The loss of Thanksgiving

We are not alone in declaring our love for Thanksgiving. A non-secular holiday where one can gather with family, friends, strangers even and share food, stories, love and warmth.  

Not this year. This is one more thing that has been stolen from us in 2020. From St. Patrick's Day going forward, everything we looked forward to has been torn away. No spring, everyone is sequestered in their homes. No holidays, no Memorial Day or July 4th because we cannot gather, and when some people did, more people got sick. No summer because of no gatherings, because it was too damned hot and because fire season started early. No summer barbeques, no picnics, too many Red Flag Warning days and Spare the Air days. 

Then finally, when the best months of the year arrived - October and November - there was still no joy because of multiple fires, many evacuations, more heat, and the unsettled situation around the Presidential election which still makes our collective guts clench in rage, fear and depression.  And then we have Thanksgiving, again usurped by this fucking virus, or more to the point, by the fucking idiots who don't wear masks and think it's fine to hang out in groups and spread the virus to anyone in their path.  This is all depressing at best. It's paralyzing and isolating and pathetic. I haven't talked to a single person in the past month who isn't going through some kind of depression, a lack of joy for anything.

Yes, we can try to be bright and Pollyanna-ish and we can be grateful that most of us don't know anyone firsthand who has died from Covid (but everyone know someone who has had it) but that fake upbeat mood doesn't do enough to mitigate the incessant fear and anxiety that still surrounds us. Not having an end to the election  doesn't help one bit, either.

I have no ideas of how to get oneself out of this circling the drain. I am in that circle of depression myself. All we can do is hold on, hope and be kind to everyone we meet with the thought that some of that kindness might come back to us, and in the end, it might help. Something needs to help. This situation is not sustainable.

Thank  you for listening.

Netflix movie: Stranger Than Fiction

 We all need to watch something other than MSNBC or CNN right now. There isn't going to be a peaceful transfer of power,  no forthcoming agreement from the Republicans that Trump lost the election.  It's going to be a nasty battle.  But we can take our minds off of the prevailing fight and wait for the courts to reassure everyone that the election was fair and just.  And this movie is one to watch for that diversion.

The cast is stellar: Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Queen Latifah. The story is good: a writer with writer's block starts talking about the book she is writing and narrating the character's life and that character turns out to be a real guy and he can hear her!  Yes, it sounds far fetched but it seems quite plausible when it's on the screen in front of you. Harold Crick (Will Farrell) is a very OCD kind of guy, works for the IRS, never deviates from his straight and narrow path until he has to audit a wild-child owner of a bakery.  And then his life goes down a much wider and wilder path. 

Bottom line, it's a love story of sorts. Great dialogue, great goofy performances from Hoffman and Thompson and a couple of scenes that will break your heart. Watch it.  Free on Netflix, a couple of bucks on Amazon.  Worth every cookie dollar you spend.

Plus you get this:  https://youtu.be/bFU545ZtOpE

Copy and paste that into your browser and listen to it.

Have a good week.

I'd go the whole wild world just to find her.

Or this:  https://youtu.be/cYGakznEllM

November 7

 I am not home so cannot write much on my phone but I simply want to acknowledge, in writing, the relief of this day with Biden’s election. We feel like we can breathe for a minute after holding our breaths for the past 4 days. Biden’s Presidency will not repair the damage to our democracy but that healing can begin. We need to be vigilant and work hard for the Democrat party in the next four years to prevent another Fascist from assuming power in 2024. 

Raise a glass to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris tonight. What a journey they have had, along with all of us Americans.

Trial of the Chicago 7

Netflix is available to most everyone for a small monthly charge. Seriously, if you are not a subscriber of Netflix, you are wasting your money on some other TV delivery system and it will never be as good or have as many options.  Yes, some of Netflix is pandering, some is boring but some is really good.

"The Trial of the Chicago 7" is one of those Netflix shows that come around now and then and needs to be watched. This is not a drawn-out documentary, this is one movie, a bit longer than two hours but captivating for every minute of those two hours.

