2020-21

The other day two of my youngest neighbors--siblings--negotiated a selling price for my house, property, truck, and Max. Relying on my finely honed business acumen, I talked them down from their billion dollar offer to a more manageable million even. Within a minute or two, I think they rather reasonably concluded a million might not be within their grasp. The discussion derailed when I mentioned I would have to move after the sale. 

The older of the two wondered out loud if I might still be living here when she turned 18. Quick arithmetic--another ten-plus years--so pushing 78? Yes, I answered, perhaps I will. With that conversational arc concluded, off they went to reexamine the winter garden, especially the lavender.

Here in this house a decade hence? On that possibility I would say I am cautiously optimistic. 

Of course, a phrase like cautiously optimistic could be considered jelly-spined, but I would argue I feel cautious optimism with the same vigor that someone might claim an irrepressible optimism or a nihilistic pessimism. 

And so the year 2021? On this matter--fortune-telling really if you think about it--I am of the same mind. Cautiously...cautiously optimistic.

Not sure why I feel this way given the likely-to-happen list so easily generated. Floods, hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, earthquakes. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and whomever else might feel the need to set others' heads on fire. Violence, lies, thievery (and on the grandest of scales), ignorance.

And the virus, and all this invasive force has manifested here and abroad.

Cautiously optimistic? Perhaps because I read enough history to crumple the current zeitgeist into a minuscule ball of time. A decade, a lifespan--makes me chuckle. And I can just as easily peer back 400 years and then imagine going forward to 2421. Four hundred years? A piffle.

Or a coping mechanism. 

To the point, I am more attuned to my perennials and trees reawakening than whether the next calendar year will seem somehow lighter than the one passing. April 21st looms larger to me than January 1st or August 11th (my birthday).

Not that I do not wholeheartedly wish you and yours and the wider world well in 2021. We'll see how it goes. Perhaps we can revisit the subject the same time next year. So, I remain yours, cautiously optimistic.

Tuesday Twofer: 5th Anniversary and An Index (8)

 Miscellany marks 5th anniversary with 15 most-viewed posts. You never know what's coming because we don't know either. 

Re: The White House...  (11/15/16)

Where the Greenbacks Roam (6/7/18)

In Memoriam (5/24/20)

Trump Names Arsonist... (12/13/16)

Worry Warts, Unite! (12/7/16)

Party-Pooper (2/6/18)

Notre Dame, 1980 (4/16/19)

Breaking Leaf (4/1/19)

Guilt (12/6/18)

To the Sea (4/4/19)

Crying Man (6/2/20)

Spiritus Monday... (3/14/16)

Not Judging (9/5/17)

Delete Radical, Insert Violent (2/16/17)

Steal the Bacon (5/29/19)

                                    An Index (8)

The mania for the century mark: Just think, turning 100 in...

2025 - Dick Van Dyke

2030 - Clint Eastwood

2042 - Joe Biden, Harrison Ford, and Mitch McConnell

2045 - Helen Mirren

2047 - Emmylou Harris

2049 - Bruce Springsteen

2052 - Vladimir Putin

2053 - Xi Jinping and Scott Kaple

2073 - Rachel Maddow

2074 - Penelope Cruz

2069 - Tucker Carlson

2081 - Alicia Keys

2084 - Kim Jong-Un

2085 - Mina Kimes

2089 - Alexandria Ostasio-Cortez and Taylor Swift

2090 - The Weekend

2092 - Selena Gomez

2097 - Malala Yousafzai

2105 - Gitanjali Rao

Sister Claire (F)

For LCW

“Good morning, Sister,” Fwam called from the bottom of the Grand Staircase.

“Good morning, Fwam. Please tell Chee I will have my tea and biscuit—no, two biscuits this morning—I will have tea in the Solarium.”

“Cold there, Sister.”

“I will get my shawl. I will be warm enough with the sun out.”

“Yes, Sister.”

After Fwam turned back to the kitchen, Sister Claire surveyed herself in the full length mirror on the landing half-way to the ground floor. She wore her grey tunic, white coif, black veil, and a linen cincture with four knots. She retied the cincture a bit tighter, a bit tighter than usual.

