“if one possessed the skill to craft sufficiently elaborate and convincing lies, then no other skills were really necessary.” Wong, David.Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick (Zoey Ashe). St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
TODAY FROM AMERICA:
POOKIE’S ADVENTURES DURING AN EARLY SPRING.
The sun shined brightly on the Enchanted Forest this morning. As we trundle toward March, the temperature outside hovers at an unseasonably warm 70 degrees. Naida and I arose early for some reason. We got up and settled into our places in the downstairs studio even before Boo-boo the Barking Dog had begun barking to be let out for his sunrise toilet. We discussed many things as we sat there sipping our morning coffee. Things like the genesis of modern poetry, Hemingway’s style and the influence of critical analysis on the spare writing preferences of modern authors, and other things like that that two people would only discuss if they had spent over a year quarantined with each other and had run out of normal things to discuss. You know, normal things such as what’s for breakfast or new in the news.
For some unknown reason, we got onto a discussion of names. Naida told me that surnames indicating orientation, like West or North, came from the direction one lived relative to the Medieval Fairs. “Interesting,” I responded. “West is a common name, so is North. I have heard of South, at least in the form Southern. But I have not heard much of people with the surname East. I wonder why.” So I took it upon myself to solve this pressing conundrum. I discovered that many medieval fairs took place in the large squares in front of the Cathedral in the town where they were held. Medieval cathedrals during that age were oriented with their entrance facing west so that the shops and homes around the square were located for the most part on the North, East and South sides of the square or plaza. Few if any were located on the East.
I was overjoyed with my discovery and imagined returning to school for my Ph.D. in history using this discovery as the basis for my thesis. I would then publish it as a book which would enable me to secure a position as an assistant professor of history at some junior college in the Midwest. There, I would probably have an affair with a coed that undoubtedly would be discovered resulting in me being fired. In disgrace, I would begin drinking heavily in the bars of someplace like Omaha, ultimately expiring in the gutter at the tender age of eighty-six. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
Today, actually this morning, during my usual desultory ramble through the detritus on my computer, I came upon a photograph of me taken precisely ten years ago as I was flying off to Thailand. I immediately snapped a photo of myself as I appeared this morning in an effort to asses the ravages of time, a brief decade, on my appearance. I could say that, perhaps, the fact that I seem to look better in blue than set in yellowish-green accounts for much of the difference — then again perhaps not.
Anyway, the day was warm and sunny and the temperature reached well into the 70s. I thought is was a good day for a long walk. So, I hitched up the dog and set off. Two more days left in February and Spring was hard upon us. It made me wonder what summer had in store for us this year.
We walked along the American River. It passes a few steps from our home. Its deep blue black water sparkled whenever the sun struck an errant riffle. The grass presented am intense green hue destined to slowly turns golden as the year trundles on.
Bicyclists sped along on the trails that snaked along the bottom lands and atop the levee. I walked along a dirt path close to the water.
I passed, inland of the path, humps of vegetation in which the homeless and the adventuresome camp at night. Because the vegetation had not yet grown back from the winter die-off, I could see into these refuges. Some of the central spaces that remain empty of vegetation all year round are as large as small dance floors and could house a whole tribe.
Now and then, I would pass one or two people stretching and enjoying the sun who I assumed resided those arbors. After, a brief detour onto the pedestrian suspension bridge, Boo-boo and I turned inland and headed for home.
I got a bit tired as I walked along the paths in the forest so I found a bench near the traffic circle now all a bloom with pink flowers. The circle is also a gathering spot for the turkey’s that inhabited the forest. I have seen over a hundred of them gathering there in the evening, then breaking off into flocks of twelve of so when they move off at night to roost in the trees or the roofs of the houses. Given the lack of automobile activity in the forest, the traffic circle, I assume, is there more for aesthetic reasons than traffic management.
Saturday was sunny and ephemeral. It briefly fluttered through my consciousness and disappeared from memory as quickly as an advertisement posted on Facebook for a non-medicinal constipation remedy.
Later that evening, my son, a committed Trumpite, sent me a series of emails urging me to forgo my second vaccine shot because he was convinced it would kill me. I responded to him that I had also conferred with my daughter, his half sister, who is a leading virologist with the US State Department tasked with tracking viral and other virulent microbiological threats to the US and she seemed to think the vaccines were relatively safe. He disagreed and maintained he knew about things like this.
Anyway, the following morning, I set off for SF and my second COVID vaccination. As I was driving, I could not help but think about my communications with my son. “What happens if he was right,” I thought. “Perhaps I will die from the vaccine.” My reaction, I reasoned, stemmed not from the obvious gaslighting, unintentional as it may be, but from family history. You see, the progenitors of my surname have a family motto — “Qualunque cosa possa accadere, lo farà.” This can be translated as “Whatever bad that can happen, will.” We have proudly borne this motto down through the ages as we attempted, usually unsuccessfully, to hide from our destiny.
We, the proud bearers of my surname, have a long if not particularly illustrious history. We are Mountain Guineas as distinguished from the Coastal Wops that have cohabited for ages on our beloved sun-drenched peninsula. As pointed out by Braudel, these two groups are as different from each other as Celts from Arabs. About 6000 years ago, the great indo-european migration from the Caucuses reached the peninsular. A few members of that group, whether because they were of an adventurous nature or driven from the community campfires for incorrigible anti-social behavior, climbed into these mountains and bred with the starving remnants of old stone-age peoples who had achieved their mental capacities and physiognomy by breeding with the last of the Neanderthals. Thus, my people are notable for their slowness of thinking and their short, bandy-legged, thick browed, hulking appearance. My progenitors adopted their motto at that time and have since then demonstrated their remarkable facility to hide from trouble.
Thus, my patronymic ancestors lived on the slopes of a mountain on the edge of Campania from which they could see that rise and fall again and again of Naples content that huddling by their campfires, heading sheep and avoiding ambition had freed them from experiencing the benefits and drawbacks of civilization.
After receiving the shot, I had lunch with Terry. We discussed the pleasures and drawbacks of our declining years and reminisced about things we had done and friends we had lost. Over a glass of an Italian sparkling rose, we toasted our good fortune in having lived lives of glorious turmoil and endless stories without hurting too many other people much worse than we hurt ourselves. I think that is the essence of a life well lived. Terry did acknowledge that, had he retained me as his attorney, he may have avoided the trouble he is in now. That may be true, but in my experience most of my clients failed to take my advice requiring me eventually to return and extricate them from the disasters I had foreseen they would fall into. That’s not all that bad, the legal fees that can be charged for extricating a client from their greed are far greater than from keeping them out of trouble in the first place.
Following lunch, I drove over to my son’s house to deliver to Hiromi her belated birthday present. Hiromi, my granddaughter Amanda, and my son met me in from of their apartment. We were all masked except for my son. After presenting the gift, giving irresponsible hugs all around, and taking a photograph or two, my son mentioned that there was a better mask available if I was worried about COVID. He said this mask he saw advertised on TV better catches the COVID viruses than the medical mask I was wearing. I pointed out that the viruses, I understood, were mostly carried in small water droplets and the particular mask I wore seemed quire capable of handling them since the droplets, although small, were many times larger than the virus. He then asked if I have been vaccinated, why was I still wearing a mask if I was cured. I told him I wear it more to protect others then myself. He then said that that made no sense —that I was supposed to be “cured” by the virus. I explained a vaccine simply arms the body to fight off and kill enough of the viruses that they cannot take over the affected cells, so some may be expiated and could cause someone else to become ill. He scoffed at that, said it was ridiculous. He said that polio has a vaccine and he doesn’t see anyone with polio or wearing a mask. I realized we were getting into Trump-Alex Jones type of debate and I excused myself saying I wanted to get home before dark as I no longer am comfortable driving after dark. After I arrived home, I received a message from him asking, more or less, why I hated him so. I wonder if compulsive gaslighting is common between parents and children. I expect so.
The day following my vaccination, I was sure I was going to die and that my son’s warnings were valid. My temperature exploded up to 103 degrees, headaches, pains in my arm, and a bunch more maladies forced me to bed the entire day and disrupted my sleep that night. Then suddenly the next day, as Fauci and others predicted, I felt as good as new. Hooray for me.
That evening, before we went to bed, Naida and I listened to the music of Morgana King , Yma Sumac, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Keith Jarrett and a bit of Herbie Hancock.
Today, whatever day it is, Thursday, March 4 I believe. I guess I lost a day or two. I remember yesterday delivering birthday presents to Hayden in the Golden Hills. I gave him an automobile emergency kit given that he would be getting his drivers license on or near his birthday. I also gave him a package of items needed for Aquascaping, which he had expressed interest in trying.
Anyway, this morning, Naida and I, while rummaged through some of her books on California Native American history, came across one written by Greg Sarris about Mabel Mckay, one of the greatest California Native American basket weavers, who, in about 1930 when she was 22 years old, was asked to exhibit her baskets at the California State Fair in Sacramento. She packed up her baskets and walked from her home near Clear Lake to Sacramento, a distance of about 100 miles. When she arrived, the Fair officials were upset she was “not dressed like an Indian.” They assembled a costume consisting of a beaded buckskin dress with fringe at the bottom, beaded moccasins and a dyed turkey feather to be put in a beaded headband. It was a costume more fitted for a Sioux native that any Californian Native American who in pre-contact days wore very little more than a leather cloak to protect them from inclement weather.
After struggling into her costume, an amused Mabel turned to the white woman who designed the outfit and said: “Do I look like an Indian yet?”
We also discussed a book by a friend of Naida’s, Jack Burrows (Black Sun of the Miwok). It tells the story of the tragic and demeaning deaths of the last six Miwok Native Americans living in the California foothill town of Murphy’s. His grandfather owned historic Murphy’s Hotel and as a child, he would spend a lot of time in the town and at times participated in the horrid treatment of these six Native Americans by the townspeople depicted in the book. As he grew older, he was horrified by the memories of his involvement in this abuse of other human beings and wrote the book in their memory and so that no-one will forget. Alas, we have.
The book opens with a heart-rendering quote by one of its characters:
Loooong time ago plenty food for Eenjun. Plenty Deer, plenty bear, plenty rabbit, plenty bird. Plenty acorn. Whiteman he come. Kill bear, deer, rabbit, bird. Cut trees. Eenjun he no eat. Beg for whiteman. Bimeby Eenjun he die. No more Eenjun. Sun go black.
In his preface to the book Burrows describes the horrific deaths of some of the other Native Americans has received from the residents of that town. Here is one:
— of old Lucy whose horribly mutilated legs were swathed in dirty rags. Unable to walk she crawled, a grotesque and pathetic little figure, kicking along through the dust or the mud by the side of the road or down a ditch. One day (and as recently as 1895) some white boys happened on Lucy crawling towards home. They rocked her to death, they declared, to “put her out of her misery,” and so efficiently, she did not even cry out. Lucy was also mute.
