1019

 Wednesday, October 19, 2022

In bed @ (:30, up @ 5:30,5 psss, no toddy.  Woke up with some indecipherable dream, thinking of the Goldberg family.  35 degrees outside, high of 47 is expected.

Morning Feeding

Love to see all the activity at and under the fully-loaded bird feeders on a cold morning.  On the ground snowbirds and squirrels are busy looking for seeds that birds have knocked loose from the feeders while looking for more desirable seeds.  Up above a magnificent red-bellied woodpecker takes his time searching out the perfect sunflower seed or small nut while chickadees and red-breasted nuthatches try their luck on the opposite side of the tube feeder.  At around 10 inches long and up to 80 or 90 grams in weight, the woodpecker easily dominated the nuthatches and chickadees who have about half the length and maybe 1/8th to 1/10th the woodpecker's weight.  On the ground, a white-throated sparrow joins the pretty slate-colored snowbirds and up above a little downy woodpecker has the suet cake all to herself.

Donald Agonistes

Trump is scheduled to be deposed at Mar-a-Lago by Jean Carroll's attorney in her defamation case against row defamer-in-chief.  Presumably, Trump will say what he has always said of the charge that he raped her in a Bergdorf-Goodman dressing room back in the 90s, i.e., that he never met her, doesn't know her, didn't rape her, and perhaps his kicker "she's not my type."  What a way to nearing the end of one's life.  He's 76 years old, probably in questionable health because of age, obesity, diet, etc., and besieged by enemies seeking to hurt him - private litigants, federal prosecutors, congressional committees, a state prosecutor, and the NY attorney general.  After the 2016 election, he thought he was on top of the world, king of the hill, leader of the free world, and invincible.  His always vulnerable ego always at least tentatively satisfied by being probably the most famous man in the world, able to draw thousands of cheering fans at his rallies slaking his thirst for affirmation, adoration.  And always protected from enemies by the powers and privileges of his public office.  He knew there was a tsunami of legal woes awaiting him if he lost the office of the presidency hence his extraordinary criminal attempts to avoid losing the office.  Now the chickens are coming home to roost, as Malcolm X would say.  Louis XV's apocryphal saying "Apres moi, le deluge" might appropriately be attributed to Donald John Trump.  His personal deluge of legal attacks has begun and may come to something or come to naught, but the country's political & social deluge pends like Domocles' sword.  We'll know a lot more in three weeks with the midterms, which I expect Trumpies will do well in, and even more as 2024 approaches.  We're in the middle of the Biden Pause, but I fear it's like the eye of a Trumpian hurricane, with death and destruction awaiting us.

The Myth of Democracy, British style

Liz Truss, the now-infamous prime minister of the UK is now widely believed to be on her way out as PM after only a couple of months in power.  A problem is that there is a rule in Parliament that there can't be another vote of no confidence after the one ousting the last PM,  Boris Johnson, for 12 months after the last one.  So that rule would have to be abolished/rescinded, suspended/whatever to get rid of her..  The problem with that is that there is no successor visible in the wings and the Tories are 20 or 30 points behind Labor so the last thing Truss's confreres want is a general election that would put Labor in charge of the government.  Most fascinating is how Truss became the PM of economically significant, nuclear power, NATO member: elected not by the people of GB, but by a relatively few members of the Tory Party, party members comprising @ 150,000 mostly elderly right-wing people, representing about 0.2% of the British population.  

Afternoon Feeding

By 1:00, the bluebirds return, sharing the suet cake with a female downy woodpecker.  Song sparrows and house finches or purple finches, too.  The bluebirds remind me of a corny plangent (new word I just learned) song by Marvin Rainwater that I loved at age 16.

Gonna find me a bluebird / Let him sing me a song

Cause my heart's been broken / Much too long

Gonna chase me a rainbow / Through a heaven of blue

Cause I'm all through cryin' over you

There was a time my love was needed / My life completed, my dreams come true

Then came the time my life was haunted / /My love unwanted, all for you

Those were the days when I could understand the lyrics of popular songs and even memorize them.

I Always Knew

Started listening to I Always Knew, the collection of letters to her mother from the remarkable Barbara Chase-Riboud.  The early letters are from October 1957, when she was 18 years old and on her way from home in Philadelphia to Paris and Rome.  It's clear from her diction and vocabulary that she had an educated upbringing and that she is otherwise gifted.  It's clear from her candor to her mother that they had a close relationship.  She writes at the time the USSR had launched Sputnik and notes that the French are happy about it because 'they believe in this balance of power stuff' and are just as afraid of the US as of the USSR.  As she was writing from Europe, I was a junior at Leo High School, madly in love with my first true love, Charlene Wegge who attended the Catholic snooty all-girl Longwood Academy.  Or was I still dating the beautiful Irish Maureen Boyle who attended Catholic all-girl Mercy High School?  What was I thinking about Sputnik, if anything?  Less than I was thinking about Maureen or Charlene or the records of the Leo football and basketball teams.