Gage Park everlasting

 I remember when some agents of Elsdon came knocking on our bungalow door asking for more money to build a new church.  My parents had never attended say for Christmas and I had wheedled my way out of ruining a perfectly fine Sunday morning belting out That Old Rugged Cross in uncomfortable clothes, and my sisters had mostly wheedled their way out and so they got zero from the house on Homan Avenue.  

And I remember all the talk about the neighborhood changing.  They're at the tracks!  They're at Western! They're crossing Western!  And then They never got there, the Mexicans moved in.  They weren't as threatening because they looked like us, but they didn't speak like us.  I remember my mother sort of tried to be friends with them in her flinty Bohunk way.  But outside of her flinty Bohunk ways, I think it was hard for them to speak English.  That's maybe what they had to speak at work, and who likes work?  It was much easier to speak your native tongue with your own people. and so my mother was sort of frozen out.

At that time there were also Arabs in the neighborhood, including on the other side of the house where those solid Irish neighbors, the O'Days had previously lived.  I'm sure they would have rather been speaking Arabic, but they were spread out and of course they didn't speak Spanish so English would do well enough.  They were Palestinians and they were pissed off at what had happened to them in their homeland. but although my mother had some Jewish friends she really had no knowledge of Israel and Palestine and that whole bitter ball of wax.

Oh Gage Park, so hustling, so bustling, so self-contained.  Those bungalows look as spiffy as when I walked two blocks down Homan to Enrico Tonti school, which is probably as spiffy as when they were built.  Good solid American brick will probably outlive the four horsemen.  Let's just go around this area, too much brick, streets all right angled and rigid, and those folks, they just seem too invulnerable.

And I guess that's the way I remember it from growing up there.  No reason to go north of 51st or south of the golf course, or east of western, or south of Cicero.  Well you can go south of Cicero to the airport.  Men in turbans, women in saris.  Big four propeller airplanes taking off for Cleveland, and for all over the world.  It was like a spaceport, like that bar in Star Wars when Star Wars was Captain Video and His Video Rangers.  A whole wide world out there.

Elsdon's Last Stand

 The church in Uncle Ken's photo was built new while I was in the army.  For years before I left, there was talk of building a new church out in the suburbs because that's where all the members would end up living when the neighborhood "changed", which was only a matter of time.  The old Elsdon church building had seen better days, and it was believed by many that it wouldn't be worth remodeling or rebuilding on that site.  When Allen Anderson became our pastor, he talked us all into staying put and adapting to the inevitable change because that was the more Christian thing to do.  The fund-raising drive was still going on when Rev. Anderson left, and it was almost completed when I returned from my summer hiatus in Alaska.  I attended a few services in the old church before I joined the army, and a few in the new church after I was discharged.  Then I moved to Cheboygan and that was that.

Years later, my mother told me that all the Elsdon parishioners eventually did move out to the suburbs, and the church building was repurposed as some kind of community social center.  I don't know if the Elsdon exiles ever reestablished their congregation in their new land, but my mom attended a Presbyterian church in Palos Park until her death in 2002.

A few weeks before my mom died, I was driving around settling her affairs as best I could so that my sister, who lived much closer than I did, wouldn't have to do everything herself.  In nearby Worth, I noticed a sign that said "Becvar's Funeral Home".  I remembered that Becvar's had buried my grandfather when it was located on Kedzie Avenue, and I thought that they must have opened up a branch in the suburbs at some point.  The lady inside told me that there was no branch, this was the original Becvar's, run by the third generation of the same family.  They had moved to the suburbs to be able to accommodate the descendants of their customers from the old neighborhood.  I told them that my sister would likely be handling things, but I wanted to do what I could while I was in town.  She suggested that I could sign some blank forms, which my sister could complete according to her wishes when the time came.  Normally I would be reluctant to a sign a blank form for anything.  But, if you can't trust Becvar's, who can you trust?

The 16-day deer season in Michigan is the traditional regular firearms season.  It used to be the only one, but now there is a three-month archery season from October 1 through December 31.  There is also a ten-day muzzle loader season in December, the two special seasons I told you about in September, and usually some kind of doe only season in the areas that are considered to be over-populated and prone to disease.  I think you are allowed to shoot up to four deer if you buy both an archery and a firearm license.  

photos of the trip

 Here is where Beagles learned to read, rite, and rithmatic, and home of the notorious denim debacle.

Here is what once was the Elsdon Methodist Church.  I enlarged it so that you can see the sign that says Chicago Ghanian SDA (Seventh Day Adventist) Church.  It didn't look like it was occupied, but it is well-kept and it has a presence on the web so I don't know.

And here is where proud Talman's once stood.  Now a 
Starbucks and LA Fitness.  What is this, the north side?

Klockner's flower shop.  The only thing I could find that was still there from the days of Beagles and Uncle Ken.

And the Colony Theater where one summer I watched Yul Brynner stalk the burning sands of the desert in air conditioning so comfortable that I could feel my toes tingle.

All in all the old hood looks good.  There are some vacant shops but the bungalow streets are neat as a pin the way I remember them from my days of riding my trike under the shade of tall trees.

the trip back to Gage Park

 See I thought opening day was a big deal.  I remember some friends moving from the wise and civilized Land of Lincoln to the bushwhacking land of Missouri and one day one of their neighbors or co-workers would by way of small talk say something like, "Are you ready for opening day?"  They would be thinking it's almost time for the world series, but it would turn out that what they were talking about was hunting season.  Hunting season?  Am I among savages?

Well I have made my peace with killing Bambi.  If I salivate at the thought of the next Italian beef, I have nothing to feel superior about over a guy who kills a deer and feeds off it for the winter.  And of course my ilk have no plan to wrest old Betsy from his grasp.  Probably he should still have to marry his gay dog.

Sixteen days though seems kind of short.  I thought there were way to many deer as it is, why only sixteen days?

I used to go back to the old hood though every year.  55th and Kedzie, the center of my teen years, smoking cigs and trying to look tough and watching all the cars go by.  Talman's, St Gall's. the drugstore where the seven Ellis brothers worked the counter one after another as they came of age, and the Colonial where you could get a drink if you were old enough, which we weren't.  All gone now except the House of The Lord.

