Madison IN

Yesterday we went to check out Aurora, Indiana. Too bad I underestimated the clothing I would need to keep warm. Frightfully chilly, just like the temperature at dawn! We did see a house I had seen several years ago, Hill Forest. I'm sorry I forgot the to ask the docent for her name. She was very good!

Since we were so cold we skipped the night's festivities, which were to include a ghost walk, and drove to Rising Sun, where my partner had booked a hotel on the River.

It was cold, too, but had a beautiful view of the river from a spacious balcony. I would be delighted if our balcony had half its depth.

Luckily we had never seen Rising Sun before we moved to Madison, because if we had my partner would want to have lived there - and according to the old song, that might have been our ruin!

There's a Halloween scare for you! ...or for me!

Incredibly sunny and warm day for Halloween - beneficent enough to spook the spooks!

(Happy Halloween!)

Madison IN

The other week I saw a heron near a temporary pier on the Ohio River with a fish in its mouth. Last week I saw one perching on the high stump of a dead tree a block inland.

The other day I saw a heron on the top of the skinniest iron cylinder nearby in the river, where I have never seen a heron before. Geese and vultures, but no heron.

Is this an unusual heron? They nest in trees, but all the herons I have seen along the river before this year have been on the shore.

Maybe herons are like kids - some of them are really vertically oriented.

Madison IN

My partner uses our one car to get to work, and really does not care to visit big cities with the insane Interstate and urban traffic.

If we only had a bus! With a bus station downtown I could  enjoy a bus ride to Cincinnati, Louisville, or Indianapolis to museums, fun shops, and art galleries.

Could have, maybe I should say.

With more and more people unable to afford an automobile, maybe bus travel will be a viable option once more.

Oh. That's right. Social distancing. How could I forget?

I should be abjectly grateful these days for having enough to eat.

Madison IN

Okay, I live in a small town. We are insulated for a while from all kinds of social phenomena that manifest first in a big city. I wrote yesterday that I hadn't yet seen any economic consequences of the coronavirus around me.

We live a block from a food bank. On my random walks by I have seen no longer lines or greater numbers of people waiting to get help - yet.

I haven't heard much on the news about families in trouble either. It's just election election election blah blah blah. Maybe I'm watching the wrong channels - and I've already voted anyway.

Walking around town I see no more signs of financial distress than usual - perhaps fewer, as it is getting colder and vagrants have found inside berths or moved South.

Now, finally, I am seeing reporting of the financial impact of the pandemic closures on everyday people reported in national newspapers. The situation is so dire for many of us that I fear it will soon be very dire for all of us.

The tipping point may be here, and the crash might be a tsunami.

Madison IN

The coronavirus is a horrible thing.

Economically, though, I see some businesses booming while others are struggling. Isn't that just business as usual?

When automation takes away people's jobs, they are basically told to toughen up and reinvent themselves. There is much talk about survival of the fittest. 

I don't at all trust the talk about how much the economy is losing. What does that even mean? That the stock market is going down?

When other countries manage to give their citizens a basic allowance, why can't ours give unemployed people another stimulus check if their spending is so important?

Some people blame the President, others blame Congress.

I blame us all, especially the billionaires.

The I Ching has a word of advice that applies here. The superior man always respects and cares for the insignificant, or they will not be there for when they are needed.

Kind of interesting idea, isn't it? It demands a little soul-searching.

Do the powerful really believe anyone is insignificant?

To herself?

Madison IN

A few days ago I saw a comment by a woman on Facebook: "Trump is the only President I have truly loved."

!!!!!!

Slack-jawed, I was nonplussed.

True to form, it took me a couple of days before, without remembering her name (dang!) I thought of my response.

"Are you a troll????"

Madison IN

When I was a young child, I had a dream that I was in a movie theater watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon. When the action got exciting I ran up the aisle and right into the movie!

I thought it was a pretty cool dream, and evidently other people felt the same way. They wanted to be in the movies!

Then TV became all the rage. Maybe since it came into their houses people felt its screen was more accessible. They were right. Closed captioning TV in stores had many appearances by the common folk, but it was still a rarity.

Now, thanks to the coronavirus, a screen is often the only way to be seen - and the screen is even smaller. Compared to a movie screen it's tiny.

I wonder if the younger generations even care. Can their in-the-body experiences compare in importance to them with what they experience of themselves on the screen? Sometimes I wonder.

 Plato himself must be twirling on the walls of his cave!

Madison IN

I'm thinking about the past more these days, getting sentimental about people I may not have even thought of in decades.

Most young people are thought of as daydreaming about the future frequently. This habit has often been described as fanciful. I think it is about survival.

Now that I am, er, older, I am thinking a lot about the past. With regret? Some. With what might have been? Not at all.

I think about the past and old acquaintance now simply because I have the time.

