Palin children

Why is Sarah silent about her newest grandchild? UPDATE://Kyla Grace was, in fact, born on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2011

 

A commenter here says Kyla Grace Palin was actually born on Saturday, not yesterday.

I received a phone call around noon on Saturday that Britta’s baby girl had been born – around 6 1/2 pounds.
The birth had gone very quickly so much so that Britta’s dad didn’t make it to the hospital in time. It makes me sad for her that Palin’s control of Wasilla is so intense that people can’t share in her joy. I know that the friends at church heard about the happy event but people are afraid to say anything.

This makes it even more strange that Sarah and Todd have not welcomed their first granddaughter into the world with a joyous public announcement.

It would hardly be an invasion of Track and Britta’s privacy for the grandparents–on either side–to announce the birth.

And it’s hardly a secret.  My mention of it here this morning led to national and worldwide coverage, including in Sarah’s favorite glossy magazine/website People.

So why the prolonged silence from Wasilla?  Could Sarah possibly be embarrassed that her two oldest children have now followed in her footsteps by conceiving babies outside of–to use a good ole’ 19th Century word–wedlock?

Or is she planning to announce the birth to Greta Van Susteren on Fox News?

Or, just maybe, is she still negotiating her fee for the first photo of her holding her first granddaughter?

UPDATE:

I’ve just received confirmation that Kyla Grace Palin was, in fact, born last Saturday, not Sunday, as I first posted.  Which means it’s now going on three days without Sarah–so quick to parade Trig in public–or Bristol–so quick to put her own baby on a book cover–even publicly recognizing the existence of Kyla Grace.

Someday, this beautiful infant will become a young woman able to research facts about her own birth.  How will she feel when she finds that her once-famous grandmother tried to suppress the news that she was born?


Sarah’s a Grandma Again

Sarah Palin’s son Track and his new wife Britta became the proud parents of a baby girl, Kyla Grace Palin, last night.

I don’t yet know when Sarah will sell the first pictures to PEOPLE.

To put things in perspective: My family


PROMPTED BY SARAH PALIN’S SICK SUGGESTION
last spring that I had rented a house next to hers on Lake Lucille so I could watch her mow her lawn or peer into her daughters’ bedrooms, hundreds of her sick-o-fants sent me abusive and threatening emails.

I wasn’t bothered by the threats, nor was my wife, Nancy, who’d been with me in Alaska in 1976–when she was an award-winning reporter for the Anchorage Daily News–and who came back to join me on Lake Lucille last summer.

But I wasn’t going to subject the beautiful children pictured above to any sort of danger.

After a right-wing radio talk show host broadcast my personal email address, I had to open a new account.

And after Palin fanatics put my home phone number online, Nancy began to receive threatening phone calls.

One charming commenter on Andrew Breitbart’s website posted this:

“Joe’s lonely wife needs mail, phone calls and other assurances of concern and good will in Joe’s absence.”

Some psychos even went to my agent’s Facebook page and began to threaten his wife.

And one of my sons, the father of a very young child, was warned that because of my having moved next door to the Palins, his toddler might not be safe.

Then I got an email that said:

“hey, Joe, sleep with one eye open, you POS. can’t wait for your grandkids to show up and play in the woods and water.”

I’m sorry to say that after receiving that threat I canceled all plans to have my children and grandchildren visit me in Alaska last summer.

It’s too bad. The kids pictured above, who range from fourteen to four, are warm and wonderful and not only love and enjoy each other, but would have been quick to invite little kids from next door to come over and play in our yard.

But I wasn’t about to put my grandchildren in somebody’s crosshairs.

So we never had a great Alaska reunion last summer. Sarah’s bullies spoiled that.

But they couldn’t spoil this past weekend, when all seven grandkids and their parents–my children–were here, at our real home.

You want to talk family values, Sarah?

Mine against yours any day of the week, babe.

I’m blessed to have a family as enriched by true values, as inspired by love, and as giving and caring as any on the face of our sweet earth.

What a joy it’s been to have everyone here.

I especially enjoyed the comment from one of the kids, who said, “Grandpa, why did you waste all that time writing a book about a crazy lady nobody even remembers any more?”

Out of the mouths of babes, eh?

Sarah sinks ever lower: will sign “books” with Bristol at Minnesota mall

So desperate is Sarah for cheap and easy publicity–and a few extra bucks–that, as Associated Press reports, on Wednesday, she’ll be horning in on her daughter’s first “book” tour appearance at the Barnes & Noble in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Pure coincidence, of course, that Michelle Bachmann (aka “The Sarah Palin of 2011/2012”) is from Minnesota.