And down 55th Street with its little bars, the dairy queen, that oddball restaurant with the goofy windows, that little grocery store with the pop machine where the bottles were all in icy water and you had to fish them all out with your icy hand.  So cool.  The Broadway of the hood.  

And the old bungalow, sitting there amid row after row of them, hardly changed since Mom left it. the whole hood looking not all that different from when I used to ride my trike on the shadow dappled sidewalks.  

Down Homan to Enrico Tonti school, three blocks that I walked twice every school day for nine years.  Enrico Tonti, still standing in its 1920 style only with a big standalone addition to serve the newly arrived immigrants and their mad mobs of kids.  

Up 59th Street to The Colony, where we watched so many epics and cartoons in air conditioned comfort in the sweaty summers of the fifties.  

Didn't get back there the last couple years, but plan on going back there this Wednesday. 

Opening Day

 Opening day of deer season is certainly not what it used to be.  For one thing, there are less hunters.  The old timers like me are aging out, and young people are generally less interested than their parents were.  For another thing, the hunting activity is spread out between the archery season in October and a couple of weekends in September that are reserved for disabled veterans and mentored youth.  The youths have to be accompanied by an adult mentor who is not allowed to carry a gun during this special season.  I suppose it's for the best.  When I first moved here, the woods were pretty chaotic on opening day.  There were lots of guys wandering around out there with little or no training or experience.  Nowadays it's a lot quieter and safer in the woods. 

I have missed a number of opening days in my lifetime, mostly because of work commitments, but I always managed to get out for some portion of the 16-day season.  Last year, after missing the first few days because of my wife's cataract surgery, I never mustered up the energy to go out after that.  I don't remember all the reasons, maybe I wasn't feeling too good myself health wise.  I didn't get my rye field planted in time, but I did get it mowed, so it wouldn't have been a total waste of time to go sit in the blind for a few hours.  I just never got around to it.  It looks like I might get the rye planted this year, and both of our health situations are about as good as they ever are anymore, so I might make it out after all.  If I don't feel up to doing the work associated with it, well, there is no law that says I have to shoot a deer just because I see one.  

the dope store

 Is opening day a big deal among deer hunters?  Is it like, let's hurry up and get one before all the good ones are gone?  Or is it like those idiots who used to line up a day before the latest Star Wars movie?  I would guess one day is as good as any other in the freehold, so does this mean that you will go later or will you just let it slide for the year?

The way I always looked at aging is that the older you get fun becomes less important and comfort becomes more important.  

Speaking of fun I went to the dope store last week.  I don't smoke a lot so I haven't been there since covid.  Still a little bureaucratic, you have to show your id at the first station, at the second you make your selection.  In the old days you would just want good dope.  It went by various names but who knew what you got and the only thing you cared about was getting high, but now there are all these different kinds, and there is that sativa, indica thing.  I don't really care much, I just want the most thc per cost.  Anyway you can spend as much time as you like at the selection station yabbing on and on about this and that to the dope expert while dope fiends behind you stare steak knives at your back.  I, of course, had made my decision from the website before leaving and the expert put it in and waved me on to the next station, where you have to pay in cash and get your little package.  Exiting the door you give the sidewalk and streets a quick glance, any dirty coppers out there? just for old times sake.

I understand that there is still a healthy underground for marijuana, and once you pay the twenty percent tax, you are paying quite a bit more, and you know I miss the fun of dealing with the dealer, but I like the comfort of just standing in line like at Target.

That Hitler thing sounds like a variant of the let sour kraut sprout ditty. I don't think I ever heard that Mussolini one.

There was another little ditty based on the song Round and Round.

Find a wheel, and drop it down and down

Till it hits the school with a happy sound

All the teachers blowing round and round

Something, something, something.

There wasn't a clear connection, but after the Our Lady of Angels fire they cracked down on us singing it.

Catching Up

 My wife had cataract surgery last fall on opening day of deer season, having had the other eye done seven years previous.  I didn't mind as much as I thought I would.  My enthusiasm for deer hunting has not yet recovered from my labors with that big fat doe I shot the year before.  I guess it's true what they say:  "You know you're old when work is not as much fun as it used to be, fun is a lot more work that it used to be, and it takes you longer to rest up than it took you to get tired."

My grandmother used to put sugar on sauerkraut too.  She didn't make her own, she just bought the canned stuff in the store, rinsed the brine off of it, and added a little sugar.  I was never a great fan of sauerkraut, but I did like Grandma's version of it.  I don't think I would like kimchi either, from the sound of it.

The closest version of Uncle Ken's song I know was popular around Sawyer Elementary School in the early 1950s, undoubtedly left over from World War II.

"My country tis of thee, sweet land of Germany.  My name is Fritz.                                         I am a German spy, caught by the FBI, my name will never die.  My name is Fritz."

Another one of the same era:

"Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk.                                                                                   Mussolini bit my weenie, now it doesn't work."                                        

flying pigs and kimchi

 Even as I was writing that whole when pigs fly thing, I was thinking of Trump coming down that escalator.  Sure was dead wrong on that thing.  I don't know what to say.

I wouldn't say we came through Trump quite well.  There were those that died of covid that didn't need to, the brutal treatment of immigrants, that supreme court, but the worst thing was him breaking the surly bonds of truth so that now nobody need feel bad about lying their ass off.  Of course politicians have always lied, but it was more in the form of stretching the truth.  Before Trump if you got caught in a bald-faced lie you would be in deep shit, now it's not even a parking ticket.  The capital got attacked and now we have gangs of armed goons camped outside FBI offices.

But he never started a war.  That surprised me, you would think a beribboned Private Bone Spurs would have liked nothing more than to be marching drum major style down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Yar, I like to stick with the original name.  My sister who now lives fourteen stories above me insists on calling it Willis Tower, and Macy's and the IBM tower whatever it is supposed to be called now, embarrasses the hell out of me when I am with her.  Prolly though it was a good move to start calling them Brazil nuts.

There is still a stretch of 4000 W way north that is called Crawford.  Do the school kids there not get Casimer Pulaski Day off?