The young are thrown into the ocean of life and are just struggling to keep afloat. They don't have as much time and mental freedom as we elders.

It seems quite natural to me.

Madison IN

I am pretty passionately liberal these days, but even I am getting fed up with news reporting that adds a little fillip to what Trump says to make it truly grotesque and horrible.

What Trump really says is bad enough! You don't need to distort his meaning to make it even worse!

Maybe I am being too literal, but the liberal press seems to me to be pressing on the bias.

Madison IN

I know I should watch the debate tonight.

Wait a minute! Why should I?

I'm pretty sure I won't learn a damn thing.

So stressful - I'm spooked! 

Madison IN

Jefferson County coronavirus deaths up to five.

What I want to say this morning, though, is about human relationships.

I wrote once long ago about being sexually misunderstood. I'm not sure if this has happened since, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Isn't it possible to enjoy someone's company and even a feeling of friendly personal intimacy without having the idea of sex creep in?

I'm only guessing that this might happen occasionally (in some cases years ago) because there is a sudden self-consciousness and wordless pulling away - breaking-off of closeness.

In past times, it seems to me, people could luxuriate in another's company more without giving the wrong impression. Our seemingly more permissive times open up so many more sexual possibilities that we have - paradoxically - become more self-conscious about it. What a drag!

Although not myself a bombshell, I'm beginning to feel as if I have spent my life as clueless as the Marilyn Monroe character in The Seven Year Itch.

Madison IN

No wonder so many country landowners (back country folk, ranchers, "hillbillies" etc.) whose families have been in the same place for generations are so afraid people with guns are going to come and take away their land.

That is exactly what their ancestors did to the Native Americans.

Madison IN

What happened to yesterday? It went downhill, on streets that might have had more pedestrians than motor vehicles.

Yesterday went to a baking show and murder mysteries.

Yesterday went to the place Where the Crawdads Sing.

And many Americans, who think they are smarter than lemmings who mythically run en masse over cliffs into the sea, are running to embrace coronavirus. (Hoping by their believed immunity to its deadlier symptoms to prove their racial superiority?)

Dance with the Devil! Haunt with the ghosts! Spread your cooties along with the candy.

As for me, I am celebrating Halloween as never before - donning my mask months early and wearing it probably into the New Year.

Happy Halloween?

Happy Hallowyear!

Madison IN

After the sun finally burned through the clouds, mist and fog it is another gorgeous Fall day.

On Main Street a caravan of twenty-five motorcycles streamed by, all the riders looking deadly serious. They were probably chilled to the bone from the near freezing temperatures earlier this morning.

Now there's a way to travel with your friends and still be able to observe social distancing!

Madison IN

Jos and I don't understand why vegans won't eat honey, because we are using the produce of the poor bees, but they will eat sugar which is still harvested by machete by human beings.

They eat Romaine lettuce harvested by migrant workers whose life expectancy is 45. Why so sensitive about animal life and uncaring of humans?

Not to mention all the plant life they have to destroy to support the energy-devouring mammalian life form.

The burden of us on the world is getting to be just too much.

Poor Earth - who is taking care of her?

Madison IN

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

The first time I heard that, I paused. It made me think.

Fifty years later, after a dream in which an old boss and old ladies dressed like brides are talking about "reining her" (me!) "in" I thought of that old saying.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?

That must have been coined by the Nazis!

Oooo... I'll have to look it up.

Hmmm... Turns out it is probably American, first printed in the Atlantic Monthly in 1932. What's more, at least one of the online definitions expands the meaning as being: if you can't beat them, don't surrender - start using their tactics!

Well, what do you know - you learn something every fifty years or so?

Oooh... scary...

(Have I inspired any ghost imagery here?)

Madison IN

Cold pea soup fog changing midmorning into cloudless sunshiny day.

Last week was marred by five evenings of revival meetings accompanied by almost constant bass drum beat as if the percussionist was trying to get everyone's heart beating in sync.

The one time I looked through binoculars at the gathering a block away I was pretty sure it numbered at least one hundred unmasked worshippers(?) many standing shoulder to shoulder around the stage.

Add to that the fact that the schools have opened and people here are generally scofflaws and defiant, and I fear that there will be a mournful Christmas in our town this year.

Madison IN

Just looked up Jefferson County coronavirus deaths. As of October 7, our number of deaths rose to four. Supposedly that is higher than one per one hundred cases.

Obviously, there are hundreds of untested positive folks running around us.

Disturbing. How is your county doing?

Madison IN

What is the worst thing about a world under the seige of pandemic besides the disease itself and its consequences?

We each have our own feelings about that, of course. For me the thing that affects me most in my day-to-day existence is not being able to eat out. I really had become quite attached to eating elsewhere every week or few, even if the experience was sometimes disappointing.

Just now I remembered that growing up in a smaller burg than this we almost never ate out. I don't think we averaged once a year, if you don't count cooking outdoors while camping. (I don't.)

