Spreading Fear for Our Good

I have found it curious that the new variant of the Covid virus, known as Omicron, which has mostly symptoms of the common cold, has been shouted from the treetops of our leadership as almost worse than the original version from nearly two years ago and its progeny, the Delta. The fear frenzy has returned. Curious. But rather expected. Things were calming down. Christmas was coming, when people want to and need to be close to one another. It is also when Christians celebrate a major religious holiday. And then, Voila! 

Pandemic redux! Test! Stay away! Watch out! Danger! 

Testing sites have sprung up again. All over the news, and within days, we have heard more and more people being found "positive" which could mean anything from someone on a ventilator to a sniffle. The numbers are ambiguous. A distinction is never, or rarely, made. Well, that's not new, they were ambiguous before. We could be told anything and we have no way to verify the truth of it. Well, was it the New Zealand Prime Minister who said it, along the lines of "Don't believe anything except what the Government tells you." 

I have been vaccinated up the wazoo. I see arguably vulnerable people in elder homes. I'm over 65. And I have had other vaccinations without a sense of concern. So, I have made the personal, medical decision to be vaccinated.

But as to this nearly two year circus I also believe that we have been the victims of a biological attack from a foreign country which we are not allowed to name; that vaccination is not the cure all; that the existence of this virus suits our current leadership in Washington some if not many of whose members may well have been complicit in the creation and spread of that virus attack; you take something "real" but "orchestrated" where people can and do die and you terrify the rest of the population who falls, mostly, into lockstep for the goal of a safety that can never be achieved. You take control and the citizenry has no choice but to take the trip over the cliff. Why? Because we have become so afraid, not necessarily for ourselves, but for others, just in case there might be something to the lie. We have been successfully gaslighted. Propagandized. Your care for others becomes the way to your very demise and that of your society.

I have my personal example. I go out fairly rarely, as I have said in other entries. In the week before Christmas, I did two things outside of my usual realm that brought me in contact, wait for it, "with people" purely for social pleasure. One of those people told me that he/she had tested positive for Covid. 

I hadn't been ANYWHERE since Sunday the 19th, and that was only to Mass where I serve away from the pews, in the sanctuary. On Wednesday the 22nd, I was informed that I was exposed to someone who was positive.  My first thought was not to panic and not immediately get tested. I felt fine. It was unlikely that I had a problem.

Then. I thought about the others. "What if I feel fine but I am more the walking germ stick than usual any human being is?" "What if someone gets sick that I happened to pass by on Sunday?" By nature, I suffer from a version of OCD, where I ruminate and create all sorts of catastrophic scenarios. Now my society has been generous enough to prove that worrying about virtually everything is the proper way to go. So, immediately I went out and got tested.

I was negative. Yea! Seventy five dollars well spent, right?  Folks said to me that well, by the 7th day you should be all right to go out because you are vaccinated and just need to be sure to wear the mask inside (which you must do anyway). I technically was at the seventh day on Friday, Christmas Eve, the 24th. But when you read the various suggestions for the unvaccinated and vaccinated and the time for quarantine, to me, it gets inconsistent and without certainty.  It's safe after seven days? But what about the MANY breakthrough cases? I'll get a test a few days hence. But still, there is no certainty of the safety mantra whatever I do. The other I have always been concerned about still is out there, and though I heartily believe we have all been had, my psyche cannot take the chance. I am too afraid. I am not among the many other braver Americans (in my view) who have decided to ignore the fear and fly and drive all over the country despite the confounding pronouncements from what my dad used to call the "Dome" in Washington. 

But for fearful me, Christmas became moot, in secular and religious terms. I had another word to offer other than "moot" but I felt it improper to say it in light of whom we celebrate at Christmas. You know what else it means to me, until this is over, and I realize that it may never be until full global domination is achieved for our good? I am not going to be with any people. I can't live with showing my papers and wearing a mask, which makes me feel like a straightjacketed inmate in a mental institution, aside from the fact I just cannot breathe with one (I know, it's an inconvenience I am told over and over despite my lying eyes and senses). And at the same time I cannot take even the infinitesimal chance that if something happens I would be considered the cause or worse, be the cause. So I have to choose my kind of imprisonment. My apartment. My terrace.  My own lack of bravery. It isn't a perfect isolation because there are a few things I have to do. But I will not do anything I DO NOT have to except out of pure human charity or obligation. 

I didn't feel sick before my friend sent me her news. I felt sick after testing negative.  A full on existential sickness. And it's affecting me physically and psychologically. And I bet I am not alone. And it's all been deliberate. We are being taken over by a full on totalitarian someone. I don't know who per se. But I know that the one thing they don't care about is your health or safety and in particular, your freedom. 

