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Mulchus repeatus. After dinner, twenty more bags sundered and dumped, with a nice break to talk to some strolling folk from across the Great Divide of 35W. (Tangletown’s borders narrow the closer you get to its center, which means the people south of 50th do not accept those north of the street as true Tangletowners, and don’t get us started about the people on the other side of the Nicollet bridge.) We still had ten bags left over, so I hoisted those up the stairs and called it quits. Wife is still weeding, presumably using night-vision goggles, since it’s dead dark.
Saddest thing written today: text to Daughter saying I had bought the gin at a steeply reduced price and got the Senior discount. She had a point in recoiling at the statement, since senior discount at the liquor store does sound . . . rather pathetic, but hold up. I went in because it was 10% off, and there’s no shame in that. I saw a big display of the gin on whose campaign she’d worked, and since they always like to see the product “in the wild,” as I loath saying, I took a shot of a big end-cap display. It is a nice bottle.
I had to take pictures of manhole covers for an upcoming piece, which I have written carefully to conform to the orders (no opinions, no humor) and have nothing invested in, even though it goes out under my name, disappointing everyone who came for opinions and humor. They are nice manhole covers.
On the way back I stopped in a building that recently spiffed up the lobby for some reason. It was fine before. Now it has big light panels. My camera reacted to them in a surprising way.
Then I jogged through the Farmers & Mechanics Bank building, which has seen neither for decades, and ran into Napoleon, the shoe man. The Lazarus of Leather. We chatted for a while about the lobby, which is undergoing a rehab, for some reason. It was fine before. The new space has some questionable upholstery choices.
I almost found this a bit sad.
Let it go. Those days are gone.
Then I . . . did what to the gym? I hit the gym, of course. I wonder if it’s the assonance that makes the phrase so satisfying. Go to the gym sounds uninvolved, as though you lope through the doors. Everything was not as hard as I thought it would be, having taken a day off and put the back to stern labors the night before. But everything clanked as usual. The music was not bad. I forced myself to listen to some music on the way home, since I A) miss the moods I used to have leaving the office and listening to certain kinds of chill, and B) it worried me that I lacked the need to hear it, or got the same vibe. It’s odd: you feel a particular connection between music and a particular place, or time of day, or action, and you feel it again, later, and now you think you ought to access that emotion whenever you wish, and when you can’t, you feel a bit dead inside. “Well,” I told myself, “if you feel a bit dead inside, it’s because you are a bit dead inside.” And that was a relief. Right, right! A cold stone made of compressed ennui and weltschmertz, covered with an encrustation of alienation. There’s an explanation! What a relief.
But I forced myself to find something, and drove home on the freeway, fast, with the window open, one hand on the wheel and the other on the gearshift, which is needless. But it is a posture of stoic reserve. I read once that having your hand on the gearshift is the blood memory of soldiers on horseback having their hand on the pommel of their sword, and never forgot it.
I listened to the song later and it didn’t do much for me at all, because I’d just done two hours of yard work and was more interested in a shower than existential nattering.
So that was my day.
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It’s 1974.
The Nadir.
Look at that page: misery and political turmoil and bombings and inflation.
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But good news! We have a Czar.
David Kenneth Rush (January 17, 1910 – December 11, 1994) was a United States Ambassador who helped negotiate the groundbreaking Four-Power Agreement in 1971 that ended the post-war crisis over Berlin.
He did double duty as ambassador to France as well in 1974 - 1977, so I’m not sure how much czaring he did.
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If you’re my age, you probably know exactly what SLA stood for: the Symbionese Liberation Army.
The story:
Neighbors tell of drinking beer and visiting with Symbionese Liberation Army members until shortly before the six terrorists died during a shootout with authorities.
The people on 5th Street watched the four white women load guns and ammunition just before the gun battle May 17.
They saw a black man, later identified as “Cinque” of the Patricia Hearst kidnap communiques, sitting on the porch of the little yellow bungalow.
They saw a man, later identified as William Wolfe, sitting on a top bunk bed, twirling a pistol cowboy-style.
They heard a tall white woman say: "We've got to be alert — got to be on guard.”
And they heard the whispered plans to leave that night-plans that were never fulfilled, for the six terrorits who had vowed to die for their revolution died in the flaming ruins of the little yellow house.
“Cinque” shot himself. Miserable people.
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NSome men die in New York. But some men die in Gotham. |
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Wikipedia has something you don't hear any more:
Gunther Schuller wrote in 1989 “Ellington composed incessantly to the very last days of his life. Music was indeed his mistress; it was his total life and his commitment to it was incomparable and unalterable. In jazz he was a giant among giants. And in twentieth century music, he may yet one day be recognized as one of the half-dozen greatest masters of our time.
Martin Williams said: "Duke Ellington lived long enough to hear himself named among our best composers. And since his death in 1974, it has become not at all uncommon to see him named, along with Charles Ives, as the greatest composer we have produced, regardless of category.”
People still revere and play the music of Ellington.
You don’t hear as much about Ives as you used to. There was a period of Ives revival, but it seemed forced.
A Jesuit priest on the White House staff denies he is being used by President Nixon and predicts a detente in the dispute with his religious superiors.
The Rev. Dr. John McLaughlin said Friday that a "resolution is in process" in the dispute, adding that "I look forward to a detente." The Rev. William G. Guindon, the Jesuit official who originally gave McLaughlin permission to go to Washington, said Friday in Vatican City that the White House might be using McLaughlin to imply backing for Nixon from the Roman Catholic Church.
"Father McLaughlin may sincerely think the President's use of profanity is justified, and to the ordinary people it looks as if the church is saying it. In this sense, he has been used," said Father Guindon, referring to McLaughlin's defense of Nixon's presidential tape transcript.
How quaint is all that. Profanity. Once upon a time they were worried about presidents swearing.
Oh never mind we’re done with that one, move along
Of course we were never done with it, and had to hash and rehash it at regular intervals.
Miserable man.
The woman with the kerchiefed head was the universally-known sign of the housewife out on errands. She may have had curlers on.
By 1974, though, was this still common?
I don’t even know where to begin with the theological and chronological implications of this, but it does show how far-ranging the whole “exorcist / demonic possession” theme had gone.
If they’re prehistoric, doesn’t that mean -
Oh never mind.
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