Life was certainly worth living then, small town isolation notwithstanding, and it's still worth living now.

What is scary is the idea that this will become the new norm - wave after wave of sickness of pandemic proportions keeping our lives on a permanent setting of low and slow.

Total deaths in Indiana from coronavirus as of yesterday - 3562. According to the New York Times, the number is higher - 3795.

Madison IN

Yesterday I was walking through the Lanier Mansion grounds when I heard an exceptional amount of squirrel racket. No mistaking it for a bird this time!

The little critter was not hard to locate and spot. He was on his belly on a low-lying tree branch little smaller in diameter than he, with all four legs hanging straight down.

Had he (or to be fair, she) eaten too many pine or magnolia berries and was belly-aching about a belly-ache, or had she gotten hung up on the branch she was lying on and, paralysed by vertigo, afraid to move?

Hearing some more (encouraging?) chatter from a nearby tree and having errands of my own, I moved on.

Now I wish I had lurked in the background and watched the outcome of that little subadult rodential drama.

Why was I in such a hurry? That might have been once-in-a-lifetime theatre!

Madison IN

Maybe it is the gloom of the cloudy day outside, but I feel in the shadow of the danger of an attempted complete takeover of the country by the man who would be king.

Pre-Halloween jitters? Maybe. We shall see.

I was thinking this morning, though, of the wonder of Halloween - how it gives us permission to take over - even become! - our worst fears and allows us to poke fun at them.

It is the perfect prelude to the comfort of candy and the more substantial consolation of Thanksgiving. With Christmas, the season of spiritual renewal begins in time to prepare us to greet the return of the light with joy.

The Fall season offers so many compensations for the onset of desolate winter!

Madison IN

In the rare case when the mean and the median are the same, I think that would really be the golden mean!

Oh. Not in mathematics, though. Turns out that the philosophical golden mean was originally taken from the mathematical realm, in which it symbolized a perfect proportion, more a geometric and aesthetic than statistical concept.

Instead I'll celebrate the golden median which could be a highway median in the Fall - probably not your average median, either.

Madison IN

I've written about this subject before, but now I am going to rant:

Throw out the word "average" when talking about demographics and politics. When I heard Pence talking last night about how much less "the average" American pays in taxes now that Trump has been President I wanted to howl.

Averages mean nothing! When billionaires pay millions less in taxes that skews the scale so that the fact becomes meaningless.

Averages are a mathematical tool that might help you gauge whether your income over a year will cover your expenses, sure. But grading on the curve does not work when the numbers represent not flunking but starvation.

The "average" American has an income of - wait a minute - let me look that up.

Well, what do you know? The very first thing that comes up when I Google "income of average American" is the "median household income was $63,179 in 2018."

"Median" is not the same as "average." The two are not interchangeable!

How many Americans even know the meaning of the word "median" beyond the strip of green in the middle of the highway?

Too bad we don't have Jay Leno to ask that question of the man on the street - at least in any channel my partner and I can afford! (Hmmm... maybe I should start a man-on-the-street survey of my own.)

Where do you fit into all this talk of lowered income tax? The "average" won't really tell you. The "median" will help, because it shows the number that represents equality. It gives the point at which there are an equal number of people (or numbers or dogs) whose reality exists above and below that number. "Median" has real meaning when you are talking about how we are all actually living - and paying taxes.

Happy Howloween!

Madison IN

Mmmph. Rmmp. Don't expect anything intelligible from me. Still numb from a root canal.

A few weeks ago I was the subject of technologically sophisticated imagery that showed my lower face as skeleton. That chin looked disturbingly familiar!

Talk about a blast from the past - here's one from the future, and very timely.

Halloween is coming! 

Madison IN

When I was three, my mother told me, I would leave my underpants on the sidewalk. I bet if I did it was because they were falling off anyway.

Today, though, as I went down the outdoor steps to the laundry room, I experienced an embarrassing reprise of that childhood habit when I ran across two pairs of my underpants and a recognizable dishcloth.

They must have fallen out of my pile of clean laundry I had hastily thrown into the basket in order to escape the laundry room and possible coronavirus contamination!

I never missed them.

Seventy years later I am beginning to revert to type. ???

Madison IN

They think they are above the law - of Nature! Hahahaha

Madison IN

The Age of Entitlement, by Christopher Caldwell just taught me something maybe many of you already knew: that the family of Betsy DeVos, Trump's appointed Secretary of Education, was a member of the family that founded Amway.

Amway! That pyramidal exploiter of the desperation and optimism of the poor and naive! I have heard that Betsy is not well-educated herself (I know nothing about her level of formal education) but I know that anyone who is willing to pocket profits from Amway is either ignorant of the toll upon those whom get enmeshed in its web or does not care.

