TODAY FROM AMERICA: POOKIE’S ADVENTURES AS HE SLIDES TOWARDS AUGUST. (July 26, 2023)

“ I was wondering if someday I’d be seen as a blustery old man, the deeds of my youth ignored or forgotten by the yet unborn.”

                Benn, James R.. The Red Horse (A Billy Boyle WWII Mystery) (p. 137). Soho Press. 

Oh, in my case, I would hope that the deeds of my youth were forgotten by now. They were certainly ignored. Now, at the grand old age of 83, I try to remember those same youthful deeds that I hope others have forgotten. Why? Perhaps because our past defines us. Even our present becomes the past in mere moments as our minds become aware of it. When we’re young, we eagerly pursue the future, unaware or unconcerned that once we grasp it, it’s already behind us. Maybe that’s why we often cling desperately to things. When we’re old, we are our past, and if we’re wise, we’ll overlook it and welcome the surprises of the future that keep shaping who we are.

On Wednesday, I had my weekly lunch with Hayden. Each time I see him, he appears more settled in himself. He seems to have moved beyond seeing college as an extension of high school and views it as something to be managed in order to enhance his goals. That’s a significant step.

My daughter Jessica had that awareness while still in high school, and it seems my granddaughter Amanda does too. Of course, that doesn’t mean those goals were or are wise, or that they’ll even be achieved. However, they usually provide a solid foundation for taking the first steps into the rest of their lives.

In the evening, the dog barked incessantly, and Naida worked on her memoir while intermittently checking the backyard to see what the dog was barking at. I didn’t take a nap but instead read a bit more of Charlie Stross’ latest Laundry Files novel. It’s clever, though not as enjoyable as the earlier books in the series. Speaking of series, while writing this, I remembered the Beware of Chicken series that I’m quite taken with (though I don’t recommend it as it’s an acquired taste, much like grappa). It’s written by someone who goes by the pen-name  “Casualfarmer.” I had saved an excerpt from the first novel in the series that I wanted to share a while ago but had forgotten. So, for no particular reason, I have posted it here instead of deleting it. The excerpt vividly describes the battle between the rooster (Bi De) and the relentless and undefeated leader of mercenaries for hire (Sun Ken).

“The half-moon. It had its own lessons. Like the Taijitu, it was half-dark and half-light, but the separation was perfect unlike that symbol. No light stained the dark, and no dark stained the light. 

His feathers drank in the holy 

light, armouring his body in the purest argent. 

Yet Sun Ken struck first. 

[Spiraling Demonic Whirlwind!] 

Red roared out, forming a ravening twister of destruction. Like demonic teeth, it consumed everything in its path. 

Bi De charged to meet it, racing into the jaws of death. The red, ravening energy slammed into his chest, and he howled in pain, but it was nothing compared to the pain Chow Ji had inflicted upon him. 

He drove through it as Sun Ken spat blood, the mist flowing out and into the red wave, burning his vital energy in his last attack. The luminescent feathers faltered. 

His pure armour began to fail. Little red cracks formed. 

Like the fangs of a demon, the whirlwind bit deep, offering no mercy. It ripped into silvery flesh and tore it to pieces. 

Bi De screamed. 

The silver light guttered out.

                 Casualfarmer. Beware of Chicken: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel (p. 252). Podium Publishing. 

On Thursday morning, I wasn’t feeling well. Naida’s daughter, Jenifer, came by and we loaded the car with boxes of Naida’s novels. They were to be taken to the State Fairgrounds and stored at the California Author’s booth for sale when the State Fair opens next week. After they drove off, I went upstairs and slept until early afternoon when Naida returned from her trip to the fairgrounds.

Still not feeling great, I went downstairs, ate a light lunch, and settled into the recliner to read my most recent Billy Boyle novel, “Road of Bones,” which was either the 15th or 16th in the series. In the novel, Billy finds himself on the eastern front of the war during the latter part of 1944. He was tasked with finding the murderer of an American and a Russian soldier. There was a tense political situation between the Russians and the American military stationed on the eastern front. The airfields were there to service the allied bombers that flew over Germany, dropped their bombs and continued on into the Soviet Union where they would refuel and rearm, and fly back to drop more bombs on Germany before returning to their bases in Italy or England.

