Post No. 1,000 - Ladies & Gentlemen, We've Reached the End of the Line

 “The people have the power to redeem the work of fools.” Patti Smith

October 28

This is the final post I will make on this blog. No more after this. Twenty years or 1,000 posts, that was my promise. I try very hard to live by my word and do as little harm as possible, even in mundane matters like respecting speed limits and handicapped parking spaces; a promise made becomes an obligation. So, this is it. Time to shut it down and leave it for the vandals. 

I have no idea what happens to blogs that peter out or are abandoned. Will I be able to visit this place ten or fifteen years from now, if I’m still around, and read what an obscure man in California was writing about in 2005 or 2010 or 2016? Have I etched something in stone or is it all just erasable marker on a white board? 

Shouts from the Balcony has been my perch since 2004. When I started this thing my son was eight, my daughter three, and my country was at war, but not any kind of war, a deliberate, manufactured war against a country that posed no immediate threat to us. A pre-emptive war. Part of the War of Retribution, also known as the War on Terror, which I knew would be a colossal failure and strategic blunder of ruinous proportions.  

I was born in 1959. The Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, and the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were the lighting rods of my youth and adolescence. My family was working-class. I grew up reading the hokey Chip Hilton sports novels and idolizing Jerry West and Walt Frazier, and was in most ways a completely conventional American kid, stuffed full of  the same prejudices, illusions, and partial blindness instilled by our national myths. A sports fanatic -- Dodgers, Lakers, UCLA basketball, USC football -- but also a reader, a voracious reader of books, newspapers, magazines. I was raised before the Prop 13 tax revolt, when public schools actually had money, and California was doing some impressive and progressive shit, like building and funding the UC system. Peach and Apple Grove, our tract home, built on the bones of a lemon orchard. Pick-up basketball games in a neighbor’s driveway. We played touch football in the street. Chick Hearn’s voice, his staccato style, lyrical and imaginative, “West pump fakes, once, twice, puts Cousy in the popcorn machine, shoots, and scores. Zeke from Cabin Creek.” And on summer nights, under the clear California sky, the voice of Vin Scully, baseball professor and poet, coming from open car windows…”a very pleasant good evening to you wherever you may be…It’s Time for Dodger Baseball…and at some point in every broadcast, quoting Dante or Milton or Shakespeare. Southern California legends. I hung on those voices, knew the sound and cadence of those voices, they were the soundtrack of my boyhood. 

Anyway, as mentioned I started venting my spleen here in 2004, with George W. Bush, a man I despised, at the wheel and the country in a perpetual war. At the time, mid-40’s, a working stiff, fatherhood and husbandhood, deeply immersed in the work of writers like Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Hunter S. Thompson, and Charles Bukowski. I was, and obviously remain, interested in the world of politics, American history, books and writers, ideas, and sports, baseball when I began but now as a football (soccer) fan of Chelsea Football Club (send help now!), and a regular watcher of the Premier League, Serie A, Champions League, Europa League, European qualifier and World Cup. Greatest sport in the world, best overall athletes, unbelievable theater, drama, and, yes, a comforting sense of belonging to a peaceful tribe of like-minded supporters. A global community. Football reminds me of how people from different countries, religious beliefs and circumstances can temporarily shelve all their differences and disagreements and mutual suspicions in order to support a group of people kicking a ball around. It’s really amazing, the instant connection and solidarity you feel, even though you might stand in complete disagreement with these very same people on everything else, proving that there is common ground. It’s a fucking beautiful game, a temporary break from the stresses and strains of daily life, as valuable, in my opinion, as any religion. Futbol. 

I digress, too much. Apologies. Back to our story. 

Through the Bush regime, the financial crash, the election of Barack Obama, which for me was a singular moment, a high-water mark, and on to 2016 and the unthinkable and disastrous “election” of Donald J. Trump, false populist, false prophet, conman and serial failure.  

October 29

Mike Pence deserves no special credit or appreciation. He did the minimum expected of a vice-president by upholding his oath of office. He’s not a hero. He’s not brave. Had he been brave and principled, Pence would have condemned Trump in no uncertain terms, along with anyone who still supported Trump on the morning of January 7, 2021. 

I worry about gun violence. My daughter is living in Philadelphia while she goes to school. What I worry about is the total randomness of being in the wrong place at the wrong moment, defenseless. You can’t defend against a random act of violence without giving up your freedom. School, church, shopping mall, night club, synagogue, grocery store, movie theater. Unsafe places. It’s estimated that there are 400 million firearms in this country.

