Monday, Christmas week, 2020. News from the White House becomes darker. Like Frankenstein and his benighted monster trapped in the burning windmill, Trump remains barricaded in the White House railing his fury, plotting desperate measures to retain power and developing strategies for fleecing his most ignorant followers for funds to ease his transition into his post incumbency life.
The COVID pandemic has reached the pinnacle of its wrath and destruction, just as a vaccine to end the plague begins distribution. Meanwhile COVID creeps closer. My grandson Anthony has two friends die recently and one of Hayden’s closest friends seems to have contracted it.
The week began with Naida and I at work on our computers finishing up on whatever holiday purchases we will make this year. It is December 21 and still winter has not yet descended on the Enchanted Forest. While I do not expect a snow storm, this is California after all, I do expect daytime temperatures to drop below 50, now and then before I call a season winter.
This morning as we sat in our matching recliners, Naida rummaged through a folder the called her “haystack” of poems, a collection of poems she had written during her life. She discovered one she had sent to her father as he lay dying. She read it to me and, as she reached its end, she began to cry.
A little later, she discovered in the haystack notes of a site visit she, I, and John Curci made to the Giumarra Brothers agribusiness properties in Kern County. I had forgotten all about that trip. The 87 year old Sicilian immigrant, head of this large agribusiness empire, took us in his Cadillac convertible for an exciting and at times harrowing drive on and off the dirt roads that traversed some of his properties. At one point, he, this 87 year old, raced a train to a crossing and beat it with seconds to spare. He told us he bought his first piece of land in the area cheaply because the sellers believed nothing could grow there. “How did you make the land produce so well,” I asked? “Imagination,” he replied, “ imagine anything, you can do it.”Later I negotiated the gift of most of their extensive holdings on the coast including, much of Morro Bay lagoon near Los Osos and the surrounding lands on which they had plans to build a large recreational resort and housing for their very large family. They retained a site on which to build a home for the family.
Tuesday, I went for my COVID test and await the results.
For some unknown reason, I received a small puzzle through the mail in a nicely designed box. It is a suitable present for the age of self-quarantine. Who may have sent it is a mystery. It only included a note from the manufacturer in English and Russian (at least I think it is Russian. The letters appear to be Cyrillic.) It includes the note that if any pieces are missing I should contact the manufacturer. As it seems to happen whenever I see an unassembled puzzle, I feel compelled to assemble it. And so I did.
On the afternoon before the afternoon and night before Christmas, Naida and I packed up Christmas presents for her daughters and grandchildren and set off to play a COVID-age Santa Clauses. We drove to their separate homes in the area. On arriving at each house, Naida would exit the car, grab the appropriate holiday decorated shopping-bag containing the presents for that family, run across the lawn, and deposit it before the door. We thought we were so clever.
As we drove from neighborhood to neighborhood, we noticed much higher automobile traffic than usual in these otherwise quiet areas. We wondered why until we saw several cars pull over to the side of the road, the doors open and women carrying decorated shopping bags rush across the lawns.
While we were delivering the presents, the defeated President pardoned an additional 26 people who could testify against him after he leaves office. He also announced he was considering vetoing the recently passed legislation that contained the needed funds for COVID release and funds to allow the government to continue to function. He has also stated he intends to veto the 760 billion dollar military budget. If he should utilize the pocket veto by not acting on the legislation, it will leave the country at the start of the new year without a government or a military. He now has now left the White House for Mar-a-Lago and no-one knows when or if he will return.
So what does all this mean? Confusion for sure. American responses to actions by our adversaries may be crippled, State government operations for public safety may be truncated, COVID relief halted, and, finally the ability for any governmental institution to resist a coup, insurrection or public crisis damaged. I wonder if that think tank that gamed the options available to Trump to upset the results of the vote gamed this.
On the day before Christmas, I awoke at about noon. Naida went out to shop for Christmas dinner. I worked on the computer and read a bit. In the evening we watched some science-fiction movie I did not pay much attention to. We retired early. So went Christmas Eve during the year of self-quarantine.
Christmas Day — I awoke grumpy. Like 80% or the people in the world I usually wake up grumpy and stay that way until I finish my morning coffee. For that 20% who wake up chipper and ready to meet the day, may someone drive a stake through their heart.
After my coffee and shaking off the foul thoughts accompanying my levee, Naida and I drove to her daughters house to drop of some presents. We returned and I watched Ted 1 and Ted 2 on HBO until it was time for a Zoom Christmas party with Naida’s Children and family.
Earlier we opened our presents. Well, not really… I few weeks ago I had given Naida a painting by Alexandra Leti and a long sweater for Christmas.
She had gotten me an exorbitantly expensive silk pajama’s that unfortunately had not yet arrived. She also got me a jigsaw puzzle picturing one of the towns in Cinque Terre (Romaggiore I believe).
The next day it was an unseasonably warm so Naida and I decided to go on a long rambling stroll through the Enchanted Forest. We found camellias blooming out of season and the citrus trees hung full with ripe fruit.
I enjoy walking with Naida. She can ramble on nonstop with fascinating stories. We began with her response to my question to her that, since she had been trained as she was by a student of Brahms, from the point of view of an accomplished pianist such what was the difference in baroque music and romantic? She explained that Baroque music began shortly after mechanical clocks had been installed in towns throughout Europe. Before then time was an approximation. Now minutes and seconds could divide up time with mathematical precision. In baroque music the rhythms are laid down with the mathematic meticulousness of a metronome while the music twined about the rhythms with geometric clarity. What was missing was emotion. The romantics added emotion. Naida’s piano teacher claimed that the music of the baroque period was not music because in order to be music it must be based on emotion.
