Category Posts
The Purification
Here in California, February is an odd month. The daffodils have started to sprout from the ground and the camellias are blossoming …
But an atmospheric river has just begun to hit the region and with it, rain. For at least the next five days. Rain.
If you’ll notice, the Japanese do not celebrate the same holidays as we do. There’s no Groundhog Day or Valentine’s Day or President’s Day. Instead the Japanese celebrate something called National Foundation Day on the 11th. It’s sort of like their July 4th. There will be parades, etc.
I’m not even going to attempt a “Japanese History for Dummies” lesson here because their history is mind boggling. February 24 they celebrate the Emperor’s birthday. Unlike our President’s Day, this day honors the birthday of their current emperor, Emperor Naruhito, who was born on Feb. 23, 1960. He seems like a nice enough fellow but from what I’ve read he has less power than King Charles of England.
February is from the Latin word meaning either purification or cleansing or fertility or all three for all I know. I awoke this morning feeling energetic for the first time since, well I don’t know when. Certainly since November 5th.
I hope you all awoke feeling energetic. Be prepared. February will go really fast and then comes the Ides of March! Et tu, who-know-who?
They swayed like branches in the wind …
This one’s for Charlie Dills
There have been many movies made about life in post WWII Germany (The Third Man, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, etc., etc.) that portrayed American GIs who stayed behind as profiteers or spies. The reality is, many were broken men who didn’t want to pretend the world would ever be free from evil. They worked for the Army, mostly in logistics, married European women, adopted European traditions and spent too much time at the Officer’s Club enjoying Happy Hour every night.
As a nineteen year old hippy dippy (love will save the world!) I loved hearing their stories and I think they were amused by my naivete. To a point and then I’m sure I was very annoying. It’s one thing to read about the millions of people – Jews, Catholics, Poles, Roma, Sinti, Soviets POWs, gays, priests, members of the resistance – targeted for elimination by the Nazis. It’s quite another to talk to someone who helped liberate one of those camps.
“I saw thousands of people whom the Red Army has saved – people so thin that they swayed like branches in the wind, people whose ages one could not possibly guess.”
Boris Polevoy, correspondent for Pravda
So, on this eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I’m remembering you Charlie Dills.
From my WIP which at this point is resting:
The train had passed through Switzerland on a cloudy night, thus, there had been little to see out the window, only the blur of lights as they’d passed through town after town without slowing down. Charlie’d watched her curiously for a while and then his eyes closed and his head slipped against the window. For the rest of the night he lay like a broken doll in that position. At one time, he’d probably been a handsome young man, she thought, like Gregory Peck, tall and dark with prominent features and soft eyes before the alcohol and cigarettes had taken their toll. Now he looked beyond repair.
Outside their cabin, the Italians partied all night long, laughing and sometimes arguing. Loudly and without a care for first class passengers who might want some shut eye. They were going home for the winter where presumably they’d have plenty of time to sleep. Riley didn’t know what awaited her except a long drive home through Switzerland with the saddest man on the planet.
Rock Gardens
The weather has been mild here in the San Francisco Bay Area and so I’ve been spending a lot of time rolling big rocks around what had been a hillside covered with a particularly hideous ground cover. These rocks weigh between fifty and sixty pounds so … I’m kind of an idiot, aren’t I?
One of my first sculptures and not a natural stone!
When my back gives out, I work on the re-writes of my second book now titled The Sloppy American. I think it’s done. Or more to the point, if I keep working on it I will done. Spent and completely mad. Over fifty years have passed since I went on the adventure that spawned the book. Europe was such a different place back then. WWII was still so fresh in so many people’s minds which I, of course, didn’t understand. Love was going to save the world and the Nazis had been driven underground and would never rise again. Ha!
I’m going to try to digitize the story which requires figuring out how to use a new software program. Ha! I’d be better off rolling rocks around the garden.
The Executioners
Rejoice America – the Executioners have arrived. You can tell from their smug expressions that their fun has only just begun. You can tell from their colorful attire what to expect for the next four years – if you live through those long and painful years (after all, Daddy is home which means the switch for all you disobedient children.) And on this happy day, to show their compassion, one thousand federal workers were fired. Seniors lost the ability to negotiate lower drug prices.
And this the only the beginning! Rejoice … there’s plenty more to come!
I’m okay. Really I am. My heart breaks for those who tried to warn us.
Divided we stand
My father, who would have turned one hundred and one years old today, always had “a twinkle in his eye.”
His brother-in-law, my Uncle Ralph, wrote at least three books on Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln, What He Stood For, Abraham Lincoln and the Western Territories and Lincoln Quotat (a collection of Lincoln sayings). Uncle Ralph was tall and thin – a lively man who taught speech and debate and, of course, quoted Lincoln at every turn.