I force myself to imagine what it’s like in Gaza today, to put myself and my loved ones in that hellish place. Worried about missiles and artillery shells, and where to secure food, water, medicine, enough electricity to charge a phone, which is probably useless anyway. I think of the darkness, with the power cut; I think of the noise of whistling artillery shells, a family huddled in the dark, bracing for impact. 

October 30

Idea for satire: the first time Joe Biden meets Mike Johnson, the newly minted Speaker of the House, a truly horrifying little man, reminds me of an accountant, with views and attitudes trapped in this mythical place where white men ruled absolutely, and women, Blacks, Chinese, Mexicans, Poles, Slavs, Italians, cripples, and homosexuals knew their place in the social pecking order and didn’t dare step out of line, because the inerrant word of God, the Bible, said it was natural for white men to rule all the inhabitants of his earthly kingdom Weird fucking views, out of step with the country, with its emerging demography and broad acceptance of abortion and gay marriage and people who identify in the LGTBQ community. The majority of kids these days don’t buy what Mike’s peddling, his closed-off and retributive view of the world. 

Anyway, so Joe Biden has to meet with the new Speaker, extend an olive branch and make nice for half an hour. Biden didn’t know Johnson from Adam prior to his ascension, so his White Staff prepared a briefing. Let’s listen in. 

JB: Can you believe the GOP? Maybe now more people will understand what I have to deal with, a circus every day of the week, even on Sundays when they’re supposed to be in church and all-day Bible Study. 

WHS: Mr. President, as directed we prepared a file on Speaker Johnson, including his family and early education, church affiliation, higher education and career prior to his election to Congress. We also spoke to a source close to Mr. Johnson, who introduced us to several people who went to junior high school with him.

JB: Start there. Should be interesting to have some background. I heard he believes that Noah managed to coax a pair of T-Rex’s into the ark. 

WHS: (Stifling a giggle) Ah, yes sir, he apparently also believes the earth is only about six-thousand years old. 

JB: And people complained about Strom Thurmond! Strom was many things, but one thing he was not was crazy. Ukraine. The Middle East. Donald f’ing Trump. Crisis after crisis and I have to think about T-Rex’s and Noah’s Ark! That’s why this is the toughest job in the world.

WHS: Very true, sir. Shall we proceed? Mr. Johnson’s classmates remembered him quite well, and some remain in contact with him. They spoke freely about their junior high experiences with Mr. Johnson.

JB: Give me the gist.

WHS: The most consistent descriptions of the Speaker included terms like “Self Righteous,” followed by “rigid and calculating” followed by “severe and unforgiving.” One person said it’s easier for him to imagine Mike Johnson in a Waffen SS uniform than it is in a tank top and cargo shorts. On the other hand, to be fair, someone also said Mr. Johnson is a pious man, a wonderful husband and adoring father, a Christian, and a proud American. 

JB: Lovely. Continue.

WHS: Legislatively, Johnson has a reputation of being very pleasant, but shows little concern for people who don’t share his Christian world view. Relentless, often fanatical, in pursuit of laws that offend his sensibility. As far is known, Speaker Johnson seems to view the world as a battle between true Christians and heathens. 

JB: (Skimming his file, frowning, then tapping his finger on the page) Full of humility, huh? Where do the Republicans find these people? I don’t get the sense that Mr. Johnson cares much for women? 

WHS: That tracks with the overt Christian nationalism, sir. Basically, it’s not the place of women to compete with men or to make disparaging remarks about the size of their penis’s. In a 2017 article in “Lawfare for Christian Warriors,” Johnson wrote that it is ungodly for women to compare men’s johnsons. 

JB: (Rubbing his eyes) How long do I need to meet with this guy?

WHS: Minimum half-hour, sir. Short press conference afterwards, the usual remarks about looking forward to working together on behalf of the American people in a spirit of bipartisan comity. 

JB: (Cackles, shakes his head and reaches for his Ray-Bans) OK, let me summarize. Speaker Johnson is a Christian nationalist, he’s anti-abortion, an election denier, dislikes women and stands in total alignment with Trump. He believes dinosaurs and people existed on earth at the same time. He believes in a mythic America where white men ruled absolutely, and women, Blacks, Chinese, Mexicans, Poles, Slavs, Italians and homosexuals knew their place in the social pecking order and didn’t dare step out of line. He believes that the Bible contains the inerrant word of God, which justifies for all time that men of the white race shall rule all the inhabitants of his earthly kingdom. Is that about right?

