Friday, March 10, 2023
In bed at 10, up at 4:25, 'winter wonderland.' Winter Storm Warning until 10 a.m. Snow on the patio table looks like 8 inches and still coming down, heavy, wet, heart-attack snow. Another 1.4 inches of wintery mix is expected next 24 hours.66,000 customers without power in Milwaukee County. 31℉, wind NE at 13, and gusts near 30 mph during the day. Sunrise at 6:12, sunset at 5:51,11+39.
Filling airtime. I turned on the tv to Channel 12 to see what was being reported about the snowstorm. I noticed, as I always do, how much of the local newscasts is filled with blather, words spoken just to fill up airtime. The tv people can't have 'dead airtime' where there is no visuals, no audio, so they fill the airtime with blather, drivel, nonsense, happy-talk, and sometimes 'happy horseshit' as we used to say in Vietnam. Silence and an empty screen are verboten. It's most noticeable perhaps with the weather people, who seem to talk to their audience as if we are children, reminding us to 'dress warm' in freezing temperatures and 'bring raingear' for a downpour when we should and shouldn't wash our cars. I sympathize with the on-air 'talent' because they don't have much choice about 'filling airtime', avoiding 'dead airtime.' It gets me wondering how much of our own lives we spend 'filling airtime.'
Birch trees across the street bent to the ground
Thoughts too seldom thought. When my father was old, twice widowed, alone and lonely in Florida, I wanted him to move to Wisconsin. Through some mixed signals, he came to live with Geri and me, in our home. We had to sell our lovely Knickerbocker condominium with its views of Lake Michigan and downtown Milwaukee to find a place that would accommodate my 82-year-old father. That place turned out to be in the country, north and outside of the Village of Saukville, 'in the middle of nowhere.' We had a Saukville post office address, a Newburgh telephone exchange, and were in the Fredonia school district. Our neighbor to the west was a very large dairy farm whose milk cows we could hear mooing on quiet days and manured fields we could smell when the wind was westerly. Geri hated living in the boonies; I loved it. Geri agreed to move there just as she agreed to have my father move into our home. She agreed because she knew it was important to me, and to my father. She didn't have to agree but she did and she did without a hint of grievance or resentment. For some reason, I had this thought while drying off after a shower this morning. When I finished, I walked into the kitchen and told her I love her.
When My Dead Father Called by Robert Bly
Last night I dreamt my father called to us.
He was stuck somewhere. It took us
A long time to dress, I don't know why.
The night was snowy; there were long black roads.
Finally we reached the little town, Bellingham.
There he stood, by a streetlamp in cold wind,
Snow blowing along the sidewalk. I noticed
The uneven sort of shoes that men wore
In the early Forties. And overalls. He was smoking.
Why did it take us so long to get going? Perhaps
He left us somewhere once, or did I simply \
Forget he was alone in winter in some town?
Tom and Sue Clark will be coming up from Arlington Heights, IL for an overnight visit. We shared many here-and-there overnight visits with them pre-covid. Geri has visited them a couple of times but I had to beg off for health/pain/discomfort reasons of some sort. Their visit today reminds me that my days of spending nights away from home are over. The next place I'll spend an overnight away from home will be a hospital or mortuary.
Wisdom from Flannery O'Connor: "I write for months and months stuff that I have to tear up but . . . I don't know what I can do until I have found out the hard way what I can't do."
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