I remember being introduced to Amway in a meeting designed to attract participants in its sales program in 1971. It seemed sketchy time at the time and I eluded involvement. Since then I have learned more about it, none of it good, none of it, admittedly, recent.

Shouldn't education be founded, along with reading writing and arithmetic, on a certain knowledge of good ethics and the social and economic consequences of not caring about them?

Hey, this book also has exposed the clay feet of Warren Buffett to my inquiring mind. Another supposed good guy bites the dust (although I had already heard he said his secretary pays a higher percentage of taxes on her income than he. How could he live with that?)

The closer we get to Halloween, the more goblins and pirates I can make out in the murk!

Madison IN

October is the most beautiful month of the year. The hot weather is banished, the doldrums dispersed.

I admit I don't remember the month from my California years before I was eight, but every community I have inhabited since has always been at its best in October.

My first October in Corvallis, Oregon was one of the most spectacular and enjoyable I have ever experienced, even if it was that horrible year, 2001. Big leaf maples, with their resonant clacking leaves when dry, add a lot to October.

Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, might force you to look a little harder for October's charms, but bright red scrub oaks and golden aspen added to the charm of drying red chile ristras and the taming of the sun keep October high in fall blessings.

Was Halloween my favorite holiday as a child for the simple reason that it topped off that wonderful month, October?

Madison IN

Trump has coronavirus. When upon awakening I heard the news I was stunned but not surprised.

Before today I would have thought that stunning news would of course be surprising, and I am surprised to realize this.

Trump thinks he and his followers have great genes. That may be true although many of his followers have contracted Covid19 and died.

He will have the best medical care money can buy, at least.

Madison IN

Another pedestrian-automobile incident, this time resulting in a death at the most dangerous intersection in town has me feeling combative about the way traffic is not managed here.

Even before this most recent death of a fifty-eight-year-old man, in this year alone an elderly friend of ours has been hit twice within half a block of Jefferson (highway 421) and Main (highway 56), luckily escaping both times without major injury.

My partner called one of our city councilors about the issue, and he said that particular intersection is really under the jurisdiction (maybe not the right word) of the State because 421 is a state highway. He should register a complaint with the Indiana Department of Transportation.

We're you aware of this division of responsibility? Do you have dangerous spots near you that will not be dealt with by your local government?

No one has ever before told me this very relevant detail about where the buck stops at the local/state level.

Madison IN

During the so-called debate, which I think would be more accurately described a snarling session, the current president huffed that the Democrats are trying to get people to hate our country.

I plead innocent! We are optimistically attempting to make the country become the wonderful place it has the potential to be, surpassing the beauty even of the visions of the founding fathers!

Maybe he is confusing the hatred we have towards the perpetrating of bad behaviors with hatred of the people who commit them.

Hmm...interesting that he seems to take it all so personally.

Madison IN

This morning I go for a tooth extraction (I always want to say excavation, haha - sob.) I am currently on three medications and I hold that sad fact responsible for the gaga that is me. Lady, step aside.

I normally try not to bore you with details too idiosyncratic of my personal life, unless I deem them of universal value. Of course, reaching for universality is a pretty bold move.

Anyway, tooth number 1 is going away today, along with one quarter of my wisdom. Students of dementia take note: is my current state of nonsense drug, age, or pain induced?

Um, gotta take that ibuprofen.

Madison IN

In bed this morning, I had a mystical experience. Engaged in my normal ruminations, all of a sudden a gentle wave of pure joy and light and calm wafted into my head.

It seemed like a visitation from some sweet spirit from beyond - a relative, maybe. Of course after savoring the feeling for a while, I had to start analyzing the source.

Maybe, in spite of impressions, the source came from within, not from without.

Maybe some physiological mechanism cleared an obstruction in my brain (or my sinuses!)

Perhaps various combinations of the (medicinal, alas) drugs I have been taking induced the experience.

Oh, no! Maybe someone died!

No, it felt like Enlightenment.

Or maybe it was a contact high from reading Hippie Woman Wild by Carol Schlanger.

Madison IN

Lately I have been suffering from dental issues. It makes me wonder if my diet during some crucial period of tooth formation was inadequate or whether my genes have something to do with it. I learned from my father (whose birthday would have been celebrated today) to be pretty assiduous about tooth care, so I try not to blame myself for the trauma I am currently undergoing.

And trauma it is, even though I try to be philosophical about it.

Often I have dealt with pain by walking. It doesn't exactly make the pain go away, but the change of scenery is distracting and the exercise is good for you, right? Gets the juices flowing, anyway. 

Yesterday that wasn't enough even with a clove on my gum, and at some point my misery overcame my fear of medicinal side effects and I downed 400 milligrams of ibuprofen which moved me from suicidal to merely self-pitying. Distraction is a pretty good remedy for that.

