Tag: divorce

Abomination du Jour

jono55

It’s not been a bad week at all for somebody who is not an admirer of fascism. Just a few few days ago, we discovered there was an acronym published in the Wall Street Journal to describe how well Cluck’s tariff manipulations are doing in his dealings with other countries. The acronym is TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out. Apparently Cluck has taken exception to the label. Go figure.

And in another juicy moment this week, Elon Musk left his government position (allegedly having been fired by the Exalted Cluckster), and three days later comes up with a description of the “big beautiful bill” now in the United States Senate as a disgusting abomination.

Now I’m not sure that once you use the word abomination, you really need to add the descriptor disgusting, because I can’t imagine what other kind of abominations there might be. Are there non-disgusting ones? Perhaps abomination lite? Or petit abomination?

But, I quibble. The bill is an abomination and I am disgusted, so there you are. If we ever needed examples of how being unbelievably wealthy doesn’t solve all the problems a person could have, with Cluck and Musk we’ve got prime cases right in front of us. I am almost embarrassed for them. Almost.

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No Expectations, by the Black Crowes

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Last evening Robin and I watched a presentation on the use of the infamous app Signal. You know, the one that our Secretary of Defense uses to share American military strategies with our foes? Yeah, that one.

The presenter this evening took pains to let us know that the app is a good one, unless you invite the wrong person to join in on the chat. For instance, if you invite a reporter, you should anticipate that they will report.

Not to be too paranoid, she told us, but the more involved that we become in resistance to what our rogue government is doing, the more we show up on their radar screens, and the more interested they become in what we are saying. So if we want to limit idle discussion about our conversations in the future, we should really consider using such a piece of encryption software.

No app known will keep the most determined and skillful hackers in the world from listening to our conversations, she added, but for the other 99.99% of the time it works very well, and is free. I will present what we learned at the next meeting of our Indivisible group and see what everyone thinks. Indivisible is a determinedly non-violent organization, but still … sometimes you want to talk off the record, no?

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This morning an unusual headline in the “Arts”section of the New York Times caught my eye.

The notice prompted two questions immediately. Who is Sydney Sweeney? Who is Dr. Squatch?

Once I had wasted four minutes of my life doing the necessary research, I learned that Sweeney is an actor who is already famous for her bosom and hoping to become famous for her acting skills. Dr. Squatch is a seller of men’s personal care products made of what they call natural ingredients and “manly” scents.

The limited-edition bar of soap, made with sand, pine bark extract and a “touch” of Ms. Sweeney’s real bath water, according to the company, will go on sale June 6. Just so you don’t go out and purchase the wrong stuff, the bar is called “Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss.”

The mind reels.

The above photograph accompanied the article, and although I usually refrain from commenting on another person’s appearance, I have to admit that she does have lovely collarbones.

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This is my nomination for the best song ever about sailing and failed relationships. Can’t hear it often enough, actually. The imagery in the lyrics completely cancels out whatever bad juju my head is involved with at that moment.

The story of the song’s origins were in a time when Stephen Stills was newly divorced and depressed. A friend invited him to get away from things for a while, to come with him on a sailing cruise in the south Pacific. Stills came back from the voyage with these lyrics in his hand. Beautiful.

Now, for contrast, I came back from my divorce without a thing to show for it but a large library of self-help books.

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Saturday Robin and I spent a couple of hours at the second annual Montrose Pride Festival. There was quite a crowd in Cerise Park on a beautiful afternoon. Live music, a drag show, a handful of food trucks. What’s not to love?

Some of the displays were delightful surprises. At least three local churches had booths, as well as the town’s only Pediatric Clinic. Indivisible had a booth and so did the Democrats. (I loved that the pediatricians were there, but then pediatrics has so often been on the right side of things).

Republicans … can I have a drum roll … were totally no-shows. In their view, I suppose, why would they attend an affair celebrating a community that they have decided doesn’t exist?

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For Robin and I, last night’s performance on CNN of Good Night and Good Luck hit it out of the bleepin’ park. First time ever of a live broadcast of a Broadway play! Right on, George Clooney and CNN for doing it. A dose of the “right stuff” in a time of much wrong stuff.

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Playlists

jono55

Back in 1987, I turned my ex-wife, and said: “You know, this October I am turning 58, and I haven’t had a mid-life crisis yet. Do you have any suggestions for me?” It turned to that she did, and it was a doozy. Before that very same birthday rolled around I was a single man.

As I have done since I was in my mid-teens, I turned to music when the clatter in my head grew too loud and a bit of respite was needed. I found that I could replace that mental static with a song. For the next couple of years, there was a short list of perhaps a dozen tunes that were in very frequent rotation. Looking back, I can’t see much of a pattern in them, and they would go in and out of the daily playlist depending on my sense of the world at that given moment. But they were always there, arrows in my quiver for use when life would place dragons on the stoop.

I’ll post a few of them here today.

