October Fog

 October has arrived, shepherding its own splendor, rolling in with the creeping fog that sits on the water each morning. At times, it is impossible to determine where the water ends, the fog and the sky begin; the palest grey is enveloping, causing the surrounding trees to look mystically wise and majestic, spiritual and romantic, and somewhat foreboding. Fog makes the world smaller, just my size; no further than the borders of the encircling trees. 

Likewise, the world becomes more quiet. The ambient noises of summer disappear. No longer do we hear the sounds of distant honking cars, tourists calling to each other across their boats and waters, ear piercing lawn mowers or hedge trimmers. Instead, there is only still peace, with the occasional deep and lonely sound of a far off fog horn or a heron beckoning to its partner. Silence is the sound of fall, the harbinger of winter. 

The forest along the roads, though, makes one last bid for attention; not by noise but by color. Each morning the aspens, orange blossoms, crape myrtles, red maples and shimmered oaks vie for notice by their conversion from staid greens to buttercup, tangerine, garnet, persimmon, even pale cherry. ‘Look at us’ they shriek and look we do. We admire them indulgently, the way we momentarily attend to a precocious child, then hurry on our way. We know what is coming. The trees, ultimately resigned to submission to the oncoming cold, turn dark and drop their ornamental leaves; their plaintive good night and goodbye. 

Soon the gardeners will appear to clear out our private pine forest; the dead trees caused most often by the tic riddled deer scratching themselves against the trunk barks. The forest is emptied of scrub and fallen trunks and limbs twice a year so that we don’t experience the same fires as happen in California. Later still, the men will cut back the grasses and pare down the shrubbery surrounding the house and the pool.

Occasionally, excitement comes in the form of hoarfrost. It’s a grayish-white crystalline deposit of frozen water vapor that finds its way on the greenery, covering the grounds in silver. The sun soon burns it off but it is beautiful in the early morning mist. Sometimes the fog itself is frozen in the air. Early one morning I found myself crackling through the air around me. At first I thought I was walking through a spider web but quickly realized that it was ice air. The shroud of winter presently to follow. 

Speaking of Islands

Remember cocktail parties? Pretty chiffon dresses, bowties and suits, loud jazz music, strong martinis, and, of course, witty repartee. How often in cocktail conversation, after a few drinks, was the ubiquitous question asked: “With whom would you like to be marooned on an island”.  

The question inevitably led to thoughtful, albeit ridiculous, responses:  Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Queen Elizabeth, Oscar Wilde, Margaret Thatcher, George Washington and other august characters of that ilk, from which would follow pontifications about the  noble attributes and deeds of such individuals; their virtues extolled. Inevitably, the compare - contrast soon would come after: Tennessee Williams or Noel Coward, Jayne Mansfield or Sophia Loren, Christine Lagarde or Angela Merkel. Really? 

And while I listened to these pronouncements I always wondered: “and why would that person want to be stranded on an island with you?” I never asked the question out loud; that would be rude, but I have asked myself that question many times over the years. Why would any of those people want to be on an island with me. What genius pondering do I have to offer in return. The company of any one of these individuals would scare me speechless. 

Think this through, my friend. After Einstein has espoused the import of, and explained the theory of, relativity, what happens next, when it’s your turn to entertain him. After Churchill is done talking about Dunkirk and the tribulations of navigating England through WWII, what are you going to say: “I’m having a hard time finding a good egg separator to bake a flan; any shopping ideas?”.  

That’s not to say that I haven’t had a few ideas of my own on companionship during island isolation, depending on my mood.  There are a few options: Bear Grylls, for instance. That guy is a survivalist and comes from a long line of British peers, but he’s not a talker. He could teach me how to fish, but dinner conversation would be limited to a few grunts and smiles.  Noel Coward, on the other hand, was so witty that fish would jump on the shore just to hear him tell a story, but he was such a dandy that the thought of creasing his cravat would cause him to burst into tears. The same question always came back to me. What do I have to say that would be remotely entertaining and make me anything close to an equal companion to these erudite figures. 

