June 5, 2020
I felt like I was at the center of the world today. This is the spot of ground upon which the Minneapolis Police Department murdered George Floyd. Within days there were demonstrations all over the world expressing outrage at yet another murdered unarmed black man and demands for reforms of police departments. Black people were at the center of the demonstration, but there were huge contingents of white people there in support. Also this week, Senator Rand Paul singlehandedly stopped the passage of a bill outlawing lynching. Right here in the twenty-first century.
June 4, 2020
Tonight I watched a few clips of West Wing on YouTube. I haven’t watched that show for six months. Once I watched some every Wednesday afternoon with my mom. I have to start watching whole episodes again. I miss it. For me, and I think a lot of others, West Wing is a fantasy about how the White House might work. Imagine it full of bright, competent people eager to make the lives of Americans better. Now we know it is full of liars, sycophants, thieves, rapists, stooges, and just plain shitty people. So, yeah, I get to immerse myself in fantasy sometimes.
June 3, 2020
I am amazed to see the strength and breadth of the protests of the murder of George Floyd. There have been protests in war-torn Syria. Moscow. London. Paris. Nairobi. It is the most hopeful event I have seen for a long time. A man is killed and tens of millions of people all over the world are outraged enough to go into the streets. They get it. Probably more than I do, which isn’t saying much. One of the weird things about conservatives is that the more people challenge them, the righter they think they are. Mostly conservatives are concerned about how the protests might affect their reelections and how much property is being damaged.
June 2, 2020
John Adams said, “I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.” I want to do something important, but I also must be responsible for my own time. That means that I have to volunteer at my church. I have to contribute to the Minnesota Peace Project. I have to be involved in elections. But all that crap has the status of mowing my lawn, another task I have to do. Had Crazy Ludwig let himself be dragged into peace work and mowing his lawn, the world would be without Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein. Physically it is probably useless, but the palace has provided millions of people with a reminder of the value of fantasy. I will never build anything like it or as valuable. I’ll never write Pride and Prejudice. I’ll never even sing an aria. The very most I think I can do is to experience great culture, because assets like The Goldberg Variations live on only as long as people like me immerse ourselves in those assets. Sometimes I am resentful of demands made on my time for even something as worthy as justice work. For me as a privileged white guy, it’s just more mowing of the lawn.
June 1, 2020
I capture interesting images from the media. In some, content makes the image interesting. Some are simply good photographs. While this one is photographically attractive because of what is called in photographic criticism conceptual contrast, the contrast has special meaning for me because of the context and contrast in attitudes. This picture was taken in the days of rage in Minneapolis subsequent to the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police department. The man in back may be protesting the killing, but he may also be among the right-wing monsters who came to Minnesota to sow mayhem. There are such evil people. The monk is clearly sitting witness peaceably in response to a crime. It interests me that I know what the monk intends, even if he is inexpressive, but I do not know what the angry man is about. He’s probably angry about the murder, but his aggressive response makes him ambiguous to me.
May 31, 2020
Update a week later: Asked about hiding in the bunker, he said that he didn’t go there for safety. He said he went there to inspect it. Does he expect many to believe him?
Here we see how cowardly conservatives are and how cowardly the Orange Filth in particular is. Protests of the murder of George Floyd arrived at the gates of the White House today. And what does the off-brand butt plug do? He scurries into the bunker under the White House and all of the lights are turned off, inside and out. While we know that conservatives in general have problems with light, inside and out, did they think they were somehow more invisible with the lights out? Did they imagine protestors would suddenly be unable to see the White House? Maybe, because there is no such thing as overestimating the stupidity of these people. Can you tell I am angry?
May 30, 2020
I grow so weary of the conflict. Must I really have to persuade anybody that Trump is a horrible person, much less a horrible president? Must I really say that there is a problem with law enforcement killing unarmed black men? Who needs persuading that we need to have and fund the damned post office? When the economy crashes and twenty-five million people lose their jobs and their health insurance in a time of plague, who doesn’t learn that the US must move into the twenty-first century and fund health care the way every other modern country does? Why must I answer the person who says that the solution to more than thirty thousand people losing their lives to gun violence is more guns? Who needs to learn that people who are bullies are bad people regardless of what values they hold, if any? Conservatives want to convert my despair into compliance. I won’t do that but I am sick of conflict.