Many of you remember the Chicago riots in 1968, the run-up to the Democratic convention in that city, the terrible year the US had had up to that point.  Started out in January with the Tet offensive in Vietnam, hundreds of attacks by North Vietnam on South Vietnam. Thousands of lives were lost but more than that, the US attitude on the war started to turn. (Thankfully.)  It was a depressing and clear moment: the US could not win this war.

Three months later, in April, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis.  As shocking as this was, the riots that soon followed were an aftershock of this horrible event. Riots on the East Coast, in Washington DC, in Chicago and in the south were violent and they lasted for days. 

On June 5, two months after Martin Luther King Jr was murdered, the hope of millions in the world, Robert Kennedy, was assassinated  in Los Angeles. He was the hopeful front-runner to secure the nomination for President that year and his death sent the United States and a lot of the world into a tailspin. 

Then came the Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago. The atmosphere was incredibly tense and into that stepped Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, outlandishly out-there Yippies,  trying their best to upset the American norm. Add to that the militaristic tactics of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, the huge and nasty fight between Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and the delegates from both sides, it's no wonder that things would escalate to the point of rioting.

And so it did.....and with that very limited background, it is no wonder that several of the far left leaders were arrested and brought to trial for conspiracy and inciting a riot. 

OK, back to the movie at the top of this blog. It's on Netflix. It is really good and pretty true to the facts. When I taught history, no matter if I was supposed to teach only up to 1950 or 1920 or whatever, I ALWAYS taught 1968.  I added it in as a large footnote because it is seminal to how we are now. (Well, pre 2016, I must say.) It was a year of trauma, war, death, free speech, loss of leadership and reaction to all of that and more. It was the beginning of the loss of faith in our country and the start of the cynicism that is now the reality. 1968 shaped attitudes in the US as no other year had since possibly 1929.

I digress. "The Trial of the Chicago 7" is a good movie. For many of us, it will take us back to that time and give us a little hint of why we need to still stand up for free speech, free actions and why causes matter. The acting is excellent and the cast is perfect. A lot of the dialogue came from the court records and from what I read, there isn't a lot of license taken with the events of that time.

Thank you for reading. Watch the movie. VOTE!  (I know, in California that is preaching to the choir.)  If you know anyone in the other states, call them and tell them to vote, unless they are Trump supporters, then drive to their house and steal their mail-in ballot.  Hold on to whatever good thoughts you might have for this November 3 election.  Whatever voodoo dolls you have, whatever saints you pray to, whomever you bribe, do it. We need evil to be overcome by fair play.  We need decency restored to this country. Bottom line, we need to live in a democracy, not a fascist state.  

xo

 

 

Trying but not suceeding

 Seriously, folks, I am trying to come up with things to write about here but I am failing. Everything weighs me down, as I am sure it does you. With the repeated Red Flag Warnings, the repeated warnings about Covid, the repetitive crap about the election, over and over, I am weary of it all. Like so many, I cannot wait until November 4, when we will have a decision on how this country and our lives will proceed. I hold out little hope for a good result but that's because I am a pessimist and I do not trust 70% of the American voters.

Perhaps our human race is just an evolutionary experiment. Dinosaurs lived on this planet for about 165 million years. Humans have been around for less than 6 million years.  With the destruction of the earth that we humans are causing, especially climate change, maybe in another thousand years we will all be gone and the experiment will be over. Other life forces will arise, of course. The earth will still exist. We silly humans cannot destroy the planet entirely, but we can destroy our viability on the planet. And it seems we are headed that way.

Pessimistic, yes, but maybe not entirely unfounded. I just read this online:  This week, a new policy paper from an Australian think tank claims that those other reports are slightly off; the risks of climate change are actually much, much worse than anyone can imagine.Climate change poses a "near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilization," and there's a good chance society could collapse as soon as 2050 if serious mitigation actions aren't taken in the next decade.