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In 1956, driving home from work at the grocery store, I head a song on the radio that stuck in my head. You know how it is, you go through your day with noise of all sorts passing by you and your brain, luckily, ignores most of it. Then, for whatever reason, one of those sounds sticks, like a dart on a board. The tune was Frankie and Johnny, and the artist a man named Lonnie Donnegan. I bought the album and every song was a winner for me, even at that age. Playing that LP on the cheap equipment that I owned at the time I eventually wore it out, so I bought another copy. Later on that album was lost, and when digital music came ’round, it hadn’t made the cut. Still hasn’t. But I found later on that all of the tunes that had been on that original album were now available on other Donnegan collections. He and I have become great pals that never met.

Album title: An Englishman Sings American Folk Songs

You Pass Me By, by Lonnie Donnegan

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I ran across Richard Thompson in 1982, when I read a review of the album Shoot Out The Lights in Rolling Stone. Since then his music has been with me as a constant presence. Going through his catalog quite a while back I came across Beat the Retreat, which I absolutely loved. Such mournful guitar work … my, oh my. Later on in life when times were melancholy it was a song to turn to. Not for solace, perhaps, but to help put words to feelings that were as yet inchoate.*

*I’ve never used “inchoate” before. Nifty word.

Beat the Retreat, by Richard Thompson

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Phoenix is the sort of tune that might have been sung Karaoke-style way after midnight by a middle-aged man in his cups who was swimming in self-pity and loss.

If any of you know of such a Person of Pathos, recommend it to them. It contains something more than slender hope, it holds out the possibility of triumph.

Phoenix, by Dan Fogelberg

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Friends, Elon Musk and I (we are bffs) would like to recommend the messaging app Signal to you.

Signal is free to use and available on both Android and iOS operating systems. Alongside the extra security protocols, it includes all of the basic messaging tools you’re going to need, including read receipts, emoji support, group chats, and voice and video calls.

Company website

Not only is it better at keeping your secrets than its predecessors, there is always the chance that you will get to sit in on a national security session where they talk about war, bombs, and other cool stuff!

And it doesn’t cost you a cent. With emojis, yet.

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Grace, Actually

jono55

Jimmy Carter passed away this week, at the age of 100 years. He had been our 39th president of these United States. Carter’s entire adult life was one of devotion to public service. When he was voted out of office, he picked up a hammer and went to work with Habitat for Humanity. He was also a humble man who taught Sunday School and who traveled the world as a private citizen, working always for peace, human rights, and the dignity of all men and women.

He and I shared a love of music in nearly all of its forms, without either of us being able to play an instrument. I learned just this morning that one of his favorite songs was Amazing Grace. So that’s two things that he and I shared.

Amazing Grace, by Judy Collins

The contrasts between this good man and the one recently re-elected could not be greater. Words like decency, self-sacrifice, faithfulness, moral rectitude, unselfishness, courage, honesty … all of these words have been used for many decades now in describing Mr. Carter and his works. None of them are ever used in describing our incoming president.

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From The New Yorker

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In the language of the land of divorced people, there are basically two groups, unceremoniously named dumpers and dumpees. Robin and I were dumpees. Neither of us had found the process of getting divorced to be pleasant in any way, and when we began dating were both still nursing bruises of varying degrees. We fell in love and in 1992 were married. We had decided that rather than have a subdued and quiet marriage ceremony, perhaps at a midnight chapel on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada, we would instead celebrate how good can sometimes alchemically arise out of unhappy events.

Part of our planning was to sit down with the church organist, who was in charge of helping people select music for such ceremonies. We told her that one of the selections we wanted was Amazing Grace, a song we both admired. At first the organist knitted her brow “Well, we usually play that at funerals … but … hmmm … just a minute … if you think about the lyrics… hmmm … they could also apply to happier occasions, couldn’t they?” We nodded assent, and into the program it went.

What we couldn’t have predicted is what the large group of friends we had invited would do with it. Robin and I stood at the front of the church and facing the minister, while those friends began to sing the hymn behind us. We had chosen only the first three verses to be sung, and the first one was performed in a rather standard and church-y way, but the next two steadily increased in volume and passion to become expressions of joy that swelled and filled the church. We received lots of presents from those same people, but what I remember most clearly thirty-two years later is their gift of that song.

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
   That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
   Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
   And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear
   The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils, and snares,
   I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
   And grace will lead me home.

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Amazing Grace, by Walela

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From The New Yorker

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For me, she nailed it.

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Amazing Grace, by the Scottish National Pipe and Drum Corps and Military Band

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So this morning we begin the laborious process of learning to write a new date on our correspondence. I usually complete the task by mid-July, but then I was never a quick study. Six months later I’m right back in a muddle once again. Hardly worth the trouble, really. If any of you receive a letter from me, you’ll pretty much know that it was written in 2025 whether I put it on the page or not, so not to worry.

We’ve got our work cut out for us in the upcoming 12 months. Slightly less than half of the American citizenry decided that they would like to have a degenerate for president and so in three weeks he takes office. He is assembling a band of quacks, charlatans, and marauders to assist him in cleaning out the vaults, men and women whose curriculum vitae under normal circumstances would disqualify them from any job other than brigand. I have no crystal ball, but like my great-great-grand-daddy might have said, you don’t get apples from a shit-tree, son.