Here's some news. As of December 29, the CDC has announced that the quarantine period can be cut to five days for the UNVACCINATED as well as the VACCINATED as follows:

.... CDC is updating the recommended quarantine period for anyone in the general public who is exposed to COVID-19. For people who are unvaccinated or are more than six months out from their second mRNA dose (or more than 2 months after the J&J vaccine) and not yet boosted, CDC now recommends quarantine for 5 days followed by strict mask use for an additional 5 days. Alternatively, if a 5-day quarantine is not feasible, it is imperative that an exposed person wear a well-fitting mask at all times when around others for 10 days after exposure. Individuals who have received their booster shot do not need to quarantine following an exposure, but should wear a mask for 10 days after the exposure.  For all those exposed, best practice would also include a test for SARS-CoV-2 at day 5 after exposure. If symptoms occur, individuals should immediately quarantine until a negative test confirms symptoms are not attributable to COVID-19.

The "science" tells them so, they lie. But it is really the fact that people are calling in sick for their jobs and not coming back for 10 plus days, and that is wreaking havoc with employers (like that wasn't predictable two years ago). The language I have heard to justify the change is that it is also about what "Americans can tolerate." But note that as a vaccinated person I have as much or as little freedom as an unvaccinated person. 

And now, Dr. You Know Who is test flying the possibility of a FOURTH vaccination. 

Tell me again how all this is for our good. Or even marginally makes sense. 

DjinnfromtheBronxChapterThree: Bumnick's Fork by Constantine Gochis

DjinnfromtheBronxChapterThree: Bumnick's Fork by Constantine Gochis: Bumnick's Fork by Constantine Gochis I watch in fascination as the gentleman at the next table examines the ivory handle of his fork.  I...

Bumnick's Fork by Constantine Gochis

Bumnick's Fork by Constantine Gochis

I watch in fascination as the gentleman at the next table examines the ivory handle of his fork.  It is not a casual act. It is more as if he is looking for some mark, some imperfection. Can it be possible? Has he found himself in that position of unbearable ignominy, of universal opprobrium sparked by being found in the random possession of Bumnick's fork?

Impossible.  It is not in the realms of time and space as we know them, that the item could be in the man's hands. Bumnick's fork is a thing of my childhood years. It cannot be, unless there are truly other dimensions--parallel universes perhaps--or coincidence, nothing more.  I scoff--mentally that is.  One does not scoff carelessly in posh restaurants with headwaiters in white tie and tails elegance.

Then again.  Is there not in fact an element of overweening pride in the casual way the man drops the fork as if he has weighed its quality and found it wanting.  Is this not a kind of "hubris", some common trait in our species that proliferation makes so common we fail to notice its existence?

But why do I try to make something philosophic out of what was nothing more than childhood fantasy, of early play, sometimes a maliciousness, that should alert parents to the inherent deviousness of the children they are nurturing.

And why do I insist on cloaking a simple tale in words that weigh heavily but have no meaning? Well, perhaps that's not true.  Finding oneself in possession of Bumnick's fork was, to any of us children, myself, with six siblings, as close to secular mortal sin as is possible How often did I hear the chorus of my six junior siblings shouting, "He's got Bumnick's fork!"  Of course, when the evil lot fell to some other of the septet, how joyful was my clarion voice of condemnation for the victim.

Well, dear reader, you have been patient and tolerant, and have the right to ask:  What is this strange ritual at which you hint and do not explain?"

Family historians date it accurately.  It was the day of the big dinner to honor the arrival to this country of a paterfamilias of our family line--on my other's side--Uncle Dominick by name but refereed to slyly, by the relatives, in contemptuous terms, as a "cafone", a farmer in the souther Italian dialect. In terms of status or accomplishment, he ranked somewhat lower than street laborer or indigent. 

Truly, he personified the description if you add the terminology of coarse, portly and verbose in the patois of his village, which was in Calabria, a region additionally known as the country of the testa dura, or hard heads.  I record this here for future generations--this being a a life history exercise I write.  A remark about his dialect was made in my hearing by another relative, sotto voce, to wit, "Che diavolo di lingua parla quest'imbecile."

My brother Tony, who was gifted in the ability to characterize a person in one all encompassing word, dubbed him "Bumnick", a name never expressed in the presence of elders, since disrespect was a province allowed exclusively to grown ups.

Bumnick, and his eating habits of that day, became legend, but this only to us children. He also became a dinner time game, a time of perpetual hazard for all of us, anxiety, world class ignominy for a victim--always for one of seven. Parents were excluded.

The hazard was finding you had eaten with Bumnick's fork.  Well, you might ask, "How was this ivory handled utensil different from its fellows?" All were a pristine white except for the one Bumnick ussed in that historic dinner.  A slight purple-blue stain infected the fork at the joint where the metal began.  It was usually invisible until the spot caught the light when the fork was manipulated.

It made its appearance many times over our growing years.  From a statistical point of view it favored no one of us with immoderate frequency.  I watch the gentleman at the next table who seems about to order. He does not.  Instead, he holds up the fork he had discarded, says a few words to the waitress and hands it to her in a manner that suggests immediate disposal.  Clearly his position in this story is simply a stimulus to my precious memory, nothing more. Nevertheless.

I could almost swear that I caught a glint of bluish light as the fork changed hands in his seeminglly disagreeable interaction with the waitress.  