“A touch of vanity this morning, Sister?” she could imagine hearing from Sister Agnes. Oh, Agnes, she thought, if only you were here to make this journey with me.

Gathering her shawl from the coat check room, Claire walked slowly down the long hall to the double doors that opened out into the Solarium. How could this be my last morning here, she wondered.

Stepping out into the 2-story enclosure of glass and iron, she blinked, the winter sun just above the tree line across the river. Some snow still here and there on the back lawn, some ice still sparkling on the edge of the river.

Claire pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “Yes, cold,” she said. “Well.” She sat down at one of the small tables closest to the windows.

She looked at her watch. Fwam’s younger brother would be along with the van in about half an hour. Of course, most of her belongings were already in Red Wing, but she was being allowed by the property developer to take the bed frame, dresser, writing table, and a rocking chair with her.

She heard the doors swing open. Carrying the tea and biscuits on a tray from the old grand resort’s best silver tray, Chee paced slowly toward Claire as if bringing a jeweled crown for her.

“Oh, Chee, no tears now. No tears.” The younger woman set the tray down opposite of Claire and put the plate with biscuits before her. Sniffling, she poured the tea into a tiny china cup.

“You will be just fine, you and Fwam will be very busy with grounds, the public rooms here. I’m sure the new tenants will be very kind. Generous even.”

Chee wiped her tears with a blouse sleeve. “I don’t like you will be gone. All the sisters gone now.”

“Yes, but you will have a new life and your old life at the same time.”

“Not the same,” Chee said as she walked away from Claire.

No, Claire agreed, life will not be the same, a new life, without the old life. To leave the cloistered life behind after 23 years, to start all over again at 44.

Fulfilling, would her new life in town be one of fulfillment, the job at the library, keeping house in her condo without another’s voice, other voices, calling to her, responding.

The doors opened again. “Sister, Kub is on his way here now. He called.”

“Good, good, Fwam. Thank you. I’ll be ready.” He bowed and shut the doors behind him.

Ready? She wondered, how is one ever ready exactly? For tomorrow, much less the months ahead. Even the next moment. She sipped her tea. The biscuits could be saved for later in town.

Claire stood and rewrapped her shawl about her. Fresh air, the cold, would be a sort of balm for her concerns. She stepped out the back entrance onto the stone patio. The metal chairs and tables empty, the sun umbrellas put away until late spring.

She drew in a long breath, the cold air sharp in her lungs. Walking out midway to the river, she turned so the sun was warm on her back. Still she shivered a bit. Looking back at the main building, she tried to imagine the sounds of the new residents, laughing, gossiping, perhaps the sound of children, surely some families might take the larger apartments.

Would the children run across the lawns, flying kites, maybe teens strolling along the river walkway, splashing stones in the water as she had done so many times.

The thought came to her, in less than two weeks she would return to being Claire, Claire Johnson.

“Kub is here, Sister!”

“Yes, I’m coming,” she called back.

Sister Claire glanced toward one of the rock-lined garden beds.  She looked again. Yes, little white flowers. Jasmine. Another spring comes.

Lyman 2020

Trump Opts for Graven Image

(WHNS) The Routers news agency reports today President Trump will forgo a presidential library for his carved likeness on the west face of Gannett Peak in west central Wyoming. 

Unverified sources Viktor Krashnikov and Valerie Rhea-Avis cited the state's overwhelming support for Trump's reelection bid as the inspiration for the monument. While the White House refused to comment on the subject, President Trump did address the possibility on Twitter Sunday.

"The beautiful people of Wyoming, those good people, deserve a gift. What a great cause, best gift in the world, boost to tourism, will put Wyomings places on the maps."

Vickie Christiansen, Chief of the USDA's Forest Service, said she could not comment on details because no details were available at the time she was interviewed. However, Christiansen did say, "That's rugged country up there, very difficult to get to." 

Later in the day President Trump did seem to suggest some options for the site, including "Lots of golf courses change the economy, make it bigger, a lodge we could build there. Maybe a casino. All good, best ever."

According to the website "Wyoming Again Great Always", public donations can be sent in care of the WAGA Committee at Belarusbank in Minsk, Belarus. The website does stipulate 70% of donations to WAGA will go to "Save America", a Trump PAC.

