I only recently came across this recording of the Big Sur
Celebration of 1969. But it’s haunted me ever since.
Naturally I know The Youngbloods’ version of “Get Together”.
I heard them sing it at what was billed as the last love-in in Los Angeles. And
I love their delivery.
But this mixture of Joni Mitchell plus David Crosby,
Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Neil Young and John Sebastian is magical.
(TBH, Sebastian doesn’t really add much. And I never was a
fan of his. These days you only see him on “Hits from the [whatever decade]
retrospectives during PBS pledge drive; about seven times per year.)
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about two
episodes of Star Trek. They carry lessons for us all, IMO.
The first one, from the original series, is
“Day of the Dove”. In it, the Enterprise and a Klingon ship are lured to a
planet inhabited by an entity that feeds off of anger, hostility and violence.
To ensure a continuous source of energy, the entity implants false memories in
both Federation and Klingon crew members, and it heals physical wounds quickly
so that the victims can resume combat.
What ends this destructive cycle? When the
opposing forces join together to laugh at the entity.
I’ve thought about this since 2016—this is what
people should have done from the first moment that the Kleptocrat swanned down
an escalator and declared his candidacy. Every time he opened his mouth, he
should have been greeted by gales of laughter drowning out his puerile
posturing and racist hyperbole. Just like that ST entity, nothing saps
that bloviating liar’s power more than being laughed at.
It's not too late—I mean, it is very late, but
his inflated ego is more fragile than a soap bubble, and laughter aimed at him
will render him flaccid in every respect before everyone. C'mon, guys—we can do this.
The second episode is from The Next
Generation, and it’s more prophetic than prescriptive. “The Inner Light”
focuses on Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who is struck on the bridge of the
Enterprise by an alien probe and rendered unconscious. During the time he is
out—a few minutes for the rest of the crew—he spends 40 years on a
non-Federation planet. Over the course of his lifetime there, he has a family
and a vocation as a scientist whose research reveals that the planet is dying.
Throughout the episode, as he ages, the environment’s drought and the power of
the unrelenting sun proceed to extinction.
It turns out that the planet’s leaders knew
about the coming end, but kept the truth from most of the people because they
did not have the technology to save them, and panic would do no one any good.
They launched the probe with all their memories embedded in it in hopes of
finding someone who could tell their history to the universe.
Picard exclaims, “Oh—it’s me, isn’t it? I’m the
someone… I’m the one it finds!”
And then he awakens in the Enterprise bridge.
In the ST:TNG case, the planet’s
destruction isn’t humanoid-caused, but clearly the path we Earthers are on is
of our own building. As most of the eastern part of the US stews under a heat
dome this week, I keep thinking that—if we can’t be arsed to do anything about
global warming, at least we ought to start collecting memories and sending off
probes into the alpha quadrant.
Juneteenth has been a federal holiday since 2021;
forward-thinking organizations began marking it in the wake of the murder of
George Floyd by Minneapolis cops. One, Derek Chauvin, shoved his knee to Floyd’s
throat for nearly 10 minutes, while his colleagues watched.
If you’re unclear
about Juneteenth, it commemorates the day in 1865 when news arrived in
Galveston with Union troops that the end of the War Between the States meant
emancipation for slaves across the country. The Emancipation Proclamation,
which the victory at Antietam in September of 1862 made possible, outlawed
slavery in all territories then in rebellion against the United States.
However, as you might imagine, the Confederates basically said, “Yeah, and?”
and got on with their slaving business for another two years. Two months after
the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, the “and”
question was answered in Texas.
We all know that
we have yet to fulfill the promise of emancipation; for that matter, we have
yet to fulfill the ideals of a more perfect union, equal justice, domestic
tranquility, general welfare and the blessings of liberty. But Juneteenth
reminds us that, even when we can’t see the full arc of the moral universe, we
feel it in our consciences and we are obligated to do our part to ensure that
it bends toward justice.
For that reason, Republicans up and down the spectrum are
grumbling and scuffing their toes in the dirt (as they do on Martin Luther King,
Jr. Day), pissed off at the reminder that they actually lost that war and that
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution exist.
(Even if SCOTUS can’t seem to find them.)
However, those of us with a working conscience and a moral
compass that isn’t permanently stuck on terror-fueled racism can take a few
moments today to consider how emancipation enriches everyone, because humanity
is not actually a zero-sum game.
One of my neighbors is really big on the
environment. One of his passions is recycling. Because Fairfax County can no
longer be arsed to accept glass items with recycling pickup, if you don’t want
your empty bottles to end up in the landfill, you have to take them to glass
collection dumpsters. Kevin solicits glass items from the cluster and makes
periodic trips there to ensure that we’re not contributing to the dump. He also
collects aluminium cans, which he turns in for cash, which he gives to his
niece for pocket money. Since I’ve got to know him by working on
cluster-related issues, I’ve taken to picking up any cans I find on my morning
walks and depositing them in his bin. I even have been known to pick up flattened
cans I find in parking lots and take them to him. Every little bit helps.
Last week I saw a Coke can in one of those
mini-trash bins that are at bus stops. I for real opened the bin and picked out
the can. I thought that was my scavenging limit. But no.