The cataract operation is indeed no big deal.  The worst thing about it is that they want you to hang around the hospital for a few hours afterwards.  I made a break for it but ended up going down one of those staircases where all the doors lock when closed.  I had to sheepishly knock on the door and tell them that I was looking for the bathroom which they did not believe, and afterwards watched me like a hawk.  But the next day when they took off the bandages I could see for miles and it knocked my socks off.  Did Old Dog's socks remain on his feet?

My fullbreed Bohunk mother always put sugar on the sauerkraut, which seems like some kind of sacrilege, and maybe because, deep as my love is for the cabbage family, of that I never took to it.  Who remembers this ditty, which apparently google does not, from our youth?

My father was a spy

Caught by the FBI

Something, something, something

From every mountain top

Let sauerkraut sprout 

I wonder if what Beagles is thinking of is Kimchi.  A delightful Korean condiment.  They give you a little dish of it with your food and you spread it on like mustard.  Very hot.  Very tasty.

Anything is Possible

But some things are not bloody likely.  I don't make political predictions anymore.  Like Old Dog says, who could have predicted Trump's victory in 2016?  I remember the headline in our daily newspaper: "Trump wins in stunning upset!"   

I read Uncle Ken's link.  Actually, I scan read a lot of it because it's really long, but I think I got the main gist of it.  Besides, I'm familiar with the gerrymandering controversy due to Uncle Ken's past mention of it.  I did not know, however, that it was mostly state legislative districts that were allegedly gerrymandered. In Michigan it was also about congressional districts.  Be that as it may, Michigan has since been de-gerrymandered, or so they say.  I make no predictions, but it will be interesting to see if the balance of power is significantly affected by this.  I haven't seen the map, but I understand that neither the state nor federal districts in which I live have changed much.  

I think the common way to preserve sauerkraut is canning in glass jars, at least that's the way I've always seen it in the stores.  I have heard that, in Korea, they bury it in the backyard, in some kind of container, and dig it up months later.  I wouldn't think it would be fit to eat after all that, but I have been told it's an acquired taste.  It seems you would have to stop the fermentation at some point regardless, like you do with alcoholic beverages.    

August interlude

Let me say this about that: when pigs fly.

I was thinking the same thing about seven years ago when Trump descended the escalator and announced that he was running for president.  Fat chance!, I thought but I also felt a chill run down my spine and a toxic worm of a thought that, however unlikely, he just may pull it off.

For all of the craziness of Trump's years in office I think we got through it quite well.  There were no big and drastic changes and it was like a veil was lifted and much of the distasteful, real life, political sausage-making was revealed.  Would we have otherwise  known how full of shit and sleazy many of those in Congress were?  It's a lot easier to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys since Trump came on the scene.  Where it goes from here I can't say; still not watching the news much but the "raid" on Mar-a-Lago was quite entertaining.

-----

Remember the murder hornet?  Well, it's no longer politically correct to call it that.

Too damn bad, I say.  Names can come and go but it doesn't change the reality of the object named.  I can see changing a name if it's blatantly offensive to certain groups but otherwise I think it's a waste of time.  People are going to call things what they're used to calling them, I think, for instance, Sears Tower.  You south-side guys probably remember that street at 4000W that was later named Pulaski Road.  It took quite a while to stop calling it Crawford.  In a humorous aside, my sister's kids couldn't believe what we used to call Brazil nuts.

-----

I don't know if I have written about my cataract surgery three years ago.

I recall reading something about it, and a couple of months ago I went to the archive to find it to help me prepare for my own surgery.  Not much help from the archive except that it was comforting to know that it's not a big deal.  And it wasn't a big deal at all; in a couple of weeks I'll be getting the other eye taken care of.

-----

The kitchen adventures continue.  After a few short weeks my first batch of sauerkraut is ready.  Not bad but it could use more of a punch.  The texture is weird because it is raw and uncooked; heat will kill all of the probiotic goodness but I'm not sure how I can stop the fermenting process.  This was a fun project but now I have more 'kraut than I think I can handle; maybe freezing will work.  I should be planning for next years state fair.

Remember my sourdough adventures?  Unless you're baking a lot bread it's a big pain, you have to keep feeding it and it grows and grows, you end up with too much.  But I read that you can dry it out the starter and it will last indefinitely, and by golly!  It's true.  I had some dried sourdough starter from last winter that I stored in the freezer and it came back to life, big time.  It seemed more robust after its long nap so I dried it out again to see if it would still wake up.  And it did, better than ever.  Just like the guy in Jurassic Park said, "Life finds a way."

 

when pigs fly

 Let me say this about that: when pigs fly.  Oh, there will surely be a woman president not too far down the road, and possibly she will be a republican, but there is no way that it will be Liz Cheney.

She is an extreme right winger, a manic war hawk, and the daughter of one of the main architects of the disastrous war in Iraq, who she has never repudiated.  The right wing is the part of the Republican that fell heaviest in love with Trump, so not much support there.  And while she is a darling to the dems currently because of her campaign against Trump but no dem is going to vote for her when they could vote for an actual dem.

Oh, she may well run in the 2024 rep primary, what else does she have to do, but she has no more chance of doing well there than she did in Wyoming.  She will most likely sign up with one of the cable networks as a commentator, and that's a well-paying gig where you keep a high profile and you don't have to work all that hard.

If we are going to do dueling links, here is one of how the reps turned Ohio from purple to red without changing minds, just changing the map.  

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/state-legislatures-are-torching-democracy

You Go Girl!

 Wouldn't it be funny if the first female U.S. president was a Republican?  Unlikely, I know, but not impossible.  One thing we can thank Trump for is proving that anybody can become President of the United States.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/liz-cheney-primary-loss-could-be-her-biggest-2024-boost-yet-experts/ar-AA10KfoI?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

Eleven men good and true and one Trumper.

 Oh he is guilty alright.  If you had watched any of the hearings you would know that.  It was all laid out with fine grained evidence.  If you are just reading a short synopsis in the paper or watching a few minutes of it on tv, you are not going to get the details.  If you don't get the details it is like watching two guys arguing from a distance, hard to tell who, if either, of them is telling the truth.  One guy could be telling it straight and the other guy could be lying through his teeth. but you can't tell without the details.

How long did it take to put Al Capone in Alcatraz?  And he didn't have most all of the republican party on his side.

