There Will Be a Reckoning

30 May 2020

Yesterday I turned Facebook off and left it off all day.  I disappeared from social media from breakfast until after midnight.  I had to.  The waves of bad news just overwhelmed me.  I needed some air.  

Turing off the “stream” really didn’t make a difference. All through the day my news junkie son would bring me tidbits of what was going on.  Exasperated he came to lunch saying, “They are flying predator drones over Minneapolis.” Seemed odd but I did not press the point.  After lunch I fact checked it.  Yes, indeed they were flying a predator drone (singular) over the city.  The sources implied it was probably from the Customs folks but the news sources were careful not to state the drone’s origin as fact. Drones being used over American cities, just wow.

Off and on my son brought me numbers of people involved in the protests, and events that had occurred. Some of them seemed far-fetched. But each time I checked the facts he recounted were true.  When he came to me with news the police were shooting reporters with rubber bullets, I was totally skeptical.  Sure enough, one news team had come under fire with rubber bullets. When the looting starts, the shooting starts indeed.The free press has been marginalized with those who oppose the truth coming out with the rubric "fake news". But the arrest of the CNN crew and this show a far more troubling state of affairs.

Watching this unfold, I personally believe America is at a crossroads, a tipping point if you would.  A dangerous disease is threatening us all, but especially the old. Black and brown Americans are being subjected to economic injustice and a system of legal machinery that is brutal, unresponsive and thoroughly not subject to being held to account. The world in which American stands has become much more unstable and we are distancing ourselves from any role of moral leadership. We have leaders incapable of empathy or of taking into account the needs of all Americans. Our President is incapable of admitting a mistake or saying he is sorry.

The riots, and that is what they are, we are seeing are not just about one man killed in one Midwestern city.  What is occurring is the result of years of marginalization of large parts of our population by government and corporations.  Jobs have been outsourced and a shot at being middle class has disappeared for wide swaths of our people, our fellow citizens.  

Local government leaders and the police have allowed the poor and disenfranchised to be lumped into a group that is something less.  Something less that the white people who live in the suburbs.  Something less than trustworthy.  Something less that a citizen equal under the law.  Doing these things has ignited a fire that has been smoldering for a time but we are at a point where a hell of a conflagration could erupt, just like in did in 1968.

So, what do we do?  I don’t know.  I think a radical change in leadership is called for, but I am not really sure either of the major parties is really equipped to deal with what must be done.  Corporations must be held to account.  The outsourcing of jobs to Bangladesh and Mexico must end. Monopolies and near monopolies must be broken up.  Lobbyists need to be kicked to the curb.  Real educational reform must happen to ensure people have an equal chance at the start of their lives. The ranks of the police must be purged of white nationalists and overly violent officers. We need to purge the corrupting and curdling influence of social media on our politics. We need to fight the cyberattacks on our way of life from China, Russia and North Korea. The laundry list is long and we need real leaders, real statespersons to get the job done. The leader of the Senate and the occupant of the White House are not those people.

What we cannot do is look away.  America is looking into the abyss.  We are facing the unravelling of our democracy.  If our leaders are incapable of taking charge, well we have to live the life of Americans who believe in equality and justice for all. One life lost can change the world, and we might be facing just such a change.

How Do We Even Listen?

28 May 2020

News has always been an addiction for me.  From the time when I was a kid during the Vietnam War, when I would watch Peter Jennings introduce the graphic footage out of South Vietnam to 9/11 and beyond, I was focused on news.  Somewhere in the 1990s I gave up on American news and started watching the CBC.  Even then I did not trust the perspective on events I was being given by the major networks.  Don’t get me wrong, I always felt the reporters were trying to get to the truth, but it seemed the corporations behind the broadcasts skewed most stories into a very pro-American light.

Over the years I have tried various news magazines.  Time, Newsweek, Maclean’s, I have had subscriptions to them all for extended periods.  Each disappointed me over time. The only print magazine for news I still subscribe to is Mother Jones. Yes, they have a viewpoint.  Yes, that viewpoint is quite left/liberal.  However, the reporters get their facts and numbers right.  Being a small magazine that can’t afford to get the facts wrongs.  The litigation would be fatal.  As it stands the magazine has been subject to strike suits by corporate wankers, like that West Virginia coal magnate that is such a friend of Trump. Mother Jones won the suit, but it cost them so much money.

Since I have retired to get my news, I listen to two podcasts, Up First and Marketplace. I like Up First because it focuses is on only three stories and gives them a fair amount of time and analysis each.  But some days I just can’t make my way through the whole short program.

Today the stories were on Covid-19’s death toll and what comes next. Also covered were the death of a black man at police hands in Minneapolis and China’s placing its foot down on Hong Kong. No matter where you stand on the political spectrum it is hard to unpack and internalize these stories.

Probably the easiest one to take in is the Hong Kong story.  Why?  Well it is not happening here.  While this story and a hundred other stories from China give great pause as to whether the next great armed conflict will be the United States and China, it isn’t here now so we can put that on a mental back burner.  We shake our heads and internally acknowledged China is eating our proverbial lunch or shaking us down for our lunch money if you want a different metaphor.  But we can turn that off, if doesn’t have exigency, it doesn’t have immediacy.

