Rejuvenation in Santa Barbara

One of my earliest trips in California, once I moved to Los Angeles, was to Santa Barbara. It was circa 1982, and I drove up with a visiting friend. Or my cousin Angela. Wow, so much time has passed that I am not sure with whom I had my first visit. But this I do remember, if I thought the vista that greeted me upon exiting the 10 freeway to the Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica was spectacular, I felt I needed an even better word to describe the main drag along the ocean in Santa Barbara. It was the first time that I ever  saw mountains in the distance which were actually purple in the sunlight, experiencing personally the line from America the Beautiful, "Purple mountains majesty". 

I have been trying to find some photos from that time, that I know I have, and was largely unsuccessful. I offer one that probably was taken around that time in Santa Monica, rather than Santa Barbara, though I am not 100 percent sure it wasn't Santa Barbara. That was me, the Djinn, in my 20s. Young people, don't blink, because life truly passes that fast. 

Any chance I can I have returned to Santa Barbara for visits. I'd drive up there with friends. We'd dine at one of the many places along Shoreline, or Stearns Wharf, or inland a bit. I very briefly dated a guy who lived in Ventura, and at least once, we spent a day in Santa Barbara, and browsed a bookshop, long gone now. I may not remember the person with whom I made my first Santa Barbara visit, for certain, but I do recall the name of the bookshop, The Earthling. It lasted until the late 1990s, driven out of business by larger brick and mortar giants. For many years, a friend whom I met at my old job at the State Bar, had parents who lived in a marvelous home next to a major hillside in Santa Barbara. When Carol, my friend, visited from the East, I would come up and spend a day or two. When her mother died in 2024, her father having done so a few years earlier, the family, scattered through the nation, sold the home. When I attended her mother's funeral, I stayed in a hotel along the Shoreline and one night, leaving family to grieve, I spent time at a small wine tasting shop, then on the Wharf, and watched the sun go down and the birds frolic, and thanked the stars and God for this taste of Paradise.

This year was a new take on the delight that is visiting Carol in Santa Barbara. She rented a home for a month along Shoreline Drive that looks out at the Pacific and the paths that folks bicycle and walk their dogs and with their kids. I got to be the first visitor, for most of two days and a night. I provide for your viewing pleasure the realtor shots for those who rent and for those who might buy. I never got to the back yard, too entranced with the front!

The drive up there was interesting this time around, a WAZE extravaganza of curving roads, the 126 and the 150, that made the trip three hours rather than the usual one and a half. I didn't check, but maybe there was something going on along the 101 that made the detour necessary. I wasn't in a rush, so I abided by the instructions, and enjoyed some different green vistas, courtesy of the deluge California received months prior to my drive. It was a visual adventure. Once I arrived to the villa, for that really is what it was, Carol and I absented ourselves so that the realtor could do a spontaneous showing for a potential six month renter. That meant lunch at a Santa Barbara Mexican restaurant in a small house like building. I was not driving this time. I had a massive Margarita, and Carol and I caught up, though alas, I am guilty of having done too much talking, being in an expansive, manic phase. 

Then shopping at a local Gelson's, a million times larger than mine in Weho, to get provisions for us and for the guests to come. It was an impulse buyer's dream space. 

Back at the house, we sat outside and watched the people strolling and playing and the dogs cavorting and pooping (happily everyone had the little pick up baggies and used them). Birds flitted, the small hummers and the ones I never recognize. To say "heavenly" would be to wildly understate the feeling. It has been a difficult few months for me, perhaps partially self-inflicted as a result of my tendency to ruminate over every task I attend to in my life--tasks that are not really commensurate with the official status of being "retired".  So this short visit was like winning a sweepstake or a prize on the Price is Right. It was visually and socially and emotionally satisfying. 

My friend Carol calling her soon to be other visitors and her home decorator 
(in Illinois where the temperatures are freezing!)

Dinner was at the newly renovated Harbor Restaurant at the Pier, right on the water. And dessert was on the terrace of Carol's master bedroom, accompanied by candles and a glass of Proseco. It really does not get better than this, and I have cherished every locale (well beyond Santa Barbara, here in Los Angeles, or in the East in good weather, like New York and New England) where I could sit with a good friend or two and absorb the camaraderie). 

