9/27/23

 Wednesday, September 27, 2023

In bed at 9:30, up at 6:20.  63°, drizzling, high of 66°, Beach Hazard again, 3 to 6' waves, currents, especially at Bradford Beach.   AQI=25, wind ESE at 14, 11-15/26.  0.65" of rain in the last 24 hours.  DPs 60-61.  Sunrise at 6:44, sunset at 6:40, 11+55.

Have I stayed too long at the fair?  A lesson I learned long ago is that it's easy to ruin a painting by not knowing when to stop.  I'm fearing that I may have wrecked Dora Carrington by giving her a Fauve smock.  In the photo I worked off of it's clear she used her smock to wipe brushes, knives, and maybe her fingers just as I use my brown denim apron, and I wanted to reflect the color cacophony one sees on painters' aprons, smocks, wipe clothes, etc.  But by using smears of paint right out of the tubes directly on primed canvas I have created this Fauve riot of deep, bright colors that would not appear on an absorbent cloth ground. I'm wondering if I have wrecked the painting.  I liked the painting as it was with her wearing a clean white smock, but I also kind of like it with the brilliant colors.  Do I leave it alone, try to cover the colors with layers of opaque titanium white, or subdue them with a glaze?  I better step away from the painting for a while.

I thought of Barbra Streisand's great 'I Stayed Too Long at the Fair" song as I wondered whether I have wrecked this painting.  Now I'm wondering whether that sad but beautiful song couldn't be an anthem for so many old folks with the same problem painters face, when to call it quits.

I wanted the music to play on forever
Have I stayed too long at the fair?
I wanted the clown to be constantly clever
Have I stayed too long at the fair?

I bought me blue ribbons to tie up my hair
But I couldn't find anybody to care;
The merry-go-round is beginning to taunt now
Have I stayed too long at the fair?

The music has stopped and the children must go now
Have I stayed too long at the fair?
Oh, mother dear, I know you're very proud
Your little girl in gingham is so far above the crowd;

No, Daddy dear, You never could have known
That I would be successful, yet so very much alone...
I wanted to live in a carnival city
With laughter and love everywhere

I wanted my friends to be thrilling and witty

I wanted somebody to care;

I found my blue ribbons all shiny and new

But now I discover they are no longer blue...

The merry-go-round is beginning to taunt me

Have I stayed too long at the fair?

There's nothing to win

And there's no one to want me

LTMW at 8 a.m., I note that there has been a single house finch perched on the sunflower/safflower tube for what seems like 15 minutes, carefully checking each available seed so as to select only the best ones without interference by any other finches, sparrows, chickadees, woodpeckers, cardinals, jays, or nuthatches.  She holds onto the tube with her anisodactyl feet and claws (3 facing forward and 1 rearward) and braces herself with her tail pressed onto the wire mesh.  I'm wondering where the neighboring birds are.  It's a quiet, gray, drizzly morning with a steady strong breeze coming off Lake Michigan, the air humid with its dew point in the low 60s.

Navy Bean soup that I made last Saturday has provided my breakfast today and a brunch the other day but I have to chalk it up to failure, a thin, watery gruel.  At least I learned that one pound of dried navy beans doesn't work with 4 quarts of water, even with a $13😱 ham bone and lots of saltines.   I can't imagine how the recipe I used got and remained online on the Allrecipes website.  I should have known.

Life in a savage land.  From this morning's WaPo, "In Texas, guns are everywhere, whether concealed or in the open."

NEW BRAUNFELS, Tex. — To live in Texas is to live surrounded by guns.

Each morning, men here strap guns inside suits, boots and swim trunks. Women slip them into bra and bellyband holsters that render them invisible. They stash firearms in purses, tool boxes, portable gun safes, back seats and glove compartments.

Neighbors tuck guns into bedside tables, cars and trucks. They take guns fishing, to church, the park, the pool, the gym, the movies — even to protests at the state Capitol. The convention center hosts gun shows where shoppers peruse AR-15s and high-capacity magazines outlawed in other states. Texas billboards offer an endless stream of advertisements for ammunition, silencers and other accessories.

It has been legal here to openly carry long guns like rifles for generations. But Texas’s gun-friendly attitude isn’t just a relic of the Old West and ranching: Many restrictions on handguns were loosened only recently. Two years ago, state lawmakers gave those 21 and older the right to carry handguns without a permit . . . 

Unlike California and some other blue states, Texas has no state firearm sales registry, no required waiting period to buy a gun, no red flag law guarding against the mentally ill or violent having weapons, no restrictions on the size of ammunition magazines and no background checks for guns purchased in a private sale.

While a majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws and say it’s too easy to obtain a gun, many Texans see guns as a solution to the problem, not the problem itself. 

England is a cup of tea.

France, a wheel of ripened brie.

Greece, a short, squat olive tree.

America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand.

Argentina, Maradona’s hand.

Germany, an oompah band.

America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.

Hungary, a goulash stew.

Australia, a kangaroo.

America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.

Scotland is a highland fling.

Oh, better to be anything

than America as a gun.

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick,  is a satiric essay by Jonathan Swift, published in pamphlet form in 1729.  Swift, an Anglican priest and dean of the Church of England's St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin,  proposed that the country ameliorate poverty in Ireland by butchering the children of the Irish poor and selling them as food to wealthy English landlords.  I thought of Swift's notorious essay as I read a story in this morning's NYT: "In Rare Alliance, Democrats and Republicans Seek Legal Power to Clear Homeless Camps."  Cities out West have been desperate because of their inability and/or unwillingness to cope with the thousands of homeless people living in tents in public places.   Reading this story right after reading in the Washington Post ("In Texas, guns are everywhere, whether concealed or in the open") about everybody in Texas packing heat made me think: why not round up all those unwelcome, dirty, smelly, often mentally ill homelesss people in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle and bus them to Texas to be used as live targets on shooting ranges?  Many, perhaps most, of the people we would occasionally like to shoot are moving once we aim a firearm at them so why restrict shooters to stationary 'bulls-eyes' or silhouettes of human figures at shooting ranges?  Using live homeless people would simultaneously increase the marksmanship skill of the shooters while reducing the need for paper targets, landfill space to dispose of the used targets, and the need for trees supplying the nation's smelly, polluting paper mills.  Most importantly, it would reduce the homeless population interfering with commercial activities in our big Western cities!  A win-win solution!  It is surely clear by now that the homeless in America's cities found shamelessly sleeping atop grates in flagrante delictu or secreting themselves in tents engaging in God-only-knows-what perversities contribute nothing to American society and economy while detracting much from what would be, without them, American's most desirable cities.  America's gun owners, on the other hand, are Second Amendment patriots, dedicated to standing by as America's Good Guys ever-ready to take down the Bad Guys who would subvert the true purpose of firearms as instruments marketed only for the protection of American families and the killing of dangerous white-tail deer, elk, mourning doves, mallard ducks, etc.  So can't we all get on board with this win-win solution to reducing the ranks of America's homeless while improving the marksmanship of American Good Guys?  Now that I think of it, how about all those dirty, smelly, often wet immigrants invading our country intent on stealing our jobs?!?  Thanks to Jonathan Swift for his 'modest proposal'.

Back spasms while driving.  A new worry, very painful back spasms while driving back from Meijer's in Grafton.  Too dangerous, worried about losing control of the car, especially on freeway.   I called the VA PM&R clinic to request that my appointment on 12/8 be moved up.  The receptionist said she'll leave a note for the nurses and they'll follow up.  Keeping my fingers crossed. . . Good news: Nurse Julie called back at 4:50 and I got an appointment for 3 p.m. next Wednesday with Dr. Chang.