Stealing Beauty: Random Thoughts on a Bernardo Bertolucci Movie by Constantine Gochis

 
This is one of my insomnia nights.  I keep thinking of the latest Bertolucci opus, "Stealing Beauty" which I walked out on. My feelings are ambivalent.  I am sure there is no real story.  Essentially, the theme is about a beautiful nineteen year old needing very much to lose her virginity.  It is a pictorial glorification of this primordial ritual.

The players are a familia Cinecitta melange of poets, artists, ageing courtesans and satyrs.

The maiden arrives at the altar and the camera greets her and walks with her over a country estate of sprawling proportions.  They pass, together, life sized sculptures, many in the supine positions of pleasure. The statues seem Roman in construct. So close does the camera pan that sometimes only a portion of the subject can be seen at one time.

For a while only the architecture and the maiden are pictured.  Ultimately she encounters an elderly, seasoned blonde, a decadent, ill character played by Jeremy Irons, a voluptuous, lounging woman and a grungy looking, unshaven man who says he wants to look at her for a while before he begins a portrait of her.  Of course, I cannot fault him for this.  She is very worthwhile visually, sometimes in a low-cut, mid-thigh shift which augments rather than conceals the perfection of her body. The flimsiness of its weave makes it conspiratorial with the breeze that is trying to remove it.

A very old Jean Marais--he of the original Cocteau "Beauty and the Beast--greets her warmly and familiarly. I can think of no reason for his presence in the film except perhaps that he exudes a kind of elegant decadence--white haired and frail, another sculpture of depravity though a living one--perhaps the reason Bertolucci hired him for the part.  Who else would have seen him as an asset to a cast already chock full of characters unto a Bacchanal. The camera moves on.

Couples cavort in a pool nude as the progenitors of us all.  Our heroine romps in a staged scene, innocent play in her revealing shift that the breeze still tries to remove. A young girl-child whirls unrestrainedly with the maiden and the camera records the gratuitous ballet.  Later, it follows the heroin through flashes of chiaroscuro, as she goes form atrium to stone interiors.  She is treated to sounds and partial views of a couple in a frenzied stage of the eternal embrace. She hides in the shadows to tarry rather than escape. She emotes with star quality the full range of artfully phrased erotic expressions of empathy.  The camera is stealing beauty.

At night, sleep eludes her. The camera gazes lovingly at her body, pauses on her perspiring face, where droplets of moisture form on the upper lip of her parted mouth.

I may return to give the movie a second chance.

Bravo Bernardo, voi sapete godere la vita.  Bernardo, you know how to live.

Post scriptum:

Today I went back to the theatre to check on the name of the female lead. Liv Tyler.  As I wrote the name down on a scrap of paper, literally my losing Lotto receipt, a voice addressed me.

"You seen the movie?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"Is good?"

"If you like Bertolucci."

There was no animation in her face.  No comprehension.

"It's kind of avant-garde . . ." I stopped.  The face was stony, impenetrable.

"It's about a nineteen year old trying to lose her virginity."

"Vy not---vy not." The woman's face broke into a broad smile.

"Vy not? What's so bad?"

Caprice by Constantine Gochis

 When Dad got calls of solicitation, political or not, he generally turned the tables and engaged the caller. A few of the telemarketers did not hang up for even though Dad was playing with them, he did so with an abundance of charm. Today, is the tale of "Caprice".

The voice had a childlike quality. I could not place her age.

"Is this the Gochis residence?"

High school or early college, I thought, or a newly installed telemarketer, but I wasn't sure. I decided to use my least offensive method for cutting off unwanted calls.

"Mr. Gochis is on tour of the Cayman Islands," I answered. "I'm the butler.:  I find this method useful in discouraging the telemarketers.

She laughed.  She was not put off by the tactic and the tinkling sound in her voice tempered my impatience. I decided, instead, to listen to the sales pitch.

"What's your name?" she countered. There was a generous good humor in her tone.

"My name is Constantine." I replied, fully expecting the usual incomprehension, the hesitant garblin responses to my given name. 

"Contantine!" she exclaimed. That's a nice name.  She laughed.  It had a genuinely pleasant sound.

"What are you selling?" I said, in capitulation.

"I'm not selling.  I 'm offering hope; hope for the children of our schools."

Ah, the children again. Another chant from the dome in Washington.  My enthusiasm was slightly dampened.

"Are you running for something?"

"No," she said, "just helping in the fight."

"Are you in college or an aspiring politician who has been promised a fat IOU?"

"I'm a sophomore."  How prophetic. This is a Greek word signifying wisdom and absence of knowledge, both.

"What's in this thing for you--a job--a novitiate aspiring to a more ambitious internship-pardon the expression?" I felt a little guilt at the questions.

"No, all I want to do is to help Caprice in her battle."

"Who is Caprice?" I asked.

"Caprice is our hope for better schools, for the children," she said. "She is running for leadership in the coming School Board primaries on April 13th.

"Rather an unfortunate name for a politician," I suggested.  "Haven't we seen enough capriciousness in politics the last several years?"

She had no response.  She seemed now rather to be reading. 

". . .Caprice Young is endorsed by the L.A. Times. . ."

Mentally, I made this a count against her. The L.A. Times is not a plus in my book.

". . .And Mayor Riordan. . ." the voice continued.

Again, not a recommendation.