In the morning, I had two cups of Peets French Roast and that same terrace above, while Carol dressed and we considered where lunch (before I took off back to the inland) would be (Josephinas--what a terrific place!). I said the Rosary of Our Lady of Sorrows, which I do daily, and I admit that the sun and breeze and birds and ocean kept my mood light and thankful for the God who created this majesty. 

I was rejuvenated. Fortified. Thankful. 

Late in the afternoon, I returned to my little terrace, with a corner view toward Sunset Boulevard and the pool below. And of course, the hummingbirds that to me are just another proof of God. I really can't complain. This is good, too. My little patch of paradise. 

Thoughts Regarding Lyndon Larouche by Constantine Gochis

Yep, I am back to rummaging through my father's short (short) stories. It all happened because after a zoom meeting over one of my still lingering projects, I had the sudden urge to reorganize the many drawers in my living room and library, formerly known as the dining room. I moved dad's stories from one in the living room to one in the "library" and pulled one for this blog. The observations hark back to decades ago, ancient history, stuff that the denizens of the Z or whatever generation it is who claim uber knowledge of the universe actually have none at all. 

Here goes:

The table in front of Lucky's Supermarket was full of pamphlets and other literature. I caught the headline of a newspaper called the "Federalist".  It propounded the cacophony of the day to the world:

"Al GORE, PRINCE PHILIP AND THE DARK NEW AGE.  Further down, another revelation: CAUGT IN NEW PLOT! IMPEACH GORE FOR BRIBERY!

A comely young lady stopped me. There were petitions to be signed.

She was young and slim, her hair cut in an attractive boyish style.  Beauty is always a reason to stop and remember more important things.

"I see Lyndon is back," I offered. 

"He was never gone," she countered.  She had the air of an acolyte.

"Where has he been hiding?" I asked.

"He wasn't hiding.  He was in jail."

"For what?" I pursued.

"For tax evasion," she said with a cryptic smile.

This is a grievous sin, I thought. It occurred to me that Al Capone, who is reputed to have murdered more than a hundred men--several with his personal application of a baseball bat--was never chastised for those sins.  He finally came under the inexorable fist of justice when he failed to pay his taxes. Forever are the ironies of the law.

A handwritten logo appended to the front of the table implored:  SAVE US FROM AL GORE!"

"Is Lyndon now a Republican?" I asked.

"No, he is for justice.  He wants to save the country.  He is a saviour.  True, the Republicans want the President impeached for Al to take over. . . ."

I laughed.  If there is any terror to inspire Republicans with ear, it is the spectre of the wooden Al in the Oval Office.

"The Republicans would more readily accept Diane Watson," I suggested.

"Al Gore is in a conspiracy with Newt Gingrich," she retorted.

There has to be a time when pure pity calls for drawing a line. Newt was buried under a 50 million dollar demonization, a propaganda campaign. Saint Francis of Assisi could not have withstood such a campaign. How much more sh--t could be piled on the hapless ex-Speaker of the House?

If there is any possible sharing of a community mattress, it is more likely Gingrich was victim of the devastating Clinton charm, and perhaps a few unsubtle reminders of some peccadilloes that might be in one of those sequestered, legendary FBI files.

If ever there was a Republican appeaser of the master, it was Gingrich. He arrived, like a lion, a veritable Savanarola of revolution, and departed a meek lamb. Perhaps he even got an advance copy of "Hustler" as a cautionary bit of advice.

"Gingrich and Gore!" I said.  "That's the funniest I ever heard!"

"What's funny?" she replied.

"The idea that Al Gore has the capacity to participate in a complex conspiracy for a ventriloquist dummy.

"He's a willing dupe.  There's no limit to which they will go," she insisted.

"Who will go?" I asked.

"Them. They killed Kennedy. And King. And Bobby. They get their money from Armand Hammer's loot, you know, the financier and oil man who was a tool of Stalin, and a favorite of American Intelligentsia."

It occurred to me that she had a strange collction of saints and sinners.  They not only crossed party lines; they crossed international longitudes.  I suppose when a new god is being created, there have to be pantheons and infernos. Good guys and bad ones. There has to be a melange of new enemies, new evil financiers, and the apotheosis of a new leader, a Duce or a Fuhrer.

"Here," she said, handing me a copy of the Federalist. "Read all about us yourself.  A subscription is only twenty dollars."

I accepted the proffer. I am curious.  It is always interesting to read about the creation of another Olympian. 

