Happy Thanksgiving

You know the food is delicious when there's barely room for the turkey on the plate.  

After the feast,  we came home to this. 

Wishing you a happy and peaceful Thanksgiving weekend,  filled with local shopping (using cash) and lots of love.

Cccccold

FlapJilly didn't need a jacket because it was only 44 degrees outside. Her Cubs sweatshirt would be fine, if only she could find an umbrella. 

In Arizona, we'd be sending her to wait for the bus in not only a jacket but with a scarf, a hat, and mittens. 

The humidity is 98%, according to one of the many electronic listening and informing machines in my daughter's home.  The air is thick and almost visible. 

Back in Tucson,  it is also 44 degrees and 98% humidity. But it's warming up to the 70's and there's not a scintilla of rain in the forecast. 

But there's no puppy in Tucson, no grandkids or adult kids, no swarm of hugs or pleas to play hide and seek or follow a treasure map, no tween discussing algebra or the Revolutionary War. 

It seems like a fair trade. 

Traveling for the Holiday

We are flying from a small airport to a small airport, albeit that our pilots are protesting poor wages and benefits.

We are leaving sunny and 65 for overcast and 31.

The plane begins boarding 45 minutes before takeoff; considering the number of wheelchair passengers that usually travel this route that is a very brief window.

I paid an extra $32 for extra leg room, an extravagance once upon a time but now more of a necessity as old body parts require space.

We land mid-afternoon, late enough for Little Cuter to get us at the airport and early enough that the grandkids will be home from school and awake.  Given the bizarre flight schedules Allegiant Air creates, this is a highly unusual and thouroughly delightful situation.

If I am dilatory about posting, please forgive me this week.  There are a lot of hugs to be gotten and given. 

The American Revolution

Ken Burns is at it again.  

His PBS series was ten years in the making.  It's voiced by Josh Brolin and Meryl Streep and Michael Keaton and Amanda Gordon etc etc etc. reading letters home and Pennsylvania's Constitution and military communiques.  

Without photographs he relies on portraits and interpretations new and old; the project exists on many levels all at once - narration, background music, and the visuals.  It's hard to do anything but watch the screen; multi-tasking is not advised.

He brings you real people with real flaws.  Enslavers wrote about freedom and independence and liberty.  Personal slights, giant egos, recalcitrance and inaction on the field and in the Congress - some of it is really hard to watch.  

I found myself wishing for the story I learned in school.  I wanted ideals and courage and victories without any of the disturbing pieces shattering the illusion.  Too bad, that ship has sailed.  What I got was unvarnished pieces of information derived from the original sources.  

After only three episodes, TBG and I are wondering what the world would look like if Abigail Adams had been elected President.  I didn't know that Washington trounced the British at Trenton with only one third of the troops he expected.  I relived childhood vacations in upstate New York, racing around Fort Ticonderoga with very little consideration of its pivotal role as the British fleet floated down river.  

Ken Burns does his homework and he's happy to share.  

******

Here's a wonderful interview, if you want more.

A Lunch Date

It sprinkled and then it drizzled and then there was an outright downpour.  A gardener draped her jacket over my head because I don't want to see you be wet but it was all to no avail.  I was soaked and I was going home.

I checked to be sure it was possible, then met TBG at honme to share the plan.  Flu (extra strength) and COVID (Moderna) shots at Albertsons, then lunch. No appointment or prescription or co-pay needed,  just come on over.  

So,, we did.  

We filled out the paperwork so Medicare would accept it, waited for five minutes while it was processed and the vials were prepared, sat one after the other, and took our medicine like grown ups.... much to the amusement of the similarly aged couple on the two other chairs.

We laughed about what a lunch date looked like these days.  

Rememberinng the instructions from our first COVID vaccination. we kept our injected arms in motion as we drove and then ordered and ate.  Midway through, we took Advil.  All the way along, we shared our syptoms.  They were happening to each of us at the same time.  Throbbing and itching and heat and as the sensations moved along our arms it was obvious that we'd gotten the same ingredients and that we'd lived together for a very long time.

We finish each other's sentences, often knowing what the sentence will be before it's spoken aloud.  We know when the other is hungry and we usually have exactly the same food in mind.  We make the same assumptions and connections without exchanging a single word.  

All that, and yet we've never mimicked each other's symptoms.

It might mean something.  It might not.  But it's what's on my mind and I thought I'd share.  