What I found most interesting and exciting were the sections of the book about the famous “Night Witches.” The “Night Witches” were an extraordinary group of female aviators who played a vital role in World War II. Formed in the Soviet Union in 1941, these brave women were part of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, the only all-female air regiment in history. Flying in obsolete biplanes, such as the Polikarpov Po-2, they conducted daring night bombing missions over German-occupied territories. The nickname “Night Witches” was given to them by the German soldiers due to their stealthy tactics and the eerie noise their wooden planes made during flight. Facing harsh weather conditions, scarcity of resources, and relentless enemy fire, the Night Witches displayed unwavering courage and determination, successfully completing over 23,000 combat missions and dropping around 23,000 tons of bombs on German positions.

The Night Witches were so despised and feared by the Germans that any airman who shot one down was automatically awarded the Iron Cross. Despite being the most highly decorated Soviet air force unit of the war, the Night Witches were disbanded six months after the end of hostilities and were not invited to participate in the victory parade held in Moscow.

In the novel, Billy Boyd accompanies one of the Night Witches on a night-time bombing run in Poland. To me, it was one of the most exciting episodes in all the novels.

The next morning was another lazy one. I woke up early (for me) at around 7:30 AM and laid in bed for the next hour or two, browsing through the usual sites on my phone: checking my mail, messages, the 49ers Webzone, local weather, Apple News, HuffPost, Daily Kos, and Facebook. Then I went downstairs, gave Naida a kiss on the head, glared at the dog, and made my way into the kitchen to prepare my  usual breakfast,  consisting of a bagel with cream cheese and gravlax, along with coffee. The dog followed me, begging for scraps. I returned to the studio, ate my breakfast, and read a bit in my latest Kindle book. After finishing breakfast and giving the dog my dish to lick, I played on my computer until around 12:30 or so. Then I went back upstairs, got dressed, and prepared for the rest of the day. Often, the “rest of the day” would begin with me crawling back into bed for a long nap.

The next day was Saturday. My son, Jason, arrived just before we were to leave for the Saturday Morning Coffee. He planned to spend the day playing golf, even though the temperature was expected to reach close to 110 degrees. His tee time was not until twelve noon, so he went upstairs to take a nap first.

We drove to the Nepenthe Clubhouse because even at 10 in the morning, it was too hot to walk. After the coffee gathering, we went to Raley’s for some food shopping. When we returned home, I went upstairs and found Jason still asleep. He had missed his tee time but was not too disappointed. “I would have probably died from the heat,” he said.

That evening, we all went to “Lemon Grass,” our favorite Vietnamese Restaurant, and had a good time. After returning home, we had a lengthy conversation about this and that and another thing or two until it was time for bed.

The following morning, Jason left to return to San Francisco. After breakfast, I went back to bed for a nap. The temperature outside is expected to reach close to 110 degrees again. In the evening, after sunset, we walked the dog, but it was still too hot, in the high 90s. For dinner, Naida prepared a nice meal using the leftovers we brought home from the restaurants we ate at in the past two days.

That night, we watched a couple of Pam Grier Blaxploitation films from the 70s, namely “Foxy Brown” and “Sheba Baby.” I love her acting and the fashions of that era.

Monday marked the beginning of a new week. I noticed that everything appeared blurry in the morning, and I seemed to be having trouble with my vision. Even as I type this, I can’t see the letters clearly as they appear on the screen. Maybe it’ll somehow improve my writing. The day was hot again, though not as much as yesterday. Yesterday’s temperature reached 110 degrees, while today’s is expected to be around 105. After breakfast, I wasn’t feeling well at all—dizzy, blurred vision, and serious irritation in my throat and mouth. I put myself to bed and slept until almost 4 PM. Upon waking up, I still didn’t feel much better. I had a late lunch downstairs and examined my mouth and throat, suspecting a return of thrush. I decided to increase my throat medications to address it.

The next morning, I woke up early, and my throat and mouth still felt raw. The Nepenthe management had shut off the electricity for some repairs, and workers were scrambling about in the alley. Another hot day was expected, with temperatures hovering in the low 100s. It felt reminiscent of the COVID shutdowns, this time confined indoors due to the scorching heat instead of the pandemic. At about 11 AM, the electricity was turned back on, and we were able to have our morning coffee.