In the afternoon, I returned to writing the missing ending to the mystery novel I began writing several years ago. I had intended to write a detective story, set in San Francisco that ended with no one killed and no mystery to solve even though my cynical and inept detective goes through the motions of trying and failing to solve the mystery he was hired for. Then to my dismay, about half way through the draft, I discovered we had not one but two unexplained deaths. That upset me a lot. I along with my detective had no Idea what was going on.
Recently, I took up the writing of the novel again in the faint hope either I or my detective could solve the mystery of the deaths and I could publish the novel. Poe, when writing about writing mystery novels opined, it should have six suspects, more or less. He also advised the mystery writer begin with the murder itself. Then as Bruce Hartman suggests:
The mystery is created by presenting a series of baffling facts, the meaning of which must be preserved until the end; but the author cannot, in his own voice, deceive the reader or use any artificial means of concealing the secret. As long as the story is conceived as the story of the murder itself, it cannot be told without anticipating the denouement or withholding critical facts. The Philosophical Detective Returns (pp. 205-206). Swallow Tail Press.
I have six suspects, all have the opportunity, means and motive to have killed the two dead men. Further, I have no idea if the dead men were murdered or committed suicide. Nor do I have any idea how to unravel the conundrum and my detective who was supposed to unravel all of this is next to worthless. He, however, is working on one of those charts you see in police movies where the detectives post on the wall all the evidence and connections. I’ll check in on him tomorrow because right now I am going to watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It is my favorite musical film but rarely shown anymore because modern sensibilities find sexist a film about seven singing and dancing brothers dressed in colorful shirts who kidnap an equal number of young women and carry them off to a cabin in the mountains only to spend the entire winter avoiding any sex at all.
PEPE’S POTPOURRI:
A. Auntie Poldi on Top:
One day Auntie Poldi laughed:
“That did it. Poldi stared at him—and burst out laughing. She choked, caught her breath and went on laughing. And when my Auntie Poldi laughed, the earth shook. Cyclopes flinched and Sirens squealed, for she laughed with the whole of her body. Every last part of her shook and wobbled in time to her peals of merriment. It didn’t worry her that her laughter was overly loud and brazen, that she pulled faces, that tears came to her eyes and she broke out in a sweat, that her wig slid askew and her bosom heaved like a North Atlantic swell. When my Auntie Poldi laughed there was no restraining or escaping it. Her laugh penetrated walls and bodies with ease. It rolled like cosmic thunder, warped space, soared to the stars and plunged back to earth like a comet of bliss and joie de vivre that simply—whoosh!—swept away all grouchiness, cussedness, boneheadedness and deviousness. One could sometimes see the laughter building up inside her, accumulating in the depths of her body like glowing plasma—see it throbbing and swelling, that throaty, ultra-Bavarian laugh which always erupted from her without restraint, for when she laughed she seemed to burst like an overripe fruit. Her laugh billowed along the Via Baronessa, setting shutters and hearts atremble. Laughter came purling out of my Auntie Poldi like iridescent bubbles, and one could bathe in its unalloyed gaiety. My Auntie Poldi’s laugh was a gift from ancient gods: extravagant, prodigious and altogether excessive. And, as is the way with divine gifts, anyone who spurns or ignores them is not to be trusted and beyond help.”
Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio (An Auntie Poldi Adventure) (pp. 44-45). HMH Books.
B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:
I am old enough to recall a time before even television arrived on the scene. It was predicted to change the world. Many thought the change would be for the worse (except for Marshall McLuhan). Then the personal computer came along with similar predictions for social disaster. But, in my opinion, nothing has been so revolutionary as the smart-phone. Now people, for better or worse, can be connected with just about everyone else on earth. If the medium is the message, what is it that the smart-phone is telling us?
C. Today’s Poem:
SCRATCH by Naida West.
(Spring 1976)
teeth to wood
gnawing scratch
beneath the bedroom
tireless rat
revived i wake
by 3 thirty
the rat just keeps
me company
my eyes are wide
husband’s asleep
feet are careful
floor won’t creak
foreshortened square
washed white by moon
suspended life
in children’s room.
here again, books
i come alone
the lamp, the desk
my nighttime home.
strange nocturnal
morphosis
soul to paper
scratch this itch.
TODAY’S QUOTE:
“ST. MARY PARISH had a long history as a fiefdom run by a small oligarchy that had possessed power and enormous fortunes, fortunes, actually hundreds of millions of dollars, at a time when the great majority of people in the parish had possessed virtually nothing. The availability of the ancient cypress trees, the alluvial soil that was among the most fertile in the world, the untapped oil and natural-gas domes that had waited aeons for the penetration of the diamond-crusted Hughes drill bit, and, most important, the low cost of black and poor-white labor seemed like the ultimate fulfillment of a corporate dream that only a divine hand could have fashioned. Even the curds of white smoke rising from the mills into the hard blue Louisiana sky couldjam easily be interpreted as a votive offering to a benevolent capitalist deity.”
Burke, James Lee. The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (p.35). Simon & Schuster.
I have not written here in awhile. The Trump impeachment trial ended. Although more than a majority voted to convict (57 votes), it did not reach the 2/3 majority of the Senate needed for impeachment. What I read in the vote was that although a majority and perhaps over 2/3 of the Senators were convinced Trump had actually incited and supported the rebellion, a group of Republican were either convinced or coerced into claiming they lacked jurisdiction over the matter. Although I find their reasoning erroneous, except for prohibiting Trump from seeking federal office, I see no substantive loss. A majority of Senators found he was a traitor and a criminal. I suspect a majority of Americans agree,
Today while driving into the Golden Hills to have lunch with HRM, I mused about my reading and for that matter my writing also. I realized, I have scant interest in how things are resolved or end up. For example, although I have read all of the Conan-Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories, I remember little about how the Great Detective solved the crimes, only that he did so. What I do remember, often quite clearly, is how they begin — Holmes playing his violin; his various costumes; crawling along of the floor, magnifying glass in hand, searching for traces of cigar ash; a frustrated Watson and so on. Whenever I began trying to write a novel or a play, as soon as I realized how it would end, I stopped writing. Of course, I could always plot out the ending before beginning, to write but, I suspect that would only prompt me to abandon it before I even begin writing. The saving grace, so to speak, is that, even if I would ever believe what I write, think, or do might be interesting to anyone, or even competent, I have no interest in publishing it — except perhaps to satisfy a twisted sense of vanity. Maybe, it all resolves itself as a morbid fear of endings. This is strange since life can be thought of as just a series of endings — youth, love, friends, jobs and ultimately yourself. Now that I think about it, that all seems pretty depressing. On the other hand, as Jim Butcher opined:
“Death isn’t when your body stops working. It’s when there’s no more future. When you can’t see past right now, because you stopped believing in tomorrow.”
In other words, look on the bright side and just finish the damned things and stop crapping around.
Hayden managed to get the Alexa that he bought me for my birthday to work. So now we have music to listen to while Naida and I sit at our computers. Much better than watching the news or old B-movies.
This evening we attended a Zoom party with Naida’s daughter’s children’s friend’s parent’s in order for them to introduce their parents to everyone else. The reason for this escaped me other than my surmise that it is simply another example of the general battiness that accompanies a year of social distancing. I found it quite enjoyable. We talked a lot about Scotland, the variety of lemons grown in Riverside and the wonders of membership in the Rotary Club. Also, we speculated on what we will do once we were released from incarceration. Most seemed stumped by the question, much like a prisoner serving a life sentence would be if asked what he would do were he to be paroled. One woman, who had entered a senior residence center a few days before the outbreak and has not been permitted to leave or have visitors since then, said she was going to go to Sicily. I do not know why.
The following morning, we arose early and spent a few hours listening to classical music while we followed along with some of Naida’s old music books dated from as far back as 1892. We laughed at the editor of a book containing Beethoven’s sonatas attempting to rewrite the composer’s works, “the editor did not allow the pedal to be used, for though it would not cloud the harmony, it would transform the short quarter note strokes in the right hand into sustained tones.” Shame! —— I am uncertain as to whether this is an enlightening morning or just another example of the depths to which we have fallen in our efforts to entertain ourselves during the pandemic. Tomorrow we may explore the question of what would happen if the earth became a blueberry.*
(*This has actually been studied by Anders Sandberg at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute who found that there would be a drastic reduction in the force of gravity, since blueberries are less dense than the rocky substrate of our planet. The crushing force of the outer-edge blueberries would then compress and heat up the inner ones into a thick jam that would generate rollicking earthquakes. At blueberry Earth’s center would be a hot core of blueberry “granita” ice, smushed into a solid by the extreme pressure. It can only be assumed that any intelligent beings evolving on such a planet would likely invent the pancake before the wheel.)
I actually spend my time looking this stuff up. Now that I have been vaccinated, I need to get out more before I completely lose what is left of my mind.
This evening, while watching Elmer Gantry on the tube, I wrote the following bit of doggerel:
I have never heard
a poem or legend
glorify a guy
who grows
great zucchini
or who invented
the vibrator.
Perhaps it is only an observation and not a poem. Pity that.
That night we went to sleep listening to the music of Keith Jarrett. Jarrett may be my favorite Jazz musician. He raises jazz aesthetic to the level of classical music. True, he may somewhat lack the swing and the bluesy sound of some of the other great jazz musicians, but his music nonetheless is other-worldly. Once, I flew from San Francisco to Minneapolis to attend one of his rare concerts in the US.
We travelled to SF on Wednesday for my infusion. Nothing of note there. Other, I guess, than when I asked the nurse who interviewed me, “Now that I am coming to the end of my infusion program does that mean I am cured? If not then I would like to know how long do I have before I die?” She said she didn’t even know my treatment program was coming to but she would inform my oncologist of my question and he could answer it when I return for my final treatment in six weeks.
After that, we along with Peter and Barrie had a wonderful meal at Bacco’s on 24th street. I have been dining at that restaurant on and off for perhaps 10 years or so and their food keeps getting better — and more expensive. I ordered a squid ink pasta and spicy calamari. Barrie and Peter had a duck pasta and Naida swordfish steak with arugula. We accompanied the meal with a bottle of Sicilian Nero d’Avola. We spent the night at Peter and Barrie’s house and returned to the Enchanted Forest the next day.
Several days have passed since our trip to San Francisco. I visited with Hayden. Naida and I had a nice dinner. The dog pissed all over the rug and distressed Naida and I greatly. As usual, I no longer remember much else other than I seem to recall being quite happy (except for Boo-boo the Barking Dog’s transgressions). I even got to enjoy writing and not particularly caring about my incompetence. All this happiness worries me.
This morning, after letting the dog out into the backyard and a little geriatric hanky-panky, I was lying in bed fiddling with my smartphone in order to find some pleasant music with which to accompany what I was sure was to be a blissful day, I ran across an album by some old friends and acquaintances, Terry Reilly, Krishna Bhatt, and Zakir Hussain.