What we can’t turn off is the race war that is still going on in this country.  Will we ever come to terms with race and racism in this country? It isn’t like we haven’t had enough time. After you have watched the Minneapolis video how can you eat a meal?  How can you face the fact of the broad divide in how justice is administered across the races? The man was saying he could not breath, so move your damn knee off his neck.  If he was a white teenager the cops would have listened.

What we can’t turn off is the pandemic.  100,000 dead…a very small number as compared to the overall United States population of 340 million. But despite the belief of some people that Covid-19 would just go away or just vanish, it hasn’t.  And listening to the most informed clinicians, it won’t at any point soon. If we don’t deal with this as a health crisis, it may get much worse. And we have allowed this to be turned into a political thing.  Even the Grim Reaper Mitch McConnell acknowledges and agrees with the CDC’s recommendations of face mask use and a six-foot social distance. But still we founder in our response to this “health” crisis.

Somedays I just want to sit on my back porch all day and watch the squirrels and chipmunks do their crazy races from one side of my yard to the other. I mean it is fun to watch them dash up a tree and fall from a branch too thin.  Somedays I just can’t take the churning that even three news stories causes in my guts. But come tomorrow I will try and listen again.  Why?  Well I learned a long time ago that no matter how much truth and reality hurt, ignorance is not a solution.

And as to the what occurred in Minneapolis, well you got to view it through the light of what happened in Central Park.  We are becoming a feudal society.  We are becoming a hateful society.  This has to end.  Brown v Board was more than a half century ago.  Can’t we just accept people as people?  Black, Asian, Hispanic, whatever let justice, and the enforcement of the laws, be equal.

Blessed Sleep

27 May 2020

The weather in the Midwest has been unusually warm for May.  We have hit and exceeded ninety degrees already. A high above ninety is way not the norm in the Great Lakes Region in May. As a result of this anomalous heat, I have had my air condition on.  My house was built in 1939 and is of wood frame construction. As nature dictates the upstairs, the sleeping quarters, get really unbearable after a ninety-degree day.  Thus, the air conditioning is running constantly so very early in the season.

With the air conditioning on I cannot hear the birdsong that has been waking most morning for weeks now. One would think that sleep would come easier and last longer. Well, yes and no.  Since I have retired my mind is not as busy.  In the old days when I went to bed a million things would run through my thoughts and I would lay awake late, late into the night.  Now, I don’t have those agonizing thoughts.  With the cool air in the room I fall asleep easier. Most nights I drift off when my head hits the pillow.

Despite the quick sleep start, with or without an alarm I am finding myself up at 5:45 to 5:55 a.m. each day.  I try and go back to sleep but that does not happen.  In the end I toss about for a few minutes and then I slip on my jeans as quietly as I can and I leave the bedroom. By 6:15 a.m. I am often done with my breakfast and I am reading the Washington Post online, along with Facebook and the Apple News app feed.

I remember seeing a headline recently about the pandemic somehow causing changes to peoples’ sleep patterns.  I don’t know if the pandemic, or my retirement, or something altogether else is impacting my sleep patterns. I just know that they have changed.

When I was working, I would get up at about 6:15. Back then I had to be at my desk by 8 a.m.  This meant I had to be up, showered, dressed, fed and out the door by 7:25 a.m. It took 35 minutes to walk in on a clear dry day.  Why my waking time now would shift 20 to 30 minutes earlier is something I can’t explain. 

Saw a stat this morning saying that a quarter to a third of all Americans are showing signs of clinical depression or anxiety since the pandemic began.  Depression can change sleep patterns. Given I was already changing gears by virtue of my retirement the shift in life’s patterns caused by the pandemic has really not flummoxed me. To my mind I am not overtly stressed, anxious or depressed.  Irked maybe, I was supposed to be heading off to another country to enjoy this golden year. I don’t think it is some mental health thing that is changing my sleep rhythm. 

Maybe it is my shift to a more southernly lifestyle.  I do find midday naps out of the sun to be a wonderful thing. I usually set aside 15 or 30 minutes at about 2 p.m. to watch the back of my eyelids.

Oh well, I guess I will just adapt.  There are some good things about being up this early.  First, there is the light, I love the golden light but I have said that before.  Second, there is the space to think and breath without being impacted by others.  Third, there is a real calm that can be sensed before the world commits to it patterns of movement and transaction.

The World is Reopening for You…

26 May 2020

…but not for me.  

Please understand that I get the need to have our economy up and running. Having the mighty the mighty machine of American commerce dead in the water is a very bad situation. People from all walks of life are suffering.  But economic pain is not the only element to be considered here.

Science says that this is a pandemic, it is not a hoax.  Science says older people, especially older people who serious health issues are at significant and material risk of suffering from a highly infectious, unusually lethal and very contagious disease. I am an older person with a comprised state of health.  If I become infected, I stand a god-awful chance of death or long-term debilitating illness. 