May 29, 2020
Wow. My town. Who would have ever expected to see Minneapolis on fire. I am more horrified by the heartless murder of one of our citizens at the hands of one of our police officers. The riots are a sign of health to me. These people can see the wickedness of four officers in broad light intentionally murdering a citizen. They knew what they were doing. Bystanders begged for mercy. The cop just stared at them and kept his knee on the neck of the black man. Now five families are destroyed. The family of the murdered man and the families of the four officers. The murderer himself will probably go to jail for five or ten years at least. Even if the others evade justice, they will never work as cops again. And I don’t think we are done with the violence yet.
May 28, 2020
The monster in the picture below has still not been arrested. The mayor of Minneapolis today in a press conference asked why he hadn’t yet. He called on the county district attorney to do that. I do not understand the delay. Maybe there is a legal process to go through. You can be sure that if the cops busted a black man who had just publicly committed murder, he would not have been permitted to leave the site of the crime. Boom. His as would have been in jail. But, since it is a white cop, it doesn’t matter. It makes me angry. People wonder why no one has confidence in institutions any more. Duh.
May 26, 2020
I had hoped that the killing of Philando Castile by a Minneapolis cop in 2016 was an anomaly. This is Minnesota after all, not Alabama. I guess not. Another Minneapolis cop subdued a man and then publicly murdered him. People were standing around him begging him to release that man who said he couldn’t breath. Instead, the cop kept his knee on the windpipe of George Floyd, now dead, for seven minutes. Three other cops stood by and watched it. Now all four cops have been fired and with any luck at least the perp pictured here will be tried for murder. Two families at least are ruined by this one sack of shit. The black man’s family and the family of the damned cop. I want revenge, almost as if that will make any difference. This picture will now become iconic. It is a perfect example of the horrible way the descendants of enslaved people are oppressed in my country. I have no answer to my question of why this happens over and over.
May 25, 2020
One of the things I am most grateful for is that I was born after Shakespeare published his plays, but no so long afterwards that I can’t understand him. I have to work on it, but usually I can learn a play well enough that I can attend it and get it. That’s not true of all of his plays. One that I know well is Midsummer Night’s Dream. I have seen it produced at least ten times. I have read it many times. And tonight I saw a production of it put on at a college somewhere. All of the theater I see these days is streamed to my computer rather than live. The day will come though when I will return to the Guthrie. I can’t wait.
May 24, 2020
Last night and tonight Adele and I watched the UK National Theater production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Wow. Wow. Wow. No wonder we like and now miss theater. This was a vibrant, physical production. I had forgotten how painful the show was. I had forgotten how deeply and swiftly Blanche decays before our eyes. Theater, classical music, and great architecture are the highest expressions of culture. Wow.
May 23, 2020
One of the wonderful things about time in an epidemic is that many organizations are going on line. Many offer free virtual tours. Museums do that, but I have not checked them out. Tourism cities are offering tours on line, places like Venice and Paris. We miss the Guthrie and Jungle productions, so tonight, for the first time, Adele and I tapped into theater. I think it is the National Theater in London that is broadcasting productions. Each week they do a different one. This week is A Streetcar Named Desire. We watched only the first hour, each on our own devices and in the same dark room together. I had forgotten how screwed up Blanche is. It was great. What a play. What a production.
May 22, 2020
In a Zoom meeting with my family, my son chided me for not watching the most recent Marvel movies because I didn’t have three hours to spend watching a movie. He said I had more discretionary time than anyone else on the call. He’s right. I do. I also said that I was sick of watching Marvel movies because they have a thing about killings off characters. Then I shared that I had just finished Harry Potter VII for the fourteenth time. So I may have more discretionary hours than anybody else in the group, but I do not have enough to prefer to watch End Game rather than read HP VII for the fourteenth time.
May 21, 2020
I finished Harry Potter VII tonight. That is my fourteenth time. I finished it again just last February. Why do I never weary of that story? I love the people. I love the story. I love the world she creates. The book is about the three virtues that strike deepest into my heart: Love, courage, and sacrifice. If I could ask Rowling only one question about the series, it would be this: “Hallows” is a verb. That is underscored by the use of the word “deathly” as an adverb. And it works only in plural. “The Deathly Hallow” is awkward. Making it plural restores some sense of it being a verb, yet the phrase is used a a noun through out the book. How did she arrive there?