Someone less cynical about the Palins than I am might look at this as a manifestation of motherly love and show of support for a daughter whose “screw & tell” memoir hasn’t even cracked the amazon.com top 500 list despite Bristol’s appearance on Good Morning America today.

As I’ve made clear in earlier posts, I simply do not care about Bristol. Nor about any of Sarah’s other children, except for continuing to wonder who really gave birth to Trig.

I care about the phenomenon of Sarah only because–by many light years–she was the least qualified and most deranged person ever nominated for the presidency or vice presidency of the United States, and because she continues to successfully seduce the Beltway chattering class.

“To be or not to be,” is no longer the question. Now it’s, “Will she or won’t she?”

Like water, however, trash seeks its own level. Sarah’s appearance alongside her no-talent daughter at a Minnesota shopping mall is the clearest indicator yet that the 2008 Republican candidate for vice president of the United States is finally becoming not the national leader she never could have been, but part of our national landfill.

And in case you were wondering, no, I won’t be bringing Levi along on my own tour for THE ROGUE in September and October. (Media appearances already arranged in New York, Washington, Toronto, Alaska, Seattle and Los Angeles.)

Honestly, I’m not desperate enough to sit behind a table in a Minnesota shopping mall.

Although I willingly appeared on Fox & Friends with my son, Joe McGinniss Jr., when his novel, THE DELIVERY MAN (soon to be a major motion picture) was published in 2008.

Here’s a difference between McGinniss books and Palin “books.” Joe Jr. and I write our own: Sarah and Bristol aren’t able to do that.

And here’s another difference: neither my son Joe nor I would ever use/abuse a child the way Sarah did Trig at her Going Rogue signing at The Villages, Florida, in November, 2009.

I was there, in the company of my great friend Ray Hudson, of Newcastle, England, who after a brilliant career as a soccer player has become the world’s best soccer announcer for whom English is a first language. In his recent extraordinary profile of Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, Jere Longman of the NYTimes made clear how Ray and only Ray can transliterate Messi’s genius into English. If anyone thinks world-class soccer is boring (I readily concede that the sub-standard version played in the U.S. is yawn-inducing), please check out this one clip among dozens on YouTube wherein Ray Hudson demonstrates that it’s not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyEls-EqdOY

Ray flew up from Fort Lauderdale so I wouldn’t have to endure the Palin appearance at The Villages, an hour north of Orlando, on my own.

And thank God he did. Even in his great company, it was an ordeal.

But I snapped out of my torpor and into parent/grandparent mode when I saw how Sarah mistreated Trig.

As I write in THE ROGUE:

She emerges [from her bus], holding Trig. Once the TV cameras and still photographers have had their fill, she hands him off to an assistant, who soon puts him down on the asphalt parking lot and lets him crawl. The lot is covered with broken glass, cigarette butts, and old chewing gum, and Trig is barefoot. Eventually, Piper comes along and puts him in a stroller.

This is almost the full monty, family-wise. Chuck and Sally and old Aunt so-and-so, plus Piper and Trig. Chuck and Sally work the crowd. Leaving Trig in the stroller, so does Piper. She’s eight years old and has the fake smile of a ten-term congressman. For some reason this sticks with me as the saddest sight I see all day.

And now, on Wednesday, in a Minnesota shopping mall, patrons will get a twofer: Sarah and Bristol showing off their fake, smarmy smiles side by side as they peddle their fake books.

Sarah: where’s Trig?

Bristol: where’s Tripp?

Can either of you care about anybody but yourselves?

p.s. I’ve said I don’t care about Bristol or Levi and I don’t. But when they start poaching on my turf–taking up space in book stores with their whiny, self-aggrandizing, adolescent tripe–I’d be remiss not to point out the difference between thoroughbred race horses (i.e. Geoffrey Dunn and myself) and the steaming piles of shit said horses leave on the ground behind them (i.e. Sarah, Bristol, etc.)

Please go elsewhere with Bristol & Levi comments

There are many bloggers–and, as I’ve seen recently–commenters keenly interested in Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston.

I am not one of them.

I’d appreciate it if you could keep your comments related to the topic of the post on which you’re commenting.