In the 1970s, when people did things like this, I would periodically travel to an artist commune on a mountain just outside of Hopland, where we would assemble in a meadow halfway up the mountain to get stoned and play music. Krishna Bhatt would play his sitar; his girlfriend, a tiny slip of a girl, would improvise on a delightedly ethereal flute; whatever other musicians gathered there that day strumming, banging or blowing on their instruments of choice; and those musical illiterates, like me, pounding out strange rhythmics on whatever was near at hand. We would play music, often non-stop, for hours until night fell when we would take the jam session inside to one of the cottages on the property. Now and then one of us would drop out of the performance to take a toke, a drink of wine, or to just lay back on the grass, bathed in the sounds, and stare at the sky. For several years, I spent my summers on that mountain with my girlfriend, living in a teepee by a little stream in which we would bath in the mornings. She was a well known civil-rights lawyer. She left me for a musician. That was a common experience in my life — not living in a teepee on a mountain side, but girlfriends leaving me for musicians. I played the accordion for a while as a teenager. I wonder whether, if I kept it up, it would have made a difference in my love life.
Writing about jam sessions and the seventies brought back other memories of that era, this time in San Francisco. I was living on 30th Street off Dolores. A few streets up from me lived a couple with many children. The couple in addition to their remarkable fecundity were also accomplished Jazz musicians. He a fine clarinetist and she a pianist and singer. Every few weeks or so they would gather a group of musicians and non-musicians like me and congregate in the basement of their house and after imbibing and inhaling refreshments of choice, we would begin jamming until exhaustion or morning. The basement, itself was dark, the only light, I recall, was provided by opening the door to another room or by candlelight. Throughout the night people would come in and play or listen a while and leave. Every now and then, the singer would take me upstairs and whisper improvisational lyrics in my ear. Yes, those years may have been the Golden Age of my life. Except for now, when after a life of trying, I learned that love, although often improvised, can be real, a delightful symphony until the final curtain drops.
In mid February 2021, spring fell like a crack crazed Roman goddess careening through the Enchanted Forest. The camellias have bloomed and cast their petals on the ground leaving behind a technicolor detritus as though painted by a drunken Van Gough. The ornamental fruit trees blossoming pink and white like the cheeks of Norwegian eight-year-olds in mid winter overdosing on candy canes.
I drove into the Golden Hills for lunch with HRM. We went to A&W for a hot dog and a root beer float. I prayed I wouldn’t, as usual get a piece of the hot dog caught in my throat and vomit all over the car. Didn’t — the day keeps getting better and better. Returned to the Enchanted Forest, parked the Mitsubishi and danced back home through the forest paths listening to the divine Miles playing Bitches Brew on my newly acquired earbuds.
Terry Pratchett maintains all life is story. I disagree. All story is metaphor. Life is a metaphor with terminal ambiguity between word and meaning, but with a clear beginning and an undeniable end.
One of, in my opinion, the few benefits of modern communications and social media is reconnecting with people whom you believed to have been lost to you other than for vague memories. People like old girlfriends or boyfriends popping up whether wanted them to or not. Recently, one of my old friends who I had not seen or communicated with since we were teenagers sent me some photographs of one summer day over 65 years ago when we all went to the beach.
In both photos, I am the young man at the left. In the left photograph the young man on my right is Frank Suppa, the eventual husband of the woman who sent me the photos. In the right photo, the boy behind the towel is Vito Pinto. I do not know who he married or if he ever did. Naida said she recognized me in the picture from my legs. She said they have not changed. I am so proud.
MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES: February Ten Years Ago.
“February 14 2011:
Today while sitting on the beach at Paradise by the Sea with Nicky and Hayden watching the Siberian hoards filling the strand around us like grunion during a full moon, I commented that I thought it strange that it was so rare to see any of them smile. Nicky observed that during his travels through Russia and Siberia a few years ago, outside of the larger cities, running water into homes was rare. I responded that if that was true Thailand must appear to them to be a first world country.
Of the few times I have seen what passes for a smile among the Siberians, they appeared to scrunch their mouth into a brief frozen rictus somewhere between a grimace and a grin. Americans, on the other hand, in addition to smiling easily when amused, often smile as a signal of non aggression and sometimes embarrassment. During my stays in Europe, I noticed that that often prompted many Europeans that I encountered to consider us Americans slightly addled and empty-headed. In Europe, smiles were reserved for humor. Meeting people required a more serious demeanor. It was a matter of respect.
Thailand has been called, “The Land of Smiles.” I read somewhere that a Thai has 13 types of smile. I believe nine of those smiles mean, “I’ll get you later, you son of a bitch.” One means, “I have gotten even with you.” One is, “You lost face and I haven’t,” and one is for pleasure, usually exhibited when some farang embarrasses himself. The final type of smile is reserved for other Thai’s and we foreigners never get to see it.
————————————————————
When she was not too much older than Hayden, my daughter Jessica suffered similar fears of the night and of sleeping as he does, and for similar reasons. So, every night at bedtime, I used to tell her long involved tales within a never-ending story in order to relax her and put her to sleep. To her great annoyance, often the stories would put me to sleep well before her.
With Hayden, I make up separate shorter stories every night in an effort to avoid nodding off during the telling. Last night’s story was a tale in a series about Danny, a boy of about Hayden’s age, and his pony Acorn. Danny had ridden Acorn to school where the Good Princess Zoe (the same name as Hayden’s teacher) sent him on a quest to the Mountains of the East to free the Prince of Words from the evil witch Miss Spelling and prevent her from turning the world into a dark place of unreadable books and a babble of unintelligible speech. Danny had to spell his way to dispatch Miss Spelling, free the prince and save the world. When I finished, I asked him what he thought of the story.
“Who is Miss Spelling’s mommy?” he responded.
I could not answer him but promised to reveal it to him in a later story. I could use your help. Does anyone out there know Miss Spelling’s mommy?
February 20 2011:
Spent a few days back in Paradise by the Sea with Hayden and “the little masseuse.” One morning, we swam in the pool then watched “Casper the Friendly Ghost” on television. Later I learned that SWAC sold the last bit of Hayden’s real property potential inheritance. The proceeds have disappeared into the Rattanaphan family coffers. Still later, I had a massage and we then all went for another swim in the pool.
After returning to Bangkok, as I was taking a sauna at the health club, a rather large man entered, mixed into a plastic cup some water from the bucket containing eucalyptus, a white powder that looked like cocaine but I assumed wasn’t because no sane person would throw cocaine onto hot rocks. He then addend some liquid from a small green bottle and poured the concoction over the hot coals. Almost immediately the air in the sauna became noticeably hotter, my skin began to prickle and I began to sweat profusely. The usual camphor smell of the vapors from the eucalyptus water changed subtly to a more citrus taste and smell and penetrated much more deeply into my lungs. The alchemist and I sweated together in the small room until I gave up and left to take a cool shower. I felt unusually light-headed for a while.
Now you may wonder why I did not inquire of the mysterious stranger what he was up to. Alas, in my life I have preferred the adventure of discovery to the safety of knowledge.
Later that day, I ate lunch at AVA. Hayden and I along with two older children of one of the employees at AVA (the woman with one eye). I then returned to the apartment where I was to baby sit them overnight. The youngest boy, about 10-years-old, seemed shy and just sat while Hayden and the children from the apartment downstairs romped up and down the stairs from apartment to apartment. Later, the teenaged boy fixed the interactive sport game and they all played with it until it was time to sleep. The two other children decided to leave and return their own house. The maid returned in the early morning with a young man whom she introduced to Hayden and me as her “son.”
February 23, 2011.
This morning I dropped Hayden off at school and proceeded along Soi 4 to Sukhumvit. Some of the shops and bars were just opening for the day’s business. The Restaurants and cafes serving breakfast were in full swing with bleary eyed farangs trying to down their first coffee of the day. A few of the ladies of the night were still out on the streets. Whether they were out trying to get an early start on the day’s business or just hoping for one last score on their way home to sleep away the sunshine hours after last nights commerce, I do not know.
I stopped at a Starbuck’s at the corner of Sukhumvit and Nana for a Cafe Latte and to read the newspaper and then proceeded to the barber shop. The barber shop I use is located in the Arab quarter because we of the olive skin race, (bordering the Mediterranean and extending into the mountains of Persia and Afghanistan), tend to be generally more hirsute than the races from the north, south and east of our homeland.
I ordered a shave and a deep ear cleaning. Now, for those unfamiliar with it, deep ear cleaning is a process that would probably be banned in North America or Europe. The barber inserts a series of long sharp instruments into ones ear and scrapes, swabs and otherwise digs out what ever he or she finds in there. In my case it must have been a lot since when I left the shop, the insistent noise of Bangkok appeared louder than when I went in.
From the barber shop, I walked through the back alleys of Arab town with their shops and cafes and travel agencies and the like catering to the mostly Muslim population of the area. The air smelled of spices, shawarma and falafel reminding me of my love of the cuisine.
I come out of the alley in front of Gulliver’s, a large barn like club. Inside there are several circular bars around which in the evenings young women sit in hopes of being hit on by preferably older and wealthier farangs.
I walk past Food Land Market. It houses a counter inside serving some of the least expensive good food, western and other, in BKK.
I enter a tunnel that runs between Soi’s. It is dark and filled on both sides with tiny bars, food stalls and shops. The tunnel exits next to an establishment named The Beer Garden. It is basically a downscale version of Gulliver’s and is referred to by some as “The Chicken Farm.” I cross the street and pass through the driveway alongside the Amari Hotel that ends in a large parking lot that skirts the abandoned lobby of what I guess is another hotel, on the doors of which are sculpted a magnificent brace of swans.
The parking lot ends at Soi 11 adjacent to the Rain Tree Spa and across from my destination, the Ambassador Hotel, containing the health club and pool I use for my morning exercises.
Following my workout, I walk along Sukhumvit to Soi 4 to go back my apartment. I often stop in the Landmark Hotel and visit the Asia Books store located in the lobby to see if there and any new releases I want to read.
As I walk along, every now and then a rat would poke its head out through a crack in the sidewalk, I guess for a glimpse of sunlight and perhaps safety from the dangers of the dark subterranean canals that lie just below the pavement, their fetid waters home to rats, snakes and god knows what else. When Bangkok enclosed most of their canals to provide the motorways for the modern city, it created a miasmatic swamp just below the city’s streets. Who knows what is breeding down there. The sewers of Paris are palaces compared to these. Novels have been written of escapes through the sewer systems of many cities, even New York. But, if you’re trapped in Bangkok’s, I doubt the possibility of survival. I sometimes wonder if in a hundred years or so some new creature or creatures would rise from those mephitic waters, a plague perhaps, or something larger than minuscule disease bearing organisms. Something looking like the Naga’s of Thai myths, multi-headed serpents ascending from those hidden waterways and careening down the then flooded streets pursuing the few remaining inhabitants of the city.
Arriving home, I usually grab my computer and go to the small restaurant across Soi 4 from my apartment, really not much more substantial than a sidewalk cart where I have lunch. It has the benefit of free Wi-fi access, so I play with the internet, check on the 49rs and write things like this until it is time to pick Hayden up from school.