At bedtime my partner suggested using a wet warm chamomile teabag on the offending tooth. Wow, that helped too! Of course I also drank the tea.

The last few days have been an altogether too excellent reminder of what misery ill health can induce. My compassion for those in pain has been given a much-needed boost (I realize.)

My old age tightrope is getting slacker, narrower and higher off the ground - one descriptor for every medication I am currently taking.

May you stay off the tightrope for many years to come!

Madison IN

Coronavirus deaths in Indiana have reached 3,322, according to statistics put out in this state, I'm assuming. The New York Times, however, reports Indiana as having had 3,548 deaths as of midnight last night.

Those statistics are pretty highly divergent for a supposedly democratic society with objective reporting. Judging from the way people around our town talk, if a relative were to die from coronavirus, they would blame the death not on the disease but on whatever chronic conditions the victim suffered. Good way to remain in denial.

Meanwhile the national total has mounted to 202,707 disproportionately minorities, if the ratios remain the same. I will leave you to decide the implications of that deplorable condition, lest I be accused of radical ranting.

Madison IN

Jack London may have been able to make me doubt the existence of God, but even he could not have made me consider the possibility that the U.S. Postal Service would cease to exist in my lifetime.

The world I grew up in is tottering. I guess that's just part of growing old. Makes me realize just how lucky my generation was.

Madison IN

For a while now I've been reading quite a few books via Kindle Unlimited and inexpensive ebooks BookBub has made me aware of. I'm reading along, perfectly content, when all of a sudden I get the eerie feeling something has changed.

Sometimes it is kind of a softening of the images the way your vision changes when you unfocus your eyes. When I read a passage like that, I suspect that the author is taking from his personal history - genuine recollection. I have written about this before.

Just now I experienced a sharpening of the imagery that sent a different message to my brain: motion picture. This worries me a little. Is our literature becoming unduly influenced by the movies?

My partner mentions photography not being able to supplant painting, but oh how photography changed pictorial art - so much so that the word pictorial seems wildly inappropriate - and probably isn't used any more.

Here I am, writing on a screen about books I am reading on a screen, worried about the screen taking over.

Ha, ha! A fait accompli.

Madison IN

Yesterday I saw a young squirrel with a magnolia fruit half as big as he. It had beautful bright red berries on it. Why have I not seen those ripe colorful fruits in over eight years of living here? Hmmm... I think I just answered my own question. I wonder how many critters like magnolia? Turns out people can eat them also - petals, leaves (a substitute for bay leaves) and fruits. Even bark can be decocted into an anti-arthritis remedy.

Madison IN

I saw a notice in The Week about a Scandinavian organization that is offering grants to people who have no plans - for doing nothing.

Dang! I should take another look at that! (I wonder what they are really looking for?)

Last day of summer tra-la tra-la had a beautiful brisk walk after ten o'clock this morning!

Madison IN

Here's a book title for you: The Art of the Meal

Earlier this morning, obviously, I must have been ruminating on Donald Trump, who I think must have been unduly influenced in his early childhood by the comic strip Dennis the Menace and the story about the Gingerbread Man.

All I can say is, Dennis er I mean Donald, you had better beware of the - but no! I am one of the townspeople trying to chase you down! 

Madison IN

Seems to me a lot of countries have the same problem: they have an entrenched power system of old males.

The U.S. doesn't seem much better to me than China in that regard.

What's with these guys? Don't they have anything better to do than try to control everything?

This, by the way, is a bipartisan complaint.

Madison IN

I've been reading The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein and shocked by the pervasiveness and deadly serious intention (and unbelievable perseverance) of those who believe in segregation to keep it the prevailing norm.

Sure, I may have heard a shocking story or two over the years, but I failed to see how pervasive the problem is, just as when I read Ibsen's play The Master Builder I failed to realize the universal warning it held.

Maybe at a tender age the realisation of the evil in the world would have been just too much to bear. Perhaps I was taught too well not to rush to judgment.

Or possibly - quite likely - I am just clueless!

Don't be like me! Read The Color of Law!

Madison IN

Today, walking by Firemen's Park, I noticed it was tidier and better groomed than I had ever seen it. What's more, there were multiple portapotties in a row along the street. Something was obviously up.

Seeing a man parked in a truck in front of the park, I ask him if he knows what's planned. A free boat race the public is invited to attend, he answers, this weekend. It will involve thirty or forty boats, and he mentioned the word "vintage." I don't know if only vintage boats are racing.

I don't quite understand why, the Regatta having been cancelled, the city is allowing a boat race to be attended, possibly by hundreds. Whoever is running it is accepting donations, but I don't know who that is.

We shall see. And hear a lot of noise, sounds like!

The vultures will definitely be happy this weekend.

Madison IN

Tired of generational name-calling? I never even heard of a "generation gap" until the 1960's. The concept, even insofar as it is genuine at all, must certainly be tied to the rapidity of technological change in the twentieth century.