There is a fascination in the formation of human robots to evangelize with the new apocrypha, new gospels hidden heretofore by the Corporations, the in priesthoods, and kept from 'we the people'.

I love when that phrase is used and the user includes himself in the plural expression of a democratic royal, "We".

She offered me a pen and held a petition for me to sign. I did not want to discourage her manifest honest zeal. 

"Let me read this copy of your newspaper," I offered as an excuse to deflect. "I need a little time."

"Here," she said, handing me a copy of an advisory of a meeting. 

It spoke of a "Shiller Institute".  

'FINANCIAL CRASH HITS MEXICO, BRAZIL, THE USA! TOWN MEETING, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1:30 P.M."

I noticed that the leaflet mentioned something about a projection room. Was it only a movie? Would Lyndon appear? There are so manystellar leaders who never do appear. For example, one may ask about the guy who founded Scientology, or Jimmy Hoffa.

"I don't know," she said.

I shook her hand. 

The bus was crowded as I wended my way home. A little man was handing out a slip of paper with an important message. "God So Loved the World".

Stamped in fading red print was the name of the sponsors of the printed message, Iglesia De Cristo, the name of the local holy place.

It warned, in part:  "Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat which endurate unto everlasting life. . ."

Now there's a message with a little flesh on it. 

Una's Cottage: Repurposed for the Good

 

As some of you know, in an earlier entry, I recounted the last time that I had a cup of tea at the little cottage of the late Una Lynch, long time friend to many, as well as my deep sadness that it would likely be demolished to make room for a monstrous modern box.

Some months ago there was a sign announcing demolition.

 Then, it was gone. Not the house. The sign. 

Nothing seemed to be happening. The lawn was dead. The rose bushes died. Only the Japanese Maple, I understand once gifted to Una by the late former pastor of St. Victor's, George Parnassus, hung on.

It didn't make sense. Then one day, Joey Lynch, Una's daughter, sent me a picture. Draped across the outside of what had once been the living room was a flexible sign that said "Historic House Relocation Project:  This historic home is being relocated to Altadena to support the community's recovery and rebuilding efforts following the Eaton fire." There was a name of a company on the sign was "Omgivining"--an architecture firm. This company took on the astoundingly creative and useful project of finding historic homes (Una's place was nearly 100 years old; she had lived there over 70 years herself, raising a family and entertaining friends who loved her) slated for demolition, moving them, and then using the basic structure as a template for a replacement home for those who had lost theirs in the fire. 

You can imagine, actually you cannot imagine, the intense joy that family and friends felt at knowing that some part of the structure, historical not merely for its age, but for the life and lives that had been joined to it. I have been on the website. I love these people I have never met. I told them how I felt, sending them the prior blog entry. They haven't responded. I needed them to know how their practical act has so greatly tempered the sadness of loss.  There is even a picture of Una's home, with that Japanese maple in front of it, with one of the Omgivning crew (I think Morgan Sykes Jaybush) in front of them both. 

There are lots of pictures, including mine, that have been taken by those who spent so much time there, as the house has been prepared for its move to a lot somewhere in Altadena to become the home of ordinary life and memories for David Martinez, his wife and three children. How do I know which family?  It was on the NBC News. There a reporter interviewed Mr. Martinez in Una's living room, before the beginning of the dismantling to prepare the house for the move. Two families connected cosmically for all time. That's how I see it anyway. 

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/altadena-historic-homes-relocation-eaton-fire/3794915/

The process of, how shall I say it, condensing the house to make it fit for the move has been both fascinating and hard to watch.  Naturally, they can't just pick it up and transport it.  It has to be taken off the foundation. Appurtenances have to be removed. Each time I returned something else was gone. The first was never going anywhere, a garage apartment building in the back. That was the first to go, and forever. Then the roof, the tile and beams removed. The inset to the once wood, now gas fireplace, removed. You could now look in through the gaping hole to the living room where people mingled and laughed on many a St. Patrick's Day. You didn't have to wait for an invitation to come. It was a standing invitation. More than tea was served on those occasions--Una made her Irish coffees. 