Because nothing I’ve posted relates to Levi/Bristol gossip or snark, no comments about them or their ghostwritings are relevant.

Many other online venues will welcome your opinions about them.

Frankly, I couldn’t care less.

I don’t like to delete comments and I’ve very seldom done so, but fair warning: this is not a site about Bristol and Levi.

They bore me. And I don’t want the comments section to bore others who feel as I do.

Please: if you have to vent about Bristol and/or Levi, do so on one of the many blogs that eagerly report on their latest doings.

But not here.

Thanks.

Rosanne Cash tells what a caring, truly pregnant mother would have done in Texas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johnny Cash was and is one of my few heroes.  My admiration for him is based not only on my appreciation of his unique talent as singer, songwriter and performer, but on the courage he showed as a Nashville heavy hitter who stood up for Bob Dylan way back when Bob was considered a commie jew anti-war hippie by the country music establishment, and for Johnny’s overcoming substance abuse problems to create a whole new oeuvre in his later years, and for his being a man who never tried to shove his Christianity down anyone’s throat, and who, throughout his life, opposed needless war, imperialism, racism and insensitivity to the less fortunate among us.

It was my admiration for him that first led me to the marvelous music and equally fine writings of his multi-talented daughter, Rosanne.

In October, 2008, she wrote a brilliant commentary in The Nation, called “Why I’d Be a Better VP than Sarah Palin.

Contained therein is her straight from the shoulder shot about Sarah being pregnant with Trig in Dallas and taking the wild ride to Wasilla:

Finally, there is one subject in which I find I am even more conservative than the Governor, and that is in the area of neo-natal responsibility. The Governor was eight months pregnant and in Texas to give a speech, when her water broke. She reportedly made her speech and then traveled eleven hours, dripping amniotic fluid, bypassing Seattle and Anchorage (major cities with world-class hospitals) to travel to a small hospital in Wasilla that had no neo-natal intensive care unit, and gave birth there. Call me a wimp, call me insecure, but you had better also call me a maverick, because I would have said “Damn the schedule! Damn the speech and the airline ticket!” If this had been me, as soon as my water broke, I’d be at the closest hospital and that baby would have been born in Texas!

This is from a mother of five whose career has taken her to far more places around the world than Sarah’s has.

It’s a question of priorities.

What matters more:  the life and well-being of your Down Syndrome baby, about to be born prematurely, or your image?

The estimable Ms. Cash makes clear the choice she would have made.

Which is the choice any sane and caring woman in that circumstance would have made.  And the choice her husband–if he were caring–would have insisted on!

This leaves us with only two options:

a) Sarah is/was either not sane, or was so uncaring that she was more concerned about her image than about the life she was carrying inside her.

or

b) She wasn’t pregnant.

I just don’t see a third alternative.

 

Trig? New evidence from Sarah Palin emails//UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan reacts


 

 

 

I’ve declared myself as “trignostic,” meaning I am skeptical about Sarah’s story of her pregnancy with Trig and his birth, but I am not yet certain that it could not be true.

If it’s a hoax, it would be the worst ever perpetrated on the American electorate by a candidate for national office.

That’s a lot to swallow, which is why MSM has simply turned its collective head.

I’m still not convinced (i.e. persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt), but recent close readings of the newly-released Palin emails by Jesse Griffin at Immoral Minority and Andrew Sullivan at Daily Dish bring me closer to concluding that Sarah’s tale is an absolute and utter fraud and that Trig, in fact, was not her baby.

To me, the questions have always been valid, and the MSM dismissal of Sullivan as a misogynist freak with a tinfoil beard has been shameful.

The question of whether or not Trig was really Sarah’s baby was much on my mind last spring and summer in Alaska. Both Levi’s sister, who was photographed holding him soon after birth, and Levi’s mother assured me that conspiracy theories about Trig were absurd: Sarah gave birth to him, just as she said.

I devote a full chapter of THE ROGUE to this question, and have material in other chapters that relates directly to it.

My research did not uncover proof that Sarah was lying, but I returned from Alaska last fall more skeptical about the official version of events than I’d been when I got there.

In regard to this question, I recall the words of a US Army CID detective who on April 6, 1970 questioned Jeffrey MacDonald about his account of the murders of his wife and two daughters: “Anything is possible, but some things are more possible than others.”

I now think in regard to Trig that anything is possible, but that it’s more possible than not that Sarah’s whole story is a lie.

