1021

 Friday, October 21, 2022

In bed around 11, awake at 5:30, CPAP mask off trying to sleep, up at 5:45 with thoughts of Hattie Clayton and her children, telephone calls this past year from Hattie, Lovie, children w/o fathers, children having children, Tiffany's 'my cousin has a bay and I want a baby,'  'culture of poverty', the goodness/badness of cutting loose, shotgun weddings in ''white culture''.  37 degrees and clear skies outside but getting up to 70 today and for the next 3 days supposedly.

Freeway construction.

Returned two books to the North Shore library last night (Kees van Dongen) and picked up Donald Hall's A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety, two books of poems by Mary Oliver, and one titled Gestapo Crows: Holocaust Poems by Louis Daniel Brodsky.  Port Road shut down for construction between Bender Road and the library road and signs approaching Good Hope told me to detour.  Didn't see the sign saying 'open to local businesses' and ended up taking a sinuous route to get to the library.

One of Hall's little essays "Cutting a Figure" strikes home: "My mother in her mid-80s wore the same thing every day, a long and voluminous device that she called a caftan.  It reached from her shoulders to the floor, was easy to put on and take off, and required no underwear.  When she walked hunchbacked to warm up her oyster stew or squat in the WC, her caftan was sufficient. From birth to death, we inhabit one sort of clothing after another . . . . When I had trouble tying my tie and it took half an hour to button a shirt I graduated to T-shirts all year, long sleeves in the winter and short in the summer.  But for my legs?  Linda thought sweatpants might work . . . I am equipped for the remainder of my life, except for the penultimate johnny and ultimate shroud.  I dress almost as easily as my mother did in her caftans.  My sweatpants hold up all day and don't fall down.  Gradually the elastic cuffs crawl from my ankles up to my knees, returning me to the nickers of Spring Glen Grammar School, or much better, the Boston Red Sox."  This reminds me not only of my current tendency to wear sweatpants every day but also of the fact that a couple of months ago  I actually looked up men's caftans on the internet, thinking they would be my preferred habiliment.

Sinead O'Connor: "Nothing Compares" and Seinfeld: 'The Bris'

Stayed up later than usual last night and watched a segment of my partial recording of the Sinead O'Connor documentary, which reinforced my admiration for her, my appreciation for her courage and values and extraordinary talent and extraordinary beauty and my sympathy for her many struggles in life.  I remember watching her in October 1992 when she tore up a photo of John Paul II on SNL saying "Fight the real enemy."  This was before the pedophile/coverup scandal broke worldwide.

Then watched episode 5 of season 5 of Seinfeld: "The Bris" which brought tears to my eyes from laughter.  The older I get the more I appreciate the comedic acting skills of Julia Louis-Drefuss, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards.  Extraordinary.  When George passes out at the bris, I 'lost it' laughing.  I'm laughing just remembering it, wondering whether I should watch the episode again.  Having memories of attending the bris of one of David Lowe's sons with Friebert and John Finerty and Finerty's and my squeamishness.

Sean O'Faolain's BIRD ALONE

PAGE 128; "It was the end of our piety.  All the bitterness of the miserable years after Parnell soured us both - made us full of hatred and contempt.  Less and less often we went into the city for the faction fights and the tar barrels and the speeches.  My grander returned to the pubs and the old meeting rooms where he met his friends who had known the old days and would talk to him of their glories as captive Jews might talk of Israel.  In that way, when I had not Elsie, I became a bird alone, a heron without a mate in an expanse of grass."

Security Insecurity

This morning's WaPo: Globally, stocks have lost roughly $30 trillion in value so far this year while bonds have suffered one of their worst years ever.  70/30 allocation?

“There is a risk of a disorderly tightening of financial conditions that may be amplified by vulnerabilities built over the years,” the International Monetary Fund warned this month in a report, which said financial stability risks had grown since April and are “significantly skewed to the downside.”

Wild Turkeys

8 of them showed up under our feeders after I filled them and dumped some large seeds and nuts out of the tube feeder.

Bannon predicts impeachment of Merrick Garland

After being sentenced to 4 months incarceration for contempt of Congress, he predicted that in the next Congress with Republicans in the majority, Garland will be impeached 'and removed from office.'  Probably correct re impeachment assuming that by next January, Garland will have authorized the indictment of Donald Trump for one or another felony.  Conviction and removal from office however requires a 2/3rd vote in what will be in any event a closely divided Senate.  If an impeachment investigation does occur in the House, it's hard to imagine what an incredible mess it will be with subpoenas issued to DOJ prosecutors and other officials.