Because yesterday, as I was coming back from my
morning walk, I noticed soda cans in a translucent trash bag (with flattened cardboard
boxes, plastic water bottles and cottage cheese containers) perched in someone’s
recycling bin. I actually walked past it and then turned around, picked up the
bag and took it to my house. I opened the bag, fished out the cans (15 of them) and then put
the bag in my own recycling bin. Then I took my haul down to Kevin’s place for
him to crush and add to his niece’s college fund.
Today I’m deeply grateful for Jillynne, the
carer who spends four hours a day with my
sister. When I visited her in
February, it was clear that Penny’s Alzheimer’s had advanced since
September, 2022, when I was last there. She became anxious whenever I enticed
her out of the assisted living facility; even walking her dog made her uneasy. Her
attention wandered and she wasn’t getting a lot of exercise—but I didn’t want
her walking outside without someone with her, because she seemed unsteady.
I was also concerned that the burden of making
medical decisions was becoming too heavy for the two elderly women who hold the
medical power-of-attorney.
My other sister and I had a long conversation
with the fiduciary, who looks after Penny’s finances. She engaged extra helpers
to spend time with Penny, and absolutely struck gold with Jillynne.
She helps Penny call us, and often acts as
interpreter, because telephonic communication with her is fraught. She encourages
Penny to engage in activities and sends us videos and photos. (I don’t know
which I like best: the video of her working on a water color painting or the
photo of her in front of a plate of steak-frites.) Yesterday it was a visit to
a fish hatchery—which produces 750K hatchlings per year (but does not have an
on-site restaurant).
Jillynne gets Penny out, active, engaged, so
that her world has become larger than her room and the facility’s dining room. She
jokes with Penny and gets her laughing. She connects her to us. This is an
amazing gift.
I am so grateful to see this change in my
sister and I am deeply grateful to the woman who’s effected it.
I’m
not sure why, but for the past week or so “There But for Fortune” has been
rattling around my head. The song was written by Phil Ochs in 1963, but is
probably best known for Joan Baez’s cover from a year later.
Perhaps
it’s because we live in such unstable times—60 years ago people in the first world
might have thought that at least their trajectory was secure, even with wars in
former colonies across two continents. But now I think we all know at some
level that nothing is vouchsafed to us: not clean drinking water, not
education, not uncontaminated food, not protection from hostile attacks, not
shelter. Those of us who are honest must also admit that much of the insecurity
is self-inflicted.
So
Ochs connecting the listener to the prisoner, the unhoused, the addict, the
invaded nation seems perhaps even more on point now than it was in the 60s.
A couple of months ago, I came downstairs one
morning to discover my kitchen ceiling was leaking. It took two visits from a
plumber (because the shutoff main for this block of townhouses is inside
one of the end units) and $600 to find and fix the leak (upstairs toilet in a
bathroom I never use). And it left this gaping hole in the ceiling:
I thought to myself, “Self—this will be a
forcing function. Instead of calling in a wallboard and painting expert for
this hole, take this opportunity to install the recessed lighting you’ve needed
in this kitchen for the seven years you’ve lived here. Remediate that single
source of light, which throws a shadow over everything you do in this room. Do
it! Now!”
Well, as I mentioned, this was two months ago.
Turns out the forcing function wasn’t the huge hole in the ceiling, but the
cold LED light bulb I put in the one ceiling lamp in the space. Because every
single time I walk into the kitchen and flick on the light, I feel like
confessing to something.
So the electrician came yesterday to spec out
the project. Turns out that pendant lights are out of the picture because of the swing of one of the over-counter cabinets. So, just recessed lights. But no shadows while I'm working.
As long as I’m talking potted
plants, about six weeks ago I bought a dwarf Meyer lemon tree. I’d have
preferred something not Meyer, but that’s all the nursery had at the time. The
one I picked had a bunch of blossoms on it, and I tried to knock the minimum number
of them off during transport.
When they finally all fell off over time, I
thought it was safe to move it to a larger pot. I wanted its roots to have room
to grow.
I’m pleased to report that there is one very
miniscule lemon growing, which I hope makes it to maturity. (The paucity of
sunlight in my garden is an issue, so my fingers are crossed.)
I decided I wanted to get a dwarf lime, as
well, so I went back to Merrifield Garden Center on Friday. Their citrus
shelves were bare.
So, Saturday I went to Meadows Farm—they had
not only Key and Persian limes, they also had Ponderosa lemon in addition to Meyer.
Well, I bought a dwarf Persian and brought it home to meet the Meyer. It has no
blossoms, but if you get close to the leaves, it smells like lime.
There were three or four gardenia shrubs in the
yard of the house where I grew up. On summer evenings, the scent of gardenias
wafted up to my bedroom (no AC, so windows open). So I suppose I associate that
scent with summer vacations and staying up really late to read books for the
library summer reading program.
At least five, maybe six, years ago, I bought a
baby gardenia bush and planted it in a pot. The first summer I had it, it
produced well, but diminished some in each of the following years. Last year I
got nothing. It occurred to me a couple of months ago that perhaps the roots
were cramped, so I repotted it into a larger container.
And, well—looky here!
Two flowers and at least 48 buds.
That’s my gratitude for today, baby—and I’m
staying up late to read a library book.
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