Even so heavily redacted, the Palin emails offer startling new evidence. By evidence, I mean facts that could be submitted to a jury in a court of law.   For a long time, there have been photos online–both of Trig’s ear and Sarah’s belly–from the spring of 2008 that would seem to contradict her version of events.  But much of what a photograph demonstrates, in a forensic sense, is in the eye of the beholder. If you already believe Sarah’s story to be a lie, the photos prove it.  If you don’t, they’re just pictures, taken from different angles by different people at different times.

The emails, however, are in Sarah’s own words.

As I point out in THE ROGUE , for someone who wrote in her memoir that “desperation…overwhelmed me” when she realized her amniotic fluid sac had ruptured in Dallas at 4 a.m. on April 17, 2008, Sarah was strangely indifferent to her baby’s fate. I describe how close she was to so many Dallas hospitals with neo-natal intensive care units, yet she felt no need to go to one, even though her baby wasn’t due for another month, and even though she already knew that his Down Syndrome and her age made the birth high risk.

Hell, Sarah didn’t even want to call her doctor!

I go into the hours that followed in great detail, pointing out that observations by others of her behavior every step of the way from Dallas to Wasilla cast doubt upon her version of events.

What’s new in the emails is proof that seven hours after being overwhelmed by desperation about the fate of her new gift from her Heavenly Father, Sarah was firing off BlackBerry messages, including one about Andrew Halcro, one of her opponents in the gubernatorial race of 2006, who’d started a blog often critical of her.

“What a goof he is…truly annoying,” she wrote in the throes of her desperation about Trig’s fate. She added, “I’m headed home from Dallas.”

We’ve all heard about compartmentalizing, but, hey, let’s get real: her great gift from her Heavenly Father is at risk of dying before he’s even born and Sarah is bitching about Andrew Halcro?

Despite being overwhelmed by desperation, Sarah also fired off a note to an aide that morning, instructing her not to proceed with a fake letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News–one that was to be sent as if it came from Sarah–responding to criticism from a couple of Anchorage radio personalities.

“Don’t submit at this time as there will be more thought put into this…” she wrote.

In THE ROGUE I wonder about how Sarah spent the hours between the onset of desperation at four a.m. and her luncheon speech. Now we know: she was on her BlackBerry, dealing with inconsequential matters, as her amniotic fluid continued to leak, putting her baby, hour by hour, at increasing risk.

IF there was a baby in her womb at the time.

Jesse Griffin’s close reading of Sarah’s letter to family and friends, written as if it were from God, provides the strongest evidence I’ve yet seen that Sarah was not pregnant in 2008 and did not give birth to Trig.

In the popular idiom, “God is in the details.” Here, God is in the redactions.

I read Going Rogue (don’t get me started.)   In it, Sarah says she wrote a letter about Trig “to our family and closest friends.” Being Sarah, she opted to write it as if it had come from “Trig’s Creator, the same Creator in whom I had put my trust more than thirty years before.” She signed it, “Love, Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”

First, how crazy is that? You write a letter to family and closest friends announcing the arrival of a new baby as if you were God?

I’ve read saner communiques from Son of Sam and Charles Manson.

But…what’s relevant here is what Sarah redacted from the letter as published in Going Rogue.

There was sheer nuttiness, such as this paragraph, which was redacted:

(But tell me, what do you earthlings consider “perfect” or even “normal” anyway? Have you peeked down any grocery store isle, or school hallway, or into your office lunchroom lately? Or considered the odd celebrities you consider “perfect” on t.v.? Have you noticed I make ’em all shapes and sizes? Believe me, there is no “perfect”!)

“You earthlings?” What is this, Star Trek?

But then there was the money quote:

“I let Trig’s mom have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy, so she could enjoy every minute of it, and I even seemed to rush it along so she could wait until near the end to surprise you with the news…”

There’s more sentimental tripe about Piper not waiting too long for a Christmas present and Palins having four-day birthday parties (“You all really like cake”),  which goes to show that the heavenly father really needs an earthling editor, but the bottom line is what Jesse Griffin spotted.

Jesse writes:

I believe we’ve now seen an email that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sarah Palin’s pregnancy was not as reported.

On Monday, April 7th, Sarah Palin sent this letter from her official government account to her yahoo accounts. It was the draft of the letter she eventually sent to friends and family after Trig was “born” on April 18th, eleven days later.

This letter was written when Sarah Palin was supposedly thirty-four weeks pregnant. Six weeks away from her announced delivery date of May 18th.