May 18, 2020
I don’t think a child of a chemically dependent family ever escapes the craziness of such a childhood. This afternoon I had an absolutely horrible encounter with a family member. The only solution for me was to disengage and walk away. When I was ten and the shit hit the fan again, I got on my bike and rode away. Worked then. Worked today.
May 13, 2020
Here is a picture of another kind of life I don’t know much about. I know about needing to mow my lawn and keeping my house clean. I have a set of books I would like to read. I make a point of reading both fiction and nonfiction, both contemporary and classical stuff, art stuff and science stuff. That sort of thing. I don’t have any experience of being put in a huge room with a thousand scary guys, nearly naked, head shaved, tattoos showing, mashed up against others in a time of epidemic, and everybody’s hands on the next guy’s genitals. Way scary. It’s another case of me thinking my life was normal. There is no normal. Jiminy Crickets.
May 12, 2020
Mom does not have the virus. We have dodged a bullet again.
I started a letter to Dan today, but I am probably going to delete most of it. I started writing in a sour mood. I was doing some research on an MPP project about the Oromo people in Ethiopia. The story is that the government of Ethiopia is suppressing the Oromo people. I common story these days. Consider the Rohingya, the Palestinians, and the Kurds. But I find out now that the Prime Minister of Ethiopia is Oromo. WTF? Sometimes I just sick and tired of people.
May 11, 2020
Whatever happened to the comics? I once enjoyed reading them. I found them frequently amusing, but not any more. This is what passes for humor these days:
And a note from Adele: P.S. Funny Myra story for the day. When I called the first time around 7:30 the nurse was actually in Myra's room and she asked if she could put the phone down while she got her settled in. I said sure and then got to listen into the conversation between the nurse and Mumz.
Nurse: Are you comfortable now Myra. Would you like to lay on your side.
Mom: Yes I would like to lie on my side, thank you (with that little tone she gets when providing grammatical correction).
I had to laugh out loud. What a stitch she is. And as weird as all this is for her she hasn't let her grammar slip! Hooray for Mumz!!!
May 10, 2020
Mom went to the emergency room tonight with all of the symptoms of covid. Coughing, reduced oxygen in the blood, elevated temperature, cold to the touch, delirious. I have little hope of ever seeing her again. So blue.
May 9, 2020
Wow. I am in sight of wrapping up the first five months of 2020. How did I let that happen? This year will be historic in many ways and soon it will be over. I am afraid of possibly never seeing my mother again. Who knows how long The Glenn will be locked down? Jeff says that a second person in the facility has tested positive. Old folks residences have been killing fields across the country. Eighty percent of deaths in Minnesota have been in facilities for the elderly. So, yeah, I’m scared. Even if she does not contract the virus, how will she do alone once Jeff leaves? I don’t know, but I am not optimistic.
May 8, 2020
I have always had this weird feeling that nothing happens where I am. I see that more than 70,000 people in the US have now died, died dead, and I look around. My lawn needs mowing. My garage is still a mess. Same books. Same junk in the cupboards and I discover that 70,000 people have died dead away of a pandemic. There’s another war going on the middle east, brown people are killing other brown people. That’s always improved matters in the past so they should probably keep doing that. White people keep shooting unarmed black people and they get away with it. Nothing’s new and nothing is happening near me. I suppose I should be grateful.
May 7, 2020
I hear that ninety percent of brain functioning is like the Trump administration: suppression of information. I get that I needed to be that way six million years ago when sitting in one place and watching a whirl of unorganized reality could have gotten me eaten by something bigger and stronger than I am. But now I sit in a comfy chair in quiet and uneventful Minnetonka. I want to see some of what my brain is suppressing. Long ago I tripped on LSD and I can still remember seeing disturbances in my visual field. Then it was mesmerizing. Today, sober, I can sometimes see some of those same disturbances. I want to relax and see more.
May 6, 2020
The world is probably a much better place than it seems. I get most of my idea of history through the news, though I never watch broadcast news. It’s like the movies. A movie can hardly contain a tenth of what is in a good book. And broadcast news is vulnerable to sensationalism. If it bleeds, it leads. My brother Jeff was visiting our mother in her old folks residence when the virus struck. He has been trapped with her, well, trapped is not the right word. He has chosen to stay with her for several months. He gently tends to her needs. That will never be on the evening news, yet he is one of millions, probably tens of millions, who do that every day. Remember that.
