Memories: February 2021 — Some Things Beginning and Others Ending.

 

Day 1.

 

The first day of the month was spent getting my new computer in order. I also stared out the window a lot. It was a crisp sunny winter day in the Enchanted Forest. Now and then I would cast an eye at the news. The television was running silently with the captions jauntily crossing the screen letting me know what the talking heads were rattling on about. The House impeachment documents were filed in the Senate. Biden met with 10 so called moderate Republican Senators whose intention it was to persuade him to gut his own COVID relief bill. They did not succeed. The investigations of the January 6 assault on the Capital goes on with intimations of eventual significant reveals. The COVID vaccination rollout continues to have its troubling bumps, but they seem to be leveling out. It appears, the problems now are in getting those who are vaccine resistant to get vaccinated and assuring the efficacy of the vaccine against the new COVID strains that are popping up.

 

 

Groundhog Day.

 

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. Six more weeks of winter weather and perhaps six more weeks of winter politics. Today, the weather is drear. My mood is one of grim amusement. I am heartened, however, that tomorrow is another day. On the other hand, when I think a bit more about tomorrow, I am not so sure I should be.

 

In the afternoon, I visited with HRM in the Golden Hills. He seems to be doing well and excited about getting his driver’s license soon. That evening Naida and I watched the ceremony in the Capital honoring the police officer who was murdered in the attack on that building. Later that night, as we lay in bed, we listened to Maria Callas. Several times I replayed her rendition of Caro Nome which I consider one of the greatest examples of the range and control capabilities of a woman’s voice in song. It reminded me that perhaps twenty years ago I made a tape (now lost) I called The Women’s Voice. It began with Callas singing this aria. The tape contained about forty different examples including Billie Holliday, Yuma Sumac, Janis Joplin, and Carman Miranda. I loved that tape and would play it everyday.

 

February 3.

 

A slow day today — What differed between this day and any other day that I sat in front of the television with one eye and ear on the news and the others on my computer was that I did not spend time worrying about things I should be doing. I expect this mood will change and the day to become more normal as it trundles on. 

 

Well, I did not have to worry much about a change in mood because I napped most of the afternoon. Tomorrow the House of Representatives votes on Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments. I am sure something else, perhaps even something of great or of historical importance, has happened today. If it has, I missed it. That’s good. Maybe tomorrow, I will pay more attention. I wonder if it is worth it, all this attention to the news. As Ben Aaronovitch said about current events, “It’s all dull old socio-economic forces acting on an undifferentiated mass of semi-evolved primates.”(Lies Sleeping — Rivers of London [p. 271] DAW). That’s another thing — this attention to the opinions and interpretations of others. I seem to live by assimilating other peoples experiences and opinions now. Maybe I always have. My knowledge of most things seems to have been less a product of effort than mostly just an ongoing process of epistemological osmosis. 

 

 

 

The Next Day.

 

I spent the morning in bed reading. The Strong Towns blog had two interesting articles. One about local city governments splitting their tax rolls and taxing land at higher rates than improvements (an old Henry George proposal that I always found attractive). A few cities in Pennsylvania following the collapse of the steel industry instituted this form of property assessment in an attempt to halt their economic declines. It appeared to successfully halt the declines and produced renewed growth of their downtowns. The other article reviewed Sacramento’s experience with eliminating minimum parking requirements and single family home zoning.  

 

It was a sunny day and Naida and I had a delightful lunch at Piatti – a pasta carbonara, rose prosecco, bread pudding and an espresso. The House of Representatives stripped Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. All and all, it was a good day.

 

 

The Day After.

 

It seems this issue of T&T (https://josephpetrillo.wordpress.com/2021/03/17/this-and-that-from-re-thai-r-meant-by-3th-21-mopey-0011-february-8-2021/) has become the longest and perhaps the most verbose ever. I do not know if this is a result of becoming more comfortable with the nature of the activities forced on me in order to amuse myself during the pandemic or simply a symptom of my advancing age.

 

We spent the morning trying to get a COVID vaccine appointment for Naida. No luck.

 

 

Another Day Cometh.

 

This morning as I opened the door to leave the bedroom, I discovered Boo-boo the Barking Dog lying on the carpet waiting to escort me downstairs. “This was going to be a good day” I thought. While we ate breakfast sitting on our reclining chairs in the studio, Naida read to me the speech she had given a few years ago on the release of the first volume of Mark Twain’s memoir. It was magnificent. She wrote it as if she were Twain himself commenting on what the editors 100 years later had done to it.

