You Can Take Him Wizard; Harry Dresden vs. Donald Trump

24 September 2020

 

My taste in fiction has two main prongs and two side paths.  Mostly I long to read great fiction, superlative fiction.  Oft I commence my journey by reading what has been publicly judged as high quality as determined by people like the folks who award the Man Booker prize. Some great reads are to be found in the Booker winners and shortlisted titles.  Last Orders was one I really liked.  The Remains of the Day was another incredible read. Give me a tale that will linger in my mind long after the book has been returned.

 

The other main vein of reading for me is novels set strongly in a place.  Think Steinbeck’s Cannery Row or W.O. Mitchell’s stories about the Canadian prairies. Thick books, well developed characters and narratives, these are things I long for. Sometimes the stories take you to where you knew they were going to as soon as you read the first page, but the journey is such a rich tapestry as to make the journey worthwhile. I like substance in my reading 99% of the time.

 

Still, I have always had one main diversion, science fiction.  And when I say science fiction, I mean tales of space exploration and/or of life on earth millennia in the future.  Robert Silverberg, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov stand out as creators of this genre.  If a story is one 50% based on the tech of getting to another galaxy, 35% on the emotions and motivations of a human crew, and 15% or less on shape-shifting, mind reading, translucent alien life forms, I am good with sitting down for a read.  I have never really liked tales with species and sub-species of thinking critters imbued with human motivations.  Don’t know why I don’t like these, I just don’t.  Dune was a jump ball but, in the end, I really liked the novel.  None of the televised or movie adaptations have moved me.

 

The other sub-diversion has been a single series, Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels. The Dresden series of books violate all my rules about reading fiction. The writing is pulpy.  There are witches, faeries, and all sort of other supernatural creatures. You are never left with deep and profound musings about the human condition when you put the paperback or the tablet down.  (Thank God for free online library collections, I wouldn’t want to pay for this claptrap.)

 

Harry Dresden, for those who know nothing of him, is a wizard practicing his trade in Chicago. Back when they existed, he advertised in the Yellow Pages. This wizard has been tempted by the dark side, and in Dresden’s world there are clearly evil and good sides, but he struggles and fights to stay on the good side.  

 

In his struggles Dresden is mentally, emotionally and physically battered to the point where his body should fail him but he keeps going because it is the right thing to do. There is a code, a set of rules, to which he must adhere about not killing with magic and similar prohibitions. This is externally created by a body akin to the legislature of the supernatural, and like human laws really, these do not cover all situations that might arise appropriately. Harry’s love life is for shit.  And electrical appliances just don’t like him.

 

When I dwell on it, and trust me it is not something I dwell on much, I am much too focused on my health, my finances, the state of the world, when can I leave this nuts country, etc., I think what attracts me to Harry is that he is ill equipped for the job both in temperament and impliedly in talent. He is an earthy pragmatist in a world of hyper-focused rule enforcers and of hyper duplicitous rule breakers. In the conduct of his affairs Harry isn’t given choices that are clearly good and clearly evil. The choices Harry faces are bad and worse.  These bad and worse decision points come in rapid succession, stacked one atop each other and Harry has to make do after taking hit after hit in the solar plexus both literally and figuratively. And yet he prevails.  

 

In a five-day period in which the news headlines were 200,000 dead from Covid-19, Justice Ginsburg dead, only minor charges issued in the Taylor death and the President refusing to say if he would accept defeat at the polls, I think I/we have taken enough in the way of gut punches. My reaction to the high level of psychic pain was to turn to reading those Dresden books my local library did not have but the online libraries did have.  Some occasions require you to just dive right in and dive deep into fantasy to keep yourself from losing your mind. Stare down those vampires and survive Harry. Take on the werewolves and while bloodied and bruised come out alive, more or less, Harry.  Face down black magic and live Harry.  Yeah, I needed this schlub to win a few in the past few days. His wins has kept me from crying about America’s losses. 

 

If Harry were real, I know he would take on Donald Trump and win.  I just know it. In fantasy stories like these good does triumph over evil. One more novel to go and then I will read the news again.