May 5, 2020
I wonder what else his happening in the world today. I read the papers every morning. For a couple months now there has been virtually nothing else but news of the epidemic in the papers. Last year the papers were full of other stuff. I know most of that stuff is still going on, but news of the virus has risen like a fog bank and I can’t see anything. That’s a little unnerving.
May 4, 2020
In my opinion, one of the most evil sacks-of-shit to possess a human body in the last one hundred years is Allen Dulles. I am tempted to go with the old standbys Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mengele, or Göring, but I think not. That few people would pick Dulles indicates what a masterful monster he was. He was the founder of the modern CIA and is responsible for the deaths of thousands. Even his wife referred to him as “The Shark.” His worst crime was his leadership role in the assassination of John Kennedy. Find out more about him in The Devil’s Chessboard by David Talbot.
May 2, 2020
The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil in the Age of Reason. It looked exactly like the kind of book I would like. But I have set it aside because I didn’t expect to learn much from it. It was page after page of white men bickering about the nature of God, almost as if any of them had any information of what they were talking about. I just don’t care.
April 30, 2020
One Sunday during the community prayer time, a woman stood up and said that this was her first visit to St. Luke Presbyterian. She likes being here she said. Shortly thereafter I felt called on to stand and say, “To the person who just spoke and to the young people sitting in the back, it’s good to be here today, but if you want to get to the time when it is really sweet to be in this congregation, stick around for fifteen years.” That drew a laugh. But I meant it and I learned that again this evening. The pastor has asked me to collect statements from people, statements about what they are learning in this time of separation, how they are keeping up their hope and faith, and for what are they grateful. I am also using the opportunity to connect again with people. What I am especially feeling grateful for right now is what feels to me to be a rich and permanent basis for relating to people. I spoke with Jean Worrell tonight who I speak to at any length perhaps only once every four or five months. The catch is that I have been in relation to her now for more than twenty years. When I call, inside of two minutes we are talking as old friends sharing stuff we would probably share with very few people. That is sweet.
April 29, 2020
Two different images. Pro-covid protestors and a baby goat. I have very different reactions to them. The protestors, who deny that the epidemic is real, make me want to spit nails. They make me want to vomit. I like what they are doing insofar as many of them
will contract the virus and, with any luck, will die from it. I am fine with their deaths, it’s called culling the herd, but they are putting all of the rest of us at risk because they have there heads up each other’s asses. The baby goat, on the other hand, makes me relax. I smile and my hope for the world goes up. I want more goats.
April 28, 2020
Yesterday was my father’s birthday. He would have been 99 years old. Mostly he was a sad case. He had accomplished the American dream. Six sons, beautiful, loyal, and brilliant wife, lived in a mansion, in the most prestigious profession at the premier clinic on the planet, and he was profoundly miserable. Part of his problem was that the Mayo Clinic couldn’t recognize pathology in their midst. Another problem was American culture rewarded being spiritually and emotionally destitute. His own parents regarded him as an imposition on their pathetic little lives and finally he just wasn’t much of a person. Now he has been dead longer than he was alive, long enough for the fury at him from his family for the disgraceful way he treated us to devolve into pity and indifference. So sad.
April 27, 2020
The world is full of weird stuff. Now that we are in social distance from one another, people and businesses are using a software package called Zoom to have meetings. Happening as frequently as it does creates a new market. Someone asked, what can I do to make money off this new activity? But, of course. Maybe someone will pay perfectly good money, $50 in this case, to have a miniature donkey named Mambo join a boring work meeting for ten minutes. And now a farmer in North Carolina is doing exactly that. What’s more, companies are purchasing his services. I love life in this world.
April 26, 2020
Thirty-two years ago today my daughter Rosie was born is Seoul, Korea. Rosie was assigned to us in the early summer. Our social worker Jean indicated a photo placed face down on her deck. That’s your child should you accept her. First, she said, she was obliged to tell us that she had some minor health issues. They were minor. Jean said that we would fall in love with Rose the moment we saw her picture so decide to turn over the picture or not. Of course we chose to and Jean was right. We fell in love with Rose the moment we saw her. That has remained true now for thirty-two years. Lucky us.