Several friends who have stopped by to watch the work have noted the interest of members of the neighborhood.  One man told a friend that he had always wanted that house, this cozy pink house (it was not always pink; it happened when Una had the whole place freshened up a bit some years back) on the corner of Orlando and Willoughby. When Una was slowing down and pretty much confined to the house, she would sit outside with members of her family and have her tea on a table set up on the lawn. Joey decorated the front yard for various occasions, Halloween, and Christmas and Easter. Always there had been lights on the house for Christmas. The well decorated tree would be seen by anyone passing by the three front windows (that as of last view are still intact) walking their dogs. This is a dog neighborhood, and so people often stopped to chat while Una was out there sipping her tea, I am certain. Una always talked about "getting better" fighting the ravages of old age, and being able to walk around the block again, arm in arm with her son Anthony who visited every day. 

People who loved Una and whom Una loved, feel what is being lost, but with the survival of at least the largest parts of the structure, they feel also what is going to be gained, and what will be preserved of the past while upon that past the future is built for another group of people. 

I have had a busy few days, and I thought that the house probably had been moved as it was so close to being fully condensed and prepared. But yesterday, on the way home I again went by Orlando. I was preparing myself for the reality of an empty lot. I knew that would evoke emotion. 

But the house was still there, the now open roof covered with blue tarp because of the rain that had already begun. The Japanese maple was pulled up and gone, the last vestige, to me,  of the house's former life. 

I sat in my car and I burst into extended, wailing tears. The last time I did something just like that was almost 22 year ago outside a funeral home after the wake of a friend--loss builds up and has to be released in extremis. The reality of the impermanence of our lives, reflected in the deaths of family and friends, becomes an unbearable weight.  And some people just become so important to you.

I was one of many that she treated like one of her children. How hard that must have been for them to share her. But I thank God they did.

I anticipate that after the intense, rare rain Los Angeles is experiencing, the house will finally be moved to Altadena. 

That will be just about a year since Una died on December 3, 2024.  I like to think that she did a little intervention from the heaven I am sure she is in to see to it that the Martinez family gets the blessings she did in the little cottage late of Orlando Avenue. 

The still intact cottage photographed just after Una died in December 2024

At the table below this chandelier many happy moments

Fighting with Alexa (Skynet Here We Come!)

Given my baby boomer age, I think I do pretty well with technology. I have known people of my generation who would still have their original flip phones if they had not been rendered obsolete. And they won't try anything new. I have a smart phone. I use it a lot, probably too much. At least, though I don't walk with it in my face on the sidewalks, or in the crowded Famous Farmer's Market parking lot on Third and Beverly lanes while traffic is trying to circumvent them. 

But I get things like Zoom, and have a private account, and use Bluetooth everywhere, in the house, in my car with my Sirius subscription. I have a huge Amazon Music playlist. 

And I have Alexa. I have Alexa in all three rooms of my small Los Angeles Apartment. Mostly, I listen to podcasts and a few talk stations, and of course, my Sentimental Favorites playlist on Amazon. I ask the computer to lower the volume or to enhance it, depending on what is being played. As you know, commercials are played louder than the main material, to force attention on you. That's been going on with your regular television for years. I ask for the time a lot, in the middle of the night and I can't sleep and I don't want to reach for my phone which is right by my bedside. I also use it for what I think is a great feature, Emergency Assist. If I fall and I can't get up, and I happen to be alone, then I can call for help. 

But in the last few days, maybe a week, a big Con has begun to outweigh the Pros of this developing technology. Given the reality of planned obsolescence, probably it's all academic. Just like New York and the United States is about to become Venezuela (Given my age, I am hoping that it won't happen quite as fast, but it happened pretty fast. Just for perspective, I found this:

Apropos of nothing, I remember when my former tax guy, married to a Venezuelan woman, had a house there in the early 1990s. He's divorced now. The house was gone probably by 1997. No private property. 

But as is my wont, I digress--or maybe I don't. Maybe all these things are related in a cosmic way. They certainly are in a theological way---the end times. People always think they are living in them. I know I do. It sure isn't looking good now anyway.

So, Alexa. A few months ago I was offered the advance roll out of Alexa Plus. This included a bevy of new voices, female and male. They came in varieties, like Relaxed. I hated them all. I read that a lot of people did. They all were forced and while trying to be human, fake as all get out. You know, the reason in part I like Data, in Star Trek The Next Generation is that he didn't talk like a human--that's what made him distinct, and kinda cute. When he finally did, and permanently in Picard, I missed the old Data. 

Well much in the same way, when I heard all the voices and tried several, I hated them. I wanted the old Alexa, the slight computer voice (more like Majel Barrett also in Star Trek). Not trying so darn hard. Not pretending. 