 

Hints of Coming Attractions

 23 September 2020

Two days of temperatures in the lower 30s tripped the chemical switch within the leaves of the trees here to tell them to put on their fall coats. The fall’s glorious colors of orange reds and yellows are yet to come. But the leaves are moving from deep green to dusty green to orange. Threads of color are present in the number of the maples I as I set out today. We will have more warm days before the snow flies. But the long lingering days of summer are gone. Deep rich saturation of green against the sky will change into a multicolored pastiche. And then there will be bare skeletal fingers spread out toward the grey ceiling of late fall and winter.

Got up before it was light this morning. Held off on setting out until I had read the paper and eaten my oatmeal. Spent a few minutes slowly sipping my coffee as opposed to gulping it down. When I went out the sun was not yet above the treeline. My down vest felt good. There are still many, many beautiful blooms out. Even though it interrupts the flow of my walk, I do have to stop and look at these flowers. They bring peace to a soul in these troubled times.

Have not seen any rabbits this morning. Have seen a squirrel or two. The furry tree rats are moving with such kinetic energy gathering up scraps for the winter. Isn’t that what we’re all doing in this for seven months of the pandemic? Furtive little trips to grocery stores to grab this and that in such quantity that we don’t have to return for a long time. The world is different. The world is so very different these days.

And before Emerson, Lake and Palmer there was the Nice.

Yep I am Voting for Biden and I Will Leave the Light on for You.

17 September 2020

In the next week I will receive my ballot from the East Lansing, Michigan’s city clerk’s office.  When it arrives, please have no doubt I will vote for Joe Biden.  At this point nothing is going to change my mind.  Biden wasn’t my first choice, but he is so much better than the alternative.

Personally, I have had enough of the debacles that President Trump has handed us as a nation.  From the inept response to Covid 19, to the estrangement from our allies, to the ethics morass that is William Barr, to the divisions that the President has fostered between segments of the American people with such fervor that has rendered reasoned debate and compromise impossible, I have seen enough. He has one by one taken bad situations and made them incredibly, if not irrevocably, worse. The only people who have really benefited from his actions are the wealthy who received their gift early on in his administration with the passage of his tax bill. So be it.  It is what it is.

I am older than I once was.  Maybe, I am wiser, but then again maybe not.  But I have made the decision to head off to the water’s edge in a country far from here. I am tired and I don’t have the fight left in me for what is coming. Yesterday I sent off for an updated criminal history check from the FBI.  This is step one in the process to become a permanent resident of a European country. No matter who wins or who loses I don’t feel like my voice will make a difference.  So, I am going to find a beach somewhere and eat seafood and watch the waves, maybe I will even get to see some of those 80-100-foot-tall salt water monsters crashing the shoreline.

Our democracy is at a tipping point.  Donald Trump with his admiration of autocratic leaders, his impulses to emulate them with the use of Federal forces to put down legitimate protests, and his “joke” about wanting three terms, stands as a stark existential threat to our democracy.  His repeated language stating that if he loses it will happen because of electoral fraud, is so contrary to truth and to what is required to keep a democracy alive, it hard to fathom a leader of this country actually saying such things out loud.

I am not going to tell you how to vote.  If you want to know about the election there exist legitimate news sources you can plumb to evaluate the platforms of the party’s, the records of the incumbent and the challenger and the goals and philosophies of all involved. Dedicated long extant news sources are not fake news no matter what President Trump repeatedly claims and are a good starting point.

Hey, if I make it to the shore of the great sea in one piece, and if the pussy grabbing, disability mocking, racist, piece of poo gets re-elected, I will try and keep a bedroom open for you to come and decompress in. With some wine in hand and some whitefish in front of us, we will be able to talk about love and life and how God resides in the endless rhythms of the ocean.

Labor Day Then and Now

6 September 2020

My morning ritual of pedestrian activity is in motion. I am in motion. Somewhere behind me off to the east, a dog barks. A car goes zipping by me.  A short time later a second car passes and thereafter the road then falls silent for several minutes. Today, the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, is gray, cool, and slow. This is how the world is these days in this year.  Pandemic quiet.