 

We later got into the problems and concerns faced by someone trying to write his or her memoir, followed my dissertation on my approach to coastal regulation and advocacy in politically changed situations. We then watched, The Secret Life of Sherlock Holmes on the television completely avoiding the political news of the day the entire morning. The good day continues.

 

I drove into the Golden Hills. It was pleasantly warm and sunny. I carried the first two books of Naida’s trilogy along with me for Haden and Kaleb. Kaleb had asked me for a good book to read and I believe these are as good as any. Both books are set on the Cosumnes River that runs along the southwestern base of the Golden Hills. We had a delightful lunch at the Town Center Lake. After lunch, I dropped them off at a gathering of the Scooter Gang. I then drove home. All and all, a good day and I have not even checked the news yet. I think I will stop here while I am ahead.

 

 

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POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN HEAT OF THE GREAT VALLEY — June 2020:

 

 

One day, the afternoon had been quite hot, so we waited until dusk to take the dog on his walk. As we walked through the Enchanted Forest, Naida mentioned a woman who she had met on her walk a few days ago. The woman had been a singer with the Sacramento Opera and also, much to the amusement of her neighbors liked to periodically dress up a statue of a duck that stood next to the path. As chance would have it, as we passed the duck, now festooned with bright yellow flowers, we were hailed by someone in a nearby house. It was the woman. So, while carefully keeping social distance, we visited with her and learned that she had been a lead singer in the Opera; was a close friend of Bing Crosby who had fostered her career, worked as a US Marshall and was assigned to be the Marshall in charge of Squeaky Fromm; and was buddies with Naida’s friends, the Van Vleck’s who owned the massive cattle ranches along the Cosumnes River. Another bit of evidence that there are really only 400 people in the world or that those who dress up stone ducks have all the fun.

Days have gone by. I lost everything that I had written here except for the above paragraph. It is a shame really, What is lost from memory or some other means of preservation, at least as far as I am concerned, might very well not have happened. On the other hand, most of us carry memories and beliefs in our consciousness that never really existed, at least not as we remember them. I guess that makes us some sort of hybrid creature, half memory, and half fantasy. Humans are centaurs of consciousness, half real, half bullshit. That sounds about right.

The temperature outside for the past few days has topped 100 degrees. We wait until dusk before walking the dog. It is still hot and stuffy but the shadows and the lamplight adds a bit of mystery to our stroll through the Enchanted Forests. Some paths take us within a few feet of a house and the shock of a light from a window — at other times we see the houses, windows glowing softly, cluster under the trees across a meadow.

This evening we went for our usual walk. The jasmine were in bloom and their delightful aroma accompanied us as we strolled around. Upon our return to the house, we watched on CNN the burning of Minneapolis a city I always enjoyed visiting. TCM’s Edward G. Robinson festival continued for the third day.

Today I did not get out of bed until noon. Naida recognizing my commitment to lazing in bed that morning brought me my breakfast. After finishing breakfast, a little hanky-panky, and a romp with the dog, I got down to lying there with my smartphone searching the internet for the latest news of interest to me.

The first thing I came across was He Who Is Not My President’s heroic retreat to a bunker beneath the White House while those Americans who were not being felled by a pandemic were being endangered by rioting to protest police brutality. I thought back to the actions taken by the great Presidents of our history during times of crisis. This is not one of them. The current incumbent in the White House seems to be little more than an evil corrosive clown.

This evening, the Corrosive Clown in Chief had peaceful protesters attacked beaten and tear-gassed so that he could stroll across the street for a photo-op of him holding up a book he has never read while standing on property to which he was not invited. He now threatens to call out the military to attack the legitimate protestors and looters alike. And, I and most of the rest of us sit here and watch it all in shock and horror and wonder deep in our consciousness whether the spectator is really not much better than an accomplice. And then, I think again and tell myself am too old to be involved.

We have entered another spate of days where the temperature has exceeded 100 degrees. We sit indoors with the A/C turned on high, watching TV or in Naida’s case working on her memoir while I content myself with frequent naps, contemplating boredom, death, and strategies to keep Boo-Boo the Barking Dog from barking.

One morning, several days after I wrote the above paragraph, as I struggled to open my sleep encrusted eyes, across the room Naida sang and danced and the dog barked. All seemed well with my little corner of the world.

 

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