After long long contemplation, I know who I want to be marooned on an island with: Keith Richards. Yup, Keith Richards. That guy has lived nine lives, his world has gyrated from scrappy to luxurious and back again, he’s traveled around the world on several occasions, has conversed with everyone from Queen Elizabeth to the guy at the dry cleaners and faced the cavernous maws of death more than once. He has countless stories and reminiscences to entertain both of us. I’ve read his autobiography. I know about a lot of the people and places of which he speaks; enough that I could easily keep up with him (intellectually he’s not that smart, just lucky), so an occasional bon mot on my part would keep him equally engaged. He’s my stranded on an island go-to. 

And the other perennial Gilligan’s Island question always asked: “who would you be:  Marianne or Ginger”. And, of course, the correct answer would be Marianne. Marianne was so smart, so efficient, so capable, could do everything, and do it right. Who wouldn't want to be Marianne? Me. I not so much wanted to be Marianne; I wanted to be Ginger. Why would I want to be Marianne? She cooked everyone’s meals, she cleaned their tents, she sewed people’s clothes back together, she did carpentry work, she grew foods in her garden. She worked hard all the time, day and night, even fashioning candles from bees wax and did anyone ever say “let’s make this ‘Marianne Day’ for all that she has done for us”? Heck no. No one ever thanked her or gave her credit for her good works, even though she was the go-to for just about everything, including cleansing and taping up boo-boos — ask Gilligan. Ginger, on the other hand, never raised a finger, other than to polish her nails. She always wore beautiful gowns; her hair and makeup were consistently set to perfection. Her meals were prepared for her; she was taken care of, there were no expectations from her. Everyone entertained her. She spent her days under a sun umbrella, and she was always sweet and funny. Why wouldn’t I want to be Ginger.  Thoughts?

Perspectives on the Pandemic

As we all hunkered down in our homes, watching TV, trading emails, playing games on the internet, and putting together jigsaw puzzles, I realized that some people, like us, can be slugs, while others are so industrious and enterprising.

I read an article about Julian Assange, the wikileaks perp, who had been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years. He and his lawyer found true love, the outcome of which was two children. Now that is enterprising. It made me wonder about the bumper crop of babies who will be born during the next nine months or so. What is more fun than making babies and, on the bright side, all those ventilators can be retooled as incubators or cribs or perambulators. 

We watched a number of videos showing very enterprising people wrapping mens’ underwear on their heads and magically transforming the article into a face mask. One friend transformed her bra into a mask for grocery shopping, while another wore a mask but not a bra; the produce manager smiled gratefully while he organized his melons. 

Every day we have watched President Trump talk about the pandemic and its current status here and around the world. Interestingly, North Korea has had no known cases, presumably because those offenders were shot dead (you know, it’s how North Korea takes care of things), so there were no disease numbers to report.   

We all worried about our families, those with us and those not with us. Alarms rang when we learned that Pennsylvania’s governor determined that liquor was a non-essential item and closed liquor stores. We wondered how long it would take before housebound women shot their husbands dead. What is life without the five o’clock glass of wine. Some drank wine right out of the bottle but learned that drinking prosecco out of the bottle had consequences. 

Home schooling children raised parents’ awareness that perhaps the kid’s  problem was not a bad teacher after all. Some parents graduated their children early while in other households children phoned in bomb threats. Ah yes, how sharp the serpent’s tooth, etc. 

It appears that we are never to learn about the genesis of hoarding toilet paper, or eggs. Even chicken farmers bought their eggs at the grocery store. Perhaps free range chickens decided that their eggs were not free. No one knew why eggs or toilet paper became such rare commodities. 

And if you remember telephone party lines, you may recall the luxury of listening to local gossip. It was so much easier to just pick up the phone and listen in rather than reading facebook tirades; no worries about attending Zoom meetings and looking good. This pandemic has changed us all. 

