I woke up thinking I was going to have to call an airline and demand to know why my credit card wasn’t reimbursed (as promised) for an airline ticket that I’d paid full price for and cancelled at least a week in advance. Last night I compiled all my dates and times, credit card bills, and relevant emails. After my coffee, I was going to battle.
Can you see the roaring elephant? I wonder what’s gotten him riled up?
The previous day my beef had been with the property tax office. I’d convinced my husband to support an increase in taxes for our local schools by pointing out that old farts like us could get an exemption. At the time I had a sneaky feeling the tax people would find a way to wiggle out of that promise and guess what? We got our property taxes on Sept 9. 2023 (due in December) and in itty bitty print above the list of taxes was a note telling people to call the number next to each tax to find out the process for applying and being approved for an exemption. (sounds like a ton of fun, doesn’t it?) Luckily the call back number for each of the applicable taxes was the same. Don’t ask me why they didn’t just list the one number. ; (
We got our call back at supper time.
Sweet Young Lady to Rotten Old Poop: “I’ll put you on the list to receive applications for exemptions for each of the taxes. You should get them by April 2024. They must all be completed and returned by May and then they will be forwarded to the appropriate departments and begin the approval process.”
Ant collecting property taxes from a flower
So basically for this year … forget it. Actually I don’t really mind. Our property taxes are already sooo high that what’s one more blow? And, I did vote for the taxes. But it is rather sneaky to get folks on fixed incomes to vote for a new tax by telling them they’ll be exempt and then make the process so onerous. Besides, I’ve got a sneaky feeling that asking for an exemption has landed me on the list of Rotten Old Poops Who Don’t Care About Kids! Soon to be published in the local paper and on the obnoxious NextDoor site.
Anyway, that was yesterday’s waste of a hour or so. Today, before I called the airlines, I decided to take a second look at the credit card statement, and there, (listed in payments and not charges), was the reimbursement for the unused ticket … in full. Whew! I may be a rotten old poop who doesn’t care about kids but at least I’m not on the list of Stupid Old Farts Who Don’t Examine Their Credit Card Statements! Yet …
So today was better than expected simply because I slowed down and took a second look. I’ll have to try and remember that in the future but no guarantees!
“What troubles you?” Asked Frau Schwimmer in a voice quivering on irritation. All of the other passengers were nesting comfortably in their seats, trying to catch a few hours of sleep before landing on the other side of the world. But not the young woman assigned to the aisle seat next to her.
“Nothing, um Nichts.” Thirty thousand feet below lay snow and ice infinitum. Ahead, the veil of darkness called night. Soon the plane would cut through that veil like a silver arrow rounding the curve of the earth, that is, if it didn’t crash in the frozen wastelands of Northern Canada. If that happened, Flight 32 would be lost forever. No search and rescue team would ever be able find the wreckage in all that whiteness. The passengers would have to eat each other to stay alive, like the Donner party. That is, if the plane landed intact, which it wouldn’t. It would tumble across the tundra, leaving bodies mangled in the metal as food for hungry polar bears.
The fidgeting continued. Frau Schwimmer noted the crumpled map on the young woman’s lap. “Where are you going?
“I don’t know. The town is called Gunthersblum but I can’t find it on the map.”
“We will find!” Frau Schwimmer pulled an industrial sized map of Germany out of her woven travel bag and patted the young woman on the hand. “Have not angst.”
Easy for her to say. She knows exactly where she’s going!
The plane shook violently. The seat belt lights flashed. “Air turbulence,” the pilot announced in English, then German, then French.
He’s lying. The plane’s lost an engine, sucked in a goose, or ruptured a gas line. It was going down.
Frau Schwimmer unfolded her map and calmly spread it over their two tray tables. “Ist these Gunthersblum Nord or Sud?”
“I don’t know.”
What an idiot? Frau Schwimmer’s thinking. Who flies to the other side of the world without knowing where they’re going? Certainly not her thirty year old daughter, the one already established and on her own in San Francisco.
“First we check index.” Frau Schwimmer ran her finger down the list of towns and villages: “Gunthersblum. Nein, Gunthersberg? Nein. Guntherslauten? Nein.” She turned to the hapless young woman. “You have perhaps written down the wrong name. There is no Gunthersblum.”
Dear Blogging Buddies – I’m re-editing a story that was published under the title The Graduate Present back in 2016. This story has taken me so long to write that it bears little resemblance to the maiden voyage on which it was based. Except for Herr Azmus. I have my high school yearbook to prove that he, at least, was real.
Shame on you Herr Azmus! You should have warned your German class about bidets and putzfraus!
When I die and they lay me to rest Gonna go to the place that’s the best When I lay me down to die Goin’ up to the Lizard in the sky
…. (apologies to Norman Greenbaum)
Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storms but to give colour to my sunset sky. – Rabindranath Tagore.
Half moon at sunrise.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
- Percy Shelley
When I was in the garden, this small plane flew overhead, reminding me of a sad anniversary. My father used to fly over our house when we were kids in his little Cessna. He loved to take us up with him but mostly so he could scare us into never wanting to go up with him again. He would have been 100 years old on January 15, 2024. I’m absolutely positive he would not have wanted to turn 100 but we miss him none-the-less. Hi Dad!
I wish children didn’t die. I wish they would be temporarily elevated to the skies until the wars end. Then they would return home safe, and when their parents ask them; where were you? They’d say “We were playing with the clouds.” Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani
I did not intend to watch Netflix’s Fall of the House of Usher but, once upon a midday dreary, as I pondered weak and weary, there came a rapping at my door.
