R.I.P. 2017-2020

This blog goes to the archive.

If I start a new blog after moving, I will add a note here. 

Big changes

We're moving into Homewoods on the Willamette, a not for profit retirement community on the river, not far from our present apartment. Since Harriet's cardiac arrest over five years ago, I have been chief cook and bottle washer and, well, I'm burned out. We're ready to get our meals, laundry and cleaning done, and so on.

After the move, I think I will put this blog to rest. It has been pretty inactive in recent months. However, maybe, or maybe not, I will start another that addresses the issues of old age and, well, dying. Maybe it should be called Meeting the Maker.

Mainly I want to have as little responsibility as possible and to spend many, many, many hours staring at the river.

Portland prayer

Read the story

Protesters seeking justice for George Floyd marched across the nation over the weekend. In numerous viral videos and photos, police appear to contribute to chaos and violence, including against both bystanders and protesters. There have been widespread reports of journalists being targeted by police while covering protests, as well. In the Flint, Michigan area, however, protesters marched to Police Headquarters, carrying signs and chanting. According to local outlet NBC News 25, police originally had on riot gear. Protesters reportedly sat down to show peace, and Genessee County Sheriff Chris Swanson actually joined the protesters and walked with them, as reported by local outlet ABC 12. Swanson, who according to Detroit News has been on the force for two decades, removed his helmet. Other officers chatted with protesters, and some exchanged fist bumps.

“This is the way it’s supposed to be,” Swanson said, as reported by MLive. “The police working with the community. When we see injustice, we call it out on the police side and on the community side.”

 (Daily Kos)

Wonderful accident

I threw together what was available for a breakfast omelette and it turned out to be one of the best I've ever had.

Cipollini onions, scallions, chestnut mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, cheddar, eggs.

Really good!

When it works

Email from former student, "you were the most inspiring teacher at PSU," which bslances the negative in this zero sum universe.

Reflections on death

This is an excellent documentary film focusing on attitudes toward dying and death. A wide spectrum is covered.

And yet my personal point of view is ignored, which suggests how radical it is.
And it is this:

In a sane culture, the self-management of death would be institutionalized. Like a baptism, like a birthday party, like a wedding, something like "a farewell wake" would happen at the end of life, hosted and managed by the individual who has decided s/he is ready to pass on. This would be a natural part of the aging process: creating one's own death with dignity. Death as a celebration of life, after which the individual would administer painless chemicals provided by a doctor, with or without witnesses as desired. Suicide, yes, but a kind of suicide that consciously and spiritually honors and celebrates a life.

My last three novels have dealt with this theme. So did a digital movie I made.

Last Rights, a novel

The Farewell Wake, a film

Q.E.D.

Variations on scrapple

I grew up on scrapple and have loved it ever since. Decades ago, I made my own scrapple the traditional way. For example, in grad school in the early 1970s I came home one day to find a cardboard box on our porch. In it was ... a pig's head! Aha, my good friend John Basham had kept his word, saving the head for me when he slaughtered his pig.

Later in life it got too difficult to make scrapple the traditional way. After research, combining recipes, experimenting, I came up with an "easy scrapple" that I made for years. I posted the recipe online and it got included in a scrapple cookbook.

My Easy Scrapple Recipe.

I keep experimenting and this morning I made a true winner. Not sure what to call it. It goes this way ...

Cook half a pound of commercial scrapple in a frying pan, breaking it up, until it is mush. Add pre-roasted cipollini onions, sliced portabello mushroom caps, chopped scallions. Cook together. Top with eggs, up for me. A DEFINITE WINNER!

In My Old Age: Poems

A reading of the book (individual poems)

A review of the book

1913 Massacre

Peggy Seeger

The mother of all blessings

I got to live my life before the shit hit the fan.