When I was much younger the world was much brighter and way noisier. On the three days of Labor Day weekend I would be trying to cram in as much of the last of summer’s fun as I possibly could. Labor Day was an exclamation point to a paragraph written frantically from late May to early September.

Friday night I’d be walking the boardwalk. Up and down I would go talking to all the vendors I knew. I would run into summer friends and laugh and joke and then move on. Again, and again, I would move to the eastern edge of the boards and stand with my waist pressed against the steel railing 10 feet off the sand.  Gazing far into the distance I would scan the ocean’s horizon for fishing boats as the sun was fading.  Seeing only a couple I would watch the waves for minutes on end. Maybe if I was feeling rebellious, I would sneak under the board and smoke a joint. 

Saturday night I’d be crowded into a tiny dive bar with tons of other scrawny, thirsty and oversexed 18 to 22-year olds looking for action. My favorite place was a tiny little place where they served seven 7-ounce beers for a dollar. And the beers would be good and icy cold. And the amber brews would be really, really tasty. And maybe I would order a basket of fried mushrooms. Sometimes there is nothing is better than crunching down through the hard crust of a fried mushroom into its moist, juicy, earthy center and washing it down with an ice-cold beer.

Late on Saturday night, added to what was already a rush and frenzy to make the end the summer memorable there would be fireworks raining over the boardwalk. The sulfurous smelling greens, reds and blues filled the night sky.  In white phosphorus written not in words but in trailing fading traces of light was this, “This is the end of summer.  Commit this one to memory.  Return to it when you need assurance that there are better times awaiting.” How I have gone running back to that message again and again as of late.

The eyeballs of those who read this message would be scarred for minutes at a time. And somewhere not far off a band was playing. Probably it was coming from the Music Pier. The songs would be older than I was. Still, people would be tapping their feet and humming the tunes. When the sun finally set the older women pulled sweaters around their shoulders to ward off the cooling of evening. This was indeed early September. These knowing women had lived this weekend many times before.

Sunday was all about the sand and the surf.  No chance of sunburn because my tan was well formed by then.  Everyone had flyaway lightened beach hair. Umbrellas and beach towels got their last workouts.

Monday was the great emptying of the summer homes and vacation rentals. Those end of the summer moments were damp and sticky from the humidity and from the human contact that was invariably part of the experience. Labor Day was the last weekend for seersucker. It was the last weekend of white pants and shoes. All the Carlton Varney florals that decorated the old one-story summer homes were shuttered up and gone from sight for nine months. Pillows that had become like lead from the sea air moisture would be thrown out as summer rentals were vacated. 

My summers have not been like that for over 40 years. But every Labor Day those memories come back. But this year will be memorable too. 2020 will be remembered as marked by isolation not celebration. This year’s reminiscences will be if anxiety, frustration, fear and angry vitriol. 2020’s summer has been the strangest of times. 

Right now, we are distanced from our past lives, from our friends, from what used to pass as normal. It is hard to acknowledge but there is no new normal yet. Many people are totally desiring the old world they knew to be open again. For them the reality that what life was like before March 2020 is not coming back any time soon has not settled in yet. And when it does settle in, I don’t think it will be with celebration. This moment is both one summer’s end and it is the end of an entire generation’s way of experiencing life.

My walk has revealed to me that the seasonal switch has flipped and we in the Midwest are moving from summer to autumn definitively. Here in this northern college town it’s 50° on Sunday before Labor Day as I am out and about. Fall season hallmarks are conspicuously absent from this Big 10 college town. There are no crushed red Solo cups or empty beer cans to be found in the gutters. Yesterday should have been a game day and celebratory detritus should be everywhere. The streets are clean and there are no tents with the Ugly Sparty logo still waiting to be disassembled on driveways and front lawns.

At this time of year every morning one should hear the Spartan drumline pounding out repetitive marching rhythms. Normally the drumline would beat those rhythms out again and again until what you would here would be crisp and perfectly in alignment. But we have no football due to the pandemic.  Because of the pandemic there is no drum line. Because of the pandemic there is no marching band. It’s a silent fall.

The memories of a pandemic Labor Day will be quieter.  The memories of a pandemic Labor Day will be lonelier, sadder. The world does change in ways unexpected. 