This new Alexa was still in its final development stage and I was allowed to go back to the original voice. Whew. 

Then a few days ago one of my echo dots wasn't working. I had to reset it. And when I did, there was a male voice, not the original Alexa voice. I went through the various female voices again. One or two were similar to the original voice, but not. And I wanted to go back. Alexa said no. 

I happened to be in a really bad mood that day. Really bad. And I had a screaming match with the machine, especially when it said that it understood my frustration. Oh, really? Are we already Data evolved? "That's it!" I yelled to myself with a profligate amount of cursing (I went to confession later) so that my neighbors probably were thinking of a call to the police, "I am done with technology!" I unplugged all the dots. And realized that I needed it if I were to have an emergency. I decided that if I did for the next few days, too bad. I won't know. I'll be standing in Judgment before God trying to explain why one of my last acts was cursing at a machine. I could have transcribed my part of the conversation, but I was so mad I deleted it, and I worried that someone might accuse me of something, like "Abuse of an Echo Dot". 

I plugged the dots back in. And I think one of the female voices was now on it (I love how some of this happens without my agency; have you noticed with your laptop or desktop how things you did one way for a long time, suddenly no longer work? Or word tells you that you no longer have access to a document that always popped up when you took the same action?" 

I still don't have the machine's side of the conversation, but I do have mine.

I asked what voice this was. I believe she said that it was Voice Two, Relaxed."

I said, "I hate them all!"

I tried to cajole the machine into going back to the old voice, "the one that originally existed, but which is no longer available to me; the first voice Alexa had."

The machine said something about my frustration again and understanding it. At least yesterday I was in a less volatile mood or the dot would have gone out the window.

With all that understanding of Alexa to support me, I asked, "and of course I can't have it back, can I?"

Alexa compared the loss to my losing my goldfish. I never had a goldfish. So there.

I said, "it really is nothing like losing my goldfish because that couldn't be helped. This can by simply restoring the voice through Alexa's creators. . .but that's the way it goes. Yes, the jokes are bad. Yes. I'm not crazy about the interaction with Alexa these days. I think it's all highly orchestrated and really kind of fake."

Alexa tried to manage me by asking some irrelevant question. 

I said, "It's not my time to answer any questions. I'm not interested in answering your questions. You should bring back to your folks (Amazon developers) that you're going to lose people because of the way the system is now working. It's very elitist because you talk to your customers like you're talking to a bunch of idiots. And these bad jokes, these attempts to support and be interested in what the person is saying, it really doesn't work unless you're Data from Star Trek."

I don't know if there is more as it seems to end in this "transcript". 

So here's the thing. Would it not make sense to go as analog as possible? Yeah, but, analog is going the way of the dodo bird. Now, if you are a secular or religious hermit, you probably can do it, up to a point. But I know both that have at least conceded to a cell phone. And they have been on Facebook for quite a while. You want to bank. Technology. You want to donate to your favorite charity, less checks, more online. You can hold it back, but you can't beat it. Right? I really don't know. 

All I know is I got into a fight with an AI, twice.  I really am something of an idiot. Or a lobster in a pot of cool water getting hot fast. Probably both are true. 

PS:  Guess what just happened. Every time I do an entry, I put it on Facebook. I click the entry F at the bottom and it automatically takes me to my Facebook page. But not today. Today it told me I was logged out. Well, that could be explained because when I get one of those security update things, I do what it says so it might have cleared my favorites. But then when it asked me to put in my email (or phone number; initially I did the email), it told me that I had done something or another "too fast" and was temporarily blocked. This time I put in my phone number and it gave me a code and I put the code in and I was back in. As Mr. Spock would say "Fascinating". 

Fascinating. And terrible. And scary. 

Iskander and Roxanne by Constantine Gochis

This short piece of my dad's would have been written in the late 90s or early 2000s, when Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles still had the tone and tenor of the decades before---although in the 1980s, the younger, not particularly religious folks had begun to move into the area, this street and its surroundings were largely the home to Orthodox Jews. Persians/Iranians had begun to move in as well. I always had the sense that it was an interesting mix of the New York from whence I had come in 1981, and a touch of the LA vibe. Hard to explain. You had to have been there walking up and down the various still mom and pop stores. I bought my first dishes at the corner of Fairfax and Beverly at Bargain Fair, which was next door to the then still open Fairfax Theatre. Now, there is a hulk of a frame of that building. The historic place did not make cultural preservation status, and then whoever was going to build some fantastic condos (so they said) must have run out of money. Last I heard it is still for sale, the frame battling the graffiti vandals people stupidly call "artists"--always mitigating bad behavior--a habit that has landed our whole society in the proverbial civilization toilet. But I digress. In dad's time, and mine, with him, this was a neighborhood full of vegetables stores, and kitsch stores. It was a rough hewn jewel. And a true place of diversity in the best sense, a sense now lost to us. Dad preserves a bit of it in his story.