Yes, that sounds ominous and it should. It is any wonder why some of us are in the dark zone right now?  Seven months of being told not to engage in social activities like going out to dinner or hanging out with your friends. Seven months of being wary even going to the grocery store. Seven months of crossing the street when someone is coming towards you, even if you are both wearing a mask. Seven months of listening to fucking jerks who deny the safety of masks, who think "herd immunity" is the answer to this virus, who think there is a pedophile ring being run by Hillary Clinton under Grand Central Station in New York, seven months of that shit...... is it any wonder why a person with an IQ over 100 is sick of this crap?

But then there are all those people with an IQ over 100 who are promoting this crap.  I don't get it. I get none of it.  And it makes me sad, depressed, scared and anxious and pissed off. 

I will try to write more often and in a less scathing manner. But I cannot promise that.

.

Here I am, back again.

 Thank you to the few readers who read this blog regularly and have nudged me to write by saying things like: "Are you okay?" or to be more blunt "Are you alive? Or not?"  Or being kind: "Are you home yet from the evacuation?"  (Which was lifted ten days ago.)

I thank every one of those peeps.  Thanks for pushing me to post on this blog again.  So here I am.

Got home several days ago. Being evacuated was fine (HA!) because I have lovely family that will put up with me, my dog, my anxiety and my brother Steve, his dog, their anxieties, idiosyncrasies, all the invasive properties one carries with one living in someone else's house. It was safe and at the same time fraught with many moments of awkwardness and weirdness. Gabe and Annie's house is so lovely and they are so gracious but I know that we (me, Steve, Cooper and dog Random) are not. We probably overwhelmed them. I am sorry about that but we did the best we could. (Well, maybe we could have been quieter!) 

Gabe and Annie gave us a place to be safe and to decompress for 4+ nights and then we left for Jenn and Dar's. 

I cannot explain how much I love the tolerance my two kids and their mates have for me, Steve, dogs, oddness, loudness, imperial thoughts, perceived righteousness,  and all the other baggage we carry with us.  While I was ready to kill a dog or a human, everyone else just carried on. I know that Gabe and Annie probably felt invaded;  they both work from home for at least 8 hours a day and we were a bit of a disruption for them. Jenn and Dar were lucky because they got us on Friday and the weekend meant no work via Zoom, via the phone, via anything that needed us to be quiet. Plus their house has distractions:  a pool table, a dart board, a full-on bar.  (Steve doesn't drink a lot.  I do. So that helped me.)

We are now home, Thursday night, with a new Red Flag Warning, high temps, high winds predicted, and let's see what happens tonight. My "go bag" is ready.  I will again sleep with the windows open so I can hear if the wind picks up and be ready to leave. 

Thank you everyone for checking in as often as you did. It meant a lot to me and Steve.  We are living the mantra "No Wind. No Wind." And we are hoping that's the case.  How great would it be to see the end of this month with no more destruction from fire? Knocking on wood and don't want to jinx anything but hoping out loud is a shout-out to the universe.  

Over and out for now.  Be careful out there. Be kind. To Everyone.

xo

Evacuated and anxious, concerned and antsy.

 Sunday the village I live in was told to evacuate.  My brother Steve's neighborhood of Kenwood also had to leave.  I left Glen Ellen around 10:30 that evening, Steve followed a couple of hours later. We are currently at my son and daughter-in-law's home in Daly City, on the San Francisco border, with our dogs, just wishing and hoping and waiting.  Today's CalFire press conference reported that the winds are supposed to pick up today and there is a lot of heat in Sonoma Valley.  They also said there's a 50-50 chance that the fire could get to Kenwood and Glen Ellen.

So we wait. And hope and try not to be too anxious, which is a lost attempt since anxiety is an obvious outcome when you are worried about your home burning up.

Gabe and Annie are being very kind and generous to let us invade their lives.  They work from home, so having two other bodies in the house and two other dogs is tough on their work process. Steve and I try to be quiet but it doesn't always happen. 

There's nothing else to say.  Tomorrow morning we will go to Guerneville and spend a few nights with Jenn and Dar. We don't know when we can go home, don't know what the fire will do, don't know where we will stay after Sunday. The situation is compounded by Steve's dog, who has a difficult time walking very much and can't really do stairs.  We may end up in a hotel, which would be fine with me.  At least we wouldn't be pestering others!

Keep good, safe thoughts.