WHS: Yes sir, on the mark. 

JB: Any chance I can shake things up and send Vice President Harris instead? 

WHS: The optics wouldn’t be good, sir. 

JB: I know. It was a Hail Mary. 

Author’s Note: I wound up posting a version of this piece on my Substack page, Working-Class Scribbler: 

https://open.substack.com/pub/briantanguay/p/satire-joe-bidens-hail-mary?r=adj3d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

October 31, Halloween

Slow coming. For the last three days I’ve thought that that day was Halloween. But even if some adorable children knock on our door, we have no treats to hand over. My wife’s broken foot killed all Halloween plans. She wears a short boot and rides a knee scooter from room-to-room. A few of my co-workers at the Market wore costumes today; we had one witch, a viking, an elf, Little Red Riding Hood, and a couple of getups that were unclassifiable. The viking was impressive. I walked sixteen miles. 

November 3

Carlos, the wonderful gardener who takes care of this property, and I talk about the olive tree that this time of year prolifically deposits small, dark olives and thin brown leaves on the driveway. We crunch over them in our cars; once a week I sweep up a pile and feed it to my compost tumbler. Later, after Carlos has gone, I go out on the secluded patio, which is my favorite place in the world right now, my happy spot, where I read and make notes and stare into the sky and breathe deeply, and watch hummingbirds jostle around the feeder, and Monarch butterflies float around the milkweed. I stand and marvel at our luck at living in this old bungalow, and remind myself that I must remain in the present moment and enjoy it while we have it. Sitting at the table in the dining room by the big window, overlooking the variety of cactuses in the landscaped front yard, the flagstone path, mesmerized by the slanting afternoon sun. In the back of my mind I know a rent increase is coming, probably in January. I don’t blame the owners. First, I have no idea of their collective financial position, what the taxes on this property are, or all the associated expenses, such as Carlos’ weekly services, none of it. If they decided to sell tomorrow how could I blame them? It’s the game, and I accept it. My hometown, the place I dreamed about when I was a young man of eighteen and nineteen, and very far away, isn’t the same town it was when I left for Japan in 1977. When I returned after ten years of wandering, it was a different place, and of course I was a different person. That’s how it goes. My little family has been lucky, and I can’t allow myself to lose sight of that. For nearly three years we’ve enjoyed living in this very tall cotton. 

November 4

I read articles in the New Yorker and the New York Review about China, its politics and economy. Problems abound and the population feels anxiety about the future. There was a reference to Chairman Mao, who ruled the country from 1949 until 1976, and his Little Red Book of political and philosophical aphorisms, which was required reading in re-education camps and among the populace. Mao wrote things like, “A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another,” and “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution,” and “After the enemies with guns have been wiped out, there will still be enemies without guns.” 

This started me thinking about Donald Trump -- it’s almost impossible not to think about the Orange Menace, lover of dictators and strongman rulers, including China’s Xi and Hungary’s Orban -- because he’s in the news every damn day. (Imagine if social media had existed in Mao’s day!) Trump doesn’t appear well these days, and his mental faculties are about as smooth as a rusted farm tractor; his public statements are increasingly unhinged from reality and dangerous to democracy. Trump’s real estate “empire” is in jeopardy and he’s bleeding money on lawyers. 

But just suppose for a moment that Trump copies Mao and publishes his own Little Red Book of MAGA wisdom. What would it contain? I imagine, first of all, that it would be in the form of a comic book, Marvel style, with Trump portrayed as a stylized golden-haired, muscle-bound adonis. But what would the text be?

We will have the best climate!

Very soon I will show you proof that the 2020 election was rigged.

We will abolish low-flow toilets in America!

I built the wall and Mexico paid for it.

Everybody knows that windmills cause cancer.

I created the Covid vaccine!

I was the first man in history to notice that “us” is spelled US. 

It was a perfect call, so perfect, completely perfect and everyone knows it. 

The only way the liberals and Marxists in California can stop their state from burning is to rake the forests! Problem solved! Rake your forests, Gavin!

Trump is the greatest president in American history, far greater, stronger, tougher and more manly than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, combined. 

January 6, 2021 was a beautiful day, a celebration of love and patriotism, and totally peaceful!

Watch out for witch hunts! 

If you come after me, I will come after you. 

I alone can fix it. 

The press is the enemy of the people.