Of course I would love to see him in an orange jumpsuit, but with him getting so much  closer to it, I realized something, he would have to have a trial, he would have to have a jury of twelve people.

One of the jewels of American democracy is the free elections.  Look how Trump has trashed that.  Another jewel is the fair trial, just think of what he would do to that.  Twelve people, and with about a third of the country Trumpers who have no belief in our institutions.  What if one of those twelve jurors is a Trumper?  No amount of evidence would make any difference.  Hell, it wouldn't matter if he was guilty or not.  If he shot that guy on fifth avenue the guy must've had it coming.  What if there is a Trumper on the jury and he gets off?

Grade school was really boring, the smell of the chalk dust, the droning teachers, the clock slowly, slowly, counting down the minutes to 3:15.  And then sometime around fourth grade this new kid took a seat, and he was a troublemaker.  Suddenly school was interesting.  The kid vs the teach was a great show, way more interesting than the multiplication tables.  And aside from his antics, which were really not that clever, he was kind of a liberator, defying the autocratic establishment.

And then he was gone, and school was boring again.  I looked around and none of my fellow classmates was willing to don the jester's hat so I took it up.  Outside of notes from the teacher going to my house and writing pages and pages of "I will be courteous," on lined paper, I had a ball.

It never occurred to me that someday I was going to be on the other side of the desk one day, but sometimes we get our just desserts.  The kids may not have even liked the kid, but they loved the disruption of the grinding of the daily routine.

You know I kind of wondered why Beagles was bringing up the subject of school hijinks after originally writing about Trump, but it hit my quite clearly on reading the last line. 

Either he was really good at not getting caught, or he just exuded some kind of malevolent aura that made other people go nuts.  

Does that sound like anybody we know?

Investigate, Investigate, Investigate

 Mark Twain said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."  A variation on that theme might be, "Everybody investigates Trump, but nobody does anything about him."  If Trump was guilty of half the things he has been accused of, he should have been locked up a long time ago.  It makes me wonder if there is some truth to his claim that each of these investigations has been nothing but a witch hunt.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Trump. What I mean is, maybe he is a witch and deserves to be hunted.  

When I was driving school buses, we had something we called "the lowest common denominator effect".  I talked to a few teachers who observed it in their classrooms as well.  What it means is, the general deportment of the entire group tends to gravitate towards the worst behaved kid in the group.  There are some kids who seem to have a bad influence on the people around them, and I'm not sure that they all do it on purpose.  Sometimes it's obvious, when a kid does something goofy and immediately looks around to see if anybody's watching him.  Other times it's more subtle.

There was a high school kid who had been in serious trouble with the law, something about drugs.  One of the conditions of his parole was that he attend school regularly.  Funny, I thought that paroled druggies were usually forbidden to come within 500 feet of a school building.  I don't think this kid ever attended school regularly, but they never did come and take him away.  Indeed, he eventually graduated, to the surprise of most of us.  Maybe that was the only feasible way they had of getting rid of him.  The kid moved around a lot, and he rode intermittently on several busses that I was driving over the years.  Every time he rode one of my busses, we had a bad day, with kids acting up and getting all goofy.  I was never able to catch the kid himself doing anything, but the whole ambiance of the bus went down like a submarine as soon as he stepped abord.  Either he was really good at not getting caught, or he just exuded some kind of malevolent aura that made other people go nuts.  

trump. trump, trump

 Well once again it's Trump, Trump. Trump.  Just when you thought, he was beginning to fade to tiny Trump in the rearview mirror he is back again like Godzilla, after they thought they killed him in one of those movies, roaring right back, snorting and tearing up power lines, take that puny humans.

There he was testifying, geez I forget in which investigation, taking the fifth on everything.  Kind of outrageous, inasmuch as he has denigrated others taking the fifth as gangsters, but maybe not so much because his whole operation has been described as like the mafia.  But really, what else did anybody expect of him?  Ho hum.

But then the next thing you know he is stealing nuclear secrets.  The man certainly knows how to top himself.  And like Charlie Brown taking a run at the football, I tuned into Fox thinking surely, hiding our nation's classified records in his basement, likely to peddle to Putin or Kim, would make them, well certainly not condemn him, but maybe wag a little finger of disapproval at him, but no, they were all about the real villains in America like Hunter Biden and the big girl, and oh yes, the FBI, that bad band of brigands.

One never expects a Boebert or MTG to stray from the MAGA line, but, maybe the slightly sensible republican fringe, people like Rubio, might venture a mild tsk tsk, but no they were all into upping the dems Defund the Police with the new rep mantra, Defund the FBI.

Well it's a hard job for Trump to top himself, and I have to admit that this whole thing is getting a little boring already.  Oh I'll follow it because I am a news junky, but I expect the dawgs will roll over with a yawn and mutter, what else is new.

I just wanted to get something out on a Monday.

my pretty good week

 The forest primeval continues to thrive.  The purple morning glories, always late sleepers, are now blossoming beside their pink brethren and all the sunflowers are blooming or beginning to.  The tomatoes that have been stubbornly green for seems like a month are taking on a reddish hue.  

I remember taking the tomatoes home from Gethsemane gardens far out on the north side, watching them protectively on my lap as the Clark Street bus took them on its start stop bumpy ride.  "Be still my darlings," I whispered to them beneath the hub bub of the bus, "I am taking you from your crowded quarters at the store, to a place high in the sky where you will be save from rabbits and squirrels and all manner of critter, and you can gambol with your pals the morning glories and sunflowers all summer long where you can raise your family in their juicy red cribs."  Of course I would be eating their children, but no need to be telling them that.

And what the hell the reason they put their seeds in those cribs is so that some animal will eat them and spread them across the land so that they can find a spot to sprout and grow their own red round cribs for their children and so on and so on.  Best not to think of anything beyond the next generation.  We people do of course and look where it's gotten us, and unfortunately we have taken everybody us.

Well a grim end to a sunny observation, but meanwhile there is still plenty of summer to go.

In other news I can still see for miles.  I find that leaning back from the computer like I am driving some big chrome monster from the late fifties helps me think clearer than when I am all cramped up over the keyboard.  Expect my writing to go up a notch.