Wednesday was my usual lunch day with Hayden. I drove into the Golden Hills, and we had lunch at a good Mexican restaurant. We discussed the possibility of vacationing together in New York before he starts college.

Thursday, I mostly felt under the weather and stayed indoors, sleeping a lot. My throat was quite painful.

On Friday, I visited my primary care doctor about my throat. She said they would arrange a visit with a specialist. The temperature was close to 110 degrees again. In the evening, after sunset, we walked the dog. The temperature was still around 100 degrees and muggy. We rested on a bench for a while before returning home.

Two ancients stealing a kiss while sitting on a bench in the Enchanted Forest one warm muggy evening in July.

On Saturday morning, we walked to the Nepenthe Club House for the Saturday Morning Coffee. Our leader, Gerry, announced that there were no announcements for the day, so we spent the time sharing bad jokes. As usual, I missed the punchlines of most of them. Afterward, I went out to sit in the shade by the pool, waiting for Naida to finish socializing. I ended up falling asleep until Naida woke me up, and we walked home in the scorching 100+ degree heat. When we got home, we sat in the studio and discussed the conversation among the men at the Coffee about post-WWII Germany. Naida, who had spent over a year in Germany in the mid to late 1950s, explained to me how the Germans didn’t believe that the Allies had freed them from tyranny but rather blamed them for preventing them from receiving the benefits that Hitler had promised them. “There was,” she said, “a deep hatred of the Allied occupiers.”

After that rather sad discussion, for some reason, we decided to sing “Deep Purple.”

When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls

And the stars begin to flicker in the sky,

Thru the mist of a memory, you wander back to me

Breathing my name with a sigh.

In the still of the night once again I hold you tight.

Tho’ you’re gone your love lives on when moonlight beams.

And as long as my heart will beat,

Lover, we’ll always meet here in my deep purple dreams.

That night we watched the Great Gatsby, an expensively made film with a great cast. Unfortunately, most members of that cast were unfit for the roles they were asked to play. An interesting if uninspiring movie that we watched until 2AM before going to bed. The next day I got out of bed at about 11AM, ate breakfast played with my computer until after lunch after which I returned to bed and slept until 5PM. When I returned downstairs Naida was at her computer as usual working on her memoir. I said to her, “I am nothing but a slug. How can you love a slug?” She laughed and began singing one of Bing Crosby’s old tunes “Would you like to swing on a star” except she replaced “mule” in the original with “slug.” Since neither of us could come up with appropriate rhymes for “slug’ in the second stanza, I asked AI to help us out. This is what we came up with:

Would you like to swing on a star

Carry moonbeams home in a jar

And be better off than you are

Or would you rather be a slug

A slug is an animal without any legs

It slides through life, leaving silver dregs

No kicks to give, just a peaceful pace

Its brain is small, but it knows its place

And if you hate to rush around

You may grow up to be a slug.

And, yes I am a slug but my dregs are far from silver.

The next day, Monday I think. The temperature did not break 100 degrees (It did make it to 98), We had lunch at Ettore’s, then went grocery shopping after which I walked the dog and then we finished the day once again sitting slack jaw in front of TV.

Tomorrow I leave for SF for my periodic medical check ups. Hayden will be driving me. I look forward to the trip. Today on the other hand is just another day a day of ennui like most days.

    Ennui

     

    Watching blue mold on bread grow,

    Spring rains, Summer’s glow,

    Autumn leaves go floating by,

    How many days before I die?

     

    Some reap and others sow,

    Some the whole world’s knowledge know,

    I instead just sit and sigh.

    How many days before I die?

I guess I am a committed cynic. A cynic knows that even on sunny days storms will eventually come; that all life ends in death. I am more amused than sad, more annoyed than despondent, more angry than desperate.

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Winnie and I: Part I

Fordham University Campus, Rose Hill, the Bronx, New York City.