Put quite simply this is my stance on where things stand.  I do not want to have a stroke, a heart attack, my lungs shredded or die because you don’t feel comfortable wearing a mask in public or because you think maintaining a six-foot social distance is ridiculous. As a citizen you have an obligation to get beyond your own selfishness.

But Freedom man, Freedom.

Thomas Paine addressed this rallying cry of the gun toting, no facemasks and crowded bunch.  To wit:

“While the Declaration of Rights was before the National Assembly some of its members remarked that if a declaration of rights were published it should be accompanied by a Declaration of Duties. The observation discovered a mind that reflected, and it only erred by not reflecting far enough. A Declaration of rights is, by reciprocity, a Declaration of Duties also. Whatever is my right as a [hu]man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”

―The Rights of Man

Like you I am guaranteed the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When you know, and the science is there for you to know, that your decisions to crowd me while not wearing a facemask, especially when you have to been to crowded beaches, bars and restaurants, is placing me at a much increased risk of death, you are not holding up your part of the citizenship bargain. You are being a selfish lout.

I would love things to go back to normal as soon as possible.  But that is simply not possible. But we can start moving in that direction if you start fulfilling your part of the democratic bargain.  Fine, wave your guns about.  But wave your guns about in a manner that is consistent with the behaviors required of a citizen living with the burdens and obligations they owe to other citizens. That is right, wear a mask on when you are in public and be appropriately socially distanced. If you do that, maybe then I will be able to venture out safely.

Memorial Day 2020, As the Pandemic Alters Life

25 May 2020

Like so many Americans I am celebrating Memorial Day in isolation.  First thing today I went and had the folks at Home Depot deliver to my trunk pipe insulation. I keep a service contract on the AC and my furnace, because the furnace has died twice over the Christmas holidays. Trust me, I made a blood oath with myself that I am never paying golden time on those repairs again. Also, stopped at Gordon Food Service and picked up a variety of dry goods.  Came home. 

After bringing the groceries in I stripped my AC insulation to and from my house and reinstalled the new insulation.  My service tech said he would do it for 263 dollars.  He suggested DIY might be a little less expensive.  The pipe insulation cost less than six dollars.  The time involved was 15 minutes.  I have to say I appreciate the tip I received. 

Sitting here listening to Bowie and Queen I am missing the old time Pedricktown Memorial Day parade.  All the firetrucks, the old cars, the scout troops, the local band, the horses and the kids with bunting trough their bike wheels bringing up the rear dodging the horse dung.  It was a moment when the ideas of hometown and America seemed to be aligned. I am also missing the shore, Ocean City to be more specific.

Somewhere I wrote a whole story about the Pedricktown parade, but after a diligent search I cannot find it.  In that it is a holiday, and in that I should reference the old hometown and some aspect of life there, I will include a portion of a story I did 10 years back about the road from Pedricktown to Ocean City.  The story is set in July, but the road is the same one we would all crowd as our parents headed for America’s Family Vacation Destination on a Memorial Day Weekend. 

Since I started this, I have done more work.  I have assisted my wife in planting the herbs in an old fire pit.  Had to drill some holes in the bottom of the pit to allow for drainage.  Also, I needed to dig out a hose that did not have a hole in it.  Both tasks were completed successfully.

This is the story of a ride on the backroads to the Jersey Shore contrasting what I saw as a kid and what I saw on a then recent visit where I retraced my parents route down to the Atlantic Ocean.

Then: For the most part the road is a treat to open eyes. These eyes are bright and dart fast from side to side trying to take it all in. These eyes are looking at it with a focus not as yet jaded by life and its lessons or the inevitable cynicism which will come as the years pass.

Two lanes wind through the cultivation past farm markets, clapboard towns and cross roads that have been here for a hundred and fifty years or more. The fields and orchards are verdant and there is the smell of raw stuff of real life in the air. Big machinery unique to packing peaches, apples or other fruit stands there like an enigma for the little engineers in the back of cars whizzing by to dream about late at night when they have reached their beach side resting places.

Now: The old packing houses are folding they couldn't compete with foreign competition. Conveyor belts and other packing machines are rusting. Their orange and pitted forms remain an enigma, a very different enigma.

When you have passed through fields of South Jersey on the way to the beach you smell life. It is almost sexual the aroma. All these many years later when I smell a real tomato not one of those plastic things you find in the hypermarket (you know the ones they won't bruise if you bounce them off the floor) I am right back to a stretch of road somewhere near Bridgeton, NJ looking at those tomato plants that are everywhere.

Then: It is a hot July day and I am pulling my legs over the vinyl seats just to hear the sucking sound that follows. Leg farts. I glance out the window, open to let the air in and there is a color to the sun that is over powering. It is a yellow dusty sun that is hot and growing hotter. The road winds and I whine "How much longer till we get there?" Getting no real answer, I look around and the comics of the Philadelphia Inquirer are shoved down onto the backseat floorboard. Maybe I will read "Dondi" again or "Steve Canyon" to kill another minute.