"Interesting times"

16 pages of obits in Sunday's Boston Globe

Hint, hint

There aren't many women world leaders, but somehow they're leading the coronavirus fight

Read it 

Good news

TOTANIC BLUES has a home IF the theater company survives the pandemic. Generous praise from a voice that matters to me.

An A for chyron writing

Nails it: I warned of Trump’s attack on science. But I never predicted the horror that lay ahead by Ariel Dorfman

These critiques of his behavior, however valid, should not let us lose sight of something more fundamental that is going on. Today’s chaotic and bumbling response to this emergency is no accident, but deeply rooted and systemic, the direct result of a pattern of callow benightedness that verges on the criminal and that goes back to the very start of Trump’s regime, embedded in the very recalcitrant anti-intellectual DNA of this president and his followers.

Read it

An old story. Further reading:

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies by Susan Jacoby

Ahead of the curve

Over 20 years ago I was teaching an online screenwriting class for Writers on the Net, soon duplicated for college credit at Eastern Oregon University, there because every Portland area college had reservations about teaching online. Today the virus is making online education the norm. Told ya! oh so long ago.

Before arthritis

This is the moment that contempt for science comes home to roost by Robert Harrington

Without saying so out loud, because they know how ridiculous it would sound if they did, Trump supporters, particularly those among them who are evangelical, fundamentalist Christians, hold science in contempt. Our current crisis provides a microcosm of how quickly that contempt can turn deadly. When science spoke they should have listened. They should stop treating science like an embarrassing but clever relation they occasionally invite to dinner. Science ought to be the first thing they turn to for answers, not the last.

Read the article. 

Sailors cheer Navy captain fired for COVID-19 warning as he leaves ship

This story hit home because it reminded me of my dad.

He had lied about his age to join the Navy and escape working in a paper mill. As a teenager he saw pre-communist China's poverty and once told me, If I were Chinese, I'd be a Communist.

After the war he reupped to go for 30. He was captain of a supply ship serving Guam and nearby islands. One day he and his crew rescued natives from a burning ship. He was a local hero.

However, the Navy had a different view. He had put his (white) men at risk to rescue mere (brown) natives. Dad was reprimanded. That was the last straw for him and with 22 years in, he bagged a Navy career.

What would my life have been like if he had stayed for 30? I wouldn't have grown up in Pasadena, for one.

Read the story

Dark justice

So we elect an incompetent president and this is what happens. To quote the ending of one of my plays, 'What the people expect they get. What they get they deserve. Always."

Reaping what you sow and all that. 

Well, I listen to a lot of favorite cool jazz and remember moments of human accomplishment. In a zero sum universe, definitely time to wallow in the positive.

A good time to be retired!

A family fantastic

Read an article about the family.

Sourdough II

First batch a bust. Try again today.

Sourdough

Bake first loaf this morning. Using artisan techniques from original book. Have backup plan if necessary.

My favorite work of art

Quotation of the day

Our biggest viral threat right now is Donald Trump and the people who continue to tolerate and even promote this ignorant, self-dealing, narcissistic abortion of a regime. Donald Trump and his anti-science, hate-filled, criminal pirate ship must go. In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe. --Robert Harrington

Read it all. 

Sourdough starter

Years and years ago I had a robust sourdough starter I kept alive for over a decade. Long time ago. Last weekend, a little bored with my same artisan breads, I decided to start a sourdough starter. A week later it already has a nice bite but I plan to feed it a bit longer before using it. Sometime to do in these isolated days.

Moanin'

Hearing this jazz classic by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers just now reminds me of 1961 in Army, digging this and other jazz tunes with colleagues during off hours in Germany, man we liked our beer and music, hard work and hard play in those Cold War days, as a Russian linguist forever aware of fragility of peace, more music please and more beer, prosit!

Cell phone

Never used my old cell phone much, kept it for car emergencies. But new one is too cool to ignore, getting into texting. 5039643577.

Hangin' in

What times we live in. Doubt if our move to the river will happen this year but I may be wrong. 

