Oh it was a fine day in so many ways. So if you want to put a cherry on top and go to sleep with a smile, read this column by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post.
DeLay, because he’s such a ruthlessly effective bully, has been as responsible as anyone for pushing his party to the end of the political spectrum previously reserved for the anti-everything, loony-bin far right. His comeuppance is an occasion to remind ourselves just what a long, strange trip it’s been.
Lord, at the ending of my life
the sun which You have made
will shine. The road will rise to
meet me, and so Thy Kingdom
come. Please send this dog to
lead me, Lord, who stood
beside me long on windy
bluffs to guard against despair.
She loved to walk and in her years
she learned to let the binding
leash hang loose. And since she
always barked for love, would in
Thy songful Heaven sing so well.
revised 2005
It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take
Who would’ve thought … it figures
–Alanis Morissette
Nah, that’s not irony. I always thought that song was pretty dumb. This is ironic:
A man standing knee deep in muddy water, in his yard, trying to save his lawnmower, is ironic. And sad. Does anybody think we can even imagine how much help is needed, let alone deliver it? God help them.
And to my friends volunteering with the Red Cross, thank you. Again and again, thank you.
This blog is taking a moment in the Cone of Silence for Don Adams, star of Get Smart. What a funny guy.
For the past several years, my favorite TV show has been The West Wing. It’s fast-paced, well written, timely, circumspect. As with Northern Exposure before it, I’ve become bonded, in a sense, with the characters; the way you relate to and care about the people in a good book. A book you don’t want to end.
I don’t want West Wing to end either, but I do believe it has jumped the shark. This cool idiom dates back to Happy Days, and an episode in which Fonzy jumps his motorcycle over a shark in a tank. And everybody knew the producers had run out of ideas. The show was dead.
A show often jumps the shark when its characters become diluted, drift apart, lose their dramatic bonds. Northern Exposure jumped when Dr Joel left the show, and they brought in a new Doc from LA. Right? Right. I thought West Wing jumped last season, when Leo had a heart attack; that character lost his bond with the president and the other characters. Can anybody deny the show hasn’t been the same since?
Now we have a bunch of new people – Jimmy Smits, Alan Alda – and the old characters like Josh and Donna have new jobs for campaigns outside the White House. They don’t work for Pres Bartlett anymore. West Wing has jumped, people. Remember you read it here, and saw me say that the merciful, creative thing to do is let it die, at least by the new president’s inauguration. Don’t drag it our for another wheezing, twitching season. Let me remember it as it was.
Did you get the title? It’s Brody from Jaws … shark, get it? Ha! I gotta million of ‘em.
So I stopped at the grocery store this evening, to pick up some fruits and veggies, shampoo, and new insoles for my dress shoes. (Thought I’d try gellin’ in church tomorrow, though I’m not entirely sure it’s not against my religion.)
The total came to more than I thought it would, even considering the stupid gel things are 12 bucks a pair. Especially since I saved $3.72 on my Albertsons Preferred Savings Card. (I definitely don’t understand the social context of this. If they’re lowering the price to encourage people to buy it, what’s the point of singling people out? Sell the stuff and be done with it. And what’s “preferred?” Me? The groceries? The store?)
Leaning on the shopping cart in front of the store, I discovered to my horror that I’d just been charged $6.75 for a 2.71 pound bag of seedless grapes. What the heck? They’re Thompson seedless farking grapes. They’re grown in the San Joaquin Valley, right over the coastal mountains from here! There are acres and acres of them, spreading as far as the eye can see! They pick the things in the summer and haul them from the fields in semi trailers. They’re not truffles from France or Russian caviar, for crying out loud.
I miss Delano, where my grandparents lived. Where Cesar Chavez made his stand against Shinlay, the company that eventually screwed my grandpa out of his pension. And where we used to get big boxes of grapes to eat, and share with the neighbors.
Just another sign that civilization is going to hell in a bucket. You read it here first.
When I think about it, there was a pair of binoculars my Dad gave me when I was in college. They were in my room in Chico, when I wandered off for a while with a mildly crazy and profoundly self-centered young woman. When I got back, they were gone, along with my racketball racket and a few other things I cannot name. I guess I’d forgotten to lock the door, or maybe the window. You gotta keep your head in the game, your eye on the ball.
And a stopwatch stolen when I was about 10, from the pocket of my pants while I was swimming at a public pool. I’d been warned not to carry that thing around, take it on the school field trip. But there were things that needed to be accurately timed.
OK, you’re right: I’ll leave the dogs and grandparents out of this. But there have been a thousand ideas for poems and stories that drifted by as I drifted off to sleep. I was so sure I’d remember them when the sun came up.
It’s not the thing itself; it rarely is. It’s a neural pathway, I suppose, that’s been burned well and brightly, so that it lights easily again, and can be seen from distances that exaggerate its prominence in the night and fog. Or it’s like Donald Hall puts it here:
excerpt from The Old Life
There are miseries
of childhood that an old man’s mind—alien
in the hour of injections
and restraints, ignorant of what
day or season it is—
will clutch to itself with angry tears.
I wanted a Mickey Mouse
watch as much as, later in life,
I wanted a job,
a prize, or a woman. It disappeared
a month after my fifth
birthday, and sixty years afterward
I grieve for it whenever
I regret something lost.
— Donald Hall
* * * * * *
"I try every day to write great poetry—as I tried when I was 14. What else is there to do?"
— Donald Hall
As I’ve mentioned before, every year at this time, the alumni of my high school band get together and join the current kids in the band for a halftime show. That’s happening tonight.
Want to see some photos from the practice last night?
Want to see our Web site? (I’m the webmaster.)
In other news, I have an uncle in Zavalla TX, right on the Tx- LA line, about 100 miles from the coast. They’re hunkered down with the whole fam damily, waiting for Rita. I thought it was really weird that he built a steel frame house last year, with steel siding and wood framing inside the steel structure. Hmm, maybe it’s not so silly after all, though I thought heading for Boise would be a good plan too.
Well, here we are, on the first day of autumn. I can’t hardly believe that the summer is over, though I can’t say I’m sorry for it. It was a season of struggle for me. Struggle and grief, and hope and change.
How about you?
Metaphor 