If differences are to be accurately described these days, maybe they should be called semigenerational or even demidecadanal. Surely the person born in 1991 spent her childhood in a vastly different culture than one born in 2001.

I myself never considered myself a boomer in the sense of a young person who feels the right to untrammelled freedom so often attributed to us. Demography may have some statistical validity, but really won't much help you understand the people next door.

Madison IN

Just saw a plane coming toward us with lights on seemingly out of Louisville all lit up and SILENT. When we first saw it we couldn't tell what it was, and after I looked at it through binoculars I thought it was a biplane. My partner looked again and said no, and he was right. As it flew upstream towards Cincinnati close enough to see its jet shape, we started worrying. We could see separate lights on it. We should have heard its engines.

I guess now we can only wait for news. The best news about this will be none.

Madison IN

Today I found out there was a Trump rally down along Vaughan Street below the Riverboat Inn and our mayor spoke! Supposedly not a racist, how can he support such a racist?

Presumably not a sexist (although how would I know?) how can he speak at a rally with a huge pink Women for Trump sign prominently displayed?

I read on Facebook an explanation of Trumpists' behavior that explains what seems to be their mindset - "F__k the liberals!" if not the "libtards"

Well, that's a relief! Now I'm freed from trying to understand or explain.

Lucky I walked the other way yesterday!

I will just try to stay civil and vote.

Madison IN

Today on my desultory walk I saw the Rockin'Thunder boat folks, who have a couple of rides planned for the day. It was good to see them - their long hair took me back to the sixties - which was fun. Paul said he was going to let his hair grow into an all-out Willy Nelson look - which my partner has already attained thanks to an earlier start.

I took the opportunity to ask them about a submarine accident which I thought they had talked about on our ride to the Kentucky River locks several years ago.

Turns out I had elided two anecdotes together and got the facts wrong. The accident was one of two bombers which were flying up the Ohio River. One went over the bridge at Vevey, the other went under. Which plane came to grief and crashed into the river Paul did not know.

As for the submarine, it was only an idea. The governor of Kentucky (whose territory most of the breadth of the river is) wanted to use submarines to patrol the river - against what threat I do not yet know!

Which is stranger, my concocted fiction or the real story?

Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Madison IN

My partner left for work while it was still dark. Yesterday being the anniversary it was, he reminded me of my intention to expand the thought I had about cleaning up messes. Plenty of people worked to clean up Osama bin Laden's mess, even if it wasn't their job.

I got deflected, though, when I turned on the water in the bathroom to wash my plastic nightguard (yes, stress makes me grind my teeth at night as well as grind out words during the day!) and there was no water. Nary a drop.

Of course I had not filled up my eternal pitcher of water. Luckily we had a nice big jug ready for the plants. I appropriated it - they don't need it as much as we do! - and headed to the downtown dollar store.

Since the store hadn't yet opened I went on a walk behind Hillside Inn. Up and down and back again. Yesterday there was water going down the back driveway because the city was cleaning out the water tank uphill. Today the driveway is dry, but now a pipe under Vaughan has broken.

Hmmm... wonder if there is a connection? No water in the pipes created a lack of pressure to resist collapse from traffic above? Is that idea silly? They have had problems with that section of pipe before - once there was a sinkhole there.

On the way back I got water at the only place I know of downtown and walked home with an eightpack under each arm. I feel lucky to have scored any at all. Since they don't have water either, the store is probably closed by now.

I had planned to do laundry this morning, but obviously that has to be postponed. The inconvenience is irritating because that pile is only going to get bigger, but now I sit with my feet up, luxuriating in uncertainty about what I will do next.

I do love that feeling!

Later - now I have read the latest in the New York Times about the western fires and how dire they are, I must tell you (given the name of this site) that the city of Corvallis and Benton County, Oregon have closed local natural parks because of bad air quality and public safety considerations.

My partner and I are hoping all our old acquaintances in the area are doing okay, and sad to see the danger and restrictions you are suffering under... as if coronavirus weren't bad enough.

And glory hallelujah the water is back on. Gee, I forgot to eat breakfast! Brunchtime!

Madison IN

Ha, ha, here's one for you: if Stephen Miller lived alone would it be his job to clean up the trash?

Karma is a botch (ha, ha, I said something else, but for once my electronic editor might have said it better!) for shortly after writing yesterday's mal mot I got an instant response from the universe in the form of a dumpster and nine black vultures.

I had just tied up a bag of trash and was on my way out to dump it at seven o'clock in the morning and beheld a depressing disgusting morass of trash including a whole plastic pecked-at bag of detritus outside of the acceptable confines of the structure.

Normally, having outgrown the Puritan instruction of my parents, I don't pick up the little litter I encounter, especially in the time of coronavirus. This outrage, however, was enough to induce a moral dilemma within me. What to do?