FEBRUARY FACTOIDS:
February 10, 1862, Battle of Elizabeth City. Destruction of the Confederate Mosquito Fleet by Union gunboats.
February 26, 1564, Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury England to Catherine Marlowe and John Marlowe, a shoemaker. He attended Cambridge University, lived a life of high adventure as a spy, wrote some of the greatest plays and poetry in the english language and died in a barroom brawl before he was 30.
(Don’t forget to celebrate.)
PEPE’S POTPOURRI:
A. BookWorld by Jasper Fforde with Thursday Next or One Thereafter on Top:
Thursday Next is the protagonist in a series of comic fantasy, alternate history mystery novels by the British author Jasper Fforde. In Thursday’s universe, England is a republic. There is no United Kingdom, and Wales is the independent “Socialist Republic of Wales”. The Crimean War is still being waged in 1985, Russia still has a Czar, and the Whig Party still exists
Thursday is a member of SO-27, the Literary Detectives or LiteraTecs. She polices Bookworld. The BookWorld is a fictitious and complex environment that acts as a “behind-the-scenes” area of books. The BookWorld is most likely “created” by what is known as the Great Panjandrum, a person/thing that is thought to be of the highest of authority, yet is never present, acting as a god of sorts to the BookWorld. As the word panjandrum means someone in high authority, this reaffirms this possibility.
Consisting of 52 levels total, the Great Library acts as a lobby of sorts for the BookWorld and serves as a public gateway onto any book ever created. 26 of the upper levels, organized according to the author’s last name, are laid out in a cross shape, with 4 rows of book cases radiating from a central point.
Below, Thursday invites three characters into her home:
“I opened the door to find three Dostoyevskivites staring at me from within a dense cloud of moral relativism.”“Welcome to my home, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.”
‘Oh,’ said Raskolnikov, impressed that I knew who he was. ‘How did you know it was me? Could it have been the subtle way in which I project the dubious moral notion that murder might somehow be rationalized, or the way in which I move from denying my guilt to eventually coming to terms with an absolute sense of justice and submitting myself to the rule of law?’
“Neither,” said I. “It’s because you’re holding an axe covered in blood and human hair.”
‘Allow me to introduce Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov.’
‘Actually,’ said the second man leaning over to shake my hand. ‘I’m Dmitri Razumikhin, Raskolnikov’s loyal friend.’
‘You are?’ said Raskolnikov in surprise. ‘Then what happened to Svidrigailov?’
‘No,’ said Razumikhin in the tone of a long-suffering friend, ‘that’s your mother. Andotya Romanova Raskolnikova is your sister’
‘I always get those two mixed up. So who is Marfa Petronova Svirigailova?’
Razumikhin frowned and thought for a moment. ‘You’ve got me there.’
“He turned to the third Russian.
‘Tell me, Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin: who precisely is Marfa Petronova Svidrigailova?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the third Russian who had been staring at her shoes absently, ‘but I think there has been some kind of mistake. I’m not Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, but Alyona Ivanova.’
Razumikhin turned to Raskolnikov and lowered his voice. ‘Is that your landlady’s servant, the one who decides to marry down to secure her fortune or the one who turns to prostitution in order to stop her family descending into penury?’
Raskolnikov shrugged. ‘Listen’ he said, ‘I’ve been in this book for over one hundred and thirty years, and even I can’t figure that out’”
“‘It’s very simple,’ said the third Russian, indicating who did what on her fingers, ‘Nastasya Petronova is Raskolnikov’s landlady’s servant, Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova is your sister who threatens to marry down, Sofia Semyonovna Marmeladova is the one who becomes a prostitute, and Marfa Petrovna Svidrigailova – the one you were first talking about — is Arkady Svidrigailov’s murdered first wife.’
‘I knew that’ said Raskolnikov in the manner of someone who didn’t, ‘so… who are you again?’
‘I’m Alyona Ivanovna,’ said the third Russian with a trace of annoyance, ‘the rapacious old pawnbroker whose apparent greed and wealth lead you to murder.’
‘Are you sure you’re Ivanovna?’ asked Raskolnikov in a worried tone.
‘Absolutely.’
‘And you’re still alive?’
‘So it seems.’
He stared at the bloody axe. ‘Then who did I just kill?’
‘Listen’ I said ‘I’m sure everything will come out fine in the epilogue. But for the moment, your home is my home.”’
B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:
When things seem bleak, look on the bright side. Things may still be bleak but it may be too bright to see them.
C. Today’s Poem: “Waiting For The Barbarians” by C. P. Cavafy.
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Constantine Peter Cavafy also known as Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis April 29 (April 17, OS), 1863 – April 29, 1933) was an Egyptiot Greek poet, journalist and civil servant. His consciously individual style earned him a place among the most important figures not only in Greek poetry, but in Western poetry as well.
Cavafy wrote 155 poems, while dozens more remained incomplete or in sketch form. During his lifetime, he consistently refused to formally publish his work and preferred to share it through local newspapers and magazines, or even print it out himself and give it away to anyone interested. His most important poems were written after his fortieth birthday, and officially published two years after his death. (Wikipedia)
D. Tuckahoe Joe’s Blog . the Week: Grasping Reality with Both Hands by Brad DeLong.
Brad Delong, one of my favorite economists, publishes a blog from which I frequently quote here in this and that. I find his economic analysis superb. Unfortunately, he all to often timid in his conclusions for my tastes. Frequently, he ends his analysis with a question rather than a recommendation or conclusion. Here he critiques the current financial sector in the United States. He claims the modern financial sector of the United States is no longer subject to standard economic analysis because it is too politically powerful, standard analysis fails when the financial sector passes beyond simple banking and it ceases and its social and financial benefits decline.
What to Do with the Hypertrophied Financial Sector?
We are live at Project Syndicate
Back in 2011, I wrote:
“In 1950, finance and insurance in the United States accounted for 2.8% of GDP…. Today, it is 8.4% of GDP…. If the US were getting good value from the extra 5.6% of GDP that it is now spending on finance and insurance–the extra $750 billion diverted annually from paying people who make directly useful goods and provide directly useful services–it would be obvious in the statistics… diverting that large a share of resources away from goods and services directly useful this year is a good bargain only if it collectively has a substantial amount of what financiers call “alpha”, only if it boosts overall annual economic growth by 0.3%–or 6% per 25-year generation….”
“Why has the devotion of a great deal of skill and enterprise to finance and insurance sector not paid obvious economic dividends? There are two sustainable ways to make money in finance: find people with risks that need to be carried and match them with people with unused risk-bearing capacity, or find people with such risks and match them with people who are clueless but who have money…”
Over the past year and a half, in the wake of Thomas Philippon and Ariel Resheff’s estimate that 2% of U.S. GDP was wasted in the pointless hypertrophy of the financial sector, evidence that our modern financial system is less a device for efficiently sharing risk and more a device for separating rich people from their money–a Las Vegas without the glitz–has mounted. Bruce Bartlett points to Greenwood and Scharfstein, to Cechetti and Kharoubi’s suggestion that financial deepening is only useful in early stages of economic development, to Orhangazi’s evidence on a negative correlation between financial deepening and real investment, and to Lord Adair Turner’s doubts that the flowering of sophisticated finance over the past generation has aided either growth or stability.
Four years ago I was largely frozen with respect to financial sophistication. It seemed to me then that 2008-9 had demonstrated that our modern sophisticated financial systems had created enormous macroeconomic risks, but it also seemed to me then that in a world short of risk-bearing capacity with an outsized equity premium virtually anything that induced people to commit their money to long-term risky investments by creating either the reality or the illusion that finance could, in John Maynard Keynes’s words, “defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelop our future”. Most reforms that would guard against the first would also limit the ability of finance to persuade people that it performed the second, and hence further lower the supply of finance willing to take and bear risks.
But the events and economic research of the past years have demonstrated three things. First, modern finance is simply too powerful in its lobbying before legislatures and regulators for it to be possible to restrain its ability to create systemic macroeconomic risk while preserving its ability to entice customers with promises of safe, sophisticated money management. Second, the growth-financial deepening correlations on which I relied do indeed vanish when countries move beyond simple possession of a banking system, EFT, and a bond market into more sophisticated financial instruments. And, third, the social returns to the U.S.’s and the North Atlantic’s investment in finance as the industry of the future over the past generation has, largely, crapped out. A back-of-the-envelope calculation I did in 2007 suggested that in mergers and acquisitions the world paid finance roughly $800 billion/year for about $170 billion/year of real economic value–a rather low benefit-cost ratio–and that appears to be not the exception but the rule.
I should, before, have read a little further in Keynes, to “when the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done”. And it is time for creative and original thinking–to construct other channels and canals by which funding can reach business and bypass modern finance with its large negative alpha. (https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/06/what-to-do-with-the-hypertrophied-financial-sector.html)
E. Giants of History: Giordano on why Sicilians rarely talk about the Mafia.
Sicilians rarely talk about the mafia in public although they all are aware and most likely have had intercorse with it. Giordano discusses this odd phenomena.
“(Sicilians are) loath to use the M-word and talk about the Italian state’s greatest foe, about speculative building, nepotism, corruption and the drug trade. About the intimidation of an entire nation by an organisation with links to the highest government circles. About atrocities and massacres, shootings and mutilations, about burying your enemies in concrete, dissolving them in acid or feeding them to pigs. Or about lupara bianca, the total disappearance of victims, which deprives their nearest and dearest of the chance to bury them and come to terms with their loss. Nobody likes to talk about such things when they happen on one’s own doorstep. Or about omertà, the principle of unconditional silence that has become symbolic of the Sicilians’ final surrender to the omnipotence of the piovra—the octopus—as the Mafia is also known. Sicily is so much more than the Mafia, of course, but they belong together, and no one who seeks to understand the former can avoid the latter.”
Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio (An Auntie Poldi Adventure) (p. 150). HMH Books.
TODAY’S QUOTE:
“A springlike day drifted in through the usual stench of rotting garbage and bus exhaust, the kind of day which, in its triumph over expectations, seems more wonderful in New York than in a country meadow. That’s the secret of life in New York, I’d already learned. Expect the worst and you will be pleasantly surprised, until the worst actually happens. Which in those days it often did.”
“Humor is… despair refusing to take itself seriously.”
~Arland Ussher
POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN AMERICA:
FEBRUARY 2021 — In the beginning.
Day 1.
The first day of the month was spent getting my new computer in order. I also stared out the window a lot. It was a crisp sunny winter day in the Enchanted Forest. Now and then I would cast an eye at the news. The television was running silently with the captions jauntily crossing the screen letting me know what the talking heads were rattling on about. The House impeachment documents were filed in the Senate. Biden met with 10 so called moderate Republican Senators whose intention it was to persuade him to gut his own COVID relief bill. They did not succeed. The investigations of the January 6 assault on the Capital goes on with intimations of eventual significant reveals. The COVID vaccination rollout continues to have its troubling bumps, but they seem to be leveling out. It appears, the problems now are in getting the vaccine resistant to get vaccinated and assuring the efficacy of the vaccine against the new COVID strains that are popping up.