Drink bleach, cure Covid, MAGA!

Many people say that Trump is the most ethical president in American history.

My hair is so beautiful, I have the best hair, big, beautiful hair, the greatest hair anyone has ever seen. 

Author’s Note: I posted a version of this germ of an idea on Working-Class Scribbler, my Substack page:

https://open.substack.com/pub/briantanguay/p/nightmare-on-milpas-street-trumps?r=adj3d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

November 7

The end. 

But it’s not the end, it’s more of a transformation because I will continue writing and posting on my Substack page, Working-Class Scribbler. The pieces there will differ in character because they will have undergone my own editing, which is critical if not always error-free. With few exceptions, the posts I’ve written on Shouts from the Balcony are unedited, basically dated streams of consciousness regarding whatever preoccupied me on the day. 

Today is my 31st wedding anniversary. This past Sunday my wife and I had a celebratory meal at Holdren’s on State Street, the first time we’d dined there in at least twenty years. I’m not a big food lover, in no way a bon vivant, my tastes are basic, but this was a fine meal, a large, satisfying meal. Lobster and filet mignon for Terry, a juicy pork chop for me, baked potato, steamed vegetables, salad, soup, bread. My Old Fashioned was one of the best I’ve had anywhere in this food-and-drink obsessed city. In Santa Barbara, or so it seems, only real estate is talked about more than food. 

My periodicals are full of stories about Israel and Gaza. A long piece by David Remnick in the New Yorker, poignant because the author has friends and acquaintances on both sides. One such, a 30-year-old poet who left the confines of the Gaza strip for the first time at age 26, and now lives -- or perhaps lived is more accurate since he may have since been displaced by Israel’s ground offensive -- reported that the attack a few weeks ago on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital was carried out by Israeli warplanes, not a Hamas rocket that misfired. Israel has since, as it always does, shifted attention away from its actions. 

This isn’t to represent that news from the area isn’t clouded or muddled, or deliberately skewed, but why would it be considered shocking for Israel to bomb a hospital in Gaza? Since at least 2000, has the United Nations, the International Criminal Court or the United States Congress, or any other coalition of nations, ever held Israel to account for its actions in Gaza? Did anyone hold Israel to account when the IDF shot and killed upwards of 200 unarmed Palestinian demonstrators who were peacefully protesting at the border during the 2018-19 Great March of Return? Did Netanyahu, or his political allies, pay any political price for these killings? How much can the world expect the Palestinians to absorb and not lash out with the same fury and lethality with which they are attacked? 

Another question is: why are Westerners told that Israelis are inherently less barbarous than Palestinians? I have a lot of questions about Hamas, its aims and strategy, and its history. What are this group’s antecedents? 

I’m deeply troubled by the complicity of the American government for its decades-long blind allegiance to Israel. News stories about transfers to Israel of American-made weapons and ammunition make it seem that the Israeli military is a starved basket case at a steep disadvantage. The reality is that Israel has plenty of its own firepower to prosecute its campaign of revenge and retribution.

Well, what else? I’ve started to re-read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, which I first encountered more than thirty years ago. Miller’s writing made an impression on me and I want to see what my reaction to it is all these years later. I might write an essay for California Review of Books.    

That’s about it. The sun is shining in Santa Barbara, on the red-tile rooftops and white stucco buildings, but the Balcony is in shadow and will soon be in darkness. So long. 

Post No. 999 - Know the Reason Why

 

“All of us -- as readers, as writers, as citizens; we have obligations.” Neil Gaiman

Quite a week, it’s hard to keep it all straight. When I took the dog out for her morning walk I thought it was Saturday, but then saw kids being dropped off by the high school. We were scheduled to be enjoying art and food and a change of atmosphere in Santa Fe, my son and mother-in-law, my wife and I, but on the eve of departure my wife turned her ankle and fractured a bone in her foot. All plans scuttled. 

Spending time with my son is always good for me, he’s funny, and he’s been helping his mother. 

Israel still preparing for a ground invasion, Biden defending freedom on the television, Trump scolded and fined $5K for violating his gag order in his NY fraud case, and down in Georgia, two last minute pleas of guilty by Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro. That’s a lot of political action. As I understand it, neither Powell or Chesebro is off the hook with the federal Special Prosecutor, and they are bound to testify against the other defendants, including the man at the top, Donald “Tiny Hands” Trump. Kingpin white collar criminal of his time. It wouldn’t shock me if we see a succession of plea deals in the coming weeks. Some folks, at least, are starting to understand the cost of doing dirty work for Donald Trump. It’s about damn time. 