I battered away the vultures, threw my trash from an angle into the lidded emptier side of the overflowing mound of disgusting rejects and excretions, and came to a firm decision: this noxious offense must not remain. After all, we do not live in a slum.

I must clean it up, even if it was not my job.

I went back upstairs and asked my partner for a pair of gloves, expressing my intention, and he confessed to having the same urge, although he would normally have called cleaning up after litterers "enabling."

It was a stinky nasty job, but somebody had to do it, and it only took about five minutes of time. I won't go into revolting details.

Who was responsible for the mess? The neighbor who didn't use a bag? The person who didn't bother (or who physically couldn't) deposit his bag well into the dumpster? Or was it the birds?

We were going on a hike so I figured I'd find out in a couple of hours.

When we got back, we found that the vultures had littered again, but not too badly. I accuse them because they were the perps on the scene.

But was botched Karma done with me? Evidently not.

The garbage truck finally came (it should have been here Wednesday mutter mutter grump grump) with trash already on its roof, and as usual, after much grunting and scraping and groaning, departed with the dumpster load minus a full-sized loaded plastic bag and more scattered offenses.

For the second time in the 8+ years we have lived here I donned gloves, grabbed another bag (this time large shopping-sized) and picked up the trash truck's leavings. They were even worse than the vultures'. The stench from that empty dumpster was one of the worst I had ever encountered in my whole life. 

Good thing I was in Cinderella mode.

So here's a question for you, dear readers. If Stephen Miller were living alone in the middle of the forest and a bear took a dump on his front doorstep would it be his job to clean it up?

And would it matter?

Madison IN

My partner and I watch a lot of movies. Whenever some character in a fit of anger swipes a tableful of crockery or a deskful of important papers onto the floor I think, I wonder who's going to clean that up? Unfortunately for my poor partner, I also usually say it aloud.

After reading an excerpt in The Week from Hatemongers by Jean Guerrero about Trump and the White Nationalists (including about Stephen Miller) we know, at least, who it will not be.

Even as a student Miller would intentionally make messes and comment that it was someone else's job to clean up.

Extrapolate that attitude to national policy and the cleanup, as we have already seen, will be massive.

Madison IN

Ha, ha, anybody who doesn't know what the state of Utah is about has only to look at their state quarters. Talk about phallic symbols!

Next day - I know, know, Indiana's cannon is just as bad, but at least it doesn't have aspirations to heaven!

Madison IN

This morning I walked downstream and was pleasantly surprised at how few people were out and about. As I walked by the two rusty cylindrical structures one big, one of very small diameter, there, atop the latter, was a heron!

I'm hoping it was the young one I saw last, perhaps now fully grown. I stood and talked softly to it, and was amazed it didn't fly away. It seemed so close and big with the tall late summer vegetation between us, like the moon when it's rising over the hills. Also the sun was striking the bird at just the right angle to make more than usual detail visible.

Later I saw a hawk on the fence by the ball park, but couldn't identify it for sure - maybe a Cooper's. I murmured to it also, but from that distance it probably couldn't even hear me. You never know, though. Birds have great hearing.

So what if the black vultures feasting at the dumpster don't exeunt until I make it quite clear that they are in danger of getting bopped by my trash if they don't skedaddle?

I fancy myself quite the bird whisperer.

Madison IN

Lovely, intoxicating walk yesterday followed by an emotional hangover today induced by my early-morning reading of The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein.

Having been brought up in a racist white town, of course I wasn't aware of the "legal" ways used to keep the African-American population away from the white populations in countless other communities. We weren't exactly taught in school an honest history about racism in the good old U.S.A. I doubt very much my teachers knew much about it. I had no idea that my town was not unusually bigoted.

This book has made me more aware of just how intentional and widespread varietal (more commonly known as "racial") discrimination has been since over a century ago especially as implemented through housing legislation.

Wow. All I can say is Wow. I am not one-fifth of the way through this book yet but I'm already willing to say it should be required reading.

Madison IN

Glorious walk this morning along trails 9 and 10 at Clifty Falls on grassy pathss lined with New York ironweed much taller than we were. These giant flowers were accompanied by orange speckled jewelweed, tall bright yellow blossoms in the aster family, thistle, goldenrod, and a milkweed complete with striped monarch caterpillar.

The only spiders we saw were parallel to the path several feet away. We were safe from them, and they from us!

Part of our walk was in woodland, also gorgeous. Ideal sunny weather to enjoy the park, and we went early enough to avoid too much contact with other hikers. Labor Day itself will be a true day of labor for my partner, who has to go to work.

We are nevertheless more than content with our holiday weekend!

Madison IN

Here's a little tidbit for those who are following my blahg for the study of a progression of dementia (yes, I made that offer!): for the first time in my life I forgot to pay the rent.