An employee at the Gannett Peak Lodge in Pinedale, Wyoming said she was unsure of any expansion plans and ended the interview to finish her high school economics homework.

Gannett Peak is the highest point in Wyoming at 13,809' and stands in Bridger-Teton National Forest. 

The tradition for presidential libraries goes back to President Herbert Hoover.

 

The Great Reminder

 A friendly prompt, to consider a word or phrase to characterize what we--collectively and individually--have experienced, are experiencing here in 2020. I said I would chew over what has been served up by the pandemic and the epidemic that infects our body politic. And so, The Great Reminder.

Spoiler alert--I don't see anything going on any differently from what has been true of the human experience for, oh, 6,000 years or more. To the point, human nature is always a study in human nature. Some folks break things, and some folks fix things. And some folks watch.

Tossing around a term like risk management doesn't change a fact of existence, a human life being unpredictable, ever uncertain. Was that reality ever not so? I saw a report this morning of a poll showing 1 in 3 Americans think a traditional Thanksgiving family gathering is worth the risk of infection. We assess, we make our choices. With the understanding that others may pay for those decisions.

Well, I can't help think of very early seafaring peoples shoving off in their small boats to confront the terrible awesomeness of the oceans to find a new habitable spot. Families in tow, the horizon dividing the knowable from the unknowable.

Needless to say, those of us who have all that we need mostly expect what we need to be readily available. Until it's not. Thus, the mad rush for toilet paper in the face of broken supply chains. The gears of commerce lurching, jobs on hold if not altogether gone, waiting times of 4-6 weeks on, gulp, Amazon. 

Perhaps you have seen estimates of the number of refugees in Europe during and shortly after WWII--a staggering 60 million. Supply chains? Commerce? Jobs? Going without? 

Hasn't the phrase essential workers revealed much about the income levels of workers and the jobs that need to get done to keep our lives rolling along--and those essential millionaires? Hey, millionaires didn't build the pyramids. 

As for the body politic, I'm guilty of a simplistic outlook, simply most people want the world to be what they want it to be. And there is no consensus. So artificially drawing dotted lines around chunks of landmasses--how do you think that will go? Feel free to revisit world history at your leisure. 

I think you already know all of this, but wars, famines, pandemics, earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, greed, ignorance, violence et al shove it in our faces. The human experience is a fragile endeavor, my friends. 

Let us be kind to our kind as we will. Enjoy the holiday season.

Think of It

If only for a minute or two, think of how it came to be that you are here, you are where you are. Four generations of my family live within 15 minutes of each other. A more unusual circumstance these days I would guess. A span of about 86 years covers this slice of the multitude.

My parents would be the senior members of our crew, my sister's newest grandchild the littlest kid on the block. I am aware of how my parents met and courted and married. Same for my sister and her husband. My niece met her husband at college, the details were not part of my watch, but here they are with 4 children.

Three couples gets at the point I am driving at. An incomplete picture to be sure. No, 4 individuals on their paths brought niece and beau into this world. Which means their 8 grandparents, each with stories of meetings and life-decisions and passions. 

Now ease back one more generation, 16 persons of interest relative to the little one crawling about these days. Probably 110 to 120 years ago roughly. Teddy Roosevelt or William H. Taft, or Woodrow Wilson, in the White House--if they were born here in the US when they came along.  

How did those family members with all the twists and turns lives easily confront happen upon one another and make the momentous decision to bring children into their worlds? 

Perhaps along and along the mesmerizing effect of doubling came your way--just one more generation, one more set of stories, 32 strands of decisive moments which if one were missing, you would not be you here and now. Think of it.

But let me lose my mind and mull over 10 generations back, 200+years most likely. Now, you sit as you do because 1024 individuals found the someone they would bring a new life into this world with as part of their stories. Or if you like, your personal heritage, that generation, 512 couples. 

Of course, 200 years or so is nothing, but I'll spare you the arithmetic of a thousand years. Just stare off for a moment, consider the spiral of humanity that is your personal history. Go ahead, just a shake of your head. 

And back to your business at hand.