In essence, Powell and Chesebro are exchanging lenient sentences for testimony against the other defendants. Powell and Chesebro have tea to spill, names to drop, and we can only guess at what else they can offer the prosecution. This should disrupt the slumber of their co-defendants, including Donald Trump.  

And for a cherry on top,  Jim Jordan of Ohio found out just how much his colleagues despise him. Oh, the many reasons why. For his manifest incompetence; for his being a Grade-A Asshole for nearly twenty years; and for his perverse subservience to Donald Trump. Jordan is a member of the Ass Kissers Hall of Fame. Anyone who has worked in a business or other organization knows one of Jim Jordan’s cousins. Fuckers, every last one. I don’t know what to make of Jordan’s Ohio constituents, some of whom are probably very decent people. Can you explain to me how you’re not embarrassed by this ridiculous man? What does he do for you, as a citizen? How does Jim Jordan make your American life better or richer or more predictable? What do you get out of voting for him? Talk to me, please, I want to listen. 

I’m reading Tyranny of the Minority by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, both professors of government at Harvard. They write with clarity. They explain the baked-in impediments (Electoral College, US Senate apportionment, lifetime terms for judges, etc) to a more robust democracy that reside in America’s foundational documents and its practices over time. They contrast and compare America’s democracy with democracies in Europe and South America. They show what an overthrow of an elected multiracial government looks like, here on American soil. They offer warnings, but also a number of potential solutions, some of which seem entirely unattainable when judged in the context of our current political situation, but that’s the thing about how social or political change is made: it has to start somewhere, with language and ideas, an understanding that things don’t have to remain the way they are today. Tyranny of the Minority is one of the most important books I’ve read this year. 

I’m also reading Alfred Kazin’s Journals, not quite halfway through it, one of those books you can tuck into at any time and come away with a literary gem. Interesting descriptions of the political scene in the early 1950’s, the era of Joe McCarthy and anti-communist madness; the New York intellectual scene; Brooklyn. 

When Mitch McConnell kicks the bucket and is buried beneath old home Kentucky soil, when a little time passes and the scholars dig into Mitch’s legacy, they’ll note how his actions carry weight beyond his death, and they will see that he is a primary example of the anti-democratic nature of the US Senate. Mitch killed legislation on abortion, gun control, the minimum wage, taxes and other proposals that were supported by majorities of Americans. Mitch gave all of us the finger. He employed the Senate’s arcane rules and the filibuster like Thor’s Hammer, and shepherded the confirmation of dozens of radical judges to the federal benches. McConnell is the consequence of a weak architecture; one man, unaccountable, even to his constituents. 

I see a flock of pigeons wheeling in the morning sunlight. 

Post No. 998 - Gaza, Again

 “The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu.” Editorial, Haaretz, October 8, 2023

I think it’s fair to say that the world doesn’t care about Gaza or the plight of the Palestinians. Since I began this blog in 2004, Israel has pulverized Gaza with disproportionate military force at least five times (2006, 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021), causing massive destruction of critical infrastructure and thousands of civilian casualties. Israel targeted hospitals and schools, yet I don’t recall a single American official calling Israel’s actions “evil” or “merciless” or, heaven forbid, a “war crime.” What I remember are assertions from the State Department and the White House that Israel’s right to defend itself was sacrosanct.  

To be clear, I’m not defending Hamas for targeting civilians, shooting women and children, and taking more than 100 people hostage. But nor do I accept the idea that the attack by Hamas was unprovoked. The actions of the Netanyahu government in Gaza and the West Bank over the past decade is the provocation. Gaza is one of the most -- if not the most -- densely populated places in the world, often described as an open-air prison due to Israel’s complete control of access points, water, electricity, and the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, and other goods. Israel controls Gaza’s airspace as well as its coastal waters. 

In the West Bank, Israeli settlers with the active collusion of the Netanyahu governing coalition, police, the Israeli military and the courts, have waged a merciless campaign to drive Palestinians from their traditional lands, to appropriate Palestinian olive groves and water sources; entire villages have been reduced to rubble by Israeli army bulldozers, schools destroyed, homes invaded. Writing in the October 19, 2023 edition of the New York Review, David Shulman notes that in the South Hebron Hills, thirteen villages are in imminent danger of expulsion, with the backing of Israel’s High Court of Justice. 