This ride is an explosion of sensual experience. There is the smell of the old gasoline mix, it is intoxicating. You don't smell that blend anymore do you? The heat comes from the engine and the sun and the blacktop road. A three-inch speaker on the front dash is blasting out "Nowhere to Run" and it sounds good. But why is the old man letting Motown play? He doesn't like their music. And then I lie down and stare up at an angle and we hit that canopy of trees.

Green and going on for 10 or 20 miles I am not sure how long it will be but eventually we will pass the old church. Maybe we will stop and I will get to look at the old cast iron headstones. What a weird thing those are. But the Green part of the ride it is cooling and it is not long until I will be at the beach. Looking up at the trees in memory as I whiz by in Ford Galaxy 500, a long-gone ghost, I am deep into the green world.

If you want to read more about my car memories here is a link, https://onetruenorthspace.blogspot.com/2014/07/tinny-speaker.html

Today’s song is one I just heard today and I really like it. It is old but very, very nice.

Automotive Therapy

A car, a quite comfortable car sits high, on the late afternoon of a clear day.  Open roads are calling to be driven before sunset, before twilight drops its curtain. Out there somewhere are enticing winding roads. Just a short piece of motoring away and there are country roads for miles. With the windows down and the sunroof open the car heads out of the city and onto narrower and narrower roads.  Quickly the curbs and berms drop away. Mailboxes start to appear and soon a mix of newer ranch houses and old short wood frame farm houses sit in front of fields and ponds.

Golden sunlight is still pouring down. A steady breeze blows from the southwest. The car’s metal nose is pointed north. Very quickly the car and its passengers have made their way out and beyond the small lots and wood frame houses of their neighborhood.  The car passes soybean fields and grain silos.  It passes cows at pasture.  Driving a little below the speed limit the car passes sheep grazing quietly in a green landscape. The road shifts from blacktop to dirt.

An ATV darts out a short distance ahead of the car.  It fires across the road and starts riding on the edge of a field near the beginning of a woodlot. The helmeted rider turns onto a trail leading into the mature woodlot. The car slows to make sure no one is following the rider on another ATV.  No one is in a rush.  There is no need for unnecessary danger.

The road has become more path than road. The bouncing is nonstop. The sound of not quite ringing, not quite crunching of the tires on the sometimes dirt, sometimes gravel road, works its way into the car’s cabin. Time to turn on the radio to something rock and roll-ey.  Time to sing along.  The driver turns up the Tedeschi-Trucks band singing a very bluesy take on the old folk classic Be Home Soon.  Everyone sings. Arms rest on the door frame or hang out of the car.

The dirt road curves as it hits the county line. The road as it continues on in this new county does not seem to have been graded this year.  A culvert lies ahead and the road narrows to one lane.  The culvert must be blocked for a stand of trees to the righthand side of the car is flooded and there are puddles on either side of the little bridge. The car splashes through.  The singers keep singing.  All eyes scan for deer for it is late in the day. Time is now when deer begin to leave their daybeds and move.

Everything is so green.  A chipmunk darts across the car’s path but vehicle’s pace has slowed and the little tree rat is in no danger. In the old days this is where you would crack open the road beers and hold them between you legs.  That was then, this is today, and society is justifiably safer and more cautious. But the older riders remember and they turn the music to an oldies station and start singing along with the Bee Gees song the New York Mining Disaster. With its occupants lost in a long ago past the car continues on.

For forty-five minutes the world is as it once was.  For the price of a gallon and a half of gas the riders decompress from a world that grows harder and harder to live in or understand.

Memorial Day Sunday During the Pandemic

24 May 2020

My neighborhood is sort of self-contained. Glencairn is bounded by two main north/south corridor roads.  The northern boundary is a five-lane trunk road with a speed limit of 45 mph hour.  The southern end is permeable but kind of follows the path of an east/west corridor road that has a terminus on the eastern boundary of the neighborhood.  South of that line is well worn student housing.  North of the line are owner occupied buildings with well-tended gardens and signs in the yard that say, “Drive as Though Your Children Lived Here. SL0W!!!”

Mine is an older neighborhood with the vast majority of the houses being built before World War II.  If you know where and how to look, there are lots of old-style building features like stone windowsills and Bavarian inspired wavy roofs. Lots of houses have trellises and climbing flowers.

On the eastern side of my neighborhood and across the north-south corridor road is a neighborhood that was built after the war. This neighborhood was meant to be an upscale neighborhood and has much, much larger lots.  Some houses there have front porches with columns that stretch for their full two stories.  Many of the houses are clearly architect designed and build. My opinion, antebellum columns don’t work in this cold weather state.  I mean a grand porch is usable for what ninety days out of a year?

A goodly number of the houses in the upscale neighborhood were clearly inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School of architecture.  These houses have flat roofs, long horizontal windows at the top of their brick walls to provide light, and oddly shaped rectangular windows bringing bright sunlight into one corner of the house.