I've been having groceries delivered before all this but now it's become tricky to book. Everyone is doing it.

How can so many still support Bone Spur?

Many fellow citizens depress the hell out of me.

Dylan's back

Read the lyrics

surreal sadness

These times ... Retired life not changed personally all that much ... But the news is sad.

A favorite theme

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1955

March 26

Black music gets whitewashed, as Georgia Gibbs hits the pop charts

 with “The Wallflower (Dance With Me, Henry)”

Read about it  And this Henry song was a cleaned up version of Work With
 Me, Annie!

This has been a favorite theme in my work. In a novel, in stories.

The Deadly Doowop, a novel. Playwright-sleuth Red Trevorak investigates blackmail and
 murder against the rise of rock-n-roll in 1954 Los Angeles.

The Man Who Shot Elvis, short story from Prism International, 1977.

A Whiter Shade of Fear, from Selected Stories.

"Alexa, play cool jazz radio on Pandora"

This command, as much as anything, is keeping me relatively sane these days. It is stressful to watch the consequences of so much powerful incompetence. Surreal. 

Making the case

The headline:

The Greatest Scandal In American History: The Trump Cover Up Of A Looming Public Health Crisis.

This should be the scandal of the century. In a rational world it would destroy Trump’s Presidency and end the Republican Party as a political force for years. For weeks the President of the United States, and many in his party, engaged in a systematic cover up of a looming public health crisis. When it came, as they were warned it would, hundreds (likely thousands or tens of thousands before it is through) of Americans would die. A nation enjoying a prolonged period of economic prosperity would be pushed into a recession. While those engaged in this cover up did not prepare the nation, they often prepared themselves, their political supporters, and their families, for the financial shock by dumping soon to be greatly devalued stocks.

Read the story.

And this is a Republican speaking ...

Steve Schmidt

✔@SteveSchmidtSES

Trump is incompetent, dishonest and profoundly indecent. His staggering incapacity for moral leadership in this unprecedented moment is hard to overstate. His empty boasting, dishonesty, blame gaming, lack of empathy and fragile ego are a deadly combination of traits right now

75.7K

3:58 PM - Mar 22, 2020


Couldn't have said it better myself.

Mashed cauliflower

Very tasty! Made it for the first time yesterday. For breakfast, leftover mashed cauliflower pancakes.

Panic

Shoppers hoarding things like toilet paper here as everywhere, demonstrating human behavior at its greedy, selfish worse. What a screwed up species we are.

All this is just the beginning. The consequence of climate change will make the pandemic look like a Sunday school picnic. I should be dead by then, thank the gods.

In the meantime, I try to enjoy favorite music and books and films and homecooked food as much as possible. It's a good time to be old and on a short time leash.

When a conman rules

I’m A Doctor. The U.S. Response To Coronavirus Has Been Nothing Short Of Criminal.

Read the story.

Memories of John Basham

My late friend did a great version of this. Heard it first on a weekend at the coast during grad school days, John ended up in the adjacent campsite, in his Michigan pickup, seeing the country on his dad's inheritance and trying to finish the cases of Ouzo he carried along. And a guitar. So we all ended up playing music all night, and this was among my favorites of his songs. He ended up liking Oregon enough to move here. Was diabetic, passed away too early.

Shameful truth

Norway University Calls On Students to Return Home From Countries With 'Poorly Developed Health Systems'—Such as the US

"Norway is correct... the U.S. is a poorly developed country."

Read the story.

Chaos

"This is the result of having Jared Kushner and Steven Miller direct actions and responses in a national crisis"

by

Common Dreams staff

Two Guitars

Two guitars,
The sound of them
Reminds me of you,
Dear friend.

Refrain:
Ekh! Raz, yeshcho raz, (Ekh! Once, one more time,)
Yeshcho mnogo, mnogo raz. (Many, many more times.)
Ekh! Ravaz, yeshcho raz, (Ekh! One-nece, one more time,)
Yeshcho mnogo, mnogo raz. (Many, many more times.)