How can you possibly explain her writing a letter which thanks God for giving her an exceptionally easy pregnancy (“Then, I let Trig’s mom have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy so she could enjoy every minute of it,”) when she should have been six LONG weeks away from the end? Still facing the weeks that any woman will tell you are going to be the most uncomfortable…

How could Sarah know for sure that her birth would be easy and free of complications or that her baby would be, except for the Down Syndrome, healthy?…

And what about this sentence? “and I even seemed to rush it along…” I believe this is a clear reference to the fact that Trig came early. But how could Sarah possibly have known, on April 7th, that that was going to happen?…

Here is my question:  if she could write on April 7th that her Heavenly Father let her “have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy,” and she knew in advance she’d give birth so easily–although a month prematurely–that she wouldn’t even have to take a day off from work, how come “desperation…overwhelmed” her in Dallas ten days later?

Sarah: forget about “The British are coming!”   What should worry you is “The questions are coming!”

Ever thicker and faster.

And by the way, where is Trig?  Long time no see.

UPDATE:

See “A Trignostic Wavers” from Andrew Sullivan at Daily Dish today.

Coming Soon? Sarah’s first novel?

As Julie Bosman reported in The New York Times last week, it’s not enough for celebrities such as the Kardashian sisters and Snooki and someone named Lauren Conrad–sorry, I’m behind the curve–who is described on Wikipedia as a “celebutante”, to crowd real authors off the nonfiction bestseller list. Now they’re doing it to novelists.

William Morrow, (now a division of Rupert Murdoch’s Harper Collins, aka Sarah’s outfit), the once-respected publisher that will inflict upon us Bristol Palin’s “memoir” this summer, has announced that they’ll soon publish a “novel” by Kourtney, Kim and Khloe Kardashian.

It will follow in the rich literary tradition established by Snooki of Jersey Shore, whose first “novel,” A Shore Thing became a New York Times bestseller, although Snooki confessed to having read only three books in her life, none of them the one she ostensibly authored.

I don’t know Snooki–though I put in some hard time at the Jersey shore in the 1980’s, while researching Blind Faith–but I knew the father of the KKK girls, Bob Kardashian, from my even harder nine months at the OJ Simpson trial in 1995. Bob was one of OJ’s lesser lawyers, also his gofer and his bagman, as in literally carrying OJ’s bags. But he’s a story for another time.

The point here is how can Sarah sit back and let others cash in on an avenue of celebrity she herself hasn’t yet explored?

She can’t.

The obvious solution is for her to “write” a “novel.”

With apologies to Dreiser, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and the late William Styron and Norman Mailer,  from whose friendship and guidance I benefited greatly, and such friends and acquaintances as Stephen Amidon, Craig Nova, E.L. Doctorow and Jim Shepard, among others–I’d advise Sarah to get off my nonfiction turf (where she’s worn out her welcome, as the failure of her second book showed) and take her fantasies and fabrications where they belong—-to the fiction list.

Her potential range is enormous.

She could “write” a geographically-centered novel such as James Michener’s Alaska:

Or historical fiction such as Paul Revere’s Ride, by David Hackett Fischer, although, like Sarah in Boston last week, he claimed his account was true.  And at least he wrote it himself.

Given her familiarity with both states and her seemingly endless supply of ghostwriters, she could even start a series, like F.D. Caldwell, whose Alaska, Love Found Under the Stars will soon be followed by Arizona, An Adventure of Love.

Aiming higher, Sarah could try to emulate Margaret Truman, only daughter of President Harry Truman, who had authored for herself a series of 24 murder mystery books set in Washington, bearing such titles as Murder in the White House, Murder in the Supreme Court, Murder at the FBI.

Some suggested titles for Sarah’s series:

Murder at WalMart,

Murder at the Wasilla Library,

Murder (of a Neighbor) on Lake Lucille.

But I’m sure you have your own suggestions for subjects and titles for Sarah’s first (admitted) work of fiction.

Please feel free to share.

A suggestion to get you started:

A Tale of Two Babies

 

 

Still think she’s not running? Sarah to Sudan in July//UPDATE: Sarah’s 2008 Lie about Sudan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah told the Sunday Times of London, “I am going to Sudan in July and hope to stop in England on the way. I am just hoping Mrs Thatcher is well enough to see me as I so admire her.”

Aides to the ailing Margaret Thatcher won’t let Sarah anywhere near the former British prime minister. That’s no surprise.