Hang on, friends, it’s going to be a ride. It might help to remember that to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose. At least that’s what good ol’ Ecclesiastes said, and I’ll go with him every time.

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Turn, Turn, Turn, by the Byrds

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Thor’s Hammer

jono55

This has been the summer of thunder. Many nights we have been wakened by blasts that send the cats scurrying under the bed. Up to a point they trust us and look to us for protection but give them a good enough thunderclap and it is adios muchachos, you’re on your own! The measured amounts of rainfall haven’t been that impressive but each drop flies out of a brilliant soundscape.

I like the thunder, personally. it’s almost mythical. Think about it, if you were reading a book about a planet where electricity became visible and could snake down from the sky to seek out a single person’s life and take it. All of this accompanied by a dark crescendo that the victim never hears, but all of the spectators do. Wouldn’t that seem fantastic? Not necessarily “good” fantastic, but still …

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Dueling Banjos, by Erik Weissberg

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There have been periods of my life where there were significant bursts of knowledge acquisition, followed then by decades of embarrassingly flat learning curves. One such burst of positive cortical activity came during my divorce. First of all, the fact that I was becoming divorced at all was a learning experience, since I thought this only happened to people who forgot their wedding anniversaries, or were guilty of poor personal hygiene.

But more shocks were to come. I discovered that when I put my worn clothes in the hamper that they did not clean themselves and put themselves back in the closet. Some agency had obviously been responsible for doing that, and after several days of reflection I came to the conclusion that my former wife had been that agent, and that now it was apparently up to me.

It took me only a day or two to locate the laundry area and choose which large white metal object was the washing machine and which was the dryer. There were some problems I had in learning that if one cup of detergent did a good job, three cups didn’t do a better one, as I choked up the washer and foamed the laundry room floor . But eventually these things smoothed themselves out.

The dryer posed new challenges. It turned out that putting certain items into the machine, cranking the temperature up to good and hot, and then walking away for an hour or two converted them into a brand new size more appropriate to toddlers. This was especially grievous in one instance where a Pendleton woolen shirt that I had treasured for years was now as shrunken and withered as a plaid prune.

So today when I used the washer perfectly correctly, dried everything for only a few gentle minutes, and then hung the clothes outdoors in the sunshine of a Sunday noon, I felt wounded only two hours later when a raincloud opened just above our home and drenched those carefully tended garments which were helpless on the line.

I could hear the gods snickering as I plucked everything down and re-hung them indoors on some collapsible racks. The world is like that. Sometimes good intentions and hard work are rewarded with a swift kick.

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Robin and I had friend Rod over for supper and a movie the other night. The food part went well, but the film left something to be desired.

Since this had been a markedly political week, I thought it might be fun to watch an older movie with a political theme. The classic “All The King’s Men”of 1949 came to mind, and I proposed it to our group. While looking for a streaming source I came across something interesting. There was a much newer version available (2006), with a great cast, which included Sean Penn, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson, James Gandolfini, and Mark Ruffalo. How could it miss? We decided to go for the new one.

Bad choice. Abysmal, actually.

So bad that at the end when I asked everyone what they had thought about the movie, the general consensus was that we had collectively wasted six hours of human life. In order to waste a minute or two more, I went to Rotten Tomatoes to see what the movie’s score had been, and the number was 12%. Twelve percent is an awful score, for those of you who don’t use this service. The kind of movie that you don’t go to see unless you are desperately trying to escape a hailstorm of life-threatening softball-sized stones and need to duck in somewhere.

And then, just to hurt myself further, I checked the RT score of the original film starring Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, and Mercedes McCambridge and found that it was 97%.

More insult was later added to the injury.

Released by Columbia Pictures on November 8, 1949, the film received widespread acclaim from critics, and was a commercial success. At the 22nd Academy Awards the film was nominated for seven Oscars and won three; Best Picture, Best Actor for Crawford, and Best Supporting Actress for McCambridge, making an impressive film debut. The film also won five Golden Globes, and was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

In 2001, All the King’s Men was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Wikipedia

Can I pick ’em or what?

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I found this disturbing photograph on CNN this morning. The caption read: People in Warsaw, Poland, enjoy Dinner in the Sky, a special dining experience where a crane holds their dinner party in midair, on Saturday, August 17. To an acrophobe like myself, that someone would voluntarily subject themselves to this is not to be believed.

To put me in one of those chairs would require general anesthesia, and when I came out of it my screaming would ruin the meal for everybody within earshot, which, as I study the photo, would be everybody. Even if I eventually dropped down to a level below hysteria, I would still need four-point restraints requiring someone to be appointed to feed me my gourmet meal.

Also, the floor of the contrivance appears to be transparent … I can’t go on.

To the “normal” people, however, there would still be some questions I might pose. What happens if you drop your napkin? Or a knife?

The odd bat flying past would certainly send some diners into major tizzies. And how much do you tip your waiter at 1000 feet in the air?

So many questions … so little time.

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Closing Time, by Semisonic

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