Went walking through this neighborhood I have been describing this morning just for a change of pace.  The route was about forty minutes in duration and 2.25 miles in length.  The ample yards on this walk had carefully manicured lawns and were abundantly populated with flowers.  As we walked the smell of lilacs arose again and again, so sweet, so evocative of summer’s start. The splashes of purple, red, yellow and orange flowers in the beds and around the borders of these lawns offered my spirit encouragement in this dark time. 

One lawn at one house really caught my attention.  The place was one of those Prairie School homes, all brick with brown and umber tones about it.  Beyond the Wright attraction, the owners were art lovers.  Outside the home were seven 3-4-foot-tall non-representational metal sculptures.  Some were painted bright colors and some were unfinished and were being allowed to oxidize.  To see a home with such a commitment to art really made me feel good. It was a moment away from tales of death and disease.  

My hope is that warmer weather will slow the impact of Covid 19.  My hope is that successful treatments for the disease will be developed. My particular hope is these medications or therapies will minimize the coronavirus’s impact on older people. Sometimes a walk in late spring lightens the spirit and makes these hopes seem more realistic.

The First Grade of the Pandemic

23 May 2020

Our world has slowed.  This world has really, really slowed. Our lockdown has been in place for a little better than eight weeks. Some of the world is reemerging this weekend, reopening. We will see what becomes of us as the world opens up. Be safe my friends.  Do what the experts tell you based on who you are and what you do and where you live.

Over the past few weeks I have learned various things which without the pandemic’s changes in my life I would never picked up.  I have learned things about people I know, discerned attributes really. These traits are things I have never seen before in people I have known for years.  

I have discovered their top 10 album favorites.  Truth be told I would not have expected some of the people posting along this line to have had the time or inclination to have specific musical favorites.  (Oh wait, I am being Judgee McJudgeface right now.) On almost a daily basis I have learned people’s food likes and dislikes. 

Some knowledge has come from Facebook challenges that say list the top 10, etc.  Some has come from comments about the bad habits of others with whom these folks are sharing their isolation with. You can learn a great deal about someone based on what they bitch about. Some insight has come from the political and philosophical posts including memes people have put up.  Has been a wonder to see who has been traveling the same road I have been on and who made a hard right or a hard left turn some years ago. Observing all this has been an education. I

My personal experiences have offered up a dose of true learning. What has the pandemic taught me?  Well, it has taught me that no matter how well we think we understand the way the world works, we don’t really get it.  For all of our human cockiness, nature tells us-we the erect walking masters of the earth, that we can be felled by the tiniest bit of biology. I have learned humans don’t play the long game.  We behave for short periods of time and are compliant with good practices for a few weeks, but this adherence to best practices doesn’t last.  Americans in particular seem to value individual freedom over group safety. (I have had reinforced my notion Americans all have very individualized views of freedom.) I learned that the shortest distance from respectful conversation to invective is engendered by a general distrust of authority. In our world experts urging caution will not be heard as readily as charismatic populists urging action now.

I have also learned that in a slower, more geographically limited world, you become aware of the lives and personalities of your neighbors. You share things from food to tools to conversation. In this world, with the pause button on, I have learned you have the time to speak to people who pass by the front of your house doing their daily rounds, albeit from a safe six feet away. I have learned things that there was no time for in my past.  I have learned to value the aesthetics of my yard. I have learned the condition of various tools and pieces of furniture about the homestead, need to be addressed. In a slow world values shift. Because when you are not always on the move, you can or perhaps have to, focus on the things that surround you in your immediate environment.

I am sure that before this is all over, I will learn a great deal more.

No real tie to the above text.  This is just a pretty song Apple told me I would like.  Apple was right.

Small Victories

22 May 2020

6:26 p.m. sitting out on the back porch.  Mostly clear and mostly blue the sky is above me; the sun has returned.  Old Sol had been here early and then it got overcast and misty. Right now, is close to the perfect evening. 

Relaxing here I am listening to a song that is unusually straight forward for the artist involved.  The link is below.  Per the title the work has some kind of Portuguese connotation or inspiration. Nice track but the rest of the album is out there. Still, this one track is something of wonder, warm and rich, a perfect accompaniment to a golden evening.

Got a bunch of things done today. Finished the backyard mulching.  Mowed the yard.  Cleaned up the deck, the porch and the backyard pathway. Small victories.  I celebrate them. In this period of isolation nurturing growth in the yard and making things aesthetically pleasing may be the highest and best we can do.

Tomorrow we are going on a socially distanced picnic with friends.  I assume they will sit at one table and we will be at another. Francie has made some cheesesteak sub rolls.  And baked beans. And a pineapple upside down cake.  I think we are ready for a picnic.

Wishing you all a happy Memorial Day. Be happy. Be Safe.

[The photo above is an image of the flooding on Michigan State University’s campus this week.]

And a second link just for the heck of it.

Communication Innovation in the Pandemic Times

22 May 2020

So, there I was reading the Washington Post yesterday morning. As I took a deep dive into the paper, I came across an article rating various new video conferencing software products.  These tools were from Google, Zoom and Facebook.  Trying to see how the Facebook one worked, I created a room.  I contacted my wife.