Keating Hall in winter. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I walked in the blazing heat of the Bangkok sun to the health club today; heels striking the pavement heavily, shoulders hunched, head down checking the sidewalk in hopes of avoiding falling through a hole into one of those inky black and disgustingly dangerous sewers that were at one time canals. My neck jutted out parallel to the ground like that of a turtle or a chicken as I walked. Plodding along, I, as old men often do, ruminated through the parched grasses of memory. I surprised myself by finding I had become fixated on Winston Churchill.

No, not the balding, rotund, cigar smoking, alcoholic, bigot who many believe won World War II single-handedly despite the death of millions of allied soldiers and the unlimited aid of American industrial might, as well as the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of mostly non-white colonial serfs who gave up their lives at the request of the Free French generals in order to liberate a nation most of whose population had settled down happily and comfortably under the tyranny of the SS. No, not him, but Winston Churchill (of some number, I think III) a scion of an American offshoot of the legendary British family who attended Fordham College with me back in the late 1950s and early 60s. (This was also the period when the 45th President of the United States of America attended that university. He was neither among the brightest nor most distinguished members of the student body. In fact, to use one of his often used phrases, “He was a nobody.”)

Fordham was a Catholic, Jesuit run university at a place called Rose Hill in the Bronx at the edge of a large Italian ghetto. Winnie, as he was called, enrolled at this second-rate Catholic university instead of ivy-coated halls of Harvard or Yale to which his ancestry and wealth entitled him because his fanatically Catholic mother insisted that he bide his time under the watchful eyes of the Jesuit order before receiving the rewards due a Churchill.

There was no question in anyone’s mind, least of all Winnie’s, that he was destined for great things. In addition to his name and heritage, he was clearly one of the five or six smartest students at the university. He also was tall as befitted a child of the nordic-germanic races as opposed to us much shorter Celtic and mediterranean types that peopled the campus. He was blond, blue-eyed and handsome in a pretty sort of way. The only blemish on his appearance that I could recall was his blade thin nose that erupted from his face like a knife after slicing through a round of camembert. For someone who came from a race of either bulbous or beak-like probosci, Winnie’s nose simply appeared unimpressive to me. His nostrils were so narrow I wondered how he got enough air through them to survive. I half suspected that he had a bottle of compressed oxygen secreted nearby and would now and then slip out for a nip like a Bowery denizen would nip at a bottle of Thunderbird encased in a brown paper bag.

However, what mostly set Winnie apart from the rest of us, and if you would have asked me at the time the rest of humanity, was his abiding belief that what was good for Winnie, was… well, all that really mattered. Now, this did not mean that Winnie was mean or callous; no not at all. If an old woman walking in front of him on the sidewalk tripped and fell, Winnie would not hesitate to stop and help her up. And in response to the old woman’s expression of thanks, flash his broad smile as though her gratitude was his due. Of course, if the old woman tripped and fell into a puddle of mud, he would most likely walk right by. Wouldn’t anyone?

Anyway, in our senior year, many of us took the LSAT examination required for those of us planning to go on to law school. That year they introduced an additional day of exams directed at testing our general knowledge. When the results came back I scored 800 out of 800 on the general knowledge portion of the exam which was the highest in the school (Winnie was second but far behind me) and obviously no one in the New York had gotten higher since that was as high as the scoring system went.

Now I scored so high on this exam not because I was particularly smarter than anyone. I was not. My scores on the other two days or the exam proved this since they were barely adequate to get me into a second-rate law school. No, it was that my reading regime and obsessions with factoids gave me an advantage. That and the fact that this portion of the exam was multiple choice and I firmly believed that anyone that could not get at least 90 percent right on a multiple choice test, even if the test were in a foreign language that you did not understand, was mentally deficient.

Nevertheless, I was sort of pleased with the results. Not pleased enough to tell my mother, but pleased enough to hope some of the young women around campus would hear about it and think that I was interesting enough to date. This was the end of the 50s after all. Alas, it never happened.

As I contemplated my forlorn hope, I received a message from the Dean of Students requesting I come immediately to his office to discuss the results of the LSAT exam. Now, I do not remember how the message was delivered. This was after all before computers and mobile communication. I guess it was the usual method of communication available at the time; another student shouting at me as I walked across campus, “Hey Joe, the Dean wants to talk to you about the LSAT right away.”

So off I went with the hope of some official recognition that would intrigue the girl of my dreams.

