Have you ever noticed that many improvements become burdens?

E-mail, for instance.  I welcomed e-mail for a variety of reasons.  I could get in touch with my friends.  I could order things online.  I could complain quickly and painlessly with providers such as Comcast.

  Now I dread it.  I get around 200 e-mails a day.  The only reason I look at them is to avoid a pile-up of epic proportions.  So I have to keep up with them in order to avoid being inundated by unwanted and unsolicited messages and missing the few--very few--from people I actually want to hear from.  When I miss a week I have so many messages that I just delete them all.

  The people I have financial accounts with want to send me e-mail bills.  Its cheaper and more convenient for them.  But not for me.  I prefer to get my bills from the post office.  In that way I can look at the charges and see if they really are something I charged or some kind of hack.  Ditto for bank statements.  More than once I have been charged two or even three times for something I only ordered once.  I was charged four times for "audible," which I never used and particularly loathe as I don't like books read to me.  The only thing I want to hear broadcast is music. 

 Another irksome feature of modern life is voicemail,  I long ago gave up answering my landline because of all the unwanted solicitations.  Now I am getting them on my cell phone.  So I never answer the cell phone unless the number is known to me.  But it's still annoying to hear it ring at inappropriate times.

  I'm not a hater of modernity, nor do I long for a simple life.Modern life is great.  I love air conditioning, ice makers, and Japanese cars, among other things too numerous to mention.
Including blogging.  And I appreciate those few, those happy few, who read my blogs.

Praying for unbelievers

Some of my Facebook friends who are in distress ask for prayers from their friends.  I'm willing to comply, but frankly I'm not sure if my prayers are answered or even heard.  I'm rather dubious about the whole thing.

Not to say that I am not a believer,  or even a non-believer.  I am in the position of whoever said:  "Lord I believe--help thou my unbelief."  I have friends who are deeply religious and who derive comfort from their beliefs.  I cannot say the same of myself.  I can only say that I hope to believe, but have serious doubts.

Why would I want to believe?  I would like to believe that those  I lost will be restored to me, that I will some day see my mother, my father, my dearest cousins whose departure has left such a hole in my life.  I would like to believe that there is a realm where those who suffered will be free of pain, that sinners will suffer., that the good and virtuous will get their reward. 

I cannot understand  ardent atheists, especially those who proselytize, and take joy in converting others to their ardent hopes that this life is all there is.  Those who nourish such hatred of God that they must proclaim their disbelief from the rooftops.

I remember the late Christopher Hitchens, when he was dying of lung cancer, telling those who said they were praying for him that that was fine if it made them feel better.  Well, I was one of those who prayed for him, which in my case meant that I was sad for him, thought of him often and ardently wished he would be spared.  Or if not spared, that his suffering would be lessened.

  I never believed that my prayers or ardent wishes would be efficacious. They were not.  He subsequently suffered greatly and then died.  Would I like to believe that his witty spirit somehow survived him and still exists in some other realm?  Of course.

FBI agent escorted from FBI building.

I'm just going to call him Peter S.  His name is too hard for me--he is seriously deficient in vowels; also in morals.   Apparently he spent his time at work texting his inamorata, the lazy bum, and conspiring against the president.  I hope he does serious jail time.  Not that he will.  None of them do.

I'm  seriously pissed at Laura Bush.  She sounded off about these immigrant children being separated from their parents.  It was okay to separate these children in her husband's administration, as well as under Obama.  It only became heartless and wrong when Trump did it.  I liked the Bush family, because they kept their mouths shut unlike that whited sepulcher Jimmy Carter.  They have spoiled their record now.

Last on my shit list is Netflix, who hired the Obamas. I canceled my subscription.  That'l learn them!

Losing friends permanently

Some of the people I've been following on Facebook are taking drastic steps to sever relationships with friends and even family because these individuals voted for or even defended Trump (also known as the President of the United States). They are even unfriending people who by not enthusastically agreeing or  offering no opinion on the topic  appear to offer tacit support.  Off with their heads!

Friends come and go, and Trump has come and will eventually go. Someone more to your liking will be President eventually.  What will not come back, if they have any sense, are the former friends.  People who used to invite you to Thanksgiving dinner or come and see you when you were in the hospital or just wish you a happy birthday are gone forever.  Your former colleagues, second cousins, neighbors who used to babysit for your kids.  Those who you rejected can now reject you.