We goofed around with it using the various background features and the facial constructs. Me, I was a green slug-like thing for a time.  Suddenly, my old administrative assistant popped up. According to her she saw a notice online and seeing I was involved followed it.  Together the three of us goofed around with Rooms various features.  The games were lame.  

After a short time, my sister popped up. She had gotten a notice I was active with a room.  Video quality overall was pretty good. My sister and I enjoyed a normal, “Hi and how you doing?” chat.   

Just so you know there are default settings in Rooms.  When you create one, unless you specify who is invited everyone on your list of friends is invited.  Be warned.  You may have some friends you don't was interacting with other friends for a plethora of reasons.

Having tried Rooms out with four people, I decided to try a bigger reach.  I created a room for a get together later in the day.  In that my high school buddies talk a good deal on Facebook I reached out to them.  One person got in.  A couple of folks said there were technical issues getting in. A number of people had already gone to bed. 

I should note that setting up the room on my iPhone was no problem.  Setting it up on my MacBook Air was a pain in the tail.  First, I had to download a separate standalone Messenger app.  Next, when I tried to use it, I was told that it would not work with Safari, the Apple Browser.  I was required to download Chrome for it to work.

Uggh.  The guilt over some folks not being able to get in is bugging me.  You know that for a decade I was part of a team they kept a video conferencing network up and running.  I am not a neophyte when it comes to teleconferences.  About half of my day for the last twenty years was spent holding video conference administrative hearings. But last night did not go as planned.

I am sure as the days move on this technology will improve and I/we will get Rooms to work effectively. If you see me pop up as active in a room, drop in and say hello.  You never know who might be there.

Chasing the Squirrels

21 May 2020

Mine this morning, is a simple proposal for an addition to our handy lexicon of phrases that are shorthand for emotional states, think “carrying the weight of the word” on his or her shoulders.  I think chasing the squirrels would be a good addition to such turns of speech as, “He’s a ray of freak’n sunshine” and “Watch out, she’s nine miles of bad road.” 

Okay so what do I mean by chasing the squirrels?  Well, let me give you the real-world example of chasing the squirrels.  I live in a neighborhood where people are affluent enough to take time out of their lives to feed the birds.  These folks like to look out their windows in the early a.m. and look at the hummingbirds hitting their special feeders.  They also love to listen to and watch the songbirds that have returned in this pandemic.

My neighbors love their winged friends so much that they want to make sure that bird food they bought at special supply stores (I kid you not we have a place called Wild Birds Unlimited that provides specialized wild bird foods,) from falling into the hands of our brown, black and grey squirrel populations.  Many, and I mean a whole lot of these folks buy specialized squirrel proof bird feeders and hang them outsides of their homes.  

Squirrels eat any bird feeder marked ‘Squirrel Proof’ for breakfast and then spit them out.  I am serious.  There are all sorts of patented designs in my neighborhood hanging supposedly squirrel proof. Nothing tickles my funny bone more than watching a squirrel hang upside down part ways squeezed through a tiny hole, with its body serpentine through various barriers designed to bar it access to bird seed, just feasting on grains and sunflower seeds. When the patented ‘Squirrel Proof” contraptions fail my neighbors go primal.

Yesterday, one of my neighbors was shouting and making a ruckus as I passed by her on my neighborhood walk.  She was using those tones a first-grade teacher does to try and stop a six-year-old dead in their tracks. Took me a second but I quickly figured out she was scolding a squirrel for eating bird seed.  When the tone did not work, she began waiving her hands about and started yelling in earnest in the direction of the bird feeder.  She even began a false change, much like a black bear does, to warn the squirrel to back off.  The display of temporary Tourette’s Syndrome abated and the squirrel kept on munching. For all the energy expended my neighbor changed nothing in the situation.

So, I assert this vigorous anti-squirrel dance is the prime example of chasing the squirrels, that is throwing a highly emotional response at an intractable problem that we have no chance of solving. Think telling a teen to stop playing those damn video games.  Think waving at cars speeding through your residential neighborhood. Think trying to convince and old friend of the correctness of your political party and beliefs in these times when the friend has demonstrated a strong affinity for the other colored laundry, be it red or blue.

Oh, how much time I have spent chasing squirrels. I think that as idioms go, chasing squirrels is a fine one.

Today's songs are songs replete with as many cliches as possible. Both are older, but both of them are fun

Just Another Day

20 May 2020

The day was a full one.  There was a trip to the pharmacy.  There was a trip to the swollen Red Cedar River.  We jogged over the diary store.  There was lawn edging installed.  There was mulch moved.  I shaved.  I showered.  I made the beds.  I did laundry.  Yup, this was a full day.

Right now, I am sitting on the back porch watching the fading light.  I am listening to the Good Ole’ Grateful Dead work their way through China Cat Sunflower from Bickenshaw Festival, one of the shows on the 1972 tour. Very nice sound.  I pulled this up because on one of those clickbait things It listed this among the top 10 Grateful Dead shows of all time.  It isn’t bad.