Groundhog Day.
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. Six more weeks of winter weather and perhaps six more weeks of winter politics. Today, the weather is drear. My mood is one of grim amusement. I am heartened, however, that tomorrow is another day. On the other hand when I think a bit more about tomorrow I am not so sure I should be.
In the afternoon, I visited with HRM in the Golden Hills. He seems to be doing well and excited about getting his driver’s license soon. That evening Naida and I watched the ceremony in the Capital honoring the police officer who was murdered in the attack on that building. Later that night, as we lay in bed, we listened to Maria Callas. Several times I replayed her rendition of Caro Nome which I consider one of the greatest examples of the range and control capabilities of a woman’s voice in song. It reminded me that perhaps twenty years ago I made a tape (now lost) I called The Women’s Voice. It began with Callas singing this aria. The tape contained about forty different examples including Billie Holliday, Yuma Sumac, Janis Joplin, and Carman Miranda. I loved that tape and would play it everyday.
February 3.
A slow day today — What differed between this day and any other day that I sat in front of the television with one eye and ear on the news and the others on my computer was that I did not spend time worrying about things I should be doing. I expect this mood will change and become more normal as the day trundles on.
Well, I did not have to worry much about a change in mood because I napped most of the afternoon. Tomorrow the House of Representatives votes on Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments. I am sure something else, perhaps even something of great or of historical importance, has happened today. If it has, I missed it. That’s good. Maybe tomorrow, I will pay more attention. I wonder if it is worth it, all this attention to the news. As Ben Aaronovitch said about current events, “It’s all dull old socio-economic forces acting on an undifferentiated mass of semi-evolved primates.”(Lies Sleeping — Rivers of London [p. 271] DAW). That’s another thing — this attention to the opinions and interpretations of others. I seem to live by assimilating other peoples experiences and opinions now. Maybe I always have. My knowledge of most things seems to have been less a product of effort than mostly just an ongoing process of epistemological osmosis.
The Next Day.
I spent the morning in bed reading. The Strong Towns blog had two interesting articles. One about local city governments splitting their tax rolls and taxing land at higher rates than improvements (an old Henry George proposal that I always found attractive). A few cities in Pennsylvania following the collapse of the steel industry instituted this form of property assessment in an attempt to halt their economic declines. It appeared to successfully halt the declines and produced renewed growth of their downtowns. The other article reviewed Sacramento’s experience with eliminating minimum parking requirements and single family home zoning.
It was a sunny day and Naida and I had a delightful lunch at Piatti – a pasta carbonara, rose prosecco, bread pudding and an espresso. The House of Representatives stripped Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. All and all, it was a good day.
The Day After.
It seems this issue of T&T has become the longest and perhaps the most verbose ever. I do not know if this is a result of becoming more comfortable with the nature of the activities forced on me in order to amuse myself during the pandemic or simply a symptom of my advancing age.
We spent the morning trying to get a COVID vaccine appointment for Naida. No luck.
Another Day Cometh.
This morning as I opened the door to leave the bedroom, I discovered Boo-boo the Barking Dog lying on the carpet waiting to escort me downstairs. “This was going to be a good day” I thought. While we ate breakfast sitting on our reclining chairs in the studio, Naida read to me the speech she had given a few years ago on the release of the first volume of Mark Twain’s memoir. It was magnificent. She wrote it as if she were Twain himself commenting on what the editors 100 years later had done to it.
We later got into the problems and concerns of someone trying to write his or her memoir, followed my dissertation on my approach to coastal regulation and advocacy in politically changed situations. We then watched, The Secret Life of Sherlock Holmes on the television completelyavoiding the political news of the day the entire morning. The good day continues.
I drove into the Golden Hills. It was pleasantly warm and sunny. I carried the first two books of Naida’s trilogy along with me for Haden and Kaleb. Kaleb had asked me for a good book to read and I believe these are as good as any. Both books are set on the Cosumnes River that runs along the southwestern base of the Golden Hills. We had a delightful lunch at the Town Center Lake. After lunch, I dropped them off at a gathering of the Scooter Gang. I then drove home. All and all, a good day and I have not even checked the news yet. I think I will stop here while I am ahead.
PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY:
CAPITALISM
Capitalism is a word whose meaning everyone seems convinced they know, but with little agreement as to what that is except that it is good or bad or none of the above. The dictionary definition of capitalism is more or less:
“An economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.”
This definition hides more than what it reveals. Among the things that it hides is the fact that government has sheltered the investments of those private owners and their businesses from losses beyond their investments.
Capitalism as we know it was created more or less by British royalty’s wish to develop the resources of the New World without expending royal funds*. Up until that time, in Britain investors were responsible for an enterprises losses. Not many were willing to invest in the New World because the risks were too unknown. As a result Britain was falling further behind other colonial powers in reaping the benefits of their conquests. The King, therefor, provided for a limitation on losses on those investments to the amount invested. The documents attesting to this advantage then were sold and traded in the coffeehouses of London along with the investments and insurance shares on shipping. With the rise of the corporate form with similar protections for investors, we have the creation of what is most often referred to as capitalism. In brief, it is a system of shielding investors from the catastrophic losses most of the rest of us are forced to face.
Removal of the corporate vail along with the limitation of liability for investors beyond the value of their investments, would collapse the system. Capitalism, as it exists today, depends upon the government and has never been free enterprise.The investors and corporations benefiting from those actions of government receive an added value to their investments from this governmental largess.
It is the impacts, both good and bad, on everyone else not so sheltered by the government upon which many commentators base their approval or criticism of the system. The Austrian School of Economics, the Republican Party, Ann Rand argue in favor of reducing community interference with the goals or wishes of the investors and corporations (except for the liability shield). We are familiar to some extent with the criticism of the system by Marxists, democratic socialists, some environmental thinkers and others. I recently came across an article describing the great historian of the rise of capitalism Fernand Braudel’s criticisms of capitalism that I found interesting and informative:
“Braudel clearly regards capitalism as an ‘anti-liberal, ‘Smithian’ perspective.
It is a non transparent game from which ordinary entrepreneurs are excluded. According to Braudel one can see it played in particular on the stock exchange, in deals on major international markets, and in complex financial transactions such as provisioning credit. Capitalists are the people at the pinnacle of trading activity; the ones who hold ‘the commanding heights’. They are well-enough informed and materially able to select in what sectors and places they do or do not want to be active. They do not specialize but, thanks to their wealth and protection, can always keep several options open. They earn their profits thanks to the lack of transparency of the market, or in his terms as a “franche contradiction” of the market economy. Capitalists try to eliminate or circumvent the rules of the free market as much as possible. If ‘real existing capitalism’ is characterized by freedom of choice — and Braudel believes this to be the case— we have to realize we are talking about the freedom of choice of a very small group of very rich and privileged ‘super entrepreneurs’. Capitalism is an unfair game, played by a tiny number of privileged people who have been granted or have seized the power to have things their way.”
Unfortunately, I lost the cite to the above article, however I have added some additional information about Braudel:
Fernand Braudel ( 24 August 1902 – 27 November 1985) was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects: The Mediterranean (1923–49, then 1949–66), Civilization and Capitalism (1955–79), and the unfinished Identity of France (1970–85).
In brief, Braudel considers Capitalism a small collection of individuals and organizations that dominate the “market” for their own benefit.
I thought I would also add the statement by Pope Francis in his 84-page apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, described unfettered capitalism as “a new tyranny” and called on world leaders to fight rising poverty and inequality:
Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting
*Capitalism began as a scheme to produce income from land without risk or investment by the owner. It remains the same today except that in many if not most situations herd mentality has replaced land as a necessary precondition.
MOPEY’S MEMORIES:
Jomtien Beach Thailand, Ten Years Ago This Month.
Yesterday was my first day back on my old schedule since I returned. This morning I walked along the beach observing the mornings doings. I know, previously, I commented on what I saw on my walks that what, at least to me, I felt was humorous or interesting but to others may appear, at best, dyspeptic. The exotic culture of “little Crimea,” the acres of bleached flesh and so on have all caught my attention. But, I have recently come to the realization that perhaps the strangest denizen of the strand is one aging farang striding purposefully along the shore in a geriatric power walk, half stagger and half stride.
Who could it be? Why it is me! With my crushed straw hat, walking stick, flowered shirt, and sandals tucked into my belt. I am greeted by smiling Thai vendors with “Hey Papa, getting your exercise today. Good for you!” Of course being a farang, to them I am a bit crazy and stupid for, at my age, walking out in the hot sun while anyone with any sense is lying in the shade under the beach umbrellas. ( I would guess that their amusement also could be directed at the Siberian hordes, stagnating together like marble statues in the shallows.)
Despite the provocation, I keep trudging along, a smile on my face and earphones in my ears leading from my newly purchased I-something or other, that I cannot get to do anything except play music. The song I am listening to is “A girl from Ipanema” (I know it indicates my advanced age. As one gets older and one loses friends, one is left with memories and “A girl from Ipanema.”) At least it is somewhat appropriate music for a walk on the beach and so I walk on with a smile on my face and a Samba hitch in my gait. Unfortunately, although I can get the I-something to play music, I have not learned how to get it to do anything other than play the same song over and over…
“…when she passes, I smile, but she doesn’t see…Ahhh”…still I smile and walk on.”
_____________________
For reasons that I can only guess at, since my return from the US, as I power walk my mornings through “little Crimea” and “Siberia del Sud,” things do not appear to amuse me as much as they did a month ago.(Speaking of Crimea, I just finished reading another retelling of “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” I am always amazed how young men are so willing to throw their lives away so stupidly and for so little. It only confirms my belief that the male sex has outlived its evolutionary usefulness and men should be put out to pasture and periodically milked for their sperm.)
Anyway, back to more amusing things like my loss of humor. I usually just wait things out when I feel like this, after all, tomorrow is another day and almost anything can happen to banish my ennui. Nevertheless, waiting around for something to happen does not increase anticipation. Instead, it tends to decrease interest. Anyway, since whatever happens when one waits around for something to happen appears to me to more often than not be something bad when it does happen, I think I will be better off doing something foolish now, on my own, rather than waiting for it to be done to me.The problem however is that the most foolish thing I can think of to do right now is to fall in love or a reasonable facsimile thereof and frankly at my age even that seems to be too much effort. There must be easier foolishness one can do — something that can be done say from the comfort of a beach chair.
I guess I will give it more thought after my nap.
____________________________
I have been in a bit of a funk for the past few days. I do not know why, so, until it passes, I settled down to read some of the books that I have brought with me from the US.
One of these books is “Eye of the Bear” by my friend Naida West with whom Hayden and I spent a wonderful three days at the ranch along the Cosumnes River near Sacramento. It is a marvelous story and one that I recommend highly.
Although the book is identified as a historical novel, it is like “The Grapes of Wrath” is an historical novel. And even as an historical novel, it stands unique. As Naida herself points out “In most historical novels a fabricated plot is imposed upon an historical setting. Instead, I used documented events as story guideposts…” And what a story it is. Every bit as exciting as “Leather-stocking Tales” and every bit as much an examination of the American experience as “Huckleberry Finn.” It is one of the best novels that I have read in years.