Shulman also writes the following: “The moral foundation of the State of Israel has been severely compromised, perhaps beyond repair, and exchanged for the horrific reality of the occupation, which is further entrenched with each passing hour.”

Once again we see a disparity in the value of human life. The lives of Palestinians are simply not valued as highly as those of Israelis. Palestinians die at the hands of Israeli soldiers or settlers with no outpouring of shock or sympathy or calls for justice, and the United States certainly doesn’t rush aid to the survivors. Moral outrage is reserved for Israeli victims. Palestinians are dehumanized in the same way that Native Americans and African Americans were during America’s first century and a half. Palestinians are deprived of civil rights, legal redress, and can be killed with impunity, driven off their ancestral lands to make way for Jewish settlers. 

Benjamin Netanyahu is a narcissist in the same way that Donald Trump is a narcissist, and like Trump, is under indictment. For fifteen years he has preached division and hatred of Palestinians and surrounded himself with rabid ultra-nationalists. Netanyahu is responsible for the attack by Hamas as surely as Donald Trump is for the January 6 assault on Congress. 

I can’t bear to watch or read mainstream American media coverage of this war; it will be presented as a fair fight between equals, which isn’t even close to the reality. While Hamas is clearly being supported from without, presumably by Iran, the support comes nowhere close to what the US provides Israel on an annual basis. Israel has an overwhelming military advantage, the latest advanced missiles and bombs, fighter jets and ordnance. 

American media will also remind us that Israel is the Middle East’s only democracy, and therefore entitled to our undying support. This assertion is laughable. Netanyahu and his coalition of rabid ultra-nationalists care about democracy about as much as the American Republican Party does, which is to say, very little. 

Israel and the United States share an astonishing hubris. Both countries believe themselves entitled to oppress, invade, attack, disenfranchise and expropriate what belongs to others, and both react with shock and rage when those others rise up and strike back. 

Post No. 997 - Equinox

 

“Your belief in yourself must be greater than everyone else’s disbelief in you.” August Wilson

The equinox passes. I didn’t know the significance of the day until M, a man who reads books and watches videos on his phone on the patio at the Market, told me. M’s a tall man with a large frame, sunburned skin and close-cropped gray hair, who has lived on Hitchcock avenue out of the camper shell of his red Toyota pickup for several months. M uses the bathroom in the store, fills many water bottles at the filling station, and buys items from the hot bar now and again, all without troubling a soul. M is obviously resourceful having survived being unhoused so long. It can’t be easy or comfortable, particularly for a man in his 70s. M’s got a weathered look about him, but he’s never dirty. One day he complimented me on what he called my “work signature,” telling me it’s obvious when I’m on duty because the men’s bathroom is always clean. As to why he’s here I gathered that he’d blown the engine of the Toyota and was waiting for money to get it fixed. He moves between Bend, Oregon, Boulder, Colorado and Santa Barbara. I don’t think I’d be a very kind or rational and patient soul if I lived like M. 

Running errands this morning with a runny nose and a dull headache. Not feeling 100%. Passed my first stop like it wasn’t there because my mind was elsewhere. I had to drive three blocks out of my way and double back. My debit card failed twice and to pay the bill I had to draw money from an ATM. Service charge for this privilege of $3.50. Drove down the road to BevMo and spent several minutes wandering around in search of tonic water. When did BevMo start selling groceries and sundries? Checked out a selection of bourbons. My debit card worked fine at the checkout. 

Feels like I have a late-summer cold. When I get home I drink a cup of herbal tea for cold/flu symptoms. 

Lately I’ve spent more time reading than I have writing. Finished a fine biography of James Baldwin by David Leeming, and am deep into a biography of August Wilson, the playwright who shook Broadway with “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Fences.” The usual periodicals, New York Review of Books, the Nation, The New Yorker. 

The Baldwin bio gave me some new insight and understanding about a man I consider a prophet. I also read True North by Jim Harrison for the third or fourth time, with renewed appreciation for Harrison’s perceptive observations about the human condition, particularly greed. I’m just getting into The Rolling Thunder Logbook by Sam Shepard. The way Shepard strung words together is under-appreciated; there’s music in his writing -- and also an edginess. I’ve read a lot of his considerable oeuvre.  