But how about the trip to Sudan, where summer temperatures in the capital, Khartoum, average more than 105 degrees? (Maybe the move to Arizona was to acclimatize her.)

On anyone’s list of the most unfortunate countries on earth, Sudan would have to be near the top. Put it this way: Sarah’s not going there for the shopping.

Can anyone see any reason for Sarah to make this trip other than to give herself another “foreign policy” credential for the 2012 campaign?

Questions:

–Is Franklin Graham paying for it?

–Will Greta Van Susteren tag along?

–Think she’ll bring any of the kids? How about her “good biblical wife” Todd?

–Will Sarah pop over to Kenya to get a refill on her protection from devils from Rev. Thomas Muthee?

–How much of her fortune will she donate to humanitarian aid for the impoverished people of Sudan?

No matter what’s in the (heavily redacted) emails that the state of Alaska will release on Friday, video and photos of Sarah touring refugee camps in Darfur –location of  genocide so appalling that former Secretary of State Colin Powerll called it “the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century”–will make it old news by next month.

It’s one thing to hop on the back of a Harley in Washington, and wink and wave.

But for Sarah to inflict herself and her ambitions on the hundreds of thousands of suffering refugees in Darfur would be the most loathsome thing she’s ever done.

UPDATE:

During her 2008 vice presidential debate with Joe Biden, Sarah claimed that as Alaska governor she tried to fight atrocities in Sudan by having the state pension divest itself of investments there.  Not so, as ABC News demonstrated.  In fact, Alaska state representative, Les Gara, a co-sponsor of the divestment measure, said that Sarah’s administration “killed our bill.”

Despite Palin’s claim in the debate, her administration’s position on the bill was summarized by her deputy revenue commissioner, Brian Andrews.  At a legislative hearing in February, 2008, he said, “Mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens’ financial security is not a good combination.”

In other words, forget the atrocities as long as we’re making money.

Nonetheless, in the debate, Palin said, in regard to the genocide in the Darfur section of Sudan:

“What I’ve done in my position to help, as the governor of a state that’s pretty rich in natural resources, we have a $40 billion investment fund, a savings fund called the Alaska Permanent Fund.  When I and others in the legislature found out we had some millions of dollars in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars to make sure we weren’t doing anything that would be seen as condoning the activities there in Darfur.”

Which is exactly what she did not do when it mattered.

As the legislative session was ending, and there was no chance that the bill could even be brought up for vote,  she had another aide say that she’d changed her mind and now supported the it.  However, as the Washington Post reported, that was only after it was clear that time had run out.

In other words, she was against it before she was for it, and paid lip service to it only after she knew it was dead.

Of course, in the same debate, Sarah also said, “We’re building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline.”

How’s that AGIA thing working for ya now, Sarah?

Piper back in Wasilla, smiling again, thanks to Britta//UPDATE-CORRECTION

 

 

 

A Wasilla correspondent lets me know that Piper was back home this afternoon, unwinding by enjoying a visit to a local coffee shop/ice cream parlor with Track’s new bride, Britta.

I’m told that Piper was smiling and that Britta and Piper “were just hanging out.”

From all I know of Britta, described to me as “a sweet girl from a solid family,” it would be just like her to take poor, road-weary Piper out for a treat.

Someone who’s known Piper all her life said she came in and “waved a little wave” and, when asked how she was doing, smiled and said, “Okay.”

And now, despite all her mother has done to strip it from her, let’s give Piper her privacy back and hope that the rest of her summer will be better than the start.

And let’s be happy that in the person of Britta Hanson the Palin children finally have a female family member who cares about them.

UPDATE/CORRECTION:

I’ve heard from so many people–and have now seen video to back it up–that poor Piper, in fact, did not make it back to Wasilla today for a happy, end-of-tour ice cream with Aunt Britta.  I have no doubt that my correspondent’s first-hand report is correct as to what happened, but perhaps I misunderstood when it occurred.

A difference between a blog and a book is that misunderstandings about who, what, when, where and why don’t get published in a book.

Wherever Piper is tonight, let’s hope—for her sake–that we neither see her nor read about her again until she’s at least eighteen years old and able to make choices about privacy for herself.

Let’s also hope that in Arizona somebody will post a sign designed to protect her that’s similar to the one I posted  on my property line last summer after the first time Todd trespassed, which of course is described in THE ROGUE.