During my stay at their ranch, Hayden and I accompanied Naida and her husband Bill Geyer on a walk along the river near their ranch. I stood under the oak tree in which Eagle Woman lived, saw the rude parking lot that covered the village of the Lopotsumne, climbed over the rocks pocked with the grinding holes used by the village women to prepare their acorn flour now partially covered by refuse thrown there by the developers of the adjacent subdivision, walked on the playing fields now a garbage dump and climbed the hills overlooking the village.
While I listened to Naida tell me about these places and about the lives of the people, I listened politely with that detachment that one reserves for docent tours through museums or archeological sites. It was only by reading the book that her words became alive. I saw myself there for the “Big Times” and the “Rattlesnake Dance,” Morning Owl‘s orations and Grizzly Hair and Oak Gall‘s bathing in the cool of the river mornings. I experienced Grizzly Hair‘s shock at first contact with horses, Padres, and mountain men and saw the suffering and death at the Missions.
It is a great story and a great read.
TODAY’S FACTOID:
OnJune 10, rioting that began as a bar fight in the city of Osh between ethnic Kyrgyz and the minority Uzbek population exploded into the streets and escalated throughout the region resulting in the death of somewhere between 400 and 3000 people and the creation of over 400,000 refugees. This made everyone in the area nervous and prompted the governments of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and others in the region to mobilize their military, ultimately requiring Russia and the UN to intercede in an attempt to calm down the situation. It also prompted me on June 18 of that same year to write from Thailand the following:
It looks like the “Great Game” is afoot again in the too many consonant Stans. For those who have not taken world history in a while, in the 18th, 19th and early part of the 20th Centuries, Russia, Great Britain and China engaged in an extended game of “Spy vs. Spy” over control of the passes through the high mountains between north and south Asia, a portion of which was called the Hindu Kush. It seems they are at it again except the US has taken Great Britain’s place at the table.
The latest flare up on the road to Armageddon is in the what I call the lesser Stans, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Tajik ( As opposed to the Greater Stans. Afghan, Pak and Kazakh–I do not know whether Turkmen is a Greater or Lesser Stan).
Old Joe Stalin, the almost forgotten beloved “Uncle Joe,” did not have enough white Russians to resettle on this portion of the Russian border to protect mother Russia from the Turk or whomever. Remember at this time 20 million or so of them were busy being slaughtered in the most recent Slavic-Teuton struggle over who would have the right to kill the Jews in the Pale. So crafty old Uncle Joe took a large fertile valley, the only piece of land in the area worth anything since most of the rest was mountain. and gave it to the Uzbeks, except that the Uzbeks lived on the other-side of the mountains and the only way into the valley was through a very long narrow pass that that scamp Uncle Joe gave to the Tajik and to add to the hilarity of the situation, Joe the Comedian gave the foothills surrounding the valley to the Kyrgyz who although they could look down on the Uzbeks in their happy valley from their towns on the foothills they could not defend those same towns because they also lived opposite the Uzbeks on the other-side of the mountains surrounding the valley.
Now the USA, assuming the role of merry old England in the Greater Stans of Afghan and Pak (The role of winning the battles and ultimately losing the war) decided to put its supply bases in the land of the Kyrgyz over the mountains from Happy Valley and make many of the Kyrgyz rich. The Kyrgyz then took that money and begin a pogrom against the Uzbeks living in the foothills overlooking their brethren working their farms below. The new Kyrgyz government although gaining power through a nationalist revolution claimed surprise at the continuing turmoil. They also need help to stop the pogrom before the Uzbeks decide to assist their oppressed cousins across the border.
What to do? What to do? They cannot ask the Americans because the Americans, being the new English, do not see the Lesser Stans as in their interest. It would piss off the Russians to wake up with the Anglo-Americans acting on their turf so to speak, so they have asked the Russians for help. What happens next? Will China, with its already unhappy Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in its western provinces feel threatened? What the hell is everyone fighting for anyway? The great game was about trade routes. Is this all about mineral resources? Is it another man-thing? Stay tuned for, As the World Turns.
Meanwhile in the Greater Stans, the Nato forces are engaged in a war of attrition to punish and retaliate against the ex-Afghan government for allowing their country to shelter a tall skinny ex CIA operative lunatic on dialysis while he was plotting to send citizens of an ally of the US using funds obtained from that same ally to launch a terrorist attack on the US for the purpose of creating enough turmoil the US would respond as Russia did in the same area and destroy itself economically by spending too much money on war and the things of war.
Meanwhile,….. is it getting hotter or is it just me?……
PEPE’S POPOURRI:
A. FAUX NEWS ON TOP:
“The Six Steps” that Fox employs to create national controversies:
STEP 1: Conservative activists introduce the lie.
STEP 2: Fox News devotes massive coverage to the story.
STEP 3: Fox attacks other outlets for ignoring the controversy.
STEP 4: Mainstream outlets begin reporting on the story.
STEP 5: Media critics, pundits praise Fox News’s coverage.
STEP 6: The story falls apart once the damage has been done.”
From the Fox Effect. David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt.
B. TRENZ PRUCA’S OBSERVATIONS.
The age old bind in all democracies; is the person you are about to vote for an ideologue or an idiot? Remember, a politician’s primary skill is to craft elaborate and persuading lies sufficient to persuade a majority of the electorate that he shares their ideology and is not an idiot.
C. TODAY’S POEMS: THE CALYPSOS OF BOKONON.
The Calypsos
On Dynamic Tension
“Papa” Monzano, he’s so very bad
But without bad “Papa” I would be so sad;
Because without “Papa’s” badness,
Tell me, if you would,
How could wicked old Bokonon
Ever, ever look good?
On the Natives of San Lorenzo:
Oh, a very sorry people, yes,
Did I find here?
Oh, they had no music,
And they had no beer.
And, oh, everywhere
Where they tried to perch
Belonged to Castle Sugar, Incorporated,
Or the Catholic church.
On the creation of Bokononism:
I wanted all things
To seem to make some sense,
So we could all be happy, yes,
Instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
And I made this sad world
A par-a-dise.
On the end of the world:
Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why just go ahead and scold Him. He’ll just smile and nod.
The Boko-maru Calypso
We will touch our feet, yes,
Yes, for all we’re worth,
And we will love each other, yes,
Yes, like we love our Mother Earth.
The Fourteenth Calypso
When I was young
I was so gay and mean,
And I drank and chased the girls
Just like young St. Augustine.
Saint Augustine,
He got to be a saint.
So, if I get to be one, also,
Please. Mama, don’t you faint.
The Fifty-third Calypso
Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a Chinese dentist,
And a British queen–
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice–
So many different people
In the same device
.
The Hundred-and-nineteenth Calypso
“Where’s my good old gang done gone?”
I heard a sad man say.
I whispered in that sad man’s ear,
“Your gang’s done gone away.”
Kurt Vonnegut in his comic novel, Cat’s Cradle, invented a new religion he called Bokonon. The holy scripture of Bokononism was the ever-growing “Books of Bokonon,” written by Bokonon himself. Bokonon, a British Episcopalian Negro from the island of Tobago whose real name was Lionel Boyd Johnson created his religion as a way to distract the people of San Lorenzo from their pitiful lives. To Bokononists just one thing is sacred: man not God. Among the many verses in the work are a group of poems called Calypsos, a sort of a Book of Psalms of Bokononism. The above eight are the only Calypsos recorded in the novel.
D. SICILIAN TALES AND MORES, BY GIORDANO: WHY SICILIAN MEN LIKE CORPULENT WOMEN.
It has been my observation here in the US and in Sicily, that Sicilian men tend to eschew the skinny model type of women preferred by Americans and instead search (some say excessively and obsessively) for those with more meat on their bones. I, being brought up as an American, have been curious about this aesthetic choice. As usual, Giordano, my reliable but garrulous expert on things Sicilian, provides an explanation.
My sole explanation for this phenomenon is, like many things in Sicily, mythological.
Behind a bulletproof window in Vienna’s Museum of Natural History one can see the limestone figurine of a corpulent female known as the Venus of Willendorf. Barely eleven centimeters tall, with thin arms, huge breasts and plump thighs, she was sculpted by a Neolithic artist around thirty-thousand years ago, during the last Ice Age, when central Europe was so short of food that the whole population migrated south en masse and may have reached Sicily.
I can imagine that those people, who knew only hunger and privation, revered corpulence as a divine ideal of beauty. After all, until the advent of the Phoenicians and Moors, Sicily was for thousands of years a barren land in which only olives and almonds grew. Memories of widespread hunger may have etched themselves into Sicilians’ DNA, with the result that, notwithstanding all passing fashions and slimming crazes, body-shaming campaigns and low-carb diets, the sight of sensual corpulence still arouses lust in the male beholder.
Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio (An Auntie Poldi Adventure) (pp. 55-56). HMH Books.
E. GIANTS OF HISTORY: TERRY OPINES AGAIN.
With the Biden victory in the presidential race and the Democratic Parties wresting control of Congress, Terry offers a word of caution to those rejoicing in these victories.
As noted in my last blog, it is impossible for a political party to continue with a fantasy wing and a reality wing. See the article below.
The reality wing of the Republican Party at the State and local level is divorcing from the fantasy EXTREMIST wing. Office holders are retiring, former leaders are registering as independents and the party has a vacuum that will be filled by extremists. This happened in 1860 to the Democratic Party dooming that party to nearly 100 years out of national power . The same will happen to the 21st century Republican Party, unless there is a sea change that I don’t see coming.
Traditional Republican funders are boycotting the Party while small contributors are replacing them. While this is a hopeful development for the Democratic Party, unless that Party passes a national RIGHT TO VOTE LAW ensuring absentee mail in balloting and making unreasonable voter ID laws illegal and prohibiting gerrymandering by legislatures. It’s quite possible for an Extremist Republican Party to create lots of dangerous local and state policies and lots of national headaches before it burns itself out over time.
Democrats must be quite bold now that they have power . The filibuster must be limited if not eliminated . That action is required to defend the Democratic Republic we have. We fail to do so at our peril.
An Emboldened Extremist Wing Flexes Its Power in a Leaderless G.O.P.
I have always considered David Duchovny of x-files fame as one strange guy both for the characters he often plays and for what I have read about his personal life. Recently, I came across an article by him in The Atlantic magazine that to a great extent could have been written by me here in T&T. It includes a number of my ongoing obsessions, fears, and admiration for Samuel Beckett’s novels. I have always believed that a life of failing and failing again is a life well lived. I guess that makes me strange also. The question remains are Duchovny and I boring neurotics or exciting psychotics?
“This is why I must write—to make these searching guesses and to justify all the time my parents put into seeding my brain with the ideas that were meaningful to them.”