But, at the end of the day, this generation’s pandemic still has not suffered the consequences of life that previous generations have had to endure. Cases in point: 

Remember the Blitz, the heavy bombing attacks on London from September 1940 until May 1941. German bombers attacked British cities, ports and industrial areas every single day and night for 11 weeks. If a Londoner woke up in the morning, and that too was an if, the next door neighbor, or the neighbor’s home, might no longer exist. Now that was harsh. Today we are bombed only by mosquitos. 

Then there was the Spanish flu. While that global pandemic lasted for two years, a significant number of deaths were packed into three especially cruel months in the fall of 1918. An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during that pandemic; ten times as many as in the world war. The fatal severity of the Spanish flu's “second wave” was caused by a mutated virus spread by wartime troop movements. Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus and not to the enemy. War is hell. 

And the polio pandemic that caused paralysis. Outbreaks occurred regularly in the United States throughout the 1950s. Of the 57,628 reported cases in 1952 alone, there were 3,145 deaths. People who survived would live the rest of their lives in an iron lung.  

Don’t get me started on the Holocaust. Six million people. Wearing a mask is not the same as wearing a yellow star. So, contemplate, and compare this pandemic to other past ‘pandemics’. Our homes are standing, there is food in the grocery stores, our families are near and we can walk the dog. So, chin up; keep calm and carry on. 

As The Crow Flies, or Something to Crow About

The “wicked-wabbit” was caught chomping on my little flower buds for the last time. Damn it, I’d had it. Another azalea bush gone. I called in the big guns and by that I mean my husband. Scott pulled out his rifle and in one crack shot took the critter out. It was a spectacular hit. I can hear city folk bemoaning the death of Bugs, but too much fauna had eaten too much of my flora. Country folk will undoubtedly appreciate the shot more than city folk might; that little rabbit flew two feet into the air before it hit the ground. Dead. It was a good death. There are huge plusses to marrying a Nebraska farm boy who grew up with rifles instead of a metrosexual who grew up with game boards. 

Within a few moments we heard crows cawing and, looking out the window, sure enough, there were three crows taking turns circling the rabbit carcass. We’ve seen enough PBS and Nova series to know that crows are never to be messed with so we weren’t about to shoo them away. In fact, we liked them. They would take care of the rabbit. 

I read a story in Weird News about a town that was being inundated with crows during their annual migration, eating plants, landing hundreds at a time on power lines, which frightened the locals and generally were wreaking havoc. The mayor was fed up, as was everyone else in town, so the mayor declared open season on crows. The town folk went wild shooting crows. Sadly, it did not end well for the town folk. The next year and every year afterwards the crows, remembering the shootings of their friends and relatives, did not stop in that town but instead would fly overhead a few times each day shitting on everything and causing much more damage than previously before leaving town again.

Crows are romantics. They usually mate for life. During the winter months, they'll congregate with hundreds or even thousands of their peers to sleep together at night in a sprawling communal roost. During the day, a group of crows is called a murder of crows. Poetic. 

Relative to its body size, a crow’s brain is huge, accounting for 2.7 percent of the bird's overall weight. By comparison, an adult human's three-pound brain represents 1.9 percent of its body weight. They are the smartest animals in the kingdom. Many experts compare crow intelligence to that of a 7-year-old human child. Crows recognize human faces, communicate complex concepts with other crows, and think about the future. These outstanding birds are able to read traffic lights, and speak different dialects that they can change with each new murder encountered. And, when they die, their fellow crows oftentimes hold a funeral. Very civilized. 

In the meantime, we continued to watch this rabbit feast with interest from the safety of our breakfast nook. It appears that the dominant crow allows two or three  smaller crows to chow down, then shoos them away, cackles loudly and allows a few more crows to land and nosh; they share more readily than humans do. In no time that rabbit was picked almost clean. By early afternoon there wasn’t much left other than the fur and some remains on the skeleton; so much for lucky rabbit’s feet. 