". . .she will provide the kind of thoughtful common sense and leadership, and accountability, that our school system desperately needs. . ."

I had had enough of the lyrics.

"Do you believe all this?"

"Yes, I do," she said, with the enthusiasm only possible in the very young and unspoiled. "Will you come out for her on the 13th?"

I thought it would be sinful to deby her a small victory. Such innocence deserves tolerance, at least.

"Yes, I will", I encouraged.  "It would be capricious of me not to."

She laughed.

Last night I channel surfed the news programs for the election results. If there were any, I missed them.

I learned that some unfriendly bees were swarming in the vicinity.  On a happy note, the last of a trio of criminal beavers was captured. California trees are now safe from these marauding dam builders.

Last but not least, Arkansas Judge Susan Webber Wright discovered that President Clinton lied.  Now, that's news.

What's in a Word by Constantine Gochis

 It is "Christmas Week" as I make this entry of one of my dad's short short stories. I have not one thing planned until Christmas Eve, five days from now, as going out into the world has been made so unpleasant in the name of "good health". And though I have resisted becoming afraid, my nature is fearful, and the constant pounding of the dangers that abound in living are finally getting to me. I can think, as I have said, of no time when it will ever be good for our health to go out again without some kind of protective suit, mask, injection that itself will never be enough. By the way, I hear that Moderna is working on a "new" booster to address the Omicron variant. One day, you and I could belong to the "Booster of the Month Club" because for every booster there will be a variant virus. All right. I am about as "down" emotionally as ever I have been in my generally "glass half empty" view of life. It is a good thing I have my faith, because without it, I am certain I would be in utter despair. And my faith is sometimes a tenuous plank not because of my faith, but because of my human frailty. 

I was rummaging through Dad's many stories in the mood in which I find myself--one which I am told I ought to overcome even as I watch all of us sliding into the abyss--and found one of my Dad's politically tinged observations. One thing, among many I see, that demonstrates the clear genetic relationship between my father and me, is how upset the years' long gaslighting by our America hating representatives makes me. And more, how distressing it is that so many of my fellow Americans actually support the deconstruction of the least imperfect of imperfect governments. 

My dad's plethora of stories was the result of a class he took in West Hollywood over many years. His teacher and his classmates liked him despite his political views which none of them shared. They were a rare group. And my father was a rare man. It was a fortuitous interaction. But also, by the time he joined the class he had lost whatever fear he had in expressing himself. He prooffered the concept of the blessed Saul Alinsky, the patriot of the Left, in the immortal words, "Do Me Something". He chalked his bravery up to being old. Nobody cares what the old have to say. 

Anyway, when I run across some of his lamentations, I marvel how  prescient they are related to where we are today, some 20 years or more after he wrote them. 

So todays offering is called "What's in a Word?"

Our teacher and mentor today suggested that we inscribe a word in the center of a blank page, then project subconscious emanations that derive therefrom it.

I wrote the word, "chicanery" in the fulcrum area and the next word which came to my mind was "Democratic", as in the capitalized meaning, or the Party.

"Corrupt", was another word. I need not berate the reader with such memorable comments as "There is no controlling legal authority", or "I never lied--not once--to the American people."

Of course, I agree that "to err is human" except when confession is nothing more than another political maneuver.  Throughout the Democrat realm there is the pounding of chests and the rending of clothes and sufficient "mea culpas" to reach the portals of heaven.  Naturally the unified Democrat mantra of CNNs Bill Press and his less literate clones proclaim the redemption, "Yea, verily we have sinned. . .but we have grown."

"Let us get on with the business of government," says the chorus under the baton of the Master in the Rose Garden.  It is truly only the "passing of wind" but the acolytes smell roses.

"Go ye forth and vote!" I did, on Super Tuesday in the Democrat infested 42nd.  I have been voting there for 8 years, religiously, as a registered Republican. I have never expressed any sign of conversion, and they have always handed me a Republican ballot.

So, I had no reason this time to inspect the card. I voted on the ballot handed to me, and was dubbed a good citizen by the young man who took my selections. Without reference to my preference, he pinned me with the sticker which dubbed me "Republican".

On returning home, I noted that the stub was marked "Democratic".

I returned to the polling place and confronted the elderly woman who had given me my ballot".

"You asked for it!", she said, without hesitation. When I persisted, she said, "Talk to that man in black." He listened to my coplaint.

"All the ballots are Democratic," he said, the kind of response one would expect when a hand is discovered in the till.

"Does my vote count toward the selection of delegates?"

"Of course," he said. "There's only one ballot."

I persisted.  

"Pull the ballot and destroy it," he ordered.  Clearly he had some authority in this charade.

"Do I get another vote?" I asked. He was silent.

I pondered the thought that there was easy accessibility to the box containing the ballots--more significant--that there was a local authority that could access or remove what is essentially a citizen's vote, at this local level.

I left.  Perhaps it was an error.

If it was, then there were many. The multiple calls of complaining voters on the Larry Elder Show on KABC, convinced me that there is smoke, at the very least, in the area. 

Something maybe rotten, and it "ain't Denmark."