My biggest achievement of the day was making waffles from scratch.  Was so very easy. No more box mixes for this breakfast maven.  Although I must note I was given a good deal of grief for not putting enough chocolate chips in the waffles.  Hey, I made them. Everybody is a critic.  

Oh, and I fired off some e-mails and messages.  Yes, it was a busy day indeed.

Well the light is almost gone.  I close with a hippy dippy song from the hippy dippiest of all bands, the Moody Blues.  This song always made me think of twilight.  And it is so darn beautiful.

For Someone I am Trying to Show What is Possible in Anecdotal Writing

I  am posting these for a friend who had questions about writing a short narrative.


https://onetruenorthspace.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-brother-and-his-books.html

https://onetruenorthspace.blogspot.com/2008/09/thing-about-eggs.html

https://onetruenorthspace.blogspot.com/2009/05/beach-i-miss-you.html

The New Medicine Part II

19 May 2020

Like many Americans of my age and gender, I suffer from high cholesterol.  Might have been the cheesesteak subs of my youth or one too many truffle fries.  Yes, Jolly Pumpkin I am talking about your evil enticing ways here.  As a result, this blood work imbalance, and the hope of not dying early, I see a doctor who specializes in HDL, LDL and all the others Ls usually about twice a year.  Given times being what they are, I called last week and was told my early June visit is still on. The staff member who answered my questions advised me I needed to get my blood work done pretty soon.

If going into my primary care doctor’s office seemed kind of risky to me, risky enough that tele-med made sense, going into a lab waiting room seemed even more dicey.  I asked about how they were handling waiting room cleanliness when I called the lab office.  The person on the other end of the phone line told me not to worry.  According to this cheerful soul most of the risk had been reduced by the opening of a new drive thru lab.  All I would have to do is roll up to an old auto repair facility, give them my driver’s license and insurance card, and they would draw my blood sample from me through my car window.  Seems legit I thought.

This morning at a little after 9 a.m., having fasted for 14 hours, I headed off for the lab.  The drive thru lab is located in a now defunct Sears auto center.  When we arrived at about 9:15 five bays were open with 5 to 6 cars idling in each line. Kind of looked like the border crossing into Canada at Sarnia. Took about twenty minutes to get inside. I, wearing a mask and gloves, handed my ID and insurance card to the tech. My documents were encased in a Ziploc sandwich bag.  When she handed them back to me, I dropped them into an empty plastic grocery bag. 

My draw took about 15 minutes, sort of.  Apparently while entering my information the computer crashed.  The tech called a supervisor over and he just rebooted the machine.  The reboot took a bit.  I was half expected to see those dread Windows “Update installing” words flash on the screen.  The dread blue screen of endless delay didn’t happen.  Once my lab labels were printed off, the blood draw took less than a minute.

The lab tech was fully dressed in appropriate protective gear.  A mask, face shield, gloves and full body coverings were in use.  The neon safety jacket necessitated by being in a garage was a nice touch. 

Draw done off we went to home.  The gloves were wiped with Clorox wipes and set aside to dry.  The plastic bags were all disposed of.  My hands were washed with soap for forty seconds.  Facemasks were dropped into the washer and a load of dirty laundry was run on high temperature.

I am not complaining here. I have absolutely no problem with this model of lab activity.  I don’t want to be the person who picks up that stray bug flying around in the air because the cleaning or distancing protocols were not followed. Mostly what I am saying is that life has changed.  Possibly, well probably, it will never be the same.

The New Medicine

18 May 2020

A rainy Monday here in the north.  Rained all day yesterday. Supposed to rain all day today. At 4 p.m. the rain has varied from a downpour to a light mist.  This return of moisture to the earth did not impact my activities, a trip to the plant center, a trip to return a router to my internet provider and a video conference with my doctor. I even worked in doing a load of laundry from washing to folding to putting it away. I also potted four plants.

Drop after drop this current rain event has not impacted the birds or the squirrels in the least.  At 5:00 a.m. the avian chorus began kicking in right on time. All day the squirrels have been dancing through the drops going “chuck, chuck, chuck.” There appears to be a bit of a battle royal over who controls the dead tree on my easterly property line.  In a large puddle down the street three birds flitted about. These birds were treating the really big puddle as they would a bird bath.  Watching them splash and shake their wings was fun.

The trip to the garden center was strategically plotted.  It rained all day yesterday thus damping down the enthusiasm of local gardeners.  With a second day of rain we assumed (correctly) that almost nobody would be there.  The garden center covers several acres and the customers were maintain a good 20-foot distance between each other.  The staff restocking from the weekend’s crowd were the only people who really weren’t totally observing social distancing.  However, everyone, staff and customers were wearing gloves and masks. $200 fly from my hands with nary a glance at another person.

My physician’s office has put in a new policy.  If you need a refill on a prescription and you haven’t seen the doctor in over six months, well you either have to come in for a face to face visit or you have to do a tele-med visit.  Before you do the tele-med visit you have to call in and give them your temperature, blood pressure and weight.  I have a cuff, a scale and a couple of thermometers so no problem.  However, I am pretty sure not every person has this equipment in their medical cabinet.