How painful it is to read the screeds of the Trump haters1  They act as if the secret police have invaded their homes in the middle of the night.  Their whole way of life has been destroyed.  The ideals of the founders (all racists anyway and all dead white males) have been betrayed!  The whole country is pervaded by racism!  Everyone who did not vote for Hillary is anti-woman!

Unpleasant evening at the Kimmel Center

I had tickets for Tosca, supposedly the hottest ticket in Philadelphia, for me and my daughter. It was a special occasion, a birthday celebration for her.   As we approached the Kimmel Center, we saw a group of activists blocking Broad Street.  The police were monitoring the situation--I think.  Not very well, it turned out.  These activists were all over the place, like ants at a picnic.  At least two of them approached me and more would have. They were in the street, in the lobby, everywhere.

What was it all about?  These mostly middle aged white women were protesting the orchestra's plan to perform in Israel.

The Kimmel Center was showing signs of age, or perhaps of deferred maintenance.  There were buckets here and there set to catch leaks from the roof, fallen plaster was all over the place and one of the water fountains was out of order.

There was a full house. We took our seats, the concert master came out, then the conductor,   Yannick Nézet-Séguin, . He bowed and tapped his baton on the lectern, and...a female voice erupted over the speaker system, shouting about justice for Palestine.  The conductor left the stage, and some of  the musicians also started to leave.  The woman continued shouting.  We could not see what was going on, but the disturbance lasted maybe ten minutes. Ten minutes is a long time when you are waiting for a musical performance.  Then order was restored, Yannick and the musicians returned and the concert commenced.  It was handled clumsily.

It was a sort of semi-staged version of Tosca.  I did not enjoy myself very much.  Trying to follow the action of the opera distracted me from enjoying the music, and the music distracted me from following the plot. I blame the Palestinians. They and their supporters have a lot to answer for.

It was a very long opera, made longer by an interval toward  the end when the action was interrupted while a couple of stage hands moved some furniture, without musical accompaniment.  The audience stirred, ready to leave, but a supertitle warned us the opera was not over.  That was awkward, not to say weird.

All in all, not what I expected when I plunked down $158 for two seats in the third tier.

I am sorry to hear that Melania Trump now has a "cause."

I liked her just as she was, heart-stoppingly beautiful.  Silent was good too.  A nice change from the noisy, opinionated Michele, who I don't miss..

To my readers, and maybe to myself

I know very few people read this stuff, but that's okay.  I write these blog posts as a discipline, and to reveal my real feelings.  For all practical purposes it's almost anonymous, which means freedom for me.

  I have a Facebook page, but I use it to display my artwork and post photographs.  Sometimes I mention Memorial Day or something, or talk about my relatives.  The only reason I don't post cat pictures is that I don't have a cat.  Mention my political views?  Not on your life.

  Back in the day, my stepmother was notorious enough to be on a file of Communist sympathizers. And that was before the Internet.

 I am nostalgic for the old days when bloggers with interesting or amusing ideas used to post a lot.  those days are gone.  Now they post amusing things on Twitter, and I am not on Twitter.  That is intentional.

Is there anything so small and insignificant that environmentalists won't make a cause.of it?

First they came for the  showerheads; then they came for the light bulbs.  Plastic bags.  Nothing is so insignificant that they can't make a cudgel out of it,  controlling people's lives, but not enough to make anyone really mad. enough to do anything.   It's like a series of little tick bites; they don't kill you but they annoy you 24/7.

I could go on.  Did I mention top loading washing machines?  Detergents that don't deter anything? CAFE standards for cars to save fuel so that there is more for Al Gore and Leo diCaprio to circumnavigate the globe, hectoring everyone from the comfort of their air-conditioned palatial mansions? This is a partial list, I'm sure.  So what's next?

  The latest is straws.  Drinking straws. In London, they are making them illegal.  They are trying to do the same in California.  Never mind that the State has super-high taxes, unfunded pensions, and people living in the streets because they can't afford housing. Straws are destroying the
Environment--it's an emergency!

  What's next?  Toothpicks, which are destroying the redwood trees?  Never mind, I'm sure they can come up with more.  It's what they do.