The open mic, while not as crowded as I would have liked, still drew a pretty good crowd, and everybody had a pretty good time.  That story that I fretted about, I had practiced it so many times that I could no longer tell if it was funny or not, went over quite well.  Like I said, I could no longer tell if it was funny or not, but when I heard the first laugh from the crowd I knew I was on my way.

an ophthalmological adventure

 I thought I had shown it before..  Yes I left off the the part where Jenn was cooking in the kitchen.  Test audiences were confused by how they got from the kitchen to the bar.  And you do have to simplify things going from something for the reader to something you are going to read aloud.  It makes me sad to leave behind a finely wrought phrase, but in compensation I get to use voices and make faces. 

There are some errors in it I discovered when practicing it, I corrected them on the hardcopy.

I don't know if I have written about my cataract surgery three years ago.  I had thought that I had pretty good vision with my glasses, but then I noticed that when riding in a car looking for a street I was no longer the first to read the street sign, and at the ballbark I couldn't read the balls and strikes on the little mini scoreboards.  I went to the doc and he said cataracts which is kind of unpleasant and costly surgery, but at the end you can see better so I was all for it.

They put bandages on your eye afterwards and you leave them on until you see the doc the next day like plastic surgery on the hopefully beautiful woman, and you see how it all came out, only instead of being looked at you do the looking.

I was in one of those little lab rooms and across from me was one of those eyecharts showing this one tiny E and I could not believe how clearly I could see it.  Omigod, like sixty years ago when my first eyeglasses were put on my face, Can everybody else always see like this!?!

So like I said I had that surgery three years ago only on my left eye, and I have spent a lot of time just walking around looking at stuff, but the last year things weren't looking all that well.  Well likely the other eye was deteriorating and was not pulling its weight, so probably I ought to get that one fixed, though I had nagging thoughts that in addition to the right eye not pulling its weight maybe the left eye was not a supereye anymore.

So I went to see the doc and yes the right eye definitely was not pulling its weight and since you mention it, there seems to be some kind of debris in your left eye, and I pressed it against something and stared at this flickering blue light while he, er, did something. Afterwards everything was dark and blurry as he explained it all to me and I went to set up an appointment for the right eye.  But all the while things were clearing, and eventually the old supereye like just after the operation was back.  Oh gloryoski!

Walking home was a bit of an adventure with my heavily dilated eye (when the doc was talking to the nurse the subject of how well I dilated came up a few times, I wanted to reply modesty, well, I work out.) was like walking on the bright side of Mercury with heavy traffic, but I got home alive.  

Last morning I was writing my post crouched over the keyboard squinting at the screen like a little old man, but his morning I am leaning back like I was driving a Mercedes Benz like a fat old man.

Well that's all kind of indulgent.  I am not very interested in other peoples' medical adventures so I don't know why they should be interested in mine.  But it was a big deal for me and I had to tell somebody.

Open mic on the roof tonight when I will be reading that story about Jenn.  I will tell you how it goes.

Good One!

 We have indeed heard this one before, but one never gets tired of these old classics.  I seem to remember that there was more to it, kind of an introduction that begins at home, where the guy is patiently waiting for his wife fix supper.  That was also good, but I suppose not necessary if you are working with a time limit for your presentation.  If you had to shorten the story, that was a reasonable part to cut.  I caught one error that I don't remember from the last time.  In paragraph eight he mentions that the beers he has been drinking were priced at six dollars apiece.  Then in paragraph 21, he needs four dollars for the last one and only has three.  He mentions that his first nine beers were pints, but doesn't specify the size of this last one, which might explain the discrepancy in price, but this was not made clear.  

Uncle Ken's balcony garden looks really good this year.  Just think of what he could do if he had 88 acres of prime swamp land to work with.  I haven't planted anything in years, it's all I can do anymore just to keep my driveway and trails open.  

jenn

 This is a little piece that I plan on reading at open mic on the roof tomorrow.  I don't know if I have posted it before, but hoping to get some comment or criticism from the dawgs.

So I’m sitting there at the Ten Cat having a most pleasant time, the beer in front of me is almost empty, and once I finish that I will be ordering my tenth, the keystone beer, the acme of the evening, only a wave of the finger away.  

 

What an inopportune time for Jenn to say, "I'd like to go home now." 

 

Why the hell should she want to go home?  The bar is full.  Her man is brilliantly holding forth with amazing tales of his triumphs punctuated with rapier like thrusts of wit here and there.  Everybody is clearly enthralled. 

 

"Go where?" I reply, playing for time and noticing that the barmaid is now at the far end of the bar pulling off the caps from PBRs for some newly-arrived pool players.  She won't even be in this vicinity for a couple minutes at least.  So we have time to talk this out, a couple minutes to get things straight.

 

"Home.  I’d like to go home.  Now.," she repeats, just a little sharply.  And who would've thought that little Jenn would have the strength to slam my hand to the bar, just missing, I might add, my quarter-full pint of Daisy Cutter?

 

“Very well then Jenn,” I reply smoothly.  You know what I’m thinking is that what we’ll do is, I’ll just have this tenth beer, it’s a nice round even number, don’t you think?  And then we can go straight home.” 

 

“That’s your eleventh beer that you’re finishing right now,” she says with such intensity, that I think that maybe she could be right.  But she tends to exaggerate, and I’m pretty sure it’s just been nine.

 

Anyway the important thing is that one more beer, tenth or twelfth, or whatever, is the beer that is necessary to achieve the zenith of the evening.  If you think about it I’ve already had 9 pints at 6 bucks apiece and that comes to 54 bucks so it would be foolish not to spend 6 lousy bucks more to put a shining cap on the investment.  See how well I can do the math?  There is nothing wrong with me me. 

 

But this argument is a little too complex, a little too mathematically oriented for Jenn in the snit she’s in, to understand.  So I simplify it for her. “I’ll just have one more,” I say with impeccable logic.

 

Which seems to go right over Jenn’s head, and she even ups the ante as she replies, “Call me a cab.”

 

Maybe a little humor, you know I have that rapier wit thing going so I might as well use it. “You’re a cab.” I reply with a sly look that says, I know it’s corny, so that means I’m being ironic, and should a guy who’s capable of this subtle, self-aware humor, this fine display of legerdemain forego the crowning beer of the night?