Now, it is important to understand Jesuit management as laid down centuries ago by the order’s founder Ignatius of Loyola, a frustrated Basque ex-soldier who because of an injury suffered in battle could no longer do what he knew best, kill people, decided to apply his soldierly skills on behalf of the Pope and make war on people’s minds. His management system required that the head guy (it had to be a guy) must be beloved. So his job was to say in public only things that made people happy and made them love him. His second in command had to be the prick and do all the dirty work. It was essential that the prick was deeply loathed by everyone so that the head guy looked even better by comparison.

At Fordham, as far as I knew, the second in command was the Dean of Students (actually I may have his title wrong it may have been the Dean of Discipline, but whatever). The Dean of Students was a prick.

I entered the Dean’s office. Although outside it was a bright spring afternoon the office was gloomy, curtains drawn. A small lamp on the desk provided most of the light. The dark almost black wood furniture in that gothic style that Catholic religious of the time seemed to like so much filled the room. Winnie was there, sitting in a chair off to the side in an elegant upper-class slouch, his knife nose pointed towards the ceiling a few feet behind the Dean’s desk. His face absent its usual slightly supercilious smile, his blue eyes blazing with annoyance or anger or something else that I could not guess at.

I took a seat before the Dean. The chair was one or those uncomfortable, tall-backed, wooden chairs with twisted columns holding up a cross-piece of dark reddish-brown wood about a foot above my head. The wood slat had a lion’s head carved into it to go with the claws on the base of the chair’s legs. A similar larger set of claws held up the Dean’s desk.

The Dean a man of average height, with a round face and eyes that peered out at you through slits. Slits not so much like the epicanthic narrowed eyes of Asians but simply slits through which one could not see the eyes behind, only blackness. He wore a black cassock and a shawl of some sort. He leaned forward and asked in a low nearly inaudible voice, “Do you know your marks on the General Knowledge section of the LSAT exam?”

“Yes, father,” I responded.

“Who do you think you are,” he continued in that same low voice? “I know all about you. You never come to class. You do not complete your assignments. Your grades are barely even mediocre. What right do you have getting a higher mark than those students like Winston here who work so hard?”

Now, Winnie did turn in his assignments and I did not. That is so. But if truth be known, his attendance record was not all that better than mine.

Anyway, I did not get to say anything, because with a flick of his hand the Dean dismissed me.

“Thank you, father,” I mumbled. I got up, passed Winnie who now had a broad leer on his face and I left the room.

I felt neither good nor bad, neither humiliated or angry, but only concerned about how I was going to go about meeting girls now…. After all, I was barely more than a teenager, the Sixties actually did not begin in earnest until at least 1965 and no one really smoked dope except musicians.
(to be continued)

(NOTE: I wrote the above, I am sure you all recognize  as entertainment. Although the events were as described, Winnie as I knew him then was far more complex and sensitive than I describe him here, as I hope so was I. The Dean of Students, however was a prick and will always be a prick.

As long as I am on the subject, why is it OK to call a man a prick but not OK to call a woman a cunt? Who decides these things anyway? I am sure that in the all girls Catholic schools of the time the nun counterpart to the Dean of Discipline (or Students or whatever) was a cunt and was so referred to as by any student that had run afoul of her.)

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TO NOWHERE AND BACK AGAIN: The Adventures of Pookie and Gun Girl in Thailand: 3. Across the plains and into the hills.

Three or so hours later we had crossed the entire central plains of Thailand and arrived at the foothills of the mountains that separated Thailand from Burma.

The huge blue sea of a sky sporting an archipelago of white clouds relieved the melancholy press of Thai traffic as we crossed the central lowlands.  The shocking green of the still flooded rice paddies with their rapidly maturing plants lined each side of the highway. These were not your cute little paddies tended by picturesque farmers in conical hats, but industrial agribusiness paddies of many acres each much like those one sees in California’s Central Valley near Sacramento. It is from these paddies that Thailand feeds much of southern Asia.