A Day of Images

There were so many similarities and so many contradictions to the images.

There was friendship and solidarity and speechifying. 

It was the same and it was different.

Le Monde

Gulf News

The same but different.

My head hurts.

I Am Too Old For This World

Sixty or so years ago, TBG made this pump lamp at summer camp.

Today, the squiggly light bulb (which replaced the regular kind of light bulb we'd been using our entire lives) burned out.  

That's what we used to say when the filament in the regular kind became disengaged and discolored.  I don't know if the squiggly bulb has the same internal mechanism; its surface is opaque. I use burned out idiomatically these days,  I guess.

I went to the light bulb drawer in the garage and found this:

The pump lamp lives on TBG's nightstand so. a soft,  2700k output is perfect.  The Estimated Energy Cost of $0.96/ year made me smile.  So far, so good.  

I unscrewed the squiggly one and inserted the new one and unfolded the box to recycle it. As Big Cuter often reminds the world, if there are words, we will read them.  And so,  walking to the kitchen,  I read the verbiage. 

There were instructions.  

This was not a "how many old people does it take to change a lightbulb" joke.....or was it?  TBG postulated that it was a halogen bulb, but halogen's not a word on the box.  

Instead, I read "digital device" and I stopped in my tracks.  

The lightbulb, a concept that has been illuminating the indoors without much effort or interaction with its environment since 1879, now needs a manual and a decoder ring.  

Honestly, I am just too old for this world.

*****

I used AI for the first time today, opting for it to do its magic on the electric cord on the right edge of the photo.  The bottom left corner has a disclaimer.

A disclaimer.  

I am definitely too old.

 

A Modern American Feast

Brother surprised me with a phone call today.  Was he interrupting football?  Yes, thankfully.  

The first topic on his mind was Miss Stella, my precocious Garden Leader.  We laughed and loved about her and gardening and soil deliveries and nieces and daughters and fathers and mothers.  He's very good at connections.

We moved on to planning a visit while we are all in and around Chicago for Thanksgiving, and then he told me a story about his upcoming Thursday Spectacular Feast.

Turns out that his niece and her husband bought a beautiful four story brownstone right across the street from his daughter's coach house, without knowing that a cousin was right there already.  This is a happy coincidence.

So far everyone involved is still talking to one another, ans so the extended families will be celebrating together, in the new brownstone.

At the table there will be some Jews, a Muslim, and some of unknown affiliations.  There will be some who keep kosher and some who eat halal foods, some vegans, some vegetarians.  

Apparently, a turkey on the table will be acceptable.  The spiral ham, however, is not.  It will remain in the kitchen.  This is something on which everyone agreed.

Truly a modern American feast.  

Ouch

Advice for today - Do not get in the way of a football thrown by a 3rd grader.  

Better advice - Do not try to catch it when you are holding something in your dominant hand.

I share this advice from (p)ersonal ex(p)erience.  My (p)inkie took the brunt of the ball(')s im(p)act.

There aren(')t a lot of keys that use the (p), but the exit key is there at the end of every sentence.  After the first (p)eriod I ty(p)ed I realized that something had to give.  Hence, the (p)'s;  the brackets reflect the fact that I had to find an alternative method of entering that key.

And so, although there are emails and $500,000 rewards baked into the theoretically clean bill and so much more, I am going to give myself the night off.  Avoiding using my little finger is doable but no fun at all.   

I am going to soak my joint in ice water.

A Beautiful Day In The Garden

Once again, there was no running water in Grandma's Garden.  

This is some of the Bucket Brigade.

After several years, our Dollar Store watering cans are on their last legs.

This gardener figured out a way to save every drop .

Yes, he was very proud of himself.

Our produce is producing prodigiously this year, mostly because I didn't allow any tastes until the plants were settled and growing new leaves.  Now we have so much lettuce that there's a full leaf for anyone who wants a taste.  The butter lettuce was a big hit, but only one scholar wanted to eat the one big leaf on the who-knows-what lettuce hovering over the oregano.

 There were great differences of opinion on the garlic chives - spicy, awful, garlic-y, mmmmm good, NO!  The chocolate mint is a big hit, with easy to pick individual leaves spreading out in a tire masquerading as a flower bed.  