Leaning on something

You all know I broke my foot.  This led the doctors to give me various assistive devices, including a cane and a walker--not simultaneously, the walker came first.

  I can now report that walking with a cane makes you look ten years older.  Instantly, even if you have just undergone a facelift.  A walker adds another  ten years, plus the suspicion that you are either deaf or senile.  So people enunciate carefully, making sure you are looking them straight in the face.  Ugh!

What makes activists tick

I can remember protests in the late sixties--we were protesting the Vietnam War then.  Lo and behold, the war ended, not necessarily because  of the protests.  But the protestors thought it was caused by them.  By God, it felt good.

  The cessation of the war made people hungry for more..  It was like a drug,  It gave them a sense of control.   People missed the excitement, the crowds, the festive air, the fresh air.  So everybody started protesting something, or everything, or nothing.

  The environment was the next Good Thing.  And, boy, did everybody crumble.  Nobody stood up for pollution.  It was a heady success.  We were reminded of that success every time we went to the store and nobody gave us a plastic bag.

  Lately, there has been some pushback, but the protesters chose their targets carefully.  If anyone protested the efforts for gun control, you could shut them up by telling them they had the blood of children on their hands.  It turned out, no-one wanted to kill a child.  Of course not!  But some people still wanted to keep their guns, the murderers!   Not that they had killed any children with them, or even any adults; they just refused to give up guns no matter how passionately the protesters argued. 

 

It's poetry month

I've always liked this one.  I like gloomy poems.

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,

Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had

Past reason hated as a swallowed bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit and in possession so,

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

    All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

    To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

My gofundme project

The news of Andrew McCabe's Gofundme project upset me until I came to my senses.  The man is, like me, a retired civil servant who has only his pension to rely on.  How can he afford legal fees?  True, his wife has money, and they live in a multi-million dollar home, but the man says he needs money for legal fees and who am I, whose relative had to pay a lawyer $50,000 to get out of a contract, to doubt him.  Andy--if I may take the liberty of calling him that--is a good example of a retired civil servant making lemonade out of lemons.  He has inspired me to start my own gofundme scheme.

  Naturally, I want the money for a worthwhile cause.  I don't want diamonds or European travel or anything like that.  But, looking through the New York Times magazine, I came upon a project which would certainly improve my mental health--a luxury condo in Florida.  You see, it really snows very hard up here in Delaware, and my doctor has forbidden  me to shovel snow.  So far, my neighbors have helped me with this, but it is really not fair to them to have this extra burden.

  So it would improve the morale of the whole neighborhood if I were to spend the winter in Florida, leaving the snow to pile up in my driveway until the crocuses and daffodils come out.

  I know asking people for a luxury condo is a bit much.  The optics, you know.  So I wont ask for a luxury condo in Fort Lauderdale, which is what was advertised in the Times.  I'd be satisfied with a modest--but not too modest--little pied a terre on the West Coast, even as far north as the panhandle.  I think I will ask for $400,000 , $350,000 for the condo itself and $50,000 to furnish it. That seems eminently reasonable.  I will even pay the monthly fees and airfare to get from here to there.  I could raise a little money from airbnb to supplement my very modest  income.

You go, Pennsylvania!

A Pennsylvania law that gives tax breaks to farms--and also golf courses and lavish private homes--is being criticized by the people who actually pay taxes.

Supporters say Clean and Green has helped shield millions of acres of farms and other pristine lands from being turned into strip malls, warehouses and Levittowns. The lowered assessments, they say, are a bargain compared to the expense of development and the strains it places on schools, roads and public services. Backers also insist that any problematic properties represent a tiny portion of the lands enrolled.

{snip)

Under the program, qualifying properties — those with at least 10 contiguous acres or that generate $2,000 in farm sales annually — are assessed on what the land is worth as a working farm or woodlot, and not its value on the real estate market. State officials estimate that on average, that works out to a 50 percent reduction in assessment, though the numbers can be as dramatic as pennies on the dollar.

The hardest hit communities were in rural school districts such as Northwestern Lehigh and Bangor Area. Last week, the presidents of each school board said they support the tax breaks for farmers, but feel it is unfair to the average taxpayer to provide them to mansion owners with large estates.
“Somebody has found a loophole in my humble opinion,” said Bangor Area’s Michael Goffredo. “You just got a bargain somebody else isn’t getting.”
Like others, Northwestern Lehigh’s Willard Dellicker called Clean and Green a well-intentioned law producing unintended results.
“Some leniency is needed for farmers, but I don’t believe that we should be giving millionaires property tax reductions because they own 10 acres to get into Clean and Green,” Dellicker said.