April 25, 2020
I fell in love with Laura after I divorced my wife Paula. I lived with her briefly until she asked me to move out. This after I had proposed marriage to her. I am a relationship kinda guy. After I moved out, she sold her house and rented another. I helped her move as did a friend of hers. I was still in love with Laura. As the work wound down, somehow the subject of the two of us living together came up. She scoffed at the idea, indicating what a horrible idea that was. I said, “I can imagine worse fates.” Again, Laura scoffed at me. Laura’s friend then admonished her simply by saying her name, “Laura!” I took her meaning to be, “Jeez, Laura. You have here a handsome, kind man saying that life with you would be good and you are laughing in his face? Move over and let me talk to him.” I took that as a an affirmation of my value as a boyfriend and as a man. I don’t remember her name and I have never spoken to her since that night, probably late January, 1984. I have received and felt so few positive responses from women that I remember this one clearly. Thank you, unknown woman, wherever you are.
April 24, 2020
I sat down at this computer this morning to write my friend Karen a letter. Not a letter actually, but a list of the books that have changed how I see the world and myself in it. I found myself having a whole lot more to say than I had expected. Now I really did have a letter. I decided not to send it to her by email, my original intention, but rather print it and mail it to her in snail mail. People don’t read more than a couple dozen words online. I don’t, I know. Paper is different. I really wanted to let her know what I was thinking lately. So paper it is.
April 23, 2020
I am considerably less productive in my life than I could be because I pay attention to logic and the use of language. Periodically, everything stops for me. For example, when Elijah Cummings died, a colleague said about his death that he leaves “an irreplaceable void” in Washington. I think I know what the speaker meant, but that phrase stopped me dead. This morning I stumbled and fell down, figuratively speaking, when I encountered this sentence in the paper: “Gene Hackman has not made a movie in sixteen years and I have spent every minute not forgiving him.” For starters, the writer really needs to get a life. I wondered what his life must have been like. Presumably, he must have sat there - unfortunately a vision of him sitting on the toilet constipated came to mind - working hard, stressing out, continuously endeavoring to not do something. For my part, I have been focused every minute of the last decade, every single day, assiduously not preparing to run a marathon. I’m sore all over. I’ll never do that all over again. Not in a heart beat.
April 22, 2020
I think everybody likes to overhear conversations. I do anyway and I rationalize the slightly rude behavior saying that as a writer I’m not being a voyeur, I’m gathering material. I am trying to internalize how people talk to each other so I can write dialogue. However, I am usually frustrated because often I want to ask the speaker to elaborate, which, of course, I can’t do. I was in a crowd leaving Northrup at the U of M after a lecture. Two twenty-something women walked ahead of me, less than a yard away. One said to the other, “And there I was in front of all of those people, completely naked.” Wait, what?
April 21, 2020
Here’s me being obtuse again. In my freshman year at St. Olaf I knew a woman named Deb Huench. I am probably misspelling her name. Forgive me. We were quite different people. I was a budding, young radical intellectual, full of judgment and full of myself. I must have been tedious to be around. Deb was, and I suppose is, a clear-eyed, strong, quiet person of faith. I’m not sure what she saw in me, but I liked her toughness. We never dated each other, but we did see each other, my memory says, a couple times a week. Typically for lunches or walks. She left at the end of our first year. I had the impression that her family couldn’t afford the private school prices, which in 1970 were about a twentieth of what they are today. I went to see her on the morning she was packing and leaving. We chatted pleasantly for a couple minutes. Then she said she had to go. She paused, looked me straight in the eye, and, unexpectedly, abruptly, and briefly, kissed me right on my mouth. She turned and left. I never saw her again. I hope she did well. I’m sure she did. But that was me, being obtuse again. Who knows what I missed?
April 20, 2020
I frequently wonder where are the people I once knew, people who were once important to me. Today, I remembered Ruth Pralle. We were at St. Olaf together between 1969 and 1973. We were close, but not a couple. She laughed and smiled often, as much from anxiety or embarrassment as from joy. I liked her a great deal, but have had no contact with her now for more than forty-five years. How strange to think of her now nearly seventy years old. Old friends lost make me sad.
April 19, 2020
I find myself paying more and more attention to the past and I am not sure I like that much. I have been sorting through my photo library deleting some as I go. I have begun a long term project - it seems like most of what I do is long term - of listing what has happened in my life: vacations, friends who have come and gone, arrival of children, etc. I am rereading books I have read long ago (The Plague last week and Pride and Prejudice the week before that) and wondering if I am finally done with some books. Will I read The Lord of the Rings again? (I suppose that is a future oriented thought.). I listed the people who are important to me three weeks ago. I wondered if my list will do nothing but shrink over the next twenty years. Most of my vision of the future is no longer hopeful and expansive. Now it seems to be mournful. From here on out, will I be simply taking one loss after another? Who knows?