Let the Lockdowns Continue Ad Infinitum

So, though it has caused literally few deaths (one I understand in England a few days ago; as of December 4 WHO had reported none), the Omicron variant has now become the excuse for the latest in shutting down and locking down. I imagine that between December 4 and today, lots of people have died from a variety of causes. Chicago over the weekends. Car accidents. The Flu.  Let's just face it. We need to stop going out at all. Safety is all. Death must be avoided at all costs. Except this is becoming a living death, at least to my mind, my opinion being nothing, I realize.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12/14/omicron-us-spread/

I had lifted my personal embargo on social activities requiring me to wear masks or show my vax card to do something this very night, to see an interactive version of the play "A Christmas Carol" at the Ahmanson tonight. I lifted it once before, so far. And I still feel guilty. 

I had noted that as of yesterday, I was hearing all sorts of plays and entertainment facilities cancelling because of the SPREAD of the variant, that which has the symptoms of the common cold thus far. My friend who arranged our evening out, with another couple of friends, wondered whether our event would also be cancelled. And so it has been. I am still keeping my embargo lifted for the evening, as my friends all want to try to do something anyway, it being the Christmas season and all that and wanting to get together, something we have rarely been doing this last nearly two years. I feel Grinchy to be sure, but I don't think it right to act on it tonight. On the other hand, maybe if we all stopped going out and patronizing the businesses, the chain could be interrupted. Who knows anymore?

If there is reason to do this with the Omicron variant, there is now reason to keep us all locked down till the end of time. The common cold itself would be reason. 

I am convinced that we are a living (unto death) experiment by people known and unknown to us. We are being tortured. And the worst is yet to come if we don't finally say "Stop!" 

My way has been to lament on this blog which hardly anyone reads, and frankly I don't much promote. And rather counterproductively as it costs me my freedom of movement, I try not to go where I have to show a card or wear a mask. I simply stay home most of the time. Or I go places, like helping out a charity, when no one else is in the room and I don't need to wear a mask. This, of course, is rare.  In this way, I am not accused of being "unmutual" and failing to abide by the Procrustean bed imposed by my sick society, but "they" still get their way. I am effectively locked down. It may be a pyrrhic victory that I stay home and relatively rarely do anything requiring me to show papers or wear a mask, but at least I am not putting myself in a position to have mask or papers demanded of me. Today I did not have to show my papers or wear the mask. Good. And it sort of quells my emotional foment at the irony and the illogic of making me and my fellow citizens show papers and wear masks while people pour across our borders without any such requirement not only with the potentiality of Covid, but of TB, and Measles and who knows what.  Or my being told that while this is absolute necessity to show who I am and what I am doing in this instance, it is not for the privilege to vote. 

I am a bit ashamed that I am still going out tonight and will concede to the insanity this time. How do I escape the science fiction dystopia that is literally killing all of us? I feel trapped. 

I am no longer on Facebook so I don't know if people are finally waking up or not. I doubt that they are. We are about to become true prisoners, if we have not already. 

I am finding it hard to see the point in anything. I cannot listen to the voices of our leaders without seeing a repetition of some of the worst criminal outrages of the centuries about to repeat themselves. I am still on Instagram, and I do almost no commenting "politically" there. But I did see a meme from someone who sees what not enough of us are seeing, that if you wonder why things like the holocaust were "allowed" to happen by good people, you no longer need to do so. 

We are doing it again. The thing is good people are afraid because to challenge is to risk. And while I think of myself as good, I am also one of the afraid. Fear itself is death, alas. Death is all around us as we are told that we are safe if we just lockdown one more time.

It has been suggested to me that I should not let all this stuff get to me. Is there a time when it should? 

My God, My God, why have we forsaken thee?

The Insanity is Apparently Perpetual

I have received my two vaccinations, and been once boostered, despite my reservations about every single thing being said to the American public about the Coronavirus and the necessity for the restrictions that have been in place, now nearly two years.  I found out today the new Merriam Webster definitions (courtesy of Dennis Prager, and I confirmed it) of someone who is an "anti-vaxxer".  You see, it not merely someone who objects to the Covid-19 virus vaccination, or to any or all vaccinations who is considered an "anti-vaxxer". The definition includes those who object to a mandate regarding vaccinations. 

So, me, a person who has had every vaccination that medical science has to offer, including this questionable one, but believes that the separation of people into the vaxxed and not vaxxed is a moral, ethical and legal wrong, is considered an "anti-vaxxer". Such is the trans Orwellian world in which we find ourselves.

And worse, even if you have been twice vaccinated and once boostered, you must continue to wear a mask or be consigned to the unclean ostracized.

I mostly wear a plastic mask. Yes, I have been remonstrated with when I say that. "It doesn't protect. It's not flush against the face. It allows particles in." Ok. Cloth masks are the key, and close to the face. 

But here are some contradictions. People wear gators. And bandanas. And no one objects. But they are inadequate in no more or less measure than a plastic mask. And I know at least one doctor, albeit a friend, who agrees with me.

https://www.businessinsider.com/worst-face-masks-for-coronavirus-protection-2020-11

And here is something an expert said on March 8, 2020, just before the lockdowns and restrictions that began on March 15, 2020 and have lasted in many places, especially places like New York and Los Angeles and such, to date. 