Hoards of the Southeast Asian version of egrets and herons (Storks? Spoonbills?) thronged the paddies. Not just one or two here and there or even the hundred or so one sees while traveling along the Coast Highway in and around Bolinas Lagoon near the rookery, but hundreds and hundreds maybe even thousands, standing one-legged, head cocked, sharp beak and dark baleful eye searching to devour whatever wiggles within their reach. Above them swarmed flocks of the Asian equivalent of starlings and swallows swooping up any insect rising from the water.

The first city we encountered was Kanchanaburi, where almost 20 years ago Richard “Uncle Mask” McCarthy, Bill Gates and I ventured to view the Bridge over the River Kawai (or fully translated, Buffalo River Bridge). It was on that trip, if I remember correctly, that the three of us came up with the idea of opening a bar in Bangkok. Originally we thought of naming it, “California Dick’s,” but Richard was still sensitive about his youthful nickname. Then in a fit of originality, we came up with the alternative name “California Joe’s” (I having no objection to embarrassment and humiliation). Later when we suggested it to our Thai partners, they objected because Thais could not pronounce long western names. So, despite the fact that our target clientel would be westerners and not Thai, we acceded to the name AVA. The first of what would be many mistakes in our business, social and personal dealings with our Thai partners.

The Bridge over the River Kawai was an Oscar-winning movie that glorified the less than heroic deaths of the 16,000 allied prisoners who were forced by the Japanese during World War II to labor on the construction of the bridge and the railroad line between Kanchanaburi and Burma that came to be known as the “Death Railway.” Unfortunately, in typical western centrism of Hollywood, it failed to acknowledge the 10 times as many Southeast Asian slave laborers who also died in its construction.

Alec Guinness played the British military officer in charge of building the bridge on behalf of the Japanese who goes batshit over the attempt by the allies to take down the bridge by sabotage. In real life, the bridge was destroyed in an allied bomber attack. Cinematic heroism was in short supply in POW slave labor camps during the Second World War.

The city has grown considerably since I was there last. The allied prisoners who died working on the bridge are buried in a cemetery that at the time I visited it over a decade ago was located in a rural area surrounded by fields and meadows. It appeared then to be large and stately. Now the city has grown up all around it and the cemetery mostly looks surprisingly small and forlorn.

We met up with a woman friend of Gun Girl’s named Lek and stopped for dinner at an outdoor restaurant. No sooner had we sat down when a police car drove up disgorging a handsome young Thai policeman who proceeded to walk off-hand in hand with Teddy Bear Boy. They did not return until the rest of us had finished dinner and were ready to leave. After talking a few photos of the cop and TBB with their arms entwined.

Following the photo session, Gun Girl instructed me to get into Lek’s automobile for the remainder of the drive to wherever we were to spend the night. I was introduced to who would be driving. He was accompanied by his girlfriend. Lek and I got into the back seat.

Lek, a pleasantly round Thai woman informed me that she wanted to practice her English. So I patiently listened to her story of growing up poor but through the sacrifices of her honest farmer parents and her hard work she became a nurse and labored 10 years in the emergency room of the local hospital. She now is retired and works as a part-time tour guide in the area. That is why she has to keep improving her English skills.

It was night now, the road rose gently into the mountains much like the roads into the Sierra when one climbs up from the Central Valley.

About an hour or so later, we arrived at a resort that straddles a river containing stepped waterfalls. Lights illuminated the water tumbling over the staircase cascade until the river itself vanished into the shadows. The river was not very wide about 30 feet or so, but what it lacked in breadth in made up in exuberance. I counted at least 23 major steps to the falls each about 3 to 4 feet high until they disappeared above and below me into the gloom of the jungle. Innumerable smaller falls and cataracts were interspersed among the larger ones as well as on the many lesser streams that discharged into the main watercourse. Some of these tributaries passed under and around the resort buildings.

The place was called “Bamboo Hut Resort” and indeed it included a large bamboo structure that housed an open restaurant and reception area. About eight similarly constructed (but enclosed) small cabins made up the remainder of the resort.

We rented two nice cabins with double king-sized beds perched directly over the falls. Exhausted by the events of the day,  I needed to sleep so I took one of the cabins while everyone else partied in the other. Teddy Bear Boy was assigned as my cabin mate. Despite my slight discomfort at that, the surprisingly mesmerizing roar and rumble of the falls and my fatigue put me right to sleep and I slept undisturbed until morning.

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