The onion bulbs are beginning to sprout scallions, both in the garden and in the cups the scholars took home a few weeks ago.  The radishes and carrots are sending up pretty little true leaves, the precursors to the greenery that will let us know that the veggie is growing nicely.

It's hot and it's dirty and I love every minute of it.

I Just Don't Know

Angus King said that the shutdown wasn't getting the job done.

Tim Kaine said it hurt to sit next to his constiuents in church and hear them say they were unable to feed their families.  

Bernie Sanders said that the Democrats gave in to a bully and accomplished exactly nothing about health care.  

Adelita Grijalva said “A promise for a vote is no guarantee that relief will come, and means little coming from leaders who blocked my swearing in and continue to protect Trump at any cost.”

TBG says the pain is not worth continuing the fight when there is no end in sight and no real hope that anything meaningful will pass both houses.

I feel slighted and disrespected and cancelled.  Standing on street corners, writing postcards, blogging, sending (small) donations - all for what?

I'm glad that furloughed federal workers will be reinstated and that they and the essential workers will receive their back pay.  I'm glad that (the smaller number of ) SNAP recipients will, sometime this month, find money on their debit cards. 

I'm torn between laughing and crying at the thought that any adult - hell, any reasonably aware 6th grader - could believe in a pinky promise from the feckless Republican leadership.

And if the restoration of the ACA subsidies somehow manages to pass the House, who doubts that the malignant narcissist, though often asleep behind the Resolute desk, would wake from a deep sleep to slash a VETO with his sharpie.  That grudge against Obama is never going away.

If there's a good reason I'm missing, please let me know.  If there's a Democrat with a clearly stated rationale for Leader (?) Schumer allowing (orchestrating) this situation I'd love to hear it. 

For now, I just don't know how I feel.

Thank A Veteran

I never identified with the kind of person who would take up arms to defend a cause.  I never thought of myself as a person who would die for an idea.  

I wondered what it took to create that kind of dedication to something other than a loved one. I never doubted that I'd throw myself in front of a tiger rushing at their faces.  I couldn't imagine that a concept could have that much power.

I stood in awe of those who took an oath and swore to protect me and the Constitution, all at the same time.  I never worried about my safety; the world's mightiest military stood between me and any threat.

Plus, who doesn't like looking at a dress uniform on a ramrod straight body?  I know I do.

So I am now and always have been grateful to Kevin and Terry and Aaron and Amy and everyone else who is the kind of person who can care enough about an idea to put their life at risk.  

But, as democratic norms crumble, I'm beginning to understand the urge. 

On The Sun - A Snippet

Watching the San Francisco 49ers embarrass themselves in their San Jose stadium,  we were struck by the sunlight.

Attempts were made by four over-educated adults, none seemed just right. Comparisons to Tucson were inevitable; harsh and unrelenting were tossed into the mix until Not-Kathy came to her defense.

I love our sun. It's always there, never gloomy grey for days in end,  and it.... it.... it makes no apologies for itself. It is what it is.

As I cry/laugh/scream at the video of FFOTUS napping behind the Resolute Desk during a meeting on dementia and the preventive effects of healthy habits while promoting a weight loss product sold by his eponymous drug distribution organization it is lovely to contemplate descriptions of the sun

The Further Adventures of Miss Stella, Garden Leader

Over the last week or so, ever since we planted the raised beds, I am greeted with watered plants and a raked footpath when I open the garden gate .  Mr. Guy, the landscaper, told me he'd been watering every morning in case the supply line was cut again.  I assumed he raked as a favor.  After all, everyone loves our garden.

Today, though, the truth was revealed.  Unbeknownst to me, my enthusiastic 5th grader has upgraded herself to my assistant.  It's working out quite well.

Miss Stella called out to me as she approached the gate, annoucing her presence with panache.  She swept into the space, a force of nature, carefully eyeing her surroundings.  I was busy handing out seeds and rescuing the hose from overly invested eight year olds.  When I looked up, I was stunned.

Watering cans were being filled, tools were being gathered, ollas were being filled, and two newbies were raking in the restricted area.  Still sorta speechless, I asked them why they were in there.  Stella told us to rake this, Miss.

By that point, Miss Stella had my full attention.  

Let me give you my report.  Janet and I watered all your plants and raked this morning. We showed Mr. Playground Monitor my Garden Leader card and told him we had permission to go in and he said okay.

Mr. P.M. is not a man to allow unusual activity when he is in charge.  That she got away with this without my talking to him first is remarkable.  That she took a friend in with her pushes this close to a miracle.