That Didn’t Turn Out Like I Planned (or Public Nudity Was Not My Best Look)

4 September 2020

Labor Day was something I used to anticipated with great glee. More often than not in the years pre-kids it was a drunken camping weekend.  Canoes, brews and outdoor stuff to do made the end of summer just one of the greatest times.  After kids, as often as not, our family went to Toronto and watched an airshow.  We didn’t pay for waterfront seats we just watched the planes that swooped over the downtown and in the area down by Queen’s Quay. We did other things too, we ate out, we went to movies and we often would see a play. The anticipation level is not high on this pre-Labor Day Friday.

Clearly and unequivocally this year is different.  Due to our nation’s poor handling of Covid 19 we are not allowed into Canada.  Toronto is thus a no go. Also, my kids are not much for camping. Thus, three days spent here around the house will be what Labor Day is for us.  Maybe we will watch an outdoor movie.  Maybe we will picnic. Whatever we do it will be small and it will be local. What I don’t plan to do is any painting.  Or power washing.  Or work of any material nature.

Maybe I will take some of my blog posts and try and string them into a coherent narrative.  I have been posting for 13 plus years now. I began at the urging of my dear friend Chris. She used to listen to me tell my tales in a coffee shop on Ottawa Street in Lansing.  She seemed to strongly believe I needed to capture some of the mixed reality/fantasy narratives on electronic paper.  Thus, I started a blog in 2007. At this point it has over 851 posts.  Some are quite short.  Others are much, much longer.  Here is one that I like a great deal https://onetruenorthspace.blogspot.com/2011/01/of-beach-and-books-iv-night-ride-home.html  

When the pandemic hit, I created a new blog. The reason I created a new blog was because Facebook banned me from posting links to my old blog on my feed.  Four or five times I have written them asking why, but I never get an answer. So be it. Well, it was both that ban and the fact that the pandemic created a new reality for me and for the world at large.  Given the paradigm shift in how we live our life it seemed to me that I needed a new focus.  I needed to talk about now, not high school and college.  I needed to talk about the realities of this life we are forced to live due to a tiny little virus as opposed to the reactions of the poor people who were exposed to the many times I was naked in public. (My children are so ashamed of me).

As I walked about today doom scrolling through my podcasts, I had to turn them off.  I need three days without the virus, without our societal dysfunction and racism, and without Nate Silver’s modeling of voter behavior.  Listening only to the ringing in my ears and the sounds of nature I kept thinking this life of mine has not turned out exactly as I planned.  A life in the law spent in Michigan, two kids, two kinds of cancer, well none of this was on my bingo card as I left Pedricktown, NJ. I actually thought I would end up a college professor teaching some weird course at a small liberal arts college. My home would be a brick townhouse and I would be living alone at 60 with an Irish Wolfhound after several failed marriages. 

As I contemplated where life has brought me to, I realized that at each step of my passage from the cradle to the grave the ground underneath me has shifted and changed my direction and that all my plans were for naught. Yes, that would be the perfect title if were to somehow edit the 89 posts of this blog with those of the old blog into a coherent narrative.  And then I thought of one of the most life changing events in my existence, that nude jog through PGHS.  Without that moment I would not be who I am.  The way thing played out and the notoriety that ensued completely shifted who I was to become.  As a result, somehow, I would have to work that experience, and a couple of college streaking escapades, into the title. I think the above captures it perfectly.

Have a great weekend this Labor Day my friends.  Remember we are all in this together. The song below is for every man and woman who ever spent the years putting their time in laboring at "The Plant".

Wondering Where the Walnuts Went

3 September 2020

The Old Man and the Breezeway

Together with my family I have lived in this house for 21 ½ years now.  Over that time a great deal of maintenance has been deferred, well almost all maintenance has been deferred. With two kids, one in hockey, and with my wife and I holding down jobs that demanded more than 9 to 5 involvement, things were let to slide. The only exceptions have been pipes that have exploded both inside and outside of the house, furnaces that have died in -10 F weather and a roof that was leaking. Oh yeah and all the windows got swapped out.