 

Legerdemain, such a fine word.  And not only is it a fine word, but due to its polysyllabic nature, it would not be an easy word for one who has had too many to pronounce without slurring, which okay, maybe I do a little bit, but it’s just to be ironic.

 

But then it occurs to me that I am not sure what exactly the word means.  I was thinking it meant kind of like fancy footwork, like tap dancing, only with words, clearly agile and not the least bit encumbered in mind or body.  But then after that only slightly slurred pronouncement, a little sour taste hits my tongue, and it occurs to me that it could also mean bullshit.

 

But Jenn apparently doesn’t notice.  “I. Am.  Not. A. Cab.”  She says, pronouncing each word slowly and precisely.  Has my irony, like all my finely carefully crafted arguments, flown right over her pretty little head? 

 

Okay this will take a little time to explain to her.  Meanwhile the barmaid has completed her transaction with the pool players and is now moving in her maddening meandering way to our end of the bar.  Decisively I down the remaining quarter of my Daisy Cutter.  While I am explaining my little ironic joke to Jenn I will surely be able to unobtrusively raise my finger to the barmaid, and the whole thing will be a fait accompli.  I will have a full beer, and we couldn’t possibly leave until I finished it.

 

“What I meant dear was-“ I commence my explanation, but she quickly cuts me off. 

 

“I know what you meant dear.  I get the lame joke dear, but maybe your timing is a little off dear.  You know how you sometimes lose track of time dear,” she begins.  Dear me, all those dears, I know where this is going, the unfortunate tuna salad incident. 

 

Women, well they can’t help it, they are the gatherers of the tribe you know.  Empty space in the fridge is something they abhor and they have to fill it up, so that when the hunter returns with two six packs of Old Milwaukee, which he was able to get at a bargain basement price because the liquor store was dumping the brand, and which is best served very well chilled, and throws open the refrigerator door, he finds a full house.

 

Compromises have to be made.  The game is already in the third inning, so three-four cans should do it.  And you know, that square blue container is just about two cans long on each side.  What could it hurt for it to sit on the kitchen table for an hour or two? 

 

Who ever expects extra innings, or a rain delay, and especially who expects both?  And who expects that when making tuna salad, something which even I know can go bad quickly, the gatherer wouldn’t use a transparent rather than an opaque blue container, so that the hunter could see what was inside and maybe choose something else to displace to make room for the Old Milwaukee?    

 

Anyway in the excitement of the thrilling extra-inning victory, and the celebratory beers that that required, and the nap that ensued, perhaps that blue container remained on the kitchen table too long, which it wouldn’t have had I known it contained tuna salad, which I would have known had it been in a proper transparent container.  

 

And you know, she’s always talking about losing weight, and just a couple days after the unpleasantness she was fit as a fiddle.  So I don’t know why she makes such a big production about it.

 

But she does.  Every time we have a little disagreement about anything the tuna salad incident comes up.  There’s no point in interrupting her, the story will be told.  And this is not so unfortunate because this will give that maddeningly slow barmaid time to make her lackadaisical way to our end of the bar.  So all in all things are going well. 

 

“I thought I would die,” she finishes, and fixes me with that piercing look.   

 

“First of all,” I begin, raising my finger to illustrate that this will be the first of many points that I will raise in my defense, but before I can even begin, the barmaid has slipped a new Mad Hatter right in front of me.

 

This is the purest serendipity.  There is no way that I would have ordered a beer at this sensitive point in our conversation, but the barmaid has clearly mistaken my enumeration of points for that very act.

 

And so there it is, the tenth beer, or the twelfth if Jenn’s probably mistaken calculations are accurate. But the point is it is the apex, the acme, the shining summit of the evening.  Oh, there will probably be some unpleasantness from Jenn, but I will be able to deal with this from the pleasantness of a comfortable barstool with my hand tightly wrapped around the cool base of the capstone beer. 

 

And actually this is the best way for this little spat to proceed.  Were I irritable from being cut short, then I might speak sharp words to Jenn, which would be unforgivable.  How much better it is for me to be ensconced and enbeered and kindly disposed to deal with the situation in a calm and patient manner.

 

Yes this is all for the best.  But then right at this point when all is going well with the world, as I am pushing my money towards the bar, I realize that I only have three dollar bills.  I am a dollar short.  Two options come immediately to mind.

 

The first is the quick nod to Jenn accompanied by a sheepish look, my eyes darting from where the dollar is missing to Jenn’s purse.  No, that had best be discarded.

 

The second is finessing the barmaid.  It’s only a lousy buck after all, and hadn’t I enlivened her evening with my enchanting conversation?  Hadn’t I enhanced my volume so that she could partake of it?  Yes, this will almost surely work.  I shove the three bills towards her with a little complicit shrug, imploring eyes, and that sheepish look which always works so well with women.

 

And yet it doesn’t work.  “That will be another dollar,” she says, and worse yet she does not relinquish her firm grip on the glass.

 

It is standing there right before me.  Right before me.  And yet for want of a buck I would be denied what fate had so clearly granted me.  I give Jenn the quick nod and sheep it up. I even extend my hand towards the steely clasps of her purse so she won’t have to reach so far to slip me that single slim bill.

 

Jenn’s a wonderful woman, a caring considerate woman.  Hardly would a woman of this nature deny her man one paper thin, almost worthless really, scrap of paper.

 

Yet she does, and worse yet she yanks the purse back off the bar and into her lap leaving my hand dangling where once the clasps had clasped, where surely behind this purely mechanical contrivance in sweet perfumed comfort resides at least one lousy buck.

 

“Jenn,” I say, and then I say her name a little more softly, a little slower, a little deeper.  Women love a deep voice.  “Jenn, may I borrow a dollar?”

 

“Borrow?” she asks.  “Borrow?  You mean in the sense that you will be paying me back?” 

 

Oh here is a sore point.  There have been times in the past when I have treated Jenn to an enchanted evening at a fine restaurant only to discover, when the bill was presented, that the previous evening when I had stopped at the bar for one quick one, but had unexpectedly met up with a lively and philosophic crowd, that in the ensuing give and take, symbolized by the buying of rounds, I had depleted my wallet, and I had required her financial assistance to pay for the meal.