After the crows had their way with the carcass, the vultures arrived to finish the job. By the next morning the entire animal had disappeared. Some intrepid vultures must have decided to use the bones to pick their teeth clean and a female must have asked to have the fur made into a collar for the winter migration. (If you really love me, Harold, you will have that fur made into a collar for me; the other vultures will be so jealous.) The animal kingdom and the circle of life reigns once again.

Joy

Over the years, I have moseyed through various museums: the Louvre, the Met, the Tate, the Victoria and Albert, the Guggenheim, the Norton Simon. I could go on, but you get the idea. Some master works of art have moved me, while others have left me cold. When I've sat down to write a vignette, I have never felt compelled to include a picture with my blogs, until now.

I can't remember being so moved by a photo as I have with this photo.  What is seen in this photo. At first glance, we see an elderly couple sharing a fun moment; how charming. The picture makes us smile. How cute that two old folk are trying out a skateboard. But look deeper. The momentous occasion takes place somewhere in a tropical climate, perhaps Asia or perhaps Hawaii. She always carries the white umbrella, which suggests that she keeps herself comfortable under its shade, her spirits high and her skin clear. She is lovely in her colorful robe, wearing a necklace and hair piled high on her head. This couple is not wealthy in the monetary sense. They both wear dime store rubber slippers, have never known financial wealth, but they are rich and that wealth is the story behind the photo. The story is about their shared inner wealth, their years together, the joy they have given each other over a lifetime of experiences together. In her face, we see unfettered wonder, apprehension mixed with laughter, fearlessness, and equally important, trust. Trust in herself that she can do this, and trust in him that he will not let her fall. She can take on whatever the world throws her way with him by her side. And the years have proven his love is true, otherwise why else would an old grey haired lady get on a skateboard that could maim her should there be the slightest misstep. And him, look at his face. He is thrilled with himself, of course, because he is able to bring her joy, but look again, look deeper, he also is proud of her. He is a kind man. His love and affection for her is evident. He wants her to know fun and happiness. Through the years she has thrilled him with her spirit, her sense of humor and wonder, which keeps them both young. He is sure that she will follow him in whatever senseless endeavor he takes on as she has in the past, and here she is again, mounting herself on a skateboard at his behest. The unmitigated joy that each brings to the other is boundless. This photo is a masterpiece. It belongs in a museum with the caption JOY.

JOY

Quiz from Long Ago

This is a test; it is only a test. Yes, I have included the answers below, but really, you should know the answers. You have time on your hands; you have nothing better to do.

1) After the Lone Ranger saved the day and rode off into the sunset, the grateful citizens would ask “Who was that masked man?” Invariably, someone would answer “I don’t know but he left this behind”. What did he leave behind?

2) When the Beatles first arrived in the USA, what was the name of the show in which they appeared.

3) On which route did you “Get your kicks”.

4) “The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to _________”.

5) Who sleeps “in the jungle, the mighty jungle. . . .”

6) After the Twist, the Mashed Potato, and the Watusi, we danced under a stick that was lowered and lowered; what was the name of the dance.

7) What is the last word: “Nestle’s makes the very best________”.

8) Satchmo was America’s Ambassador of Goodwill. What was his real name.

9) What takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

10) What was Red Skeleton’s hobo character named.

11) Some Americans protested the Vietnam War by burning what.

12) The cute little car with the engine in the back was called the VW. What other names, there were two, did it go by.

13) In 1971, Don MacLean sang a song about ‘the day the music died’. To whom was this song a tribute.

14) We can remember the first satellite placed into orbit by the Russians. What was it called.

15) One of the big fads in the late 50s and early 60s was a large plastic ring that we twirled around our waist. What was it called.

16) What did LS/MFT stand for?

17) “Hey kids, what time is it”. Well, what time is it?

18)  “Who knows what secrets lie in the hearts of men?” Do you?

19) Which song “was a grave yard smash”.

20) Alka Seltzer used a boy with a tablet on his head. What was his name.



