hungary’s, where prostitution has a similar status to other jobs.

Foldi said about 20 prostitutes already had been issued permits and more than 500 had applied to attend counseling sessions organized around the country with the help of APEH on issues such as financial planning and accounting, as well as legal matters.

“Our aim is to make sex work become accepted as any other job,” Foldi said. “Prostitutes come from the poorest sectors of society … and it’s very hard for them to, for example, get a loan to buy their own home.”

Foldi’s group received a grant of $86,000 from the government’s National Development Plan, which includes EU funds, to advise prostitutes on the licenses.

“It is important for us to have as many participants as possible,” Foldi said, adding that there are about 7,000-9,000 full-time prostitutes in Hungary, rising to as many as 20,000 during the summer tourist season.

One of the prostitutes who already has been granted a permit said she applied for it in an effort to improve her future and self-image.

“From now on, no one will be able to ask me where I got the money to buy my house or my car,” said Rebeka, who would not give her last name. “Now we are also part of a taxpaying group and we too are making a contribution to society.”

Hungary is a signatory of the 1950 United Nations convention for the suppression of human trafficking and prostitution. But officials claimed the program did not go against the spirit of the convention because even though prostitutes would now be able to get licenses, the government would not keep a separate registry of them.

Critics say many prostitutes in western Europe are foreigners often lured there under false pretenses. They link prostitution to human trafficking.

Human Rights groups have said legalization and decriminalization of prostitution and the sex industry does nothing to address the violence of prostitution and does not help prostitutes.

Janice Raymond of the U.S.-based Coalition Against Trafficking in Women said by issuing entrepreneurial permits to prostitutes, Hungary is violating its international treaty obligations under the U.N. convention. She said countries such as Hungary that have ratified the convention agree not to regulate prostitution or subject women to any administrative controls such as registration and taxation.

“Hungary is not issuing entrepreneurial permits to aid the women in prostitution but rather to increase the state coffers with the additional taxes to be gained,” Raymond told The Associated Press by e-mail.