April 18, 2020
An image from Ben-Hur, a movie I saw sixty years ago, has stayed with me and I think of it most mornings. One dramatic sequence in that movie was the chariot race. If you saw it, you remember that the chariot of the bad guy had blades on the axle which tore up the spokes of other chariots. Today I have a blender with blades that remind me of that chariot. After making a smoothie for breakfast and rinsing off the blades, the easy way to put it away has the blades pointing up. Instead, every morning I return the blades to the base with the blades pointed down and away from me. It’s awkward, but regardless of how I put the blades away most mornings I see a couple seconds of a movie I saw long ago.
April 16, 2020
I wonder what else is going on in the world aside from the epidemic. Virtually all of the news these days is about the coronavirus and what people either are or are not doing about it. Has everything else stopped happening? Probably not. I see many articles about what the “new normal” will be. No one seems to know when that will be. This year? Next year?
April 15, 2020
I just finished reading a wonderful book: The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. I tried to put a picture of the cover here, but this software is impossible to work with. It’s like Ford said of his cars. You can have any color you want as long as it is black. Anyway, read the book.
April 14, 2020
A hundred and eight years ago history’s greatest metaphor sank beneath the waves. Other disasters have killed more people, the Johnstown flood of 1889 killed 2,200 people, for example. Uncountable numbers of ships have sunk over the millennia. Instances of stupidity, pride, ignorance, and malignance killing innocent people are daily occurrences. Why did this one stick? I suppose there is drama in a huge ship racing across a still ocean after midnight. Maybe it is simply the name itself: The Titanic.
April 13, 2020
I just saw a long article about how Bill Gates is intentionally killing people using vaccines. Somebody has way too much time on their hands.
April 12, 2020
Though great suffering happens all around me and beyond, I am happy. Call me delusional. I hear many people are bored at home. I know nothing about boredom. I hear couples are having to adjust to being around one another without conflict. Not me. Adele and I are very happy together. I have more than what I need. It’s a little scary. I still live in the vale of tears.
April 11, 2020
I was never a very good student at St. Olaf. Splendid opportunities abounded, but I missed most of them, just as I missed the expressed interest of women toward me in those years. So LeRoy says anyway and I trust him because I know that he loves me and that I can be obtuse on such matters. I was a philosophy student who really needed a professor to sit me down and demand what the hell I thought I was doing proposing to be a philosophy student. The issue came up for me again today when I was reading Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. The book started well for me, but then it descended into page after page of bickering between various traditions of Judaism. Were I studious I would attempt to follow the arguments, but I am not. I don’t care. I have a very slight interest in the history of bickering, but none of them have anything to teach me. Maybe they do, but I am simply not willing to wade into the muddy swamp of these confused lines of arguments. I. Just. Don’t. Care. I must have been an exasperating student for some teachers, but I didn’t have the time or a shortage of alternatives then or now.
April 10, 2020
The best thing I have seen on the web in response to the plague: Two factors influence the spread of the coronavirus: How dense the population is and how dense the population is. I go out only when I have to. Today I bought food and mailed in my taxes. I am amazed to see how many people are acting like we are not in the midst of a global pandemic. I expect Republican governors to be stupid. They are refusing to order a lock down. But I see people moving about in stores with no masks and no concern of their closeness to other people. On my way home, I saw eight shirtless boys playing basketball in the park. Breathing hard and banging into one another. WTF? The same delusions that prompt people to be conservative are prompting them to make other stupid choices. One is that they imagine that they are different from other people. Only other people get sick, get poor, are racist, or have accidents. The other is fatalism. I have heard people preparing to be organ donors say that they do not bother wearing helmets when the ride motorcycles because, “When my number is up, it’s up.” That’s moronic. Fortunately such behavior has the longterm effect of making the human race smarter by culling the dumb ones. Here’s a picture of dense people being dense on spring break in Florida during the epidemic. Really. This is not a generic picture of a beach.