ANSWERS


1. The Lone Ranger left a silver bullet behind.
2. The Ed Sullivan Show
3. On Route 66
4. To protect the innocent
5. The Lion Sleeps Tonight
6.The Limbo
7.Chocolate
8. Louis Armstrong
9. The Timex watch
10. Freddy the Freeloader
11. Draft cards
12. Beetle or bug
13. Buddy Holly
14. Sputnik
15. Hoola-hoop
16. Lucky Strike / Means Fine Tobacco
17. Howdy Doody Time
18. the Shadow
19. Monster Mash
20. Speedy

Louisiana Purchase

Recently we were talking about the Louisiana purchase, which was President Thomas Jefferson’s dream. Well, originally he didn’t dream that big. To begin with, he only wanted New Orleans. The dream of “from sea to shining sea” came later. It was one of those "greatness is thrust upon them" things.

The US population was expanding, already at five million, and more land was needed, but the immediate problem for Jefferson was New Orleans. While Spain owned Louisiana, the US could use the Mississippi river and New Orleans under a treaty dating back to 1795.  New Orleans controlled the shipping that channeled down from the Mississippi. Almost half (3/8) of all products: corn, fur, hogs, etc., passed through New Orleans. Jefferson realized that if the US owned New Orleans, then no other country could block the river trade, plus owning New Orleans would improve Jefferson’s chances for a second presidential term, but if France owned New Orleans then all bets were off. The inability to trade goods through New Orleans could prove fatal to the country as a whole.

Napoleon, on the other hand, had his own plans. He wanted to invade Britain but needed money. He had tried to conquer Santo Domingo for its riches (sugar, coffee, indigo), but failed due to the uprising of the black slaves, not to mention the pesky mosquitos, that killed most of his men. So  Napoleon was looking for other options. Now Louisiana, in 1803, was owned by Spain, who was tired of the governing expenses. The Queen loved Tuscany, which Napoleon owned, so he proposed, and she happily traded, Louisiana for northern Italy. Napoleon rightly figured he could flip Louisiana to the US to finance his war with Britain.

Jefferson sent Livingston and Monroe to France to buy New Orleans,  giving them a budget of around $10 million. The good news was that Napoleon needed a little more money than that, so he offered up all of Louisiana for $15 million. (Well, that’s like going to Neiman Marcus to buy a pair of fur lined leather gloves for $10 and being told that for $5 more a matching full length fur coat could be had; even a man wouldn’t say no to that.) The bad news, of course, was that the US didn’t have the money to pay for Louisiana.  Jefferson thought that he could ask for a tax increase, but when was raising taxes ever a good idea, especially before an election. Various sources say the money was borrowed from either the Dutch, or the Dutch and England, or it all came from England, which was ironic, since Napoleon wanted the money to finance a war against England.

Next was the issue of the constitutionality of the purchase. Jefferson had no legal authority to make the purchase, then again when did illegality ever stop a president (remember Presidents FDR, Johnson, Nixon, etc). There were no provisions in the Constitution to acquire new land or give citizenship to its current inhabitants (rather like illegal Mexicans inhabiting Texas or California, which, let's face it, belonged to them in the first place). Jefferson knew it would take a long time to amend the constitution and knew that Napoleon was already regretting his sale. Buyer’s remorse. Fortunately, the treaty was rushed through Congress in four days and ratified by a vote of 24 - 7.

The US now owned New Orleans and Louisiana, but what did it own? It was like the reality show Storage Wars — what’s in the box? (Or like Nancy Pelosi telling us we have to sign the ACA in order to find out what was in it).  Jefferson next asked Congress to spring $2500. for the exploration of the new territory and off went Lewis and Clark. The rest is history.

Well, there is a bit more history. Post Jefferson Louisiana — Louisiana was admitted to the union in 1812, but it was a slave state, which made the northern states unhappy. In 1819 the Missouri Compromise was reached: the Louisiana territory would be broken down into two states at a time: one free, one slave. Any state north of Arkansas’ borders would be a free state, while those below would be slave states. The Missouri Compromise held until the civil war.

So, has anything changed in politics? Illegal dealings, rushing bills through Congress. It goes on and on. Nothing changes, does it.