Why do they want to prevent development of land that would lead to more young couples owning their own homes  and raising children who would attend local schools?  There's an erroneous belief in this country that the population is too large and that people should avoid having children.  In fact, the population is becoming grayer.  We need children and young people to support us old people who are on social security.  Also to power the factories, to invent and create and think new things.
  Look at Delaware--a potentially nice area of the country which is covered with hospitals, nursing homes, and senior living facilities.  Is that what we want?

  Nursing homes or schools, which do you prefer?  Because you can't have both.

•  

Summer soldiers and sunshine patriots

It was a fine day for a parade Saturday, and the summer soldiers and their buddies the sunshine patriots made a fine display all over the country.

  I wonder how big the turnout would have been if we had been experiencing some of the weather we have been getting lately: snow, high winds, hail, and power outages?  But none of these happened, and if they had, the turnout would have been close to zero.  There was no price to be paid for protesting in the fine weather, aided by some  corporations who, as Kruschev said, would sell us the rope to hang ourselves.  Evil, evil corporations!  Or maybe just stupid, or cowardly like the Broward Cowards who didn't want to enter the school while the shooting was going on--man, you could have got killed out there! Better to hang out behind your cars until the danger has passed.  First responders, indeed!

Advice you can use: How to get anemic

When I was a kid I always fantasized about being able to eat anything I wanted to, whenever I wanted to.  My fantasies in those days ran to Wonder Bread--which my family would never buy, preferring challah or rye--non-Kosher lunch meats, and Heath bars.  I offer these memories to those who think that kids would eat healthy if you just let them choose what they would like to eat.

  However, in the middle of my journey, I found myself alone.  No one to cook for.  No one to share meals with, unless I wanted to.  So I started eating anything.  Or everything.  If I had a pound of macaroni salad, I would eat as much of it as I chose, maybe the whole thing.  Or Brussels sprouts with chestnuts and lots of butter.  Hard boiled eggs.  A baked potato, or two.  Yogurt with fruit.  Fruit alone, some days, in the summer when fruit was bountiful and available.  Meat was a great nuisance to make, the stove got dirty, and I had to turn on the oven fan.

  I don't want to exaggerate, I sometimes but not too often, made myself a nourishing soup or stew, generally in the crockpot.  I figured it would even out, somehow. 

  Then I found out I was anemic.  Now I have to take iron pills, which you can't take with meals or with other medications.  This means I pop one in my mouth when I think of it.  Or whenever.  This averages out to three iron pills a week, because I am usually either eating or taking pills, instead of the two a day I am supposed to take.

  Instead, I make healthy meals and have to clean the stove frequently, like a normal person.

Short memory

The Florida school shooting has raised everyone's consciousness about gun control.  That's because school kids are appealing victims.  It's great theater when kids walk out of school for 17 (get the symbolism?) minutes all over the country.  These appealing youngsters are featured on television news, looking young, vulnerable, and as if they know what they are talking about.  Which they don't.

Much is made of the police officers' caution, or cowardice, in staying in the safe haven of the parking lot, hiding behind cars for good measure.  I, too deplore it.  I mean, what are we paying them for?  They are supposed to keep the children safe.

But did anyone notice that when a gunman shot up a gay nightclub, with the shooter actually on the phone to authorities, that it took them almost three hours to arrive? Perhaps  they thought that by then the gunman might be out of bullets?  I guess these gay men and their friends and families were not as cute as the Parkland high schoolers, although they were just as dead.

There was the usual formulaic handwringing, but nobody's heart was really in it, and it blew over quickly.

  I guess it's really about the children.

Eating for beginners

My mother liked to make an opera--soap or grand, as the occasion demanded--out of little things.  For instance, she thought my brother was in imminent danger of starving because he had skinny arms and legs.  So she fed him at every opportunity.  After he had eaten dinner, if he left so much as a pea on his plate, she would take him to the drive-in and stuff him with French fries like someone stuffing a Strasburg goose.  This continued until the kid weighed 200 pounds, at 5'7".  She then started harping at him for being too fat.