 

But this is all in the past.  We are living in the present now, this little present of just one more beer which is presently sitting before me, little bubbles rising from its base like giggles. 

 

And then in a second incident of serendipity the pool players are ready for another round and are being quite vocal about it and the barmaid has released her grip and then she is gone, gone down the bar, and my glass of beer is all my own, steady in my hand.

 

I seize the beer and the moment, take a quick quaff, and the whole thing is a fait accompli, the triumph of logic accompanied by a couple small quirks of fate, a heroic ending for my quest. 

Oh the glare from Jenn’s gimlet eyes.  There is trouble ahead, and more troubling yet is the realization that, what with all this consternation, this beer will no longer be the capstone.  One more after it will certainly be required.

 

But with all my legerdemain, and my current serendipitous streak, I don’t see how this will be a problem.

morning in the garden primeval

 Looks like a scene from a forest primeval does it not?  It's one of those 'pans' that you put under your pot so that if you overwater it the water goes into the pan and not over your floor.  I put it out as a bird bath for the finches and pidges but they never cottoned to it.  I wonder if she can smell or taste the birds that may be frolicking in it when I am not watching it?  Or maybe they are not frolicking in it because they can smell her hot carnivore breath in the water.

I thought birds could not smell because well, they never act as if they are smelling anything, they don't pause to put their noses in the air.  But I double-checked and Mr Google says they can.  It's always a good idea to double-check what you know.  

I wasn't that sure about the noses thing, so I dropped in on Mr G, and sure enough they do not have noses.  They have a couple nose holes, but not a nose to be seen in The House of Birds.

They do have an interesting vision thing.  You know how predators have both eyes pointing forwards so they can use 3d to capture their prey and prey have their eyes on either side of their heads to better detect their predator creeping up on them?  My finches and pidges are frequently looking at me from a perch on the railing and I have often wondered are they really looking at me when they have the side of their heads facing me, or when they are looking at me head on.

Looked that up some time ago, but haven't had a chance to slip it into a post until this morning.  Mr G sez, both.  Even though their eyes are on either side of their head they both can see a little forward and so when they are looking at you like that they are getting a 3d reading, but not so good at fine detail so then they turn sideways to get a richer gander.  That's why they are always bobbing their heads around.

Anyway last night I had to put on my long pants because Sweetie wanted on my lap while I was watching tv.  If I have my shorts on it makes the little jump from the table more precarious for her and more painful for me.  Since it was a hot and humid night to accommodate the long pants I had to turn on the air conditioning which meant I had to close the door to the balcony.  This morning as I was going through my preparations for getting up and going she was meowing in a peevish manner at the door and I had to drop everything and open the door for her so that she could drink her water from the funny round pond in the forest primeval.

When you have a cat you have to know your place. 

And speaking of the forest primeval here are my morning glories bursting out like thunder across The Balcony of Ken.

Thanks Beagles

 Well alright then Beagles.  Thank you for taking the time to explain all that.  I still think, like Liz Cheney, that the only way to deal with him is a stake through the heart, but that's just me.

I thought she went a little too heavy on that putting food on the table trope, mentioning it twice.  I mean aren't people always concerned about putting food on the table?  It's like when pundits explain some phenomenon by saying these are troubled times.  Aren't times always troubled?

I don't usually post on Saturdays, but I wanted to thank Beagles before I went out to the cool of the balcony.

A Vote for Dixon is a Vote for Dixon

 What the author is saying is that some things are more important to many of the voters than Trump.  She asserts that candidates from both parties will lose votes if they try to make the election about Trump instead of the current issues.  I thought that she made her point clearly and did not find the article to be particularly long or meandering.  While not exactly identical, I thought that her statements tended to reinforce some statements that I had made in my last few posts.  Since my statements were made so recently, I didn't see the need to restate them.

The thing is, I decided to vote for Dixon before Trump bestowed his last-minute endorsement upon her.  If I were to change my mind at that point, I would be letting Trump influence my vote, which I was not interested in doing.  Besides, there were three other candidates that Trump could have endorsed just as easily.  I figured it was at least possible that the only reason he endorsed Dixon was that she appeared to be leading the pack at the moment, which was not so apparent earlier in the campaign. 

 

waiting

 You know I don't like those links in the form of:

 Hey look at this somestupidlink.com  

And I am left to read through some long and often boring and meandering article all the time looking for what exactly in the article the guy posting it is thinking of.  Doesn't seem to me like, as the reader, that should be my job.  If the poster has something to say, let him say it in his own words and not hide behind some public scribe. Isn't the main reason we are in The Institute that we like to write?

Normally I never read these bare links, but this morning I did, and I did find it meandering, but it seemed to me, seemed to me that her main point was that the dems are not going to make much headway running against Trump.  Which may or may not be true, all she had as evidence was a few cherry-picked incidents.

Anyway I will be waiting here for Beagles to explain what in the article moved Beagles to post it.

Trump! Trump! Trump!

 What she said:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-media-and-politicians-overestimate-trump-s-influence/ar-AA10j4k8?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

I was indeed kidding in that last paragraph yesterday, but I have long believed that the best jokes are the ones that have a grain of truth in them.

another vote for trump

 Au contraire mon frere (all of us effete, elite, liberals speak a little French), I should be delighted that Dixon won.  That Trump tiara which looks so chic to the republican electorate does not elicit a similar response among the independents and democrats, and though the dems would hang the mantle of Trump over whoever won that primary, it will hang most tightly on the one wearing the tiara.  

Actually thinking that any one of them has a snowball's chance is delusional.  Liz Cheney sacrificed her career to fight Trump.  Beagles sold out to him for a ineffective pot shot.

Our gov, Jolly Jay, did the same thing to the false republican with the fat cat donor that those Michigan dems did to Meijer, running ads theoretically against the most extreme candidate, the hick, but in effect promoting him among the reps by saying how conservative he is.  The ads never declare themselves to be sponsored by republicans so they are not false flags, but they are definitely dirty tricks.  But really dirty tricks against reps, isn't that just tit for tat?

