At time of writing, we’re still a couple of hours from the
presidential debate. Which means we’ve had about ten days of Republicans laying
the groundwork for a catastrophic failure by their twice-impeached, adjudicated
rapist and fraudster, cognitively impaired, convicted felon candidate. They’ve
been doing that by confidently proclaiming that Biden will be jacked up on
everything from vitamin supplements through crack, washed down by Mountain Dew.
You really can’t make this shit up, folks, because
Republicans do that for you.
Anyway, I thought that I should adhere to this theme and give
you something from the better-living-through-chemistry years. So, here’s
Jefferson Airplane and “White Rabbit”.
(Just so you know—I spent the afternoon rolling down memory
lane on this one, because the choices, man—the choices…)
As I reported
recently, I’ve had to finally Do Something about my kitchen lighting. I
just couldn’t stand that harsh light in the single fixture.
So on Tuesday the electrician—Jeff Littlejohn from JML Electric; if you’re in NoVa, he’s
the man for you—came out. In less than 90 minutes he installed three
flush-mounted recessed lights. When he flipped the switch, my ratty old kitchen
looked like a showroom. It was amazing.
You cannot believe what a difference those three lights
make. No shadows on the counter wherever I’m working. It looks…positive.
(On the downside, I can see every single place where I
missed something when wiping down the counters. This is going to end up with
more work for me.)
I’m going to think about a dimmer; I think I need to live
with this brightness for a while. But I’m so happy I finally got this one
ticked off my 2017 move-in list.
And yes: I'll finally have to call a guy to patch and paint over all the holes in the ceiling.
I had an appendectomy the summer I was 27. It was the first
time I’d ever experienced a procedure that impeded my mobility. Post-op, I
could walk around—carefully—but I was deeply aware that any sudden movement or
extra stretch could bring pain.
One incident stands out in my mind: Through connections at
the newspaper I worked for, I got permission to do some research in the
textiles facility of the LA County Museum of Art. To get there, I had to take
an elevator up three floors. Just as the doors were closing, two teenaged boys jumped
in with me. And I felt anxiety because I knew I didn’t have full range of
motion; I couldn’t defend myself, I couldn’t run. “This is what old age will be
like,” I thought.
They got off on the second floor and I went on up to the
textiles department to do my research.
I’ve been reminded of that in the past couple of weeks
because of the pain in my lumbar region. It affects my ability to reach, to
bend, to carry heavy things, sometimes even to walk. I know I walk hunched
over, because the muscle spasms have extended up my back on the left side. It’s
also arbitrary—sometimes a particular action will trigger agony; other times I’m
fine. But I live in fear that it will strike, and that makes me furious, that
fear.
The orthopod three weeks ago diagnosed it as bursitis
brought on by chronic tendonitis, but Monday when I saw the physical
therapist (you can get scheduled for surgery faster than a PT practice can slot
you in for treatment) he diagnosed something that feels more precise: the left sacroiliac joint is looser than the one on the right. As a consequence, that ilium is
lower, and my left leg seems longer, which affects my gait. He reached this
conclusion after asking a lot of questions about my symptoms and probing the
affected areas. (The orthopedic surgeon spent about three minutes looking at
the X-rays, which did not include anything above the ilio-femoral joint.)
This feels more in line with the pain I’ve been
experiencing, so I’m feeling more hopeful about recovery. For some time I’d
been carrying the burden of “this is what my life will be like, hunched over in
pain, just like I pictured it in the elevator of LACMA, and I don't like it” and it may be that this
isn’t, in fact the case.
Now it’s a question of doing the exercises—carefully;
nothing that puts all my weight on the left leg—and being aware.
It never ceases to amaze me the extent to which device
screens have taken over humanity here in the People’s Republic. During the
pandemic, I used to look out my front window and see people walking their dogs,
their kids (in strollers or not) or alone and be completely oblivious to the
world around them because their heads were bent, eyes focused on their little
screens.
(This is the logical extension of what I saw 15 years ago in the Seattle Arboretum: two guys walking through spectacular nature (if you like rhododendrons), each listening to his own earbuds. Just physical proximity, no acknowledgement of each other or their surroundings.)
I still see it when I’m out on walks (when they’re not
carrying on conversations with their phones on speaker). And I don’t get it—what
is the point of being outside if you are not, in fact, being outside?
Well, yesterday I may have hit peak device dementia. Viz:
I wonder how that kid is going to turn out in 18 years?
We here in the environs of the District They Call Columbia
are part of the extended heat wave that’s covering a good chunk of the eastern
half of the United States. Heat index for most of last week was well into the
upper 90s; Saturday we had triple-digit temperatures. For my morning walks, temps have hovered around 80F.
Saturday evening around 1900 I opened the patio door to
toss out some pizza bones for Foxy and the heat sucked the air right out of me.
Google told me it was 93F.
Listen—when it’s so hot that squirrels sploot on the shaded
concrete, it’s bad.
(I’m not going to go into global warming, but c’mon, people—how
much evidence do you need when all over the world, including both northern and
southern hemispheres, temperatures are abnormally high for prolonged periods of
time?)
So today I am so grateful that I have working air
conditioning in my house, and ceiling fans in the bedrooms upstairs, where it’s
noticeably warmer than downstairs. Because of this, I do not sploot.
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.
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