April 9, 2020
I am not a contrarian. For me there is no value in pissing off or alienating other people. Believe it or not, there are people who find pleasure in pissing off people. Some of them find confirmation of their opinions by finding themselves opposed by most other people. That is a dependence on other people I do not have. However, I do guide myself with some principles that disrupt the power of the community to coerce or narrow what I see. When everybody seems to be focused on something, look elsewhere. And look for what I can not see. Despite those efforts, I am frequently blindsided. I was in Europe during the 2016 election season. I reassured people that there was no way the Orange Filth would win. I was flabbergasted when he did. I had simply underestimated the ignorance, stupidity, and bile of white America. Similarly, I was astonished when Reagan won. That election taught me that I was a completely unreliable source for information about who might win an election. I also learned that America has the capacity to elect absolutely anything. I am still stunned to discover that there are enough horrible people to possibly reelect the orange off-brand butt plug.
April 8, 2020
Now that Bernie has dropped out, I am anxious that many of his followers will throw away the good because they can’t have the great. I hope that they see that we live in a binary world now. They can help Biden get elected or they can help Trump get elected. Those are all of the options.
April 7, 2020
One of my favorite wise sayings: I traipse through my days feeling sorry for myself and all the while the great spirit hurls me across the sky. I have no theology, but my metaphysics doesn’t admit anything like a great spirit. However, I understand the intent of the words. I am reminded of a story I read in the Onion humor page. The man is identified as one of the descendants of the people who crossed the Bering Straits when it was a land bridge. He hunted wooly mammoth. Tonight, though, he thinks he will pick up a movie on the way home and get some Chinese takeout.
April 6, 2020
I have been grasping toward a different approach to the world around me. I am consumed with politics and news. I don’t like who I am when I do that. Because I am angry, combative, and analytical so much, I am intentionally turning to cultural affairs in an effort to get more grounded and peaceful. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and now reading The Plague by Albert Camus are turning my attention toward larger more important concerns. Listening to The Goldberg Variations by Bach pulls me out of the mundane world altogether. I desire being less agitated and fearful.
April 5, 2020
One of the things about my life that makes me anxious is that everything seems to be happening in some other place than where I am. No terrorist strikes. No pandemic to anyone I know. No border problems. I am not aware of any white supremacist or even Trump people near me. (I unfriended one kook I used be friends with when he told me that Hillary was taking over the world, probably with George Soros, the Jews, and East Coast elitists.) No floods. No wild fires. No war. No gangs. No nothin’. I know that this happens in my world and I wonder when it is going to be my turn.
April 4, 2020
I can be such a sap. I just finished reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I’ve read it before, but as with all great books, I get something new out of it with every reading. This time I was aware of how bold, witty, and smart Elizabeth Bennet is. Certainly she must be Austen projected into her own book just as Hermione is Rowling projected into the Harry Potter books. In the last two days I have watched the 2005 movie version of the book. Here’s the sappy part: I watched it twice and each time I teared up just where Hollywood intended me to. The writers and director took liberties with the novel. They had to. For starters, no movie can cram into itself even a tenth of what is in most great books. Even I would tire of a twenty-hour movie, which a full rendition of P&P would require. I was even okay when Hollywood shoehorned Hollywood junk into the movie, specifically the final five minutes. More than okay. Besides, I could stare at Kiera Knightley all day long. She has an endearing twinkle about her eyes that melts me every time. See it as she leaves Darcy behind after their accidental encounter at Pemberley.
April 3, 2020
Once after parallel parking in downtown Minneapolis, the man in the car just in front of mine got out of his car and walked toward mine. Oh, no. Did I park too near his car? He was a big, muscular guy with tattoos. His head was shaved. His clothes were ratty. The sleeves had been torn off to give a tough-guy look. Did I mention he was bigger than me? As he approached, I rolled down my window. He stepped close and said, “Hey, buddy. I have an extra forty-five minutes on my meter, but I am outta here. Pull forward after I leave and you can have ‘em.” Exhales. Smile. “Thanks.”