My daughter is discovering the rigors, deadline pressure and sleep-deprivation of a packed senior year at an arts university. She had to memorize long monologues in four different classes, and then, along with the memorization, make the characters’ speech carry weight. The actor’s art, in other words. But otherwise she’s doing well, with a cozy room in a decent apartment, a circle of friends, acquaintances and classmates. We talk to her several times each day. I worry about her less than I did last year when she struggled with homesickness and the shock of moving from Santa Barbara to Philadelphia. 

If only my football team, Chelsea, was faring as well as my family. But no, the boys are struggling to jell and after five league matches have scored five goals and won five points. By contrast, Manchester City have fifteen points. About a dozen Chelsea players are out injured, including Reece James, Moises Caicedo, Christopher Nkunku, and Wesley Fofana. It’s all very dismal and looking like a repeat of 2022’s futility and failure. The club’s new owners have spent an enormous amount of money on players, many of them young, but in football money doesn’t always lead to results; the money has to be spent in the right way. My sense remains that Chelsea is a collection of parts rather than a cohesive unit and that there’s no short term fix. This means Chelsea supporters are in for another long season. The glory of the recent past fades quickly.   

Post No. 996 - Down to the Wire

“It is a common symptom of rank melancholy to keep imagining the past instead of a future, because the future feels both foreclosed and uncertain, whereas the past is all there is, infinitely reproducible.” Aleksandar Hemon, The World And All That It Holds

Coming out of a few down days. I thought the genesis of the spiral might have something to do with summer coming to an end, but I’m not sure. The past several days have been warm in SB, almost uncomfortable at times. Not like Philadelphia where I was a couple of weeks ago, that was a different kind of warm. I should be feeling buoyant after getting my daughter situated for her last year of college, but worries large and small, real and imagined, have beset me. Buying future trouble. I can far more easily imagine a dim future than I can a bright or comfortable one. 

Today this thought crossed my mind: You’re OK as long as you still have a card to play. 

As far as the future is concerned, all we may be able to say for sure is that it will be different. Most people will adapt, but some won’t. Everything will change, the new will be built on the bones of the old. 

My cousin lives in Madeira Beach, Florida, and had to evacuate her home for higher ground in the face of Hurricane Idalia. How much damage will this storm cause, how many lives will it take? Florida is a cursed child under the malign leadership of Ron DeSantis, another morally bankrupt Ivy League product, like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. America’s Best & Brightest? Please. The priorities of people like DeSantis and his ilk, including the Ken-Doll Tech-Bro Vivek Ramaswamy, are out of touch with reality and the needs of ordinary citizens. Ramaswamy switched his entire position on climate change and now claims it’s a hoax, and that the solution is to burn more fossil fuel…because human flourishing is impossible without fossil fuel. This pint-sized Trump pretender wants to be president. DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Pence, Haley, all of them are unfit for office. The litmus test should be this: if you still support Donald Trump, you’re an authoritarian not a Republican.  

I came across an Alan Watts lecture on YouTube about letting go and not taking life too seriously. I’ve listened to Watts off and on over the years and much of the time his notions just become jumbled in my mind. I sort of get what Watts is driving at, a deeper recognition about what life is about, but I’m never entirely satisfied and remain trapped inside my own head, which can be a wildly unimaginative place at times. I did understand Watts when he talked about the way we view time in western culture, as a commodity so valuable that not to use it for the purpose of maximum productivity is a sign of sloth. Watts used the example of artists, painters, inventors, musicians, and writers to argue that we need to redefine our ideas and allow more time for imagining, day-dreaming, and directionless wandering. Easier said than done, at least for me. If I’m not engaged in doing something I feel like I’m wasting time; it’s one thing I dislike about my personality. How can I achieve idleness without guilt?

For the third or fourth time I’m reading True North by Jim Harrison. The novel is on my Kindle and every once in a while I’ll turn to it. If you pressed me to name my favorite Jim Harrison work I’d say Dalva or The Road Home, but True North always impresses me for how effortlessly it flows and the deep interiority Harrison achieves with his first-person narrator. 

I just finished Last Call, an account of the rise and fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent. I’m reading a biography of James Baldwin by David Leeming and The Pornography Wars by Kelsy Burke.

Four posts to go to reach 1,000 and then I’m done here.  