And so, this morning as I fuddled about with some bills that needed paying I watched the HBO Max series: Lincoln, Divided We Fall. This series covers Lincoln’s entire life but primarily challenges the myth of Lincoln as a willing and eager abolitionist. While he always felt slavery was an abomination,
He began politics believing that the black race was inferior and that the two races could never peacefully coexist. The expansion of slavery to new territories was the issue that forced him to listen to his heart over his head. If they couldn’t erase slavery without severe consequences, they must not allow the abomination to spread. It was Frederick Douglass who convinced him the black man was not inferior and so he changed his mind. Changed his mind. Imagine. Such an impossible thing for a politician to do in this era of nonstop armchair quarterbacking.
Anyway Happy Birthday Dad. If there is an afterlife, I imagine you’re listening to Uncle Ralph tell another Lincoln anecdote, or perhaps debating the man himself! Wish I was there.
And so it begins
My favorite Christmas gift this year was a Washi calendar from Japan. The graphic is actually an embedded postcard and so at the end of each month I going to try to send a postcard to someone somewhere in the world. That sounds like a task I can accomplish without too much stress!
Maybe I’ll even learn a little Japanese in so doing.
Unless I’m wrong, this is going to be a year filled with quite enough stress, thank you very much GOP. The agents of chaos have won powerful positions by inciting hatred and feelings of superiority over “the other.” The Blue Meanies walk amongst us. Therefore, the only answer is – LOVE.
I remember when this song was released, the Beatles were at the end of one of the most productive artistic runs ever. And there was John saying it didn’t matter if there wasn’t enough love in the world. Such a simple lesson and yet true.
2025 – the year the Blue Meanies meet their match. One can only dream.
My movie to end the year with
Let’s see if you can guess the name of the movie I’ve decided to end the year with.
- It was based on a three act play by Noel Coward
- The title is from a poem called “To a Skylark” by Percy Bliss Shelley
- It was the screen debut of Margaret Rutherford
The plot in a nutshell: The ghost of a writer’s first wife is conjured forth by a bumbling spiritualist causing great distress to his second wife.
By far the best thing about this film is the performance of Margaret Rutherford (1892-1972) as the spiritualist. She was a “big boned” actress with so-called “spaniel jaws” who nonetheless, stole every scene she was ever in … although she never meant to. She once wrote of being called a comedian: “I never intended to play for laughs. I am always surprised that the audience thinks me funny at all.”
She’s probably most famous for playing Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s aging and unconventional detective.
Many other actresses have played Miss Marple but Rutherford was different. Perhaps because she was not a dainty, prim and proper old lady.
My hero!
Can you see the moon? #WordlessWednesday
In search of a believable sequel to 2024
I didn’t get much done this year and so I’m not sorry to see it end. According to my first blog (“The Celestial Smooth”) I began the year watching “The Full Monty,” a dark comedy about a group of unemployed steel workers who become strippers. The movie ends with the men exposing themselves to an audience filled with cheering women as a line of policemen prepare to arrest them.
For just one moment they are triumphant. But you know … there could never be a believable sequel. These are ordinary men, not Chippendale models.
In all, I managed to post 65 times this year. I’d say half of the posts are rather short on words and long on photos. My most “liked” post was about the raccoon who had her babies in a drain under the deck. That’s the second time raccoons and their shenanigans have taken over my blog.
February and March were lost months blog-wise. Family came to visit and their stay was stressful. My most viewed post during those months was about obituaries. I see a lot of dead people these days.
In April I shattered a filling on a Jordan Almond requiring an emergency visit to the dentist. His first question was: “How are you other than falling apart?”
In August I decided to post snippets from the sequel to Flipka, my first novel. Eleven posts which only a few of you were kind enough to comment on. I was sad but perhaps, like “The Full Monty,” that book could have no believable sequel.
September rolled along and with it the long lost contractor we’d hired back in March to fix the retaining wall and drainage in the front of our house. A job projected to take a week took over a month and, despite repeated assurances, his men managed to find and break both the water and gas lines. Imagine that? They could handle the water line but the gas line breakage required visits from the fire department, sirens blaring, and the gas company. A new gas line, a new gas meter. Road blocked for gigantic gas truck. Neighbors upset. And what did the sheepish contractor say: yadiyadi, yadiyadi, whine, whine, I have to pay a fine, whine whine.
In October I took a break and flew to Hawaii. Oahu seems to be getting more and more crowded which is sad but there’s something eternal about the South Pacific, isn’t there?
Let’s not talk about November and here we are in December, trying to be merry and bright. Me, mostly failing. So, I’ve decided on New Year’s Day I’m going to watch a movie with a believable sequel. Any suggestions? The only one I can think of is “The Return of the King” (part three of “The Lord of the Rings”). Good prevails and the evil ring of power is thrown into the fires of Mordor.
Ah, if we could be so lucky!
Happy Holidays Everyone!