IAQ

Recently I offered up to a former student what I now regard as a rather banal observation about retirement, how much more time is now under my control. Not only banal, a paraphrase, but at the core accurate. Perhaps a more astute observation would be of the underwhelming number of questions from others I face daily.

Of course, no longer in front of teenagers as their teacher is an easy explanation for the drastic drop in answers I generate. I suspect parents understand, those at least who have their children go off to school--the virus notwithstanding--or those who become empty-nesters. Not that all questions stop forever. Do they?

Since I am not much of a provocateur, rarely do I have to respond to more than a couple of questions a day, and many days none. Still, I will admit to surprise no questions followed a statement about the daily morning quotations I put on Facebook when I said I post them for a selfish reason. 

Even a simple inquiry about a particular flower in a photo series I shared is now out of the ordinary. The question, I mean, and not just the flower. Turns out, one other photo sparked enough interest to ask about, this little trio.

Merely garden-variety red Japanese maples (Acer palmatum, if you must ask) I bought online, six bucks apiece, nearly leafless, and three times taller. Yes, I cut them down that much, counting on them releafing pretty quickly. 

Will they be bonsai, my sister asked. Well, technically, they already are. But I know what the question points at, the highly refined trees and plants looking ages old in what sometimes seem impossibly shallow containers.

"Probably" was my answer, but that response is hedging since it would be unlikely they would end up in the ground. The more pointed question would be the 3 together or separated late next winter or early spring. On that point I am leaning toward keeping the 3 as a group. End of February, beginning of March I may provide an update. Should I be asked. 

Now I've got to brace myself because I have a 2nd-grader next door who, depending upon her arithmetic lessons, can be quite the Grand Inquisitor. 

How It Goes

Sometimes.

Bits and pieces, chunks, for this post came to me while I sat at a traffic light this afternoon. An overgrown lot across from the local post office shook loose some ideas. Mostly the wild cherry trees and the devil's spawn, Bradford pears gone rogue, did the jostling.

For some reason--reason?--I recalled my answer on a questionnaire from the Class of '71 reunion committee. Advice to my 17-year-old-self? My answer without much ado was "Relax, you have no idea what's coming". 

Which brings me around to the fact that until this summer I had no idea what a blue-winged wasp was until this specimen showed up in my pollinator bed. Turns out, the queen.

But I must go back further in the season. After admittedly lackadaisically applying a pesticide to keep the Japanese beetles off the Knockout roses, the ensuing invasion tore into the roses, Roses of Sharon, almond trees, and my plum tree. Absolutely, the worst season for the leaf-chomping, flower-mutilating hoard I've ever seen. You'll note the stripped branches of the plum, which kept growing throughout the summer. 

Early this spring when I planted out a pre-packaged pollinator bed, two of the plants were something again new to me, Lesser Catmint. 

But back to my newly discovered favorite insect queen. Turns out the Blue-winged wasps thrive on the Catmint. And, as it goes, this wasp queen and fellow females sting Japanese beetle grubs and then lay eggs that hatch and feed on the paralyzed grubs. Think I won't be planting Catmint around the yard next year?

So, when the 2020 growing season began I had never seen Japanese beetles rip into so many different plants and trees, never planted Catmint, and never noticed Blue-winged wasps before. 

Guess this year's experience out back makes me a tad wiser. Sixty-seven-year-old-self? Relax. Sometimes the unexpected comes calling. That's how it goes. 

 

Patience

Patiently, I try to keep my impatience in check.  The season has merit for planting, trees and shrubs, garlic and azaleas. Seems counterintuitive, perhaps, with leaves yellowing--some reds, too. My maples, however, in no hurry, their show awaits.

The garlic goes in this afternoon. I'll separate the cloves by a hand width, rows mostly aligned. I joke with a neighbor I seed and plant with the soul of a poet. No square foot gardening for me. Regardless, the rewards of fresh garlic are more than three seasons into the future. 

For the longest time I will have to watch the green stalks without easing a bulb out of the ground prematurely. This year I pulled two of five out of the ground too early. Note to self, wait. Wait. Wait. 