“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”

This pronouncement from a scientist was overturned in mere days and weeks and that very scientist, Anthony Fauci, changed his opinion COMPLETELY.  We hear that the CDC and scientific entities got better and new information as the virus developed. Except that the science of MASKS would not change regardless of the virus. Either masks worked or they didn't. And by the way, the masks everyone wears, are not the preferred cloth masks, they are disposable PAPER masks, yes, with layers, but they are paper. And I don't know about you, but every person with whom I am speaking in any setting, pulls the mask (or as Dr. Fauci said, "fiddles") from his or her face regularly, which means that unless the virus is very courteous, the surrounding virus particles can easily slip right in. 

And oh, there is the other form of "fiddling", the mask almost always falls from the nose (other people don't bother putting it on the nose anway) and has to be replaced with one's unsanitized fingers. 

And, there are other ways to push the preferred mask away from the face, but appear to be completely compliant.They have these things called "turtles", pieces of plastic you can wear underneath so that the mask isn't close to your nose and mouth. 

It has been my unimportant opinion that if gaiters, and bandanas, or as I have seen, a piece of cloth or a plastic bag across your face is sufficient, my well crafted plastic "face covering" (that's what the signs say, a "face covering" is required) is no worse or better. Lately, I have mostly not been bothered or attacked wearing it, and given my all inclusive vaccination status, which was supposed to have been the uber solution, it would have seemed to make mask wearing well, moot. But, of course, as fully expected, it has not, and the fear mongering has made people truly mad.

I went to my dentist today, as I have several times of late with my plastic mask.  Usually, no one is in the waiting area and the staff has never objected. But today there were two other people in the waiting room, one a woman. I could immediately see and feel her tension, though I was fully six feet from her, and planned, (she was rather sprawled on the couch) to stay standing given her body language. She got up immediately and went to the entrance door. I said to her, "I'm happy to stand over here." She said, "You're not wearing a mask." I usually carry the mask that people think provides utter protection with me. I put it on. (Despite my inclination to argue). She still was afraid of me. She had to be ushered into the dental cubicle inside to be rid of me, whereupon, having whatever procedure she was to have, she removed her talisman. I am sure, yet again, that the virus would never approach her eyes, or mouth, or nose. You say, "Well, it's a sanitized space." Oh, yes, that's true. So are hospitals and guess where people get some of the most lethal infections? But she felt safe. And I was a dangerous germy interloper with my two vaccinations and a booster, and my face covering selection. And then I was called in to the room maybe twelve feet from my fearful fellow patient. There are no doors on either room, but there is a wall in between. Nope, the virus couldn't get through, correct? And then I took off the proper mask so the dentist could put her instruments in my mouth and we could converse about what she saw. Two patients, now unmasked.

There is a new strain of the virus, the Omicron, which has had nothing but mild symptoms, but there is the usual lockdown mentality, immediately. (I will mention in passing that these new crises of strains arise when other aspects of the news cycle are highlighting the current administration's many faceted failures).  Don't you see, that unless we wake up and get reasonable we will never be able to stop this insanity? There will be strain after strain of you name it. I also heard that now there is a push for boosters. Will it now be the rule that unless you have had this and every booster they come up with, you cannot live in the world and enjoy its fruits? I am sure that the lady today is a lovely person. But what do you think would happen if you gave her power, the kind of power that the administrative bureaucracy has over you and I right now? I did concede when I saw her discomfort, out of courtesy yes. But also I didn't want to fight with someone in the dentist's office, so, effectively, I was forced to do something which I believe is, what my doctor friend calls, nothing more than a "kabuki dance".  That force was a societal derision that is not applied to people who use bats to break into stores and terrorize customers and staff, but is applied when someone questions the sudden changes of science that simply do not make any sense. And as you know societal shaming is a prelude to something more physical as a form of force.

I hate flying. It's a near phobia. I do it, but I hate it. I have avoided going anywhere of late because if one adds a requirement to wear a mask for hours, the anxiety overwhelming. The requirement was supposed to end in January, 2022. But the newest strain has extended it to March. The experts keep wondering why people go crazy on the planes of late and try to open doors (that was one of my fears even when people didn't do that). Well, it is because these restrictions are insane. You are in a tin can 30,000 feet up, shoulder to shoulder, and you think a mask is going to keep you safe?And you think all human beings are able to tolerate what is effectively a binding or an obstacle to freely breathing?

Reuters fact checks what Dr. Fauci said in March 2020 and says it is outdated. The virus might have changed, as viruses always do, but either masks are effective (and we don't wear N95s mostly, the one considered most effective) or they are not. What Dr. Fauci said about the current crop of masks did not change. That is not outdated. 

Here is something else that is now apparently outdated: The value of vaccination. We were told that getting vaccinated was the ideal and practical solution. Most of us did. And now we find that it isn't the solution at all. In fact, the most we can say is that if you get a certain strain of the virus, your symptoms will be mild, not that you won't get it. And we find out, as we know from the flu shot, a different strain may moot the value of the flu shot or minimize it. So, where do we go from here? The goal has to keep moving because the things that can kill us keep increasing and shifting in their etiologies and parameters. The quest to be "safe" is an illusion, as Dennis Prager and many, many others, relegated to social shaming (Thank the Lord, they don't care!) point out. 