I'm playing mahjong tomorrow morning.  I won't be in the garden, but I'm not worried.  Apparently, I have a capable assistant.

Something's Changed

The world seems like a better place this morning.  I did absolutely nothing to make it so, but I'm claiming the win anyway.

I have been so disappointed in Americans for such a long time; the lifting of the weight is palpable.  My shoulders aren't hunched up around my ears; today, my step feels lighter.  

Exit interviews were with voters stunned that life had turned very dark, very quickly, for them, not just for the other.  Nobody likes socialism until the well runs dry.

The passage of every school budget override in and around our town; young people engaged in the process; more votes cast in NYC's five boroughs than any election since 1969; Californians doing more than just whining about Republican redistricting - there were so many places to find joy.   

How I know this? For the first time in exactly one year, I was able to listen to the news in my car.  FFOTUS's reelection made me realize that I couldn't have his inanity and criminality and impunity inserted into my space; rage has no place behind the wheel.  

Today, though, I drove happily, windows down, as familiar voiced were, once again, telling me wonderful things.

And I was smiling.  

FlapJilly likes middle school.  

Her mother and I are bemused.  Neither of us liked middle school.  Neither of us know anyone except TBG who liked middle school, and he liked it because he was captain of every sports team and president of every class and club and because he was taller (although skinnier) than most of his peers.

But FlapJilly goes off every morning with a smile on her face, and she returns the same way.  She is not bothered by the nonsense that tortured me when I was 11.  She has softball friends and elementary school friends.  She's on the President's Honor Roll, with her perfect attendance and 4.0 GPA, but only knew about that honor because a friend mentioned it to her.  

Her mother would have loved that announcement, would have shared it far and wide... or at least as far as her parental units.  FlapJilly mentioned it only in response to her mom asking if anything surprising happened at school that day.

She even likes walking down the halls between classes.  She and Gimbels, a bff since first grade, trade high fives as they pass one another.  Yesterday, Gimbels switched it up a bit; she added Hey, I like your knees.

FlapJilly laughed. Little Cuter laughed.  I laughed.

What I would have given for a friend like that when I was in 6th grade.  Oh, what I would have given.

There Are Elections

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.  

I suppose I should trust that our most cherished institutions will hold.  

A Senior Judge in DC shut down the White House's attempt to intervene, reminding them that it's written in the Constitution that elections are run by the states.  

That judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, sits in an office on Constitution Avenue, a fact which made me smile as I addressed a postcard thanking her for doing just that.  

There are two women running for Governor of their states, and somehow their gender doesn't seem to be a core issue.  

That's another fact which makes me smile, and smiles have been in short supply recently.  

FFOTUS bragged about acing his MRI while the rest of us wonder what prompted the doctors to order it.  Apparently, death by drone is lawful even though the DOD lawyers didn't show up to the briefing to tell our representatives why.  A trans woman is the proud new madam of a brothel in Amsterdam and I have no idea how she showed up in my Substack feed.

And still, there are elections.  For today, at least, the center holds.

Another Sign Is Needed

(Written on Oct. 30th)

I spent my blogging time wondering about my sign for tomorrow.  Once again, protesters will be outside Rep. Juan Ciscomani's office at 8am.  I'm not sure who is organizing it.  I'm not sure if there is a theme.  I could find the invitation but I'm not that motivated.  

I called his DC office today and had a polite conversation with a staffer.  

• Yes, the Congressman is forgoing his salary during the shut down. 
• No, he has no specific plan to reopen the government.
• He is meeting with the Speaker and other Members trying to fix the problem.   

I'm all out of clever ideas to describe the insanity of denying food to anyone, let alone children and the sick and the elderly, especially when there are billions of dollars sitting in a contingency fund set up for crises such as these.

I cannot think about the fact of the destruction of the East Wing, let alone look at the pictures.  No way I want to carry a sign about it.

One thing has been bugging me since his election,  He is totally unavailable.  One virtual town hall was free.  Everything else he's done has had a fee or a membership requirement.  And so, I created this:

Cousin #1 and I will be standing on the street until it's time to meet Cousin #2 and Dr. K for mahjong.  

Arts and crafts, friends, games.... it's a great start to the weekend.

(There were 50 or so of us old folks out there,  doing our parts to save democracy.)