She then launched into a long story, with many digressions, about an author friend of hers, trained as a veterinarian, who mostly wrote children’s novels until she explained to him how to use history to provide the background and characters in novels. He eventually became an accomplished and well known mystery and science fiction novelist.
Periodically she would stop and explain something or other about interesting flora or fauna of the Forest that we strolled by. We ended, as we returned to the house, with a discussion of the fugue and Mozart’s Requiem’s possible influence on the rise of romanticism in music.
A few days after our walk, the UPS driver hurled a package over our back yard fence containing my new silk pajamas. I love them.
After a week of bitching about some items in the COVID relief bill and demanding that the $600 per person relief that his own staff negotiated be increased to $2000. Trump signed the legislation. He followed that up with a veto of the National Defense Authorization bill. Congress has only a few days to overturn the veto. Next we face the attempts by Trump’s minions on January 6 to upset the vote to accept the Electoral College decision declaring Biden the winner of the Presidential election. Also, of course, we await additional Presidential pardons, last ditch attempts to upset the election results and whatever circus he has prepared for inauguration day. I think the nation would be disappointed if he does not make a fool of himself at least one more time.
This morning I woke up late and a bit muzzy. The bright sun slanted through the slats on the window painting bright stripes on the floor and walls. Boo-boo the Barking Dog who had been strangely silent this morning sat by the window suspiciously eyeing some workmen carrying things back and forth into a garage further down the alley. Naida brought me some coffee and crackers and I settled in to reading a fascinating post in Facebook entitled The Very Real, Totally Bizarre Bucatini Shortage of 2020 (https://www.grubstreet.com/amp/2020/12/2020-bucatini-shortage-investigation.html?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR3bhMWS182uzFua-qFqrz6B60OXIlU6uEWrm3EJO-GDogrGzyG9a5vZiUvDCU). I also watched an amazing short film of dancing robots from Boston Dynamics.
After this, I went downstairs and watched a magnificent documentary on Mozart’s life and music while Naida explained to me how the rigid almost mathematical rhythms and almost absent melodies of baroque music evolved through Mozart into the varied rhythms, and melody and emotionally rich music of the Romantic composers. She pointed out that Mozart’s piano pieces were designed to demonstrate the well-tempered abilities of the newly introduced piano. Mozart’s Requiem, she seems to believe, with it’s emphasis on emotion and melody, was a key element on the transition of the Baroque-classical music tradition to the glories of the Romantic. Each piece of music presented in the documentary inspired her to launch into a brief stream of consciousness thesis on music history and method, much of which went either over my head or was lost due to the sad state of my short term memory. For example, during one piece she exclaimed “He is using the scales to create melody.” I have no idea what she meant by that. Periodically, she would express her distress at the state of modern music with its obsession with the beat (rhythm) at the expense of almost everything else. “Something, a new music, must come out of this as it has in the past,” she exclaimed at one point.
As a historian, I learned, the development and spread of the mechanical clock generated the court music of the baroque-classical period. Much of that music (and, I imagine, the income of the performers and composers) was often intended to be performed as background music for the nobles (the music would be performed in a nearby room to where the rich and powerful ate or met) and was intended to set a mood. With the rise of the social changes of the late eighteenth century, the melodies and rhythms of the music of the lower classes and the growth of more public performances with a broader audience changed the emphasis in music from timing and mood to melody and emotion.
See, self-quarantine is not all bad. It is possible to learn something. It’s not much but it is undeniably something.
Today is the last day of this God forsaken year. I suspect most people have a timid hope that next year will be better. Hope, however, is an emotion usually reserved for when reality seems to indicate the opposite. So it is with the almost universal longing for a better year than that we have most recently experienced. The installation of a new empathetic leader of the country and the roll-out of vaccines to halt the modern-day plague that has descended on us, however, seems to me to be at best a feeble impediment to the forces of chaos unleashed on us all over the past few decades.
I spent much of the day driving into the Golden Hills for a pizza lunch with HRM. Because of the pandemic, it has been a relatively long time since we had gotten together. The people close to him that may have tested positive for COVID all seem to have tested negative recently. We ate our pizza by the lake in Town Center where we had the usual teenage/adult conversation:
Me: How is everything going with you?H. : Great.Me: How is School?H. : Great.Me: Do you need anything?H. : Thanks, but no.Me: Any plans for the rest of the vacation?H. : Going snowboarding tomorrow.Me: Great. How about plans for summer? Do you have any?H. : Drive around a lot. That’s cool.Me: What have you been doing during this winter vacation”H. : Driving around a lot with Jake and Kaleb. I like that.
At this point in our edifying conversation, we both turned to gaze at the lake, eat our pizza, and enjoy each other’s company in silence.
Terry, ever the optimist sent me the following:
This article answers the question:In historical context , how bad was 2020?The answer: not so bad.We have been throughicmuch, much worse:1. In the world: 1356 , the bubonic plague wiped out 65% of the European population .2. In the US 1862 : the Civil War was at its worst, casualties disastrous on both sides. And there seemed no way out but secession.Actually 2020 is far down the list . Let’s count our blessings as the NEW YEAR begins, with a new President, a vaccine (s) and hope! HAPPY NEW YEAR 🎊🎈🎆Was 2020 the worst year ever? Historians weigh in.Those who study the past have offered their own ranking of history’s worst years.By Michael S. Rosenwald
Despite Terry’s optimism it is important for we all to remember, the light we see at the end of the tunnel may just as well be the train coming down the tracks as the sunlight. We might as well hope it is the sunlight shining on us as the Orange Menace flees down the tracks and away from us all.
Naida and I will probably retire early and miss whatever properly social-distanced festivities might be shown on television or available on smart phone.
Tomorrow is another day and another year. It seems like it is always something now-a-days.
Papa Joe's Tales, Fables and Parables 