It is almost impossible not to wear a face covering. Calling it a mere "inconvenience" is another falsity. It is a physical and psychological harm.  I avoid it as much as I can, I have to go out at least sometimes. Today, I had to go to the dentist. And, I have certain obligations and so I will grit my teeth and obey the truly counterproductive and controlling edicts (for control really is what it is all about.I know. I know. You disagree. Fine. Allow me my opinion which has its factual basis whether you like it or not). But I keep trying to limit it. The reason, I think, that these mandates continue is that many people are simply incorporating the mask into their lives, like its normal, which of course is the goal of our "leaders". I was passing one of those cool bar restaurants the other day and there was a line down the block of people happily showing their vax cards to the bouncer, wearing their masks OUTSIDE, though standing very close to one another.

The thing is, I can't see an end to it in places like Los Angeles.  I am envious of those places where sanity prevails.  But where sanity prevails, the powers that be are attacking, in Florida, for example. Their statistics are objectively better than those where the control is most imposed. But I bet many people don't know that. And the same people applaud the condemnation of the Governor of Florida.

You might say, "Just move!" I would love to, but I have responsibilities here, and I am of an age where starting over is not practical or, frankly, reasonable. 

What is more troubling is that a very few people whose motives are not salutory are directing your life and my life, and shifting the rules and reasons for the rules at every turn. And we are either being led or forced over the proverbial cliff. 

I repeat. What Dr. Fauci said on March 8, 2020 was either true or it was not. And do you remember the explanation that was given for his having not recommended masks to you and me (in "dog ate my homework" style)? It was that he wanted to be sure that medical personnel had a sufficient supply of masks. So, then, he lied so that medical personnel could survive and do their jobs, while you and I were left to our own devices. 

You buy all this contradiction? I don't. Alas, I don't know what to do about it, and the feeling of being imprisoned by mendacious propaganda is sometimes overwhelming. 

We have long passed the time when "Do what you are told!" is reasonable or just. And yet, here we all are succumbing to our own destruction. Well, not the first time.

 

Impressions of the City of Los Angeles by Constantine Gochis

 My late father only moved to Los Angeles because of me. I had moved here in September 1981 to seek my adult life. I was mesmerized by the place. It was cleaner than New York. The people were friendly. The drivers were civil and respectful of the pedestrian and of each other vis a vis the rules of the road. The weather was perfect. It was a comparative paradise to the streets of the Bronx, even the nicest streets. And it was the source of the Dream Factory, Hollywood.

My father, like most of our immediate family on both sides of the tree, would have lived and died in the Bronx, and been content. He had enough of travel during World War II and liked his immediate environs. But I was an only child and and slow to individuate, so he came out to live here in an apartment I found for him near Fairfax Avenue, only about 8 months after I came here.

By the time he wrote what follows, probably about 10 years or more after our respective moves, and now over twenty years ago, he had come to positively hate the place he had never liked in the first place Although it could be unbearably hot in New York, and add the humidity, he found the ninety eight here, far more intolerable. The traffic on the FDR drive was at least as impossible and unpleasant, but the traffic here he found incomparable. The buses and trains in New York were graffitti filled, even more than here, where it had not quite caught up. Still, Los Angeles wasn't when he wrote this what I had found when I arrived years before. Even I was beginning to see the damage that the policies of our blue state (before we really used the word with such fervor) leaders were causing in a form of destructive pseudo charity, but I was still able to see the beauty in the place. And I had an otherwise satisfactory life here. 

Here was his take:

The City is an illusion.  It is a sign, high upon a hill. "Hollywood" proclaims the legendary sign. Tall tufted palm trees, stretching ever upward in search of life giving sustenance, turning ever brown in the face of the merciless sun. Los Angeles is a desert. It is an area not intended for the habitation of civilized man. It is a place for dying, thirsting vegetation, for burros, and tumbleweed.

Today is another unreasonably hot day.  Ninety-eight. A broiling sun glares at the moving traffic, from the west. Traffic is bumper to bumper, a solid mass of crawing iron inching past the glorious manicured lawns of the Beverly Hills mansions.  In the morning, this same merciless sun flares at the drivers from the East. There is nothing to shade this onerous glare. Occasionally, the flat landscape is interrupted by an illogically placed tall, square building, phallic like, proclaiming the economic macho of an insurance company.

Over the years I have heard of this great climate, the principal reason for our overpopulation.

There is no predictability to California weather. There are months of mornings when a so called marine mist obscures the sunrise. The afternoon that follows is humid and hot. There is the torrential rains, and the overclogged storm drains.

We are building a subway to nowhere. Public transportation is erratic, its buses filthy, it's drivers unkempt, the side doors of the buses reeking of urine.  The children scratch their illiteracy into the bus windows with glass cutters and knives. They dare the passengers to object to their creativity.