“My daughter, West, just texted me and asked what I thought about her getting a tattoo—tasteful and small, monochrome, she doesn’t know where yet (uh-oh)—of a Samuel Beckett epigram from Worstward Ho: “Fail again. Fail better.” This brings me to tears. That she would ask—she’s 21; she can do as she pleases, but she also knows that I know she knows the quote through me. It’s between us. She knows I wrote my senior thesis at Princeton 1,000 years ago on Beckett’s novels. Why his novels, you might ask? An excellent question. Well, when I was 20, I saw that so much had been written on Beckett’s plays and that critics had kind of avoided the novels. So that left the field clear for me of brilliant, inhibiting elders while also cutting down on my research, a win-win. I don’t think I ever told her (no reason to scare the child) that the hardbound paper, well over 100 pages, was titled “The Schizophrenic Critique of Pure Reason in Beckett’s Novels.” What does that even mean? I’m not sure I remember, but it’s something along the lines of neurotics are boring, and psychotics are exciting.”
“There are two sustainable ways to make money in finance: find people with risks that need to be carried and match them with people with unused risk-bearing capacity, or find people with such risks and match them with people who are clueless but who have money. Are we sure that most of the growth in finance stems from a rising share of financial professionals who undertake the former rather than the latter?”
“We all are carried into the future, always. What greets us when we arrive, that is the pressing question.”
Abercrombie, Joe. The Trouble with Peace: 2 (The Age of Madness) (p. 244). Orbit.
WELCOME TO 2021.
TODAY FROM AMERICA:
POOKIE’S ADVENTURES AT THE START OF THE NEW YEAR.
New Year’s Day.
I awoke early this morning, not so much to enthusiastically welcome the New Year but more to gratefully acknowledge I had not awakened in the old.
It is traditional, at the beginning of a new year to write resolutions about things one intends to do to make themselves better. At my age, what’s the point? I think I’d rather commit myself going forward to doing whatever it has been that I have been doing recently in the faint hope that I will be able to continue doing it for far longer than I expect.
The initial political news of this new year I learned was that Congress overrode the President’s veto of the Defense spending bill. Independent of the merits of the bill or the intentions of those for or against the override, I wonder why it is that we seem to be so able to join together to enthusiastically support the funding of the mechanism of death, but seem to rarely agree upon the funding for making life better. Why is it unquestioning support for governmental control over that which can kill us all is deemed patriotic, while governmental support of those things that can make out lives better are so often criticized as threats to liberty or the frenzied raging of foreign ideologies?
This was also the third anniversary of Bill Geyer’s death. Naida was very sad and so was I. He was always a good friend to me. We spent most of the day as we often do, working on our computers and watching the news and movies on television. I searched for some interesting poets and poetry. I found a 19th century poet of whom Poe said of one of his poems that although part’s were praiseworthy “…the greater part of it is utterly destitute of any evidence of imagination whatsoever.” That ended the poets career and he died a few years later at the young age of 25. Nevertheless, that poor young man is considered by those who keep track on such things “…one of the early American Romantic poets who made a notable contribution to his country’s literature.” (https://mypoeticside.com/poets/joseph-rodman-drake-poems)
Day Two.
This morning, I decided, instead of dressing before breakfast, to remain in my new silk pajamas. So I wrapped myself in Bill’s old scarlet robe and headed downstairs where Naida chuckled and the dog barked gleefully.
The Cardinal of the Enchanted Forest.
A bit abashed, I made my breakfast of cinnamon rolls and coffee and began perusal of the day’s doings on the internet. Among other things, I discovered that Keith Lampe, the Ponderosa Pine, who wandered the streets of San Francisco during its heyday as the center of world hippiedom had died in 2014 somewhere in Ecuador. I have written about Keith here before. How he was a well known newspaper reporter and environmentalist who travelled to San Francisco, grew his hair long, gave up speaking except in growls, and traveled around town with a seven-foot long single-stringed instrument upon which he would strum and accompany with his deep-throated howls much to the amusement of the citizens of the city and bewilderment of out-of-towners. One night, while I was living in Noe Valley, I recall he spent an evening in the apartment above me baying at the full moon. If anyone is interested in knowing more about Keith here is his obituary that was printed in the Point Reyes Light: (https://www.ptreyeslight.com/article/ponderosa-pine-who-chanted-bolinas-dies-ecuador)
Naida played on the piano most of the morning, singing and rummaging through old tunes like Roll Out the Barrel and Home On the Range. She halted playing the latter tune to inform me that the composer of the piece was married six times — about as many times as me.
That evening we decided to take a bath. The bathroom in the master bedroom has only a shower. It is large enough to accommodate three or four people comfortably. The guest bedrooms have a bathtub in their bathroom. For sanitary reasons a shower is better but there is nothing as relaxing as a warm bath except now and then sex if you can get beyond the doubt.
Naida and I have developed a tradition these three years we have been together to take luxurious baths now and then during the winter months. Not together as we sometimes do in the shower, the bathtub is too small and we are striving for maximum self-indulgence.
So, that evening, I filled the bathtub with water so hot I almost could not stand it, lit a few scented candles, dumped a good amount of bath oils and various bubble bath concoctions into the water turned on my smartphone to music, shut off the lights and gingerly slipped into the water.
It was glorious lying there in water almost hot enough to burn my skin off, the bubbles caressing my nose and ears, the candles flickering gently in the darkness and the music drifting into the air.
The only music I have on my smartphone is The Girl From Ipanema. It played over and over. I consider it the greatest song ever written. The perfect blend of rhythm and melody and balance of instruments and voice. I listened to Astrid Gilberto while lying there until all my senses were overrun and I left the bath. Naida then took her bath. After bathing and dinner we went to bed and read while listening to Norma (the Opera) and Miles Davis before falling asleep. So far so good for 2021.
Day three.
The next day was a bit of a setback. I slept most of the day, the dog pissed on the rug, a tape was released of an hour long telephone conversation between Trump and the Secretary of State of Georgia during which Trump directly asked (demanded) the Secretary to recalculate the vote in his favor“
“So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”
The President of the United States soliciting voter fraud.
Also,10 former Republican and Democratic Secretaries of Defense have found something concerning enough to write a letter warning that using the military to resolve election disputes would be “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional.”
Later things got a bit better. Naida made a fire and we sat on the sofa in front of it, drank eggnog, and listened to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. Later we danced in the kitchen to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. We then watched a delightful silent movie entitled The Star Prince, made in 1918 during another pandemic 102 years ago. It was a children dress up play with five to eight year old children fitted out as kings, queens, fairies and ogres. I like children’s books even more than I like young adult fiction.
All in all, I have had much worse days.
Day four.
On the fourth day of the new year it rained. Not a downpour by any means but a weak drizzle that lasted throughout most of the day. I decided to drive into the Golden Hills for lunch with HRM. As I entered the Mitsubishi, I found the windshield wipers did not work so I called HRM and cancelled our lunch. As I exited the car the anti-theft device went off with a loud screeching sound. I sat there trying to figure out how to shut it off. Failed. Thought I should drive around the Enchanted Forest so no one neighborhood has to bear the discomfort. After about 15 minutes of frightening strollers and other drivers, I figured how to shut it off. I went home dejected and asked Naida to put my pandemic hair up because its flopping in front of my eyes was annoying. I came out looking like an Aztec soldier.
Day five.
It was sunny outside today so I drove the Mitsubishi into the Golden Hills to have lunch with Hayden and to exchange the few remaining Christmas presents. I received a nice shirt and some things for the bath and gave Hayden, Dick and SWAC portable survival kits. We had a nice lunch at Bella Bru after which I dropped him off at the skatepark and I returned home.
Today was the Georgia Senatorial runoff election that will determine control of the Senate. I sat before the TV and awaited for the returns to start coming in. The first reports were not encouraging. The youth vote appears down and although the black vote remained steady the white vote increased slightly.
At about 8:30 it appeared as though Warnock had pulled ahead of Loeffler by a small but significant margin given the number of votes remaining to be counted. Ossoff on the other hand remained tied with Perdue.
By the time we went to bed, Warnock had given his victory speech and Ossoff remains tied. If Ossoff prevails with the remaining votes, Georgia once the heart of the old Christian racist, conservative South will have elected a black and a Jewish Senator both of whom are strong progressives.
Day six.
I got up at six o’clock. I could not sleep because I suddenly remembered last night I left the Mitsubishi parked in the alley behind the house where parking is prohibited. I went downstairs, checked to see if the car had been towed (it hadn’t) made myself some coffee, opened my computer and discovered that Ossoff had been projected to win Georgia. So far this appeared to be a good day. Later the Congress is slated to certify the results of the election. Given the President and a group of Republican’s opposition to the results in several states it looks like a mess.
Now, I am watching the assault on the capitol. Where was the security? Where were the police, the national guard? What would have happened if these were black men protesting? On the other hand, we are watching history being made. It is ugly. It is always ugly. As Dan Simmons wrote, “history viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.”
Ironically, while the Trump zombies were taking over the Capitol, the media declared Ossoff the victor in Georgia. With this Democratic victory, Trump, during his period in office, has lost the House of Representatives, Senate and the Presidency.
Seventh Day.
This morning I left the Enchanted Forest for my infusion appointment. Traffic was light and I spent most of my time as I usually do on long drives, allowing my mind to wind out long essays on one thing or another, convincing myself how brilliant I am, and promising that I will write it all down as soon as I get home. Alas, always as soon as I arrive wherever I am going and turn the key shutting down the car, I forget everything. This time I at least wrote down the subjects of my musing, my walking stick and voters rights. As for walking sticks, I have always been fascinated by them and even had a large collection of them at one time. About ten years ago, I began carrying one because of my tendency to stagger as I walked had gotten worse and I thought I looked cool. Most other people, I am sure, thought I appeared ridiculous. Anyway, my thoughts were about how the walking stick or a cane was the most effective and purely defensive weapon. But, later when thinking about it free of the semi-dream state of the drive, I recalled the 1854 almost fatal caning on the floor of the Senate of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts by Senator Preston Brooks of South Carolina. Some have considered it the symbolic of the “breakdown of reasoned discourse” and the use of violence that eventually led to the Civil War. It reminds me of the symbolism of yesterday’s assault on the Capitol building. To a great extent, it is over the same issue, full citizenship of people of color seemingly at the expense of vulnerable white men.
Anyway, after my treatment I returned home to the Enchanted Forest. I was too exhausted for day-dreaming on the trip back and went to bed not long after returning home.
January 8.
Morning brought the talking heads to discuss impeachment. The White House argued it would divide the country. What the hell fomenting an attack on the Capital does to foster national unity was not discussed by the White House. The President has flown off to hide at Camp David. He said he will not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. Biden agrees he should not. Meanwhile for the 11 days or so remaining before the inauguration of a new President, Nancy Pelosi seems to be all the nation has for a head of government. She has already moved to deny Trump control over nuclear missiles.
That evening we decided to light a fire in the fireplace and enjoy an eggnog in front of it. For some reason we could not light the fire and sent smoke swirling throughout the house requiring us to spend some time outdoors in the cold waiting for the smoke to clear. After we returned to the house we discovered we were out of eggnog. So, we put some brandy into glasses of Ensure and sat before the TV drinking our Ensure-nogs until we went to bed.