“Turn on the Boob Tube or die!”
Let me begin by saying, I am truly astonished by anyone who can read Poe without an open Google window or a set of encyclopedias nearby. In the volume I’ve possessed since wretched youth, now sadly long gone, many stories commence with quotes in French, Latin, German etc., from such well-known sources as Buckhurst’s Tragedy of Ferrex & Portex. If you’re like me, you have to decipher the opening quotes before reading a story. And then you have to figure out why the author picked that particular quote which means more investigation of the source. In Poe’s case, I’ve found some interesting rabbit’s holes to get lost in.
Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher is actually a series of flashbacks. I won’t go into details about each episode, but they are interesting rifts on Gold Bug, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Tell Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Deathand the Pit and the Pendulum with many references to Poe’s poems thrown in for fun. The fact that they are set in modern times with cell phones, Tiktok, podcasts, designer drugs, (and even Fox News!) makes the Usher family’s depravity contemporary and therefore much more perverse*. In Poe’s day, decadent families rotted behind the walls of crumbling mansions. Now they can go on social media, have millions of followers, corrupt more innocent young lives, and ultimately become the kiss of death for decency and honor!
Murders in the Rue Morgue, illustration by Harry Clarke*
In my opinion, the series is too preachy. Verna, a character who is either an avenging angel or soul-seeking devil … it’s hard to say which, gives each of the Usher children the chance to change the likely trajectory of their lives. But do they care about the environment, the cruelty of animal testing, medical ethics, the plight of animals in shelters etc, etc? No and so guess what happens to them?
And then there’s that ending …
* Perverse is an adjective Poe used extensively. If you were perverse, you were willfully going against what you knew was healthy for you and for others. Perversion led to suffering and death.
* Interesting fact: Harry Clarke (1889-1931), the illustrator of the above images, also created stained glass windows for churches. He was apparently a deeply religious man who really believed in heaven …. and hell.
Henry Clarke stained glass window: From the Irish Cultural Heritage Tours
Anyway, the next midday dreary that comes along I think I’ll clean out the closet or bake chocolate chip cookies. No more Netflix series’ to remind me just how perverse it’s becoming out.
I wrote about this place back in 2015. These are the ruins of a hospital that treated small pox patients back in the 1800s. Today, they’re known as Resnick* Ruins.
The Ruins are located on an island off Manhattan that, these days, is reachable by subway and gondola. However, when the hospital was in operation, the island was only reachable by boat thus the patients could look across the East River and see the glittering lights of Manhattan, but until they were healthy they were basically entombed.
We visited on our way back to Brooklyn from Manhattan and stopped only long enough to take a look around. It was a cloudy, moonless night and we were the only people around. The only living, breathing people that is. A slight breeze carried the moans of those long gone … whose suffering still remains.
A daylight shot from Bing Images – nope, I still wouldn’t go in there!
In 2018 a group of people decided to try to save the Ruins. They removed the ceilings and interior walls and fortified the exterior walls. They planned to transform what remained into a walled garden. A memorial for all those folks who never made it off the island, many of whom had only just arrived in the United States. Then came the Covid. Now it will be a memorial for all pandemic victims. Their plans look lovely indeed, however, would I want to go back there even during the day? Nooooo.
Is there anyplace so frightening that you wouldn’t go into it, even during the day? And I don’t mean the dentist’s office or the IRS.
*Resnick is the name of the unfortunate architect (James Resnick, Jr)who will forever have his name associated with death and despair.
In 1984 I stumbled upon a class in sculpting the human form. It was being held in the community center next to my son’s nursery school and during the same hours as he would be in school. Perfect for a hyper-busy mom. For the next three years our small group of amateur sculptors met once a week. Then our instructor began having health problems. Others in the group also faced life changing issues (including me) and so the group dissolved.
Thereafter I had only friends and family members to cajole into posing for me. Probably my easiest catch was my father. I guess he may have been a little vain!
After his unexpected death In 2006, my stepmother told me their two basset hounds sat beneath his sculpture every morning for about a month and howled piteously. Sometimes she’d enter the living room and there he’d be, sitting on the couch next to his sculpture reading a book as though nothing had happened. As though that night was like all the others he’d spent in that room, on that couch, reading a book. Death had been only an illusion. Anyway, my stepmother had a few good years after his death and then began to rapidly decline. Their house was sold and the sculpture came back to me.
In June 2019 I was on my way to answer the phone in the kitchen when I noticed that my father’s sculpture had begun to glow.
So I took a quick picture and then answered the phone. My stepmother had just passed away.
The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and the other begins.
This time of year is always difficult for me, although I love the weather we generally have here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mornings … always chilly; afternoons … warm and sunny; evenings filled with golden light. It really is magical.
Cobwebs on the flimsy birdhouses outside mean, it’s time to bring them inside
Pretty soon Margaritas won’t sound so tempting! Although my husband will drink them at any time of the year.
Untitled watercolor by Connemoira, circa 1986
The other day I found a watercolor done by my friend Connemoira many, many years ago. It shows a woman peeping out from what appears to be a tattered curtain, her eyes reflecting what could be a bomb blast. When we were teens we knew for certain that all wars would end during our lifetimes. They just had to, otherwise why else were we here?
Untitled oil pastel by Connemoira. I would call it Feather Bird.
Toward the end of her life, Connemoira’s work became deeply disturbing, as though what she viewed through that tattered curtain became too much to witness. But I promised her that I would “protect my novel” and so, after some revisions to the Oncle Boob story, I am ready for an editor. Do you have any recommendations? Synopsis here.
Saying nothing in particular 