The sound of traffic never stops. Every artery is viscous with the myriad of corpuscular spaced vehicles. The city is contantly in motion. The air turns brown in resentment, but the clamor is against secondary smoke.

Beggars infest Fairfax. A sympathetic judge has ruled that their aggressive tactics were assured by the Constitution.

Los Angeles is a haven for the new age of accentuated ugliness. The streets are stained with the escaping juices of "Big Gulps" and discarded tacos and burgers. We are reaching the perfect state of equality through mediocrity. Beauty hides her face.

Desperate immigrants crowd the corners waiting for an offer of a job. It is perhaps fifteen years since I ventured into the legendary intersection of Hollywood and Vine, that fairy tale location where generously endowed ingenues only had to sit on a stool in a pharmacy to be discovered.

I made one previous visit, long ago, not to marvel at the squares that cover the sidewalks like gilded linoleum tiles, but to return a defective telephone. As I waited, I had the chance to observe my fellow man. Dress is casual ugly. Some have the aura of buzzards waiting to pounce on an unwary target. The street people, now ambulatory after a night of cramped sleep in a doorway, or on some desolate projecting pier, search round for some useful droppings of the more affluent. This is the place where purportedly dreams are manufactured, where one can find the "Maltese Falcon", jewel encrusted and priceless.

An elderly handicapped man wheels his electric conveyance with madcap verve among the people waiting for the bus.  Suddenly, he stops beside me, looks up and says, "In six months you will be riding one of these!"

Rages suffes my being. I am speechless. I want to kill him. But he is gone.

The next day, having deferred to the idea of forgiveness, I am out again. 

He was pushing a Ralph's shopping cart filled with his desultory accoutrements. He was tan, open shirted, sandalled and mustached.

Suddenly, he fell, actually, he collapsed in the manner of a body abandoned by the failure of musculature. In so doing he pushed over his cart, and its contents, a motley assortment of plastic bags and rags, followed by a collection of aluminum cans. 

A companion came to his aid. He righted the cart, gathered the jetsam and lifted the prostrate figure to his feet.

They did not hold. They collapsed like rubber. 

I approached to see if I could help. The most helpless figure raissed his head, supported it with the palm of his hand, and spat out an invective in my direction with a slurred but comprehensible imprecation.

"What d'you want, man?" he shouted, his head wavering in the unsteady hand.

"He is drunk," said his companion, clearly. "He drinks too much."

The companion looked at me not with an apparent sense of penitence for the offensive truculence of his friend. Still I offered him a bill. He refused. He was calm, and gracious, and conscious of the offer to help, but he was asking implicitly to be left alone to deal with another of life's depradations in the pitiless streets of Los Angeles, "La Reina del Cielo", the city of the Queen of Heaven. 

Well, Dad's been gone for nearly 14 years and I think even he would be startled about the level of decline in this state and city, accelerated if it were possible to do so, by the nearly two years of mandates for the rule following ordinary resident, but not for pretty much anyone else beyond the middle of the bell curve. Secondary smoke is not ok for cigarettes, but it is the beloved perfume of pot. Graffitti fully wended its way to the West Coast, for a while dwarfing the problem in New York, though now the delights of New York's policies have restored that city to its Koch era ruin. I am not sure he'd any longer find New York to his liking. A friend has said to me about dad's response to the world, the nation and the states of his former residency, were he alive, would be to have a heart attack. 

Apropos of nothing, perhaps, as I was writing today, I heard that the trial of Jeffrey Epsteins liberated right hand woman Ghislaine Maxwell, which is beginning, is not accessible to live view, which of course means that whatever is going on is being kept from the public who we are ordinarily told deserves to see everything, and here's a factoid--the prosecutor is the daughter of James Comey.

Don't ask any questions. I'm betting though my father would be sitting down and writing an observation about all of this, were he here, which for his sake I am grateful he is not. This is a very hard time to bear. 

Once Upon a Time by Constantine Gochis

 It is time, I think, for another Constantine Story.

Mr. Randolph was one of my father's favorite customers.  It was not that he was a big spender. In fact, he was one of Papa's elite clientele whose nature was never to carry cash, or anything heavy. "Put it on my account, and have the boy bring it up," was the usual interaction. In my pre-teen years, I was the "boy".  But this was not the essence of their close association. 

He was a person who exuded elegance, although somewhat worn. He was carefully attired, carried a can and wore a soft felt hat, tan in color.  He wore it contantly, regardless of sartorial color conflicts.  To my youthful eyes he too seemed somewhat worn, probably not of the very affluent of the neighborhood.

Mr. Randolph was friendly and garrulous. Whether he bought something or not, he frequently became engaged in philosophical discussions with my father. Papa always addressed him as "Professor Randolph" althought he was in fact of more pedestrian accomplishments.

To better understand this application of distinction, it must be explained that my father applied his own value to states of accomplishment.  "Professor" was not a title of reverence for him.  It was a challege, and invitation to a joust. In the society of grat minds, he felt sure that ony the vagaries of early deprivation separated him from the heights of learning.

I suspect that it was Mr. Randolph who introduced my father to an aphorism that my father employed, throughout his life in many