Have a good day.
PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY:
Give the events of this past week and for that matter the last four years, I think certain rights of the voter should be re-examined.
I know that access to the polls by the voter has been hotly debated and slowly improved over the years, but still remains under threat. I am, however, specifically concerned about certain unbiased information about the candidates that the voter should have before they even enter the voting booth.
Right now, for the most part, it is up to the to the candidates to volunteer or their opponents to ferret out significant information regarding the candidates that should be essential for the voters to possess before the candidates’ names are allowed on the ballot. They include the candidates’, tax filings, medical records, felony charges and convictions especially for economic crimes, and civil cases involving economic malfeasance. There are probably more items of information that should be included in this list and welcome suggestions as to what should be added to it. And yes, some of these already exist in the public record, but it should not be the job of the individual voter to ferret out, nor should the voters be forced to rely on the press or the candidate’s opponent to do so for them.
Yes, this may require the candidate to waive some privacy rights they may be entitled to, but in return they are being granted a great benefit — to become a representative of the people.
.
MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:
From my beloved friend Irwin during a particularly difficult time in my life eleven years ago:
“lucky you. I haven’t ogled a vagina in a long time, or rather a vulva; nor fingered same. just an Oldsmobile.”
“thanks for the advice. but I fear its too late. yesterday I thought sure I was on my way out which is not a problem! it’s the accompanying pain and discomfort that’s annoying. anyway I dragged myself through the microwave shopping, etc and made dinner (chicken breasts roasted in pomegranate molasses. ) turned off the Lakers game when I saw they were down by thirty points watched a bad Schwarzenegger movie and went to bed dozing off about 1:30 am to the conversation of some hams on my handheld transceiver that I keep next to my bed in case of nuclear attack. all-in-all sounds very gentile. this morning I am not much better but just reconciled to losing a tooth and having to go to the dentist next week. I also received a card from the superior court clerk and fear I am losing my battle in regard to jury duty ( I think I mentioned the story).”
“my one local friend just telephoned. I never answer the phone looking instead as I always do at the caller id to see who it is that has the nerve to disturb the tranquility of los pintos circle. I didn’t pick up. didn’t have the heart. I was afraid he’d ask how I was and then I’d have to tell. better he should think I am off functioning somewhere.”
“now I am going to the bank so that I can get enough cash ($5.00) to buy a lotto ticket and some salmon filet for dinner. maybe if I win the lotto I can win enough to buy my own vagina or salmon farm…smell the same?”
“maybe I’ll visit my mother today instead of tomorrow so I can be really depressed. somehow I fixed the old microwave door (dunno’ how). I’d like to take credit but it was just an accident. I could pretend but who would believe me.”
“every Saturday morning Jose Jimenez (really that is his name!) the gardener comes to putter around the front and backyard. snip snip here. snip snip there. nothing monumental or taxing landscaping wise as the lawn in both yards is near extinction. anyway today I went out and asked him to trim the grapefruit tree which has branches hanging over the roof (funny, just about in the spot where the inside leak occurred). this damn grapefruit tree won’t die. problem is that with cholesterol/blood pressure medicine grapefruit juice is a no no. besides the fruit, as I remember it, is sour. the only other edible fruit products produced on the Schatzman farm are guavas (both strawberry and pineapple) and inedible grapes. I once had an olive tree which I promised to cultivate but could never manage the olive curing process. my last wife had it cut down. the toy apple and orange trees never were worth the time and have since disappeared. I wanted to plant a vegetable garden – no. I don’t know why. again the last wife won out by insisting that the near-dead and space lawn not give way for a planting bed wherein I could grow tomatoes, chili peppers and the like.”
“I must go. I’m getting chilly. that’s a good sign. I’m still alive. well, maybe not so good.”
“More Irwin:”
“joseph, forgive me for saying so, but, you are fucked. I’m sorry. still, you could “look on the bright side of life”.
Irwin was right. I was fucked. I took his advice and looked on the bright side of life. I still was fucked but now, it was too bright to see.
DAILY FACTOID:
One that Got Away — Fakhita (Umm Hani) bint Abi Talib.
Muhammad proposed to his cousin Fakhita, but her father married her off to a wealthy Makhzumite poet instead.
Nearly forty years later, after Muhammad conquered Mecca, Fakhita’s husband fled rather than converting to Islam, causing an automatic divorce. Muhammad proposed to Fakhita again, but she refused, saying she could not be equally fair to a new husband and her young children.
Later still, Fakhita came to Muhammad, saying her children had grown up and she was finally ready to marry him; but he said she was too late.
What intrigues me most about this is contemplating what it was that was going through my mind that caused me to research the wives of Muhammed. One of the few minor benefits of aging is the slow replacement of memory with mystery. (e.g., Asking yourself how your eyeglasses got where you found them after looking for them for the past two days or why the wives of Muhammed so obsessed you that you just had to tell those who might read this about two of them.)
PEPE’S POTPOURRI:
A. Terry on Top:
It is always interesting to get Terry’s take on things political, especially during these perilous times. Sent on Sunday, January 3, it fails to contain his usual optimism but carries a note of alarm:
This is indeed troubling . Something happened to provoke this letter from 7 former Republican Defense Secretaries and 3 former Democratic Defense Secretaries. Stay tuned.
Trump’s newly appointed civilian leadership are doing something that may be untoward . This is strong pushback from the Defense Establishment. And, make no mistake, something provoked this. This letter puts all active duty personnel on notice that anyone attempting to use the military in an election dispute will be held to account, perhaps criminally. I’ve never seen anything or heard anything like this except in novels like “Seven Days in May” (1964). See the movie on
U Tube .
Also Trump’s hour rant on a recorded phone conversation with the Georgia Secretary of State ( see WAPO) indicates a man very much in King Lear mode.
The Republican leadership is acting responsibly to squash this. But fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a rough week.
The time to question election results has passed, all living former defense secretaries say
The former Pentagon chiefs, Republicans and Democrats, warned that using the military to resolve election disputes would be “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional.”
Humans are not rational animals, but rationalizing ones.
C. Today’s Poem: A Poem For A New Year.
Empathy and New Year
A notion like that of empathy inspires great distrust in us, because it connotes a further dose of irrationalism and mysticism. Lévi-Strauss
Whitman took the cars all the way from Camden and when he got here or rather there, said, “Quit quoting,” and took the next back, through the Jersey meadows which were that then. But what if it is all, “Maya, illusion?” I doubt it, though. Men are not so inventive. Or few are. Not knowing a name for something proves nothing. Right now it isn’t raining, snowing, sleeting, slushing, yet it is doing something. As a matter of fact it is raining snow. Snow from cold clouds that melts as it strikes. To look out a window is to sense wet feet. Now to infuse the garage with a subjective state and can’t make it seem to even if it is a little like What the Dentist Saw a dark gullet with gleams and red. “You come to me at midnight” and say, “I can smell that after Christmas letdown coming like a hound.” And clarify, “I can smell it just like a hound does.” So it came. It’s a shame expectations are so often to be counted on.
New Year is nearly here and who, knowing himself, would endanger his desires resolving them in a formula? After a while even a wish flashing by as a thought provokes a knock on wood so often a little dish-like place worn in this desk just holds a lucky stone inherited from an unlucky man. Nineteen-sixty- eight: what a lovely name to give a year. Even better than the dogs’: Wert (“…bird thou never…”) and Woofy. Personally I am going to call the New Year, Mutt. Flattering it will get you nowhere.
II
Awake at four and heard a snowplow not rumble— a huge beast at its chow and wondered is it 1968 or 1969? for a bit. 1968 had such a familiar sound. Got coffee and started reading Darwin: so modest, so innocent, so pleased at the surprise that he should grow up to be him. How grand to begin a new year with a new writer you really love. A snow shovel scrapes: it’s twelve hours later and the sun that came so late is almost gone: a few pink minutes and yet the days get longer. Coming from the movies last night snow had fallen in almost still air and lay on all, so all twigs were emboldened to make big disclosures. It felt warm, warm that is for cold the way it does when snow falls without wind. “A snow picture,” you said, under the clung-to elms, “worth painting.” I said, “The weather operator said, `Turning tomorrow to bitter cold.’ ” “Then the wind will veer round to the north and blow all of it down.” Maybe I thought it will get cold some other way. You as usual were right. It did and has. Night and snow and the threads of life for once seen as they are, in ropes like roots.
He had me at ‘Empathy’. That is my wish for 2021. More empathy and less dogma.
Empathy costs a lot of time, but will save you so much more.
Anthony Wilson.
D. Tales and Mores of Sicily from Giordano: Why Spending Winters in Sicily is not Ideal.
“Sicilians subscribe to the belief that they inhabit an oasis in the middle of a sun-scorched desert. Their homes are consequently paved with cooling tiles or flagstones, and they turn up their noses at sissy Teutonic radiators, completely dismissing the months between December and March. These can be devilishly cold and rainy, and even if the twenty-degree barrier is occasionally broken in December or January, the nights remain cool and dank. So Sicily isn’t the ideal place to spend the winter.”
Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio (An Auntie Poldi Adventure) (p. 106). HMH Books.
E. Tuckahoe Joe’s Blog of the Week: Logarithmic History, In the Beginning.
At the beginning of the new year I thought it appropriate to peek into one of my favorite blogs to see what happened at the beginning of it all.
In the beginning, 13.8 – 13.1 billion years ago
Logarithmic History is now rolling into its seventh year. We’ll continue with a mixture of blog posts and tweets, some recycled, some new, with favorite Logarithmic History holidays, celebrating the origins of seafood, first flowers, beer, bread, and more. Welcome!
Knowing what happened at the very beginning of the Universe is speculative. It depends on what the theory of quantum gravity looks like, which is up in the air. The theory of inflation (insanely fast growth before 10-32 seconds, after which the universe settled down to merely explosive growth with the Big Bang) may explain why the universe is flat, uniform, and not very lumpy. In 2014, it looked like we had direct evidence for gravity waves generated by inflation, going back just 10 sec from the beginning of the universe. But it looks like this doesn’t hold up.
Later developments are more generally agreed on, although some of the exact times may need revision in the future. Strikingly, a lot of familiar astronomical objects, including stars and galaxies, are already around within 100s of million of years. However early stars are short on metals (to astronomers, anything heavier than helium counts as a metal), and the early Milky Way is dispersed and fuzzy, not the barred spiral galaxy we know today.
Logarithmic History is a blog that traces the history of the universe from the beginning to the present day using a logarithmic scale.
TODAY’S QUOTE:
“In the alluvial sweep of the land, I thought I could see the past and the present and the future all at once, as though time were not sequential in nature but took place without a beginning or an end, like a flash of green light rippling outward from the center of creation, not unlike a dream inside the mind of God.”
Burke, James Lee. The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (p. 243). Simon & Schuster.
This and that from re Thai r ment. 