Post No. 995 - Dog Day Blues

“There is no escape from the strange spasms of the world as we’ve remade it.” Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch

August of my second year of semi-retirement and the money blues are starting to sing. It’s been a summer of unexpected expenses, our daughter coming home from college in May, working sporadically at a local deli; in July she had breast reduction surgery for the second time in five years -- smaller breasts, a relief for her, but hefty medical bills for us -- with the standard barrage of paper notices regarding  in-network/out-of-network services, co-pays, deductibles, all the familiar ways costs are shifted to American patients because this country doesn’t provide medical care for all its citizens. It’s the same cost-shifting racket seen in other areas of the economy. Fees. Service Charges. Tiered plans. Subscriptions. American “consumers” get hosed right and left, preyed upon by banks and credit card companies and airlines and mobile phone and cable companies, all down the line. All these “rents” make some people richer than monarchs. 

I think our portion of the bill(s) will be around $10K. Shows you how high our annual out of pocket maximum is, but accepting that risk is the only way we can keep the premiums affordable. Damned, one way or another. 

Our daughter made a wee mess of her student loans, even though we’d been riding her to sort out her financial aid situation since May. We thought, erroneously as it turned out, that we had to cover a large tuition bill in order for her to enroll in her courses. On the one hand it serves us right because we left school finances to our 21-year-old daughter, expecting her to inform us when we needed to take action on her behalf. This, we thought, was a responsibility she could, and should, handle. She did, sort of, though if we had the money we fronted now, I’d be breathing a little easier. But we won’t see a refund for another month or so. That was our little cushion, our what if the washing machine dies or one of the cars needs new tires? cushion. But isn’t that the thing about being part of the working or retired poor? The unexpected expense that drops you in a hole can take months or years to climb out of. My wife and I are good about paying down debt, chipping away at it, but right now it’s about equilibrium between the money coming in and the money going out, the balance is off and I fret and stew and create dark scenarios of poverty and destitution.  

That’s one of my major life problems and bad habits, buying trouble in the future. It’s almost a certainty that we’ll be forced before too much longer to leave Santa Barbara. We’re local products, born and bred, but we missed the real estate lottery and haven’t a prayer of becoming property owners now. Precarious renters we shall be. When my mother-in-law passes, our last good reason for remaining here will be eliminated. But when I think of relocating my head hurts because there are more and more places in America where I refuse to live. Short list, for starters: Texas, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana and Wyoming. Other places are ruled out due to cost or climate. I think my wife would go mad in wet, cold Oregon. I wonder if Wisconsin or Minnesota might be viable. 

I collected my first Social Security check in July. Most of it went immediately to my daughter for school expenses and airline tickets. I reduced my hours at the Market from 24 per week to 16, in part to stay under the income limits imposed by Social Security for workers my age, but primarily because my body needs more recovery time between shifts. I’ve got all kinds of physical ailments, from arthritis in both thumbs to a torn rotator cuff muscle, to neuropathy in both feet; I snore at night and my restless legs drive my wife crazy. “Who the hell are you trying to kick?” I’m still fit, but I need more recovery time between training sessions, and I’m forced now to constantly modify my routines, fewer reps and shorter durations, lighter weights. My arthritic thumbs are a challenge I didn’t see coming. Anyway, working two days a week, Tuesday and Saturday, is perfect, but I bring home less money. Compounds the problem. 

My daughter did some growing this summer, even though it seemed at times that she was dead set on self-sabotage. By the time we flew to Philadelphia together, and spent a couple of priceless father-daughter days setting up her room in her apartment on Spruce Street, she had set her mind on making the best of her final year. It was hot and humid in Philadelphia, the kind of heat that clings to the skin, a soporific heat. We made trips to Target and CVS and Trader Joe’s, but also made time to see the Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall, the Ben Franklin museum. We had drinks in a cash-only hole-in-the-wall bar whose walls were adorned with Philly sports memorabilia. The Little League World Series played on the TV. My Old Fashioned was tasteless. 

At night the sounds of the city kept me awake: screeching tires, car horns, alarms, voices, sirens and helicopters. People wandered in the alley below the window.

Back home Hurricane Hillary was moving ominously toward California, and the island of Maui was still in shock after wildfires destroyed a swath of Lahaina; hundreds of people there remain unaccounted for, many of them children. Canada. Greece. Portugal. Fires, floods, record breaking temperatures across the world. Catastrophic climate change isn’t coming, it’s already here, along with a debased and diseased political system that is incapable of taking action on this most pressing problem. More important matters, like banning objectionable books from school libraries and blaming America’s decline on transgender children, chasing Woke phantoms from university campuses, and making abortion illegal in all 50 states are the issues upon which our rulers and media fixate. They waste time and our tax dollars on insignificant and entirely contrived problems while the house burns and smoke pours from the roof.