Tuesday, May 9, 2023
36th anniversary
In bed at 10:30, awake at 4:30, unable to sleep, up at 5:05. thinking of gutters and downspouts, anniversary cards. 45℉, foggy, misty, high today of 59℉, wind NNW at 5 mph, 1 to 5 mph during the day, gusts up to 9 mph, .4" of rain in last 24 hours, none expected till Friday. Sunrise at 5:34, sunset at 8:02, 14+27.
LTMW at the first birds to appear at the feeders this morning, one male and one female goldfinch on the niger feeder at 6 a.m. By 7 a.m., chickadees, white-crowned sparrows, a robin, and an Eastern bluebird are visiting. An English sparrow chases away the bluebird. Squirrels and a chipmunk, probably the one that lives in a burrow under our front door stoop, feed on the ground. We seem to have quite a flock of the white-crowned sparrows hanging around our house. . . . The red-bellied woodpeckers really do a wrecking job on the suet cake. . . I saw a bird I'd never seen before on the sunflower seed feeder: dull red head and breast, brighter red rump, and a decidedly copper-colored back/upper wings with goldfinch-like stripes on the bottom of wings.
Pipe Dream. Renting a cottage on the Eagle River chain of lakes, on a lake where loons and coots and eagles and ospreys live and living without the news: no online newspapers or magazines, no television, no cable, having my Lund Mr. Pike 16-foot fishing boat again. Or spending time on Clam Lake or one of the nearby lakes like Ghost Lake where Sarah and I put in her kayak and my Mr. Pike years ago, middle of Chequamegon National Forest. Ditto Cable Lake. In my current condition, I wouldn't be able safely to get into or out of a fishing boat, and probably wouldn't do any fishing from a pier or bridge or the shore and I have to wonder if I would get sick of my own company. In the pipe dream, I would do a lot of reading - novels, poetry, non-fiction, graphics - and watching DVDs. I looked at rentals available in the Clam Lake area, Uppper and Lower Clam Lake, and got a little wistful remembering fishing with the Anzivinos for walleye on the lakes and in the Chippewa River at sundown, navigating the Chippewa with Andy on the bow of the boat with a flashlight, directing us away from boulders. More fuzzy memories of fishing in a canoe with Ara Cherchian and capsizing in the river. Many of the rental properties that appear on the internet are a far cry from the kind of places I used to stay in with the kids or the muskie crowd from Racine or the Anzivinos. They are more like luxurious chalets with large windows and modern facilities, like John Price's family 'cottage' on Lake Huron. It would simply require an exercise of will for me to go on a 'news fast and abstinence' right here at home but I doubt that I have the willpower to pull it off. Habits developed over decades are pretty hard to jettison even for a day or two much less a week or two, but one can dream. I'm reminded of an Andrews Sisters song I heard on the radio in my childhood.
I Can Dream, Can't I
I can see no matter how near you'll be / you'll never belong to me / but I can dream, can't I? . . . I'm aware my heart is a sad affair / there's much disillusion there / but I can dream, can't I?
And Johnny Mercer's 1945 hit Dream,
Dream / When you're feelin' blue / Dream / That's the thing to do / Just watch the smoke rings rise in the air / You'll find your share / Of memories there / So dream / When the day is through / Dream / And they might come true / Things never are as bad as they seem / So dream, dream, dream.
These were the kinds of popular songs we listened to in the 1940s and 50s, and that I danced to with my inamorata Charlene at the Melody Mill Ballroom in the North Riverside suburb west of Chicago, but I'm wandering a long way from Clam Lake. . .
Jury finds Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation. Jury answered 'no' to the rape question presumably because E. Jean Carroll testified she wasn't sure that Trump penetrated her with his genitals in addition to his fingers. I'm feeling no particular reaction to this news, no elation, no satisfaction, and certainly that "no one is above the law." I do feel some quiet satisfaction in the fact that of the many, many people who would like to obtain some justice based on the many, many misdeeds of Donald J. Trump, it was an 80-year-old woman, and her 57-year-old, Jewish, and openly gay woman lawyer, who brought him down. Millions of people are above the law, including all the multimillionaires with bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and/or on Malta and/or any other shelter. Trump was above the law when he avoided service in Vietnam with his phony claim of 'bone spurs.' He's been a crook most of his life, protected by his great inherited and misbegotten wealth.
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