Same with trees in the ground, a Ginko the other day. I tell myself to plant them now, trees I mean, and they'll settle in for the long winter's nap, ready to awaken as allowed next spring. As if somehow I might cheat the ebb and flow of sap by a day or so, maybe a week. And so a little closer to a maturity that is a decade off at least.

Even when I'm warned of a late season bloom--Table Mountain sunflowers--the long green stems filled with buds mocked my hopes late into September. Any day now, I reported. Any day. Wait. Wait.

A one-gallon Japanese maple in the spring will not be a three-gallon specimen in the fall. I know, I know, or so I remind myself. Maybe settle it in the ground now, wait a few years, and then dig it up and put it in a five-gallon container on the patio. 

After all, might catch a little extra spring energy. As I look forward. Patiently.

Another Thursday Twofer

                                                                      On Short Fiction

I am fortunate to have a former colleague and dear friend willing to ask, “What’s up with the endings?” as she read some of these selections.

Mad or not, a particular method under-girds this collection of short fiction—often very short. Were I a visual artist I would be inclined by temperament to sketch, to paint miniatures, to experiment.

The deliberate use of the word fictions is to avoid the term story. For me, plot is one framing device, which may or may not be significant to a piece.

Or perhaps my declining attention span is more to the point than any refined aesthetic.

What I hope is readers may be surprised at times, uncertain at times, or comforted, or moved, or disgusted as they will while easing through my work.

I only half-jokingly recommend reading no more than one selection a day.

Thank you in advance. sk

                                        

                                                                  Meal Plan

This kind of thinking comes to me sometimes when I am cooking up a meal for myself. Today, while fixing my lunch—about an hour later than usual—my mind started to put the pieces together. I thought about fixing lunches for Francine and her two kids.

Started up when I pushed my thumb through the plastic wrap on three peppers. They were packaged in a row like traffic light colors. I thought about her kids first—their lunches. Fixing lunches for them. What the other kids would say.

Little Sally, opening up her Ariel lunch box, taking out the bowl, carrying it over to the microwave on the other side of the cafeteria. One of her little girlfriends, looking up from her chicken rings and fries, asking, “Wacha got in there?”

I like to take my thumb and pry out a section of a pepper. Kind of uneven sometimes, but I don’t mind. Then I take the Misono knife my niece gave me—she thinks since I am a civil servant and don’t have any kind of personal retirement plan that I must need a two hundred dollar knife. She gives me a new knife each birthday. Funny thing is, my knives are better than hers by far. I slice up the segments from each pepper and push them to the side on the cutting board.

In the eight-inch skillet, the oil is getting pretty hot, so I scrape up the chopped onion off the cutting board and then push it off the blade with my finger into the oil. Two thin slices of pre-cooked ham are diced and tossed in as well.

Sometimes when I am cooking, I imagine that I am back in the kitchen with Francine—her kitchen—and while something she is preparing is simmering or in the oven, she and I slow dance, maybe to something like some Coltrane ballad, or maybe Coltrane and Hartman. In my mind, she is giggling and then breaks away with a laugh because maybe the lasagna needs to come out.

I check the eight pre-peeled frozen shrimp that are in the colander in the sink. I let some warm water run over them. Sometimes I think about just standing behind Francine when she is cooking, up close, pressing against her, pulling her hair to the side, kissing her on the neck. The she holds up a wooden spoon with some sauce on it—she has to make her own from scratch—and asks me to taste. Mmmm, I always respond. Good, I say.

Francine hasn’t spoken to me in three weeks. What happened was she told me she had a really hard day and when she poured the third glass of wine for herself, I asked her if she really needed another one. She told me not to ever mention anything about having a drink ever again. I was thinking about my brother, an uncle, two good friends who all had two or three at a time until it became five or six. Every single day. I didn’t tell her any of that. I just apologized, but it was half-hearted. And she could tell. We didn’t kiss when I left that night right after dinner. The kids had homework, she said.

Maybe Francine would be sitting in the lunch room at the medical center where she works and one of her work buddies would lean in a bit and catch a whiff of her lunch and ask, “Did Steve really make that for you?” Francine is a pediatric nurse.

Sometimes I think about when she is at the sliding glass door watching my dog chase after squirrels running the fences and how I would lift her hair up from her neck and there would always be some stray little strands that I couldn’t catch, and when I kissed her there, she would say, “Mmmm, that’s nice.”