 I was a fussy eater.  I liked hot chocolate, but if there was a layer of skim on the top of the cup, I not only would not eat it, I  ran out of the room screaming.  I wouldn't eat anything made with mayonnaise, because I couldn't identify the ingredients.  My father believed in stern discipline on the food front.  He made me sit at the table until I had consumed enough to satisfy him, or until bedtime, whichever came first.  Long dreary hours (probably only minutes, but they seemed like hours) passed as I stared at the congealed fat on my now tepid plate, without eating it of course. Mercifully, bedtime freed me.

  Then there was the morning milk.  Dad believed that milk was good for children, particularly at breakfast.  I could not, or would not, drink cold milk in the morning.  If I was made to drink it, I usually threw up.  Mealtimes were full of drama at our house.

How the Anglo-Saxons saved my life, with the help of the Bexley, OH library

Of course I'm an Anglophile, and have been since the age of 13.  That was how old I was when I read my first book by P G Wodehouse and discovered the wonderful world of country estates, servants, and the Drones Club.  What a great place to live!  Even at that age, I knew it was too good to be true, but that in no way detracted from its charm.  Fortunately, that was in the old days, when the Bexley  Library had not discarded any books, so I was able to read a dozen volumes by the Master.

  And then I discovered Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, to be exact.  I loved that book so much that when I first finished reading it I went back to the opening and read it again.  Country houses!  Balls!   Gossip!   But it wasn't just the setting, I loved Jane Austen's style.  These two authors taught me to write, taught me what a great writing style could bring to a book, and got me on the road to being a lifelong Anglophile and a prodigious reader.   

  I'm not kidding when I said they saved my life, either.  I was a miserable kid, attending a new school, and two years younger than my classmates.  My parents were getting divorced, not that either of them mentioned the topic, but my father's total absence from our new house was noticeable even to an unobservant child.  I also didn't have the clothes the popular girls wore.  Even my shoes were not quite right. 

  In addition to this, I was so shy that I dreaded anyone even looking at me.  Needless to say, I had no friends.  My classmates scared me.  I hated that school with an intensity that frightens me to this day.  Once I went away to college, I never walked down the street where the high school was located.  I never wanted to be in Central Ohio again, and mostly I haven't been.

  I buried my head in P G Wodehouse and Jane Austen.  When I was in their world I was released from the realities of my own.  I don't know how I would have gotten through high school without them.  But I am eternally grateful to the library for making my continued existence possible.

   

I knew the Jewish Conspiracy would come up...

and by god, it has.   The left, of course, has given Israel the back of its hand for years, yammering on about the poor Palestinians.  But now anti-semitism has cropped up on what can be described as the nutter right.  Apparently, my people are big-time plutocrats, controlling banks and newspapers and generally telling others what to think while themselves rolling in money.  A nice lifestyle, I think, particularly the financial part.  So where's my cut?

  I have been left out of this Vast Jewish Conspiracy and forced to work for local government.  and not even the political part, where I understand bribes are an honored tradition, but in the library.  It is well known that when politicians want to cut spending, they cut back on funding the library. Politicians don't read anyway, so no-one is harmed.

  

A fortuitous find

I am always one book short of clinical depression without a book to look forward to. Sometimes I feel that I have read everything worth reading by my crochety tastes, andf will be stuck re-reading "When Patty Went to College" for the rest of my life.

  Then I get lucky.  On a pile of discards at the Good Will, I discovered "All Our Worldly Goods" by Irene Nemirovsky.  I almost skipped it because I noted that the author had been killed in the Holocaust and I thought her work might be gloomy and depressing. Au contraire!


I find it difficult to express  anything positive or approving about a book or movie.  Dislike is so much easier to articulate.  Nemirov, though, delighted me.  I think you will like her work if you like Tolstoy, or maybe Balzac.   The milieu is bourgeous France between the wars, and she is a keen observer of manners and mores, with a dazzling lightness of touch. 

  I downloaded another of her books to my Kindle, "Suite Francaise," which is even better, also taking place just before the German defeat, a period of great despair, confusion, and hysteria in France.  The advancing German troops disrupt everyone's lives and turn everyone into a refugee.  The fabric of society is torn and can never be reclaimed.  Except it is, after a fashion.

  Read the damn book!