Evening wind in the field
Caressing the corn flowers,
Long, lonely road,
Lonely soul, in despair.

Refrain:

Talk to me! Oh, speak
My beloved, my seven-stringed one.
My soul is filled with joy –
Oh, this night! Oh, the moonlight!

Refrain:

Where does it hurt? What hurts you?
My head is spinning –
Today we drink, tomorrow too;
And so the whole week through.

Refrain:

A wife I had, and just once
She was unfaithful.
Said she, ‘Just once more
Maybe won’t make a difference.’

Refrain:

On the hill a birch tree stands,
And underneath the cherries grow,
A fellow loved a gypsy girl,
Alas, she married another.

Refrain:

REPORT: OREGON'S SCHOOL SYSTEM AMONG THE WORST IN THE NATION

Having grown up in California, I took good school systems for granted. Then in the late 1970s I moved to Oregon. Horrified is an overstatement but I was appalled at the school troubles here. A recent report says nothing has changed,

Read the article.

Headline of the week

New CDC guidance says older adults should 'stay at home as much as possible' due to coronavirus

Read the story.

Man, do I relate to this!

If Sanders loses the nomination, will you be as stupid as 1968 me was?

 I am trying to remember the person I was in 1968. I was 22 years old and a recent college graduate. I was angry, infuriated by the war in Vietnam and racial segregation. It was my first chance to vote in a presidential election. I was living in New Jersey — very briefly — and I voted for Dick Gregory, the brilliant comedian running as a write-in candidate, instead of Hubert Humphrey, the Democrat running against Republican Richard Nixon. It was a protest vote, obviously. I regret it to this day.

Read it. 

Endless arguments with my best friend, Dick, about this election. I, too, protested and voted for Gregory -- and later regretted it.

So I wonder, how large will the Sanders temper tantrum be this time around? Enough to reelect Trump?

I think Warren can be a valuable peace arbitrator in this context. I view this as a ONE ISSUE election: defeat Trump. A close second, declare a climate emergency if Democrats win.

"May you live in interesting times."

Getting time to learn the fate of my play at a dozen theaters reading it.

Anniversary

1952

March 04

Ernest Hemingway finishes "The Old Man and the Sea"

Read about it.

Isn't this brilliant?

Changing attitudes

'Absolutely Remarkable': Poll Shows Democratic Voters in Texas and California View Socialism More Positively Than Capitalism

Read the story. 

If true, this makes the possibility of a brokered convention compromise a potential disaster. Many may leave disgusted.

Warren might be the saving compromise.

Wow

Anniversary

1940

February 23

Woody Guthrie writes 

“This Land Is Your Land”

Folk singer Woody Guthrie writes one of his best-known songs, “This Land is Your Land.”

Listen to the songs and stories of Guthrie, performed by Charles Deemer and Jim Wylie.

Wylie & Deemer

The ignored verses:
[Verse 4]
As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said "No trespassin'"
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

[Verse 5]
In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me

Read it and weep

We Have 10 Years Left To Save The World, Says Climate Expert

Christiana Figueres, the lead U.N. negotiator of the Paris climate agreement, says the next decade is the most important in the history of humanity.

Read the article.

TITANIC BLUES is about a woman who no longer can live on automatic pilot when understanding this crisis. It ain't pretty.

Inspiration

My mum only had a few months to live. So we rented a van and took a road trip

Story by Sam Walker

Fire!

Ian Bassin

✔@ianbassin

Wow. After more than 2,000 former DOJ expressed alarm about challenges to rule of law, now the Federal Judges' Association has called an emergency meeting re concerns around independent law enforcement.

Our institutions are sounding alarms. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/17/roger-stone-sentence-judges-worried-political-interference/4788155002/ …

32.4K

2:58 PM - Feb 17, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

11.5K people are talking about this