Guessing beforehand this was a profit motivated change (which could be argued to be tied to medical necessity), I assumed that office visits had plummeted since March and the stay at home orders.  Please note, I have been refilling Singulair for 8 years without a six-month visit.  It is a mild allergy drug. I joked with the nurse who called to set up the video visit, and obtain my vitals (that I myself took), that given the drop on in person visits this must be bottom line based.  She laughed and said, “You may have got that right.”  She then said still with an almost laugh in the voice, “I have to read this to you.  The tele-med visit you are agreeing to participate in will be charged to you insurance company as a regular visit…” I snorted out loud.  She kept her composure. 

My doctor was in a convivial mood.  I have worked with him for a long, long time. I think our relationship goes back thirty years with a short break when he changed practices and due to a noncomplete clause could not accept his old patients for a one-year window. I did have some question and answered those questions cheerfully and clearly.  He renewed my prescriptions. Still won’t give me a weed card although you don’t need a card anymore. He asked me about my reprobate friends, John and Rick. I told him they were doing good and I would pass his good wishes on. I had referred them as patients to him years ago.  They have both retired and gone to warmer climates.  

In the old days he would shake my hand as I left, or perhaps pat me on the shoulder.  For me, and for pretty much everyone else, that stuff is gone, probably forever.  I offer this one piece of advice. You know you are toast when all your doctor wants to talk about is the weather or sports.  Pay attention for such a conversation.

Oh, the visit to the internet service provider was weird.  We have bought our own router and needed to return the old router.  The service locale is a little way away and we went there over lunch.  We rang the buzzer; it was a slow steady rain at that point.  The tech/service representative came to the door and pointed to a plastic bin near the door.  I asked how will you know what account this router is for.  In a muffled voice, behind a locked glass door he said it would be scanned in.  Good thing I put the device in a plastic bag.  

I assume going forward we will be moving to service set ups like the old party stores in non-gentrified Detroit.  Just like those Chaldean bodegas you will greet the clerk through bullet proof glass and talk to him or her on an intercom.  You will put your part of the transaction on a turntable of bullet proof glass and the clerk will turn it returning to you the merchandise you have sought. The world will never be the same.

I know the following has no real relationship to what I have been talking about.  Still it is real pretty.

What Day is It?

16 May 2020

Another Saturday morning has come.  It is another of the seemingly endless stream of days in the Plague Year.  

Late yesterday my wife had informed today was supposed to be a rainy day.  The Weather Channel app on my smartphone just before I fell asleep last night told me this day would be grey and overcast. On the apps weird little hourly schedule, it showed Saturday May 16 only achieving the status of partly cloudy late in the day.  Despite these prognostications of the weather at 7 a.m. I was awakened by bright, bold sunshine and by lunatic cat lunging at the window because there was a chipmunk somewhere in the county. 

The kafuffle of the cat’s fur, feet and meowing together with the brightness of the morning light and the highest trilling of some damn songbird ensured that I was totally and completely awake.  My wife looked so blissful asleep that I quietly got up, gathered up my clothing and headed out of the room and down the hallway to dress.  

Hey it was orange juice, bacon, coffee, rye toast, and two eggs for me today.  Six days of Wheat Chex have passed.  I am living large this morning.  Listened to three podcasts. Don’t know why I listened to the one about the possible return of major league baseball. It was there, I guess. 

Sipping a coffee, I am plotting out the day.  Most likely, given the lack of rain and the relative warmth promised (70 degrees) I will focus on yardwork.  Do have to leave the house to pick up one prescription.  The excitement just never ends. 

Planning and time itself have changed for me a new retiree.  I knew I was going to be shifting my schedule when I retired, but this is truly radical.  I don’t go to bed until my eyes droop, usually about midnight.  I get up when the sun or the cat or some combination thereof wake me.  I plan, but the day’s outline is always tentative and vague. And except for picking up fresh greens every two weeks and going out to get prescriptions when they come up for refill nothing is time sensitive.

I don’t even have bill days anymore.  I put gas and electric on annualized payment plans and all my bills save maybe three are paid automatically online. This was done in anticipation of living overseas for an extended period and not wanting to use a mail forwarding service. Life is so much simpler this way. Life is blurring. 

[Author’s note:  As I was writing this, I had doubts over my spelling of the word lunging.  I mean it looks like it should be an archaic or alternate term for breathing as opposed to meaning an exaggerated unidirectional leap. I asked my copywriter/editor/marketing consultant wife about this and she assured me that the e gets dropped when you move from the infinitive to the active in this case.  

I have two books on my shelf that I have ignored for years, Grammar Sucks and Eats Shoots and Leaves. Now with the time the pandemic has handed me I guess I can read these volumes and perhaps make this blog more readable.  Only problem is that the copy of Eats Shoots and Leaves is the British version.  There are differences between A Mur e Can and British usage.  Oh well, I will read it anyway.]

And for today's musical selection, The Rolling Stones.  I have seen them live four times starting in 1978.  They are what they are, sui genesis.  Enjoy.