When the onions and the diced ham seem pretty much cooked through, I toss in the peppers and the shrimp and add half a cup of chicken broth and put a lid over the skillet. It really goes to a saucepan, but I dropped the skillet lid once and it bent so badly that it lets the steam out.

Francine is great to dance with. She lets her head really rest up against my chest and she hums along with the music and we can just turn in a slow tight circle in the kitchen seems like forever.

Once the shrimp are pink, I add a third of a cup of Spanish rice I cooked up two nights ago. I always have a pot of rice to work from. Francine’s son Evan would pick out the shrimp and give them to a pal of his. “Take these,” he will say. “Really?” his friend will say. ”You don’t eat the shrimp?” Maybe Evan will trade them for an extra peanut butter cookie or some fries.

Two days ago I sent Francine a text message wishing Sally a happy 7^th birthday. No reply yet. Of course, I know she was insulted. Wasn’t the first time I mentioned it—but I think in her heart she knows I’m not picking, I’m just worried.

A couple of dashes of Tobasco and my lunch is ready. And it’s good, really, really good.

Ladson 2013

 

 

 

An Index (7)

“The following searchable table displays 100 of America’s most in-demand imported goods during 2019. Shown beside each product label is its total import value then the percentage increase or decrease since 2018.” 

Have to admit Item 8 caught my eye.

Search:RANK	US IMPORT PRODUCT	2019 VALUE (US$)	CHANGE
1	Cars	$179,515,290,000	+0.6%
2	Crude oil	$132,370,663,000	-18.7%
3	Phone system devices including smartphones	$101,893,504,000	-8.4%
4	Computers, optical readers	$91,142,326,000	-2.6%
5	Medication mixes in dosage	$78,878,163,000	+10.1%
6	Automobile parts/accessories	$69,634,459,000	-2.5%
7	Processed petroleum oils	$61,938,363,000	+0.7%
8	Blood fractions (including antisera)	$42,897,133,000	+15.8%
9	Integrated circuits/microassemblies	$33,085,046,000	-4.9%
10	Trucks	$33,075,572,000	+14.7%
11	Turbo-jets	$30,752,537,000	+16.9%
12	Electro-medical equip (e.g. xrays)	$28,016,899,000	+10.7%
13	Miscellaneous furniture	$25,524,241,000	-7.3%
14	Seats (excluding barber/dentist chairs)	$24,755,490,000	-5.5%
15	TV receivers/monitors/projectors	$23,880,012,000	-2.1%
16	Insulated wire/cable	$21,649,452,000	-2.8%
17	Aircraft parts	$20,361,542,000	+5.5%
18	Diamonds (unmounted/unset)	$20,196,920,000	-17.3%
19	Computer parts, accessories	$19,499,377,000	-30.6%
20	Printing machinery	$15,800,960,000	-5.6%
21	Taps, valves, similar appliances	$15,568,569,000	-6.4%
22	Jerseys, pullovers (knit or crochet)	$15,530,369,000	+1.8%
23	Rubber tires (new)	$15,476,108,000	+1.3%
24	Models, puzzles, miscellaneous toys	$15,387,286,000	+4.3%
25	Electrical converters/power units	$15,094,401,000	-1.8%

Blood money becomes an interesting phrase.

"Below are the 15 countries that exported the highest dollar value worth of blood during 2019."

1.    Ireland: US$2.6 billion (29.2% of total blood exports)

2.    United States: $1.8 billion (20.1%)

3.    United Kingdom: $801.5 million (9.1%)

4.    Germany: $777.3 million (8.8%)

5.    France: $537.1 million (6.1%)

6.    Denmark: $500.9 million (5.7%)

7.    South Korea: $250.2 million (2.8%)

8.    Italy: $154.6 million (1.7%)

9.    Jordan: $140.1 million (1.6%)

10. Netherlands: $134.9 million (1.5%)

11. Belgium: $129 million (1.5%)

12. China: $87.3 million (1%)

13. Australia: $79.5 million (0.9%)

14. Poland: $77.8 million (0.9%)

15. Switzerland: $73.1 million (0.8%)