Still I don't like it.  We should be better than that.  They should just take that money and give a big picnic for orphans.  It would be such a huge unprecedented thing that the press would give it big coverage, so they wouldn't even have to spend money to let the public know what nice guys they are.

I wouldn't say I was ecstatic about Trump winning the primary, but I have to admit I may have smiled.  I was, of course, jesting with that stuff about Beagles being a double agent, and I assume that last paragraph of his post is just a continuation of that jesting, but with Beagles I can't always tell.

It's Not Always About Trump

 I understand that Uncle Ken is disappointed by Tudor Dixon's winning of the Republican nomination for governor because she is the one candidate who might have a snowball's chance in hell of beating Queen Gretchen.  That's one of the reasons I voted for her myself, not because of Trump's last-minute endorsement.  Indeed, you might say that I voted for Dixon in spite of Trump's endorsement, not because of it.  

There were no Libertarians on the ballot because this was a primary, you can either vote for Democratic candidates or Republican candidates but not for both, and certainly not for Libertarians who don't even have a primary in Michigan.  I didn't know if there were any non-Trumpist Republican candidates in Michigan, but I just found out there was at least one.  He was not running for governor, he was running for re-election to Congress, and not in my district.  Turned out he was defeated, largely because of a false flag ad put out by Democrats who thought his Trumpist opponent would be easier to beat in November.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/democrats-should-hang-their-heads-in-shame-for-helping-oust-principled-republican/ar-AA10gBT5?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

I seem to remember that Uncle Ken was ecstatic when Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016 because that surely meant Hillary was going to win in November.  I speculated that maybe he was sent by somebody for that very reason, but it backfired on them when Trump won.  Now I wonder if that isn't why they are keeping him around after all these years.  They keep investigating him but not charging him, except for that impeachment thing which they knew was doomed to failure.  If Trump was in prison where he belongs, they couldn't use him to cast aspersions on all the other Republican candidates and everybody who votes for them.

another vote for trump

 Your vote for the Trump-endorsed candidate was hardly irrelevant.  When future candidates try to decide whether to go all out Trump or not, they will consider what his record on endorsements is, and the triumph of Tudor will be one more example of how it is politically wise to go the Trump way.  Your vote was another palm leaf laid before the feet of the orange one.  

You have admitted that none of these Trumpists have a chance of beating Gutsy Gretch so what difference does it make who you chose, except that you could have made a choice to vote in a very small way against Trump.  Were there no libertarians? You could have written in the name of that Czech guy you used to write about, or yourself, or maybe a non-Trump republican if such a thing exists in Michigan.

I remember how you used to peddle this theory that Trump was some sort of double agent sent by Them to ensure Hilary's victory, well now I have to think that you are some sort of double agent, complaining about Trump but using your vote to advance his interests.

But this is America, you can do whatever you want.

Didn't mean to disparage Michigan reps, here is who the proud reps of Illinois have chosen to run Illinois.

I Decided That Trump's Endorsement is Irrelevant

It bothered me when Trump endorsed Dixon, but not enough to make me change my mind.  I thought it possible, even likely, that he waited till the last minute before jumping on the Dixon bandwagon before it started off without him.  I just now came across this article that tends to agree with me:

“The last-minute endorsement for Dixon was more about Trump trying to position himself as the kingmaker,” says Michigan-based Republican strategist Dennis Lennox. “He waited and waited until it became obvious that all the third-party money and endorsements from a who’s who in Lansing had pushed her over the top.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/michigan-primary-tests-trump-s-role-as-republicans-anointer-in-chief/ar-AA10ezPP?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

What other choices did I have anyway?  Three other Trumpists and one preacher man who thinks he can save Michigan by restoring Judeo-Christian principles to government.  Sorry to say, that ship sailed a long time ago.  It was way back in the 60s that the Polish enclave of Hamtramck had to cancel their annual Christmas pageant because they couldn't find a virgin and three wise men, or so I have been told.  I understand that the Poles abandoned Hamtramck to the Muslims some time ago, and maybe that's one of the reasons why.

another vote for Trump

 Dixon is the evilest of the five evils.  Because she has been endorsed by Trump, the election is sort of a referendum on Trump.  If she wins then the craven reps will see that the Trump endorsee has won and that will be an example of how powerful he is in the party and they will be less likely to try to go against him in any way.  A vote for Dixon is a vote to keep Trump strong.

And a vote for Trump is a vote for Russia and their invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile here in Illinois the hick has been abandoned by his fatcat backer, Uihlein, interestingly enough an heir of the Schlitz fortune.  The fatcat who backed the fake republican has has left the state for  Florida, and the other Irvin backers are not bothering to throw their support to the hick, and he is broke and cannot even air commercials, and the dem incumbent, who is his own fatcat, is pounding him on the airwaves.

Last I heard that Michigan commission is fair and square so since the previous redistricting was rigged to favor the reps, they should do less well in the elections, but I don't know anything more of what is going on in those races.

The black majority district thing did indeed backfire.  The blacks did get their districts but at the cost of losing their representation in other districts, so that the legislatures in the white districts, having few black people in their district, they had no incentive to pay attention to black districts.

Trump Marches On

Thanks to Uncle Ken for clarifying that De Vos issue.  I have read vague references to it, but I didn't know what they were talking about.  The election is tomorrow, and I've got to vote for somebody, so I think I'll stick with Dixon as the lesser of five evils.  I agree that Queen Gretchen will probably get re-elected, but she won't do it with my vote. 

The political survival of Trump never ceases to amaze me.  I thought he would be history after the January 6 riot, but he keeps hanging on like an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party.  I suppose it's because he tells people what they want to hear, but there must be somebody else out there who can do that without being Trump.  That's what I would like to see, the Trump agenda without the Trump.  

Meanwhile back at the mid-terms, it will be interesting to see what effect the latest redistricting will have on the balance of power in the Michigan legislature.  Queen Gretchen wouldn't be that hard to take if the Republicans maintained their majority in both houses.  Remember, our legislature no longer does its own redistricting, it's done by a citizen's committee that is supposed to be fair and impartial.  Last I heard, they were being sued by a couple of Black districts that were split up, leaving neither of them with a Black majority.  Like Uncle Ken said, gerrymandering can backfire on you, and it appears that de-gerrymandering can too.