April 2, 2020
I like to take pictures that are disorienting to the viewer, not because I want to confuse her and not because I want to make her work. Here’s why: Sometimes in my photo class - temporarily shut down - the teacher has asked us to introduce the rest of the class to a photographer. Typically, in my presentation, I describe a little of the history of the photographer, take a shot at the style of her photography, and then show some examples. Once I chose Jessica Lange. (I get grumpy sometimes when I find someone like Lange who has way more beauty, talent, and creativity than the rest of us. Well, okay, more than me anyway.) I immediately ran into a problem. I could find no secondary sources about her work. I couldn’t find anyone to tell me what to think. Oh, no. I had to experience her pictures and respond to them all on my own. I did, and it taught me to respond to all art work before I expose myself to someone else’s assessment. For example, I no longer accept audio guides in museums. Now, in my own work, I offer little help to people viewing my photos even to the point of removing pointers from within the picture itself. If the picture can’t stand for itself, it’s not much of a picture
April 1, 2020
I’m a total sucker for the combination of love and courage in literature. A splendid scene in The Lord of the Rings is an example. Shelob has stung Frodo and Sam believes him to be dead. He takes the ring and Sting, Frodo’s sword/dagger, and proposes to move forward on the mission they had been on. Then he discovers that Frodo is alive. Without a moment’s thought, Sam changes plans. He apologizes to Gandalf and the other leaders, throws over the quest completely, and seeks to find and rescue Frodo. His love for Frodo dismisses all other concerns. Every time I read that passage, I tear up. Love and courage. Does anything else matter?
March 31, 2020
I am beginning to get coronavirus fatigue. A month ago it appeared in the papers every day. Now almost nothing in the paper is about anything else. I have learned what I need to do to protect myself and, as they say, “flatten the curve.” Now I read headlines only in most articles about the plague. It’s spreading. People are dying more and more. Trump’s doing a superlative job of protecting us. It’s not news to me anymore.
March 30, 2020
I had forgotten how much I like Pride and Prejudice. Austen has extraordinary command of English. If for no other reason than to submit myself to magnificence of her sentences, I will return to this book. I start at the beginning of one, it swings and turns like a ballerina, swoops once or twice and dives for the end which wraps up the thought snugly like the solid landing of flip by Simone Biles. I read non-fiction mostly, but I must return to good fiction.
March 29, 2020
The news is unrelentingly horrible. And the stuff not getting reported and more terrible than the plague doesn’t stop. Saudis are killing Yemenis with US weapons. Global warming goes on. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Republicans continue to trash our democracy. Conservatives of South Dakota are denying Native Americans the vote because they do not have the correct residence papers. And they don’t get or care about the trenchant irony. After the 2004 election, I was so disillusioned that I determined to retreat into something apolitical and cultural. Classical literature I thought. I chose badly however. I read The Plague by Albert Camus. I learned a little and chose Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen this time, though I intend to read The Plague again soon. I need to immerse myself in another time and place. Yes, there are shallow, self-absorbed sacks-of-shit in the novel, but nothing like the monsters I read about in the papers every day. Being ill-informed any time is irresponsible, and totally is these days, so I keep up with the news, but I am taking some breaks from the gloom.
March 28, 2020
In a time of plague, I need to remember that marvelous events continue to happen amidst all of the fear, anxiety, deception, and posturing. I have just returned from two months in Long Beach, CA, where Adele and I go to get away from the cold and the dark in Minnesota. Well, Adele goes there for that reason. I go because I won’t be separated from her. While there, perhaps once a week, we were treated to the sight of a flock of parrots. Yes, parrots. Jabbering, green parrots. They have become a permanent resident of California. As permanent as anything is these days, anyway. They may have migrated from Central America to California, assisted by humans transplanting their sources of food, decorative yard plants for people and food for the birds. They may have escaped from or been released by humans. Seeing them fly about on their own business brings joy, lightness, and peace to my heart. Thank you, birds.
March 27, 2020
There is so much that is terribly sad in a time of plague. There was a well-liked man who lived in Virginia. He contracted covid-19 and died shortly thereafter. He had been isolated in a hospital room which means he probably died alone. That’s sad. His daughter was not permitted into his room so she was denied an opportunity to say good-bye. That’s terribly sad. His name was Landon Spradlin. He was a conservative minister - also sad - who attacked the media for its coverage of the plague. He said they were exaggerating the severity of the epidemic in an effort to degrade respect for Trump. (How you degrade respect for him, I don’t know.) It is sad that Spradlin diminished concern for the plague because others, who knows how many, acted carelessly, caught the bug, and might die because he was an idiot. That they infected others is sad. Then other people went to his Facebook page and mocked his family and insulted the dead man. That’s cruel. And it’s sad that people can be so heartless. When I repeated this story to others, they laughed. Irony and instant kharma are funny, but the center of the story is a foolish man who got sick and died. Sad. Sad. Sad. There’s a reason this place is known as the vale of tears.