In recent months remedial efforts have been undertaken to try and sort out stuff that just has to get done.  Last summer, back when I was still employed, I had some contractors replace two doors on my breezeway.  The sills had rotted and the doors wouldn’t close properly.  Seemed like a good start to the many projects that were awaiting in a process of upgrading and rehabilitating the house.

Bids were solicited and one was accepted. The contractors were here on time and they were efficient. Both doors were installed quickly, two to two- and one-half days maximum from start to finish.   However, comporting with the Jay Todd Theory of antecedent causes which states that all things done will disclose another thing that should have been done first, the breezeway work revealed just as great a deficit on the interior of the space.  As the contractor pounded in the door frames, large portions of drywall and ceiling of the breezeway just collapsed.

The large chunks falling off the walls and ceiling were not the fault of the contractor; pieces parts had been decaying for years.  Quickly, a quote was created to redo the ceiling and walls.  The price being agreeable to this owner the work was commenced late in the fall 2019.  The only thing was that there was a $335 bid for painting.  Given the small area involved I decided I could do it myself.  Worst $335 I did not spend.

Note well the construction had moments of absurdity.  As the contractors ripped out the old roof of the passage, they got a surprise.  A bushel and a half of walnuts cascaded down on them just as soon as they pulled the ceiling down.  Apparently, a squirrel or many generations of squirrels had found a passage into the space above the breezeway. The furry pests were using the empty space as a larder for their walnut stash.  The passage has now been sealed off. 

When June of the pandemic year rolled around, I ordered the paint needed to do the job.  Being that nobody wanted to go into stores, and given Home Depot was offering free home delivery on most any order, I sat down at my computer and requested gray floor paint and white semi-gloss for the walls and ceiling. (Now, Home Depot has shifted to free home delivery on orders over $45.) Most of the paint got here unopened.  One can however leaked about a quarter of its contents.  Home Depot graciously credited me 25% of the price of that can.  It was the floor paint and with a six by eight area to coat I did not need a full gallon.

When I headed in to the breezeway to paint, I then realized I needed tools with which to apply the paint.  At one point in the past I had a roller and some brushes.  Time steals everything it seems. Another online order followed and this delivery went off without a hitch. I was all set. Well, almost.

First the weather was way too hot to work in an unventilated breezeway.  Then, it was too humid.  Then, well it was my day to read a novel.  Eventually in early July there came a Monday that was not too warm or too cool, that was not humid at all, and when I had no e-books checked out and I set to the task.  Did I tell you how many nooks and crannies there are in the breezeway due to the inordinate number of built in shelves that are located there? Did I mention how hard it is to paint on bare wood because it just sucks up the paint?

Over the next two months I worked on painting a few hours here and a few hours there.  First, I did all the prep work, Frog Tape and I are tight.  Then I attacked the ceilings, the shelves and finally the walls.  Oh, at the start of this I did the floor. Yeah, I am aware I should have left that for last.  But I had to apply this anti-moisture paint that takes forever to dry and I figured I had better get it out of the way.  And anyway, what are drop cloths for?  

Finally, last Saturday I got the last pieces of the molding on the floor painted. My task was completed, the first coat that is. Yesterday I had enough.  In a fit of fury, I put the entire second coat on. And it was done.  Does it look like a professional job?  No.  Does it look like an attorney painted it?  Yes.  Was it a learning experience?  Oh yeah.  I can tell you for certain getting a large amount of paint out of your hair is unpleasant.  I can also tell you a good fan is a must for ventilation.  Luckily, I had one industrial mother of a fan. 

Today, towards the end of the day, when I have assured myself the paint is good and dry, I will start moving the stuff that came out of the breezeway back in.  Hopefully, I will find an order to organizing that has never previously existed in the space.  

Am I proud? The answer is no, it was just work that needed to be done.  Am I one with my pandemic sisters and brothers who have undertaken home repairs and home improvements like never before?  Yes, I am. Time is different now.  Things have a different hierarchy of value now. Life is different now.  

And somewhere there are some pissed off squirrels wondering where the walnuts are. Hey the attached song has nothing to do with this post.  But I like it so I am sharing.