Sure, in the past I have suffered from the failure of the mail service or a glitch of my own. Once when I was renewing my lease my check got put into the wrong envelope and sent to a credit card company instead of the management of the property.

Usually I have the check written and sitting around ahead of time on the TV table, but this time I got distracted.

So there we were, my partner and I, yesterday? drinking our coffee on the balcony, when the landlord drives up in his SUV. Sotto voce I wonder where he's headed but we exchange greetings with no questions. Then my partner turns to me and casually asks, "Did we pay the rent?" He's tactful like that.

I couldn't remember. I ask the landlord, and he smiles and tells me he doesn't know. I make a joke - well you never know with me, always trying to get away with something! and head inside to get my checkbook. The landlord didn't hang around - he's not concerned.

It was the fourth of the month and I had not paid my rent! That's a lifetime first and it has me a little rattled. My only comfort is that my partner, who tends to want to pay for rent days in advance, had not even noticed that the rent check never appeared this time.

Oh boy, there goes the kitchen timer telling me it's time to go downstairs and put the laundry in the dryer. That's another reminder I did not require a few years back.

Madison IN

General Butler State Park outside Carrollton, Kentucky was our destination on this perfect hiking day.

We slipped and slid and fell a little along the still-muddy path which often sloped not only up or down, but also to the side.

It was cool in the woods but so noisy from highway traffic that we didn't get any peace for a good stretch of the hike. Walking through grassy sunny paths in between forested sections, we used our walking poles to bat cobwebs out of our way. The spiders at home on the webs had white triangles on their backs. 

After hiking a good part of the loop, we started experiencing deja vu. We had seen this little pond before, all surrounded with vegetation. It looks deep in spite of it's surface size. I remembered going onto Woodland Trail (same as today, must be, because I remembered coming out at the back of the Conference Center same as before.)

Before we started our hike I recalled next to nothing about it except that our hiking was curtailed, but whew! It was still a good hike. If my partner had not packed an energy bar which we shared I might've been in trouble.

Why were our memories so curtailed? My partner said it was almost as if we had been in some kind of dream state.

We walked through the golf course to get back to our car, but this time the grass seemed unmowed. Maybe the coronavirus has curtailed golfing.

I still don't understand the park map. I can relate to Christopher Columbus.

P.S. Turns out the white triangle is on the abdomen of the female Verrucosa arrenata or arrowhead spider. And our last hike on this trail was four years ago almost to the day!

Madison IN

One of the most helpful concepts I have ever learned is the idea of a continuum. What better way of showing that reality is not only comprised of black and white?

The hardness of wood can be expressed as a continuum. You hear of soft woods and hard woods - more about hardwood than softwood, I admit. (Is that even a word?) I would love to see a plethora of tree species listed as a continuum - and now that we have the internet, I bet I can! (Well, I just tried and I see graphs which, if turned sideways, make a continuum. Lots of species I never heard of!)

Sex is a continuum - as anyone in the least interested in biology knows. It's hard to believe many people still think there are only two sexes, male and female.

I for one am glad the world is not so simple as that. Of course, any one continuum does not tell the whole story about much. The black charcoal gray steel gray mist grey white continuum doesn't describe rainbow colors at all.

Still, the rainbow itself is a continuum of light frequencies.

No wonder it is the symbol of the gay rights movement!

Madison IN

Turns out that paranoia is a contagious disease. Q-anon believers are increasing at the behest of our Paranoid-in-Chief Donald Trump. Inflated ego leads him to believe everything is about him, so even truths that really have nothing to do with him are considered by him to be threats.

The political left isn't helping the situation. Every minor infraction or clumsy verbalization is blown up to ridiculous proportions and meanings far beyond the intent of the speaker. These rabid descriptions seem unreasonable to moderates and discredit the party.

I'm not defending dT. I think he has the moral development of a toddler. In a way that is my definition of evil - the desires of an infant combined with the power of an adult. The "adult" in this case is unfortunately very powerful - therefore a very evil guy.

I also don't think it is hyperbole to call his behavior criminal and I admit he scares me. I am not sure of what he might be capable if citizens do not stand up to him, but Trump is not the Devil. At most he would be a tool.

Of course, unless he dies (or I do) he has plenty of time yet to prove me wrong.

After all, the actions of some men seem to outdo in their evil effects any fanciful Devil figures I have heard of. Historical men of power, however, are harder to deny.

Now that's a depressing thought.

Trump might be worse than the Devil so many believe in. After all, he is real. I don't know anyone, left-leaning political pundit or Q-anon paranoid or coronavirus victim, who tries to deny the existence of Trump.

Madison IN

Enter September.

I thought by going up on the hill we might escape the fog. We decided to walk around the park around Johnson's Lake. The fog was still powerful! We walked around three times and since the fog began to lift the scenery was different every time.

Pretty cool, actually.