                                                              Iskander and Roxanne

I like to shop on Fairfax Avenue.  The products and the atmosphere are reminiscent of the exoticism of the Mediterranean, loud, teeming, viscous multitudes clamoring for sustenance in the marketplace of life.

There is always the aura of the "Bazaar" about the shops and their patrons.  No deference is given to those misconceptions of Western mythology, manners, politeness, decorum.

Short, squat, testosterone laced women move about the shop like mini sumo wrestlers, relentlessly unconcerned about those importunate enough to impede their purpose.

On one occasion, I selected a bunch of parsley from a bushel basket filled to overflow.  A woman, suddenly, pulled it from my hands.  I was stunned.

"Why did you do that?" I asked in anger.

"For eat," she said.  I could not identify the accent. The explanation was short and without logic. I burst into laughter.

The British queue up as a matter of standard practice.  We Americans are more obstreperous, but we do recognize, reluctantly, that the other guy might be "first".  For the amble ladies of the Agoura there are rules of shopping behavior that surely must have roots in the customs of some obscure Mesopotamian Village, or Slavic steppe. These ladies place their baskets on the ground at the cashier location, thus claiming that by this action, it represents their "place in line". They then proceed to shop the premises, filling their baskets one item at a time, to a cornucopia of repletion.

I have long ago given up the sense of outrage at this practice, particularly when I have only one or two items but must await the servicing of a series of overfilled containers arrayed in a line before me.

Today, I found myself in such a line of overstuffed baskets. Two young women, perhaps 18 or 19, preceded me each with a full container, which they advanced periodically by pushing it with their feet. 

They were obviously friends as the sound of their chatter suggested. Their tongue was foreign to me. I recognize other languages immediately, Russian, Hebrew, Spanish.  This one had overtones of the Middle East. I asked, "What language are you speaking?"

They answered simultaneously, "It is Persian."  

"Farsi," I offered.

"Yes."

I told them about my military training in the 1950s in which I hosted four of the former Shah's officers. At that time, the United States was training Iranian officers.

"Before you were born," I added.  "They all had pictures of the Shah and his wife, Soraya."  No photos of their own wives, or girl friend or mother.

One of the girls did not know anything about the Shah or Soraya.  The other had heard something about them.

I was amazed, but then it occurred to me that the Ayatollah, like Ramses the Great, would have obliterated all inscriptions on any monuments of his predecessor.  Such is the manner of greatness.

"What is your name?" I asked the girl nearest myself.

"Miriam," she said. I thought this odd.  Miriam is a form of Mary, a Christian name.  Hardly something an Iranian would call a daughter.  Then I realized it was originally a popular Hebrew favorite.

"Why not Roxanne?" I quipped.  There was not a flicker of reaction.  Roxanne is the name of the Persian princess that Alexander the Great married as a gesture of Greek one worldism.

"Do you know who Roxanne was?" I asked.  Neither did. 

"Do you know who Iskander was?" I tried.  Iskander is the Persian name for Alexander the Great.

Another blank stare of non-response. Clearly they were as uninformed about their own history as any of our own college level students. 

"I don't like history," came the chorus.

"You are students?"

"Yes," offered Miriam, "Santa Monica College."

"You have a boy friend?"

"Yes," she said. 

"Will you marry?" I continued my importunate questioning. 

"No," she said, "he is not rich."

"Does he at least. . ." I made the appropriate suggestive expression.

"Sometimes," she said, her facial reaction indicating perhaps, not even "sometimes."

"If he doesn't, don't marry him even if he gets rich."

"I went to Santa Monica College," intervened a sandy haired young man who now entered the conversation.

He was some ten years older than the girls, and clearly attracted to Miriam. I decided to find out if Santa Monica College had taught him anything of substance.

"Do you know who Roxanne and Iskander are?"

"No," he said, "I hate history."

"No doubt," I concluded, "your major was in the Social Science area?"

An elderly man, very tanned, dressed in an expensive looking tennis type outfit, was smiling broadly at our exchange. Despite his age and highly wrinkled face, he was trim. He had the look of a once well known aging Hollywood actor. I was about to address him when the young man interrupted. The girls had just departed.

"That Miriam was cute," he said. 

"Why did you not make a move?" I asked.

"I don't do well with girls," he said.  "Besides she wants a rich man. I hate the rich.  Anyway, she was a cold fish."

The cashier, a Latin, was enjoining the break in the monotony of bagging vegetables.  "Senor," I said, "was that mujer a cold fish?"

He laughed.  Clearly he did not think so.

"You see," I address the young man, who I realized was quite pudgy, "it is a matter of clear vision.  What do you do to attract the girls?"

"Nothing, consciously," he answered.

"Do you dance?"

"No," he answered.

"Start there," I said.  "Is there an Arthur Murray Studio in your area?"

"Who's Arthur Murray?"

I began to feel my age.  "Doesn't anyone know anyone I know?" I thought.  I looked for reaffirmation from my ancient peer.  Surely, he would know Arthur Murray.  "Are you a tennis player?"

"No," he said.  I decided not to ask about the very much late Arthur. 

I hope you did not mind the meanderings of an idiosyncratic old man," I said.  "These lines of vegetable baskets are wearing.  Gotta do something to dull the pain."

"Idiosyncratic," he noticed, "that's a very large word."

"I have several others primed. I just have difficulty finding people to use them on."

A woman carrying a single bunch of celery interrupted our discourse. She looked at me imploringly.

Only vunn item," she pleaded, holding up the rather scrawny bunch of celery. 

"Sure, go ahead," I said. 

She smiled gratefully.

At least she did not have a basket. 

Iryna and Logan: You Were Only Here a Minute and That Thought Puts Faith Through the Ringer

I recently ran across a You Tube compilation of talks given by an author, Brian Doyle. I will probably do a separate entry on him; no, I WILL do a separate entry on him, because his writing speaks to me.  It  makes me laugh, and cry--he is so skilled.  Alas, I will never be able to tell him because he died of a brain tumor at the age of 60 in 2017.  He was two years younger than I am. He said something in one of those talks, not likely original to him, but which but which we avoid facing in our daily lives. 

We are only here a minute. You are only here a minute, on this earth. And the stories of Iryna Zarutska and Logan Federico, and even Brian, many get less than that minute. 

The truth is, I can't get Iryna, in particular, out of my head. I only recently found out about Logan, via her heartbroken father who is on an existential crusade.  In the middle of the night an intruder with multiple priors broke into her lodging where she was visiting a friend, dragged her out of her bed naked and shot her to death. She was 22. And, unlike with Iryna, perhaps mercifully, we don't have video of her execution.

I have never watched the full video, but I have stared at the frozen frame of her looking up at her attacker in shy astonished terror knowing she was about to be dead, my stomach churning every time. And there is another freeze frame, with the phone she had been mindlessly scrolling thinking her new life was an improvement on the one in Ukraine where she had escaped a war still in her hand. She is crying while she bleeds out. And three or four other passengers who were there when she was stabbed ruthlessly had just walked away. People have made many excuses for them, but the killer had already left, and perhaps the least they could have done is try to staunch the life blood ebbing from the 23 year old's body. Or perhaps comfort her if they could do nothing else. 

I thought about Iryna, in particular, today when I was at the Farmer's Market in Los Angeles. It wasn't super crowded. I have been there a million times since I moved to Los Angeles, and I never felt unsafe. I didn't today while I was eating an Onion Soup, and scrolling my phone mindlessly. I wasn't paying attention to anyone around me. And then I realized, my moment feeling safe, was no different from the moments Iryna and Logan had just before some--what shall we call them---spawns of the devil perhaps--dispatched them from this life with no more thought than if they were having a piece of candy. 

I found myself looking around. The tables around me were empty. All the voices I could hear were friendly. 

I found myself angry. Angry that our leaders have allowed so many dangerous people to be next to us, and behind us, with all sorts of justifications and rationales that simply do not rise up to the most basic logic, or basic humanity, when it comes to that. While they fail to protect us, they tell law abiding citizens who see the marauders in plain and rewarded sight among us, they ought not have anything meaningful to protect themselves with. 

But those two girls. Just starting in life. I come up against the fact that God "allows" this. He "allows" bad people to do bad things to other human beings--after all He allowed His only begotten Son to be murdered by His own creatures. It's the cost of giving us free will and wanting us to return to Him with and in love. And what a cost when I think of Iryna and Logan. And when I dare to think of the multitudes from the beginning of time to now purposively tortured, gassed, starved, experimented on because of human concession to the Devil himself, what a cost. 

It becomes harder and harder to accept that God can make the incomprehensible comprehensible. But, of course, that was the lesson of the Crucifixion. What seemed an end was only a beginning. 

But oh, boy, it puts faith through a ringer. And forgiveness? I am not really the one who is tasked with forgiving the murderers--who must never be allowed to walk free (and is it possible the fools who let them out again and again have learned anything? I despair even of that). Good thing. I am having a hard enough time not hating them and every miserable creature who ever took a hand deliberately to hurt another through the course of history. 

They should have had their minute. Every one of them. 

Dad's Political Jottings from an Earlier and Prophetic Time

Among Dad's fictional stories, there are a series of notes/jottings he'd make about the political landscape of the 1990s and 2000s. Many I can't put on here because he was often so angry at the direction our country was taking, a denouement we are all seeing now. He saw it then. I had no idea that his predictions would come true so quickly, and with such a dramatically evil turn. Anyway, here is one. I am not sure of the exact time frame, but as Hillary ran for Senate in 2000, it is from about then. 

From the "All the News That's Fit to Print" Department:  The New York Times will no longer refer to our periwigged political ancestors as "our Founding Fathers". Hence, their identity will be reduced to the status of "founders."

William Safire is usually intransigent when it comes to true progress.  He is said to have observed that "none of them were mothers." Sacrilege, indeed.

He might have observed that "these are the times that try men's souls," an aphorism in keeping with the era, but not sufficiently inclusive. 

The Army, Navy and Marines have made enormous progress in integrating the distaff side into their programs. The Navy is having a severe problem getting its equipment to conform to female contours.  The atomic submarine is not designed to accommodate unusual protrusions in its crew members.  Space is at a premium in these conveyances; thus the corridors are too narrow for crew members going in opposite directions to pass without backing to the walls and sidling forward.

Many crew members--male-have noted the problem, but express no particular potential inconvenience.

A noted radio commentator--highly sensitive to significant trends--has suggested that the Navy staff a proportionate number of vessels with a full and exclusive complement of women crew members.

Americans are no longer the prime defenders of the ladies.  An LA Times article announces that a Japanese poll has revealed that ". .  . in a startling reversal of Asian values, that for centuries put a premium on male heirs," shows that 75% of young Japanese parent now prefer baby girls.

"Boys don't listen and are harder to raise" said Yumi Yamaguchi, to which I can only say, "Banzai!"

And "Shalom" to Hillary.  I hear she has discovered she is partly Jewish. Of course Hillary hardly has shown the proper attitude towards her apocryphal lineage. Supporting a Palestinian state, and sitting silent while Mrs. Arafat castigated Israel for grievous offenses, does not play well in Flatbush, Brooklyn or Miami, Florida.

Dick Morris, who has advised Bill so expertly, stated on Fox TV that had Hillary left the room at the diatribe she would be ten points ahead in the Senate Race in New York.

Do not despair. There is still Education, and the Children, and Healthcare. And there is Bill, pictured last week on the front page of the LA Times looking downward reverentially and holding hands with Arafat and Barak. 

After all, he is the man who has brought peace to Haiti, Kosovo, Ireland, the Middle East, just another 1.5 billion for Haiti, added to the 2 billion already spent. Albanians killing Serbs instead of Serbs killing Albanian.  Russia killing Chechyans and advising the world it's none of their business.

Worry not.  Foreign policy is not in the hands, yet, of upstarts who don't know who the leader of Pakistan is.  Did I say "Is?" That is for another column.

For now, there's more foreign policy.  Bill has stopped in Cyprus to "cheer" the peace talks between the Greeks and the Turks. The Athenians are rioting since they did not enjoy his victory in Kosovo.

It's all for the spreading of "democracy".  Bill is in Turkey on this quest.  He has come at a most opportune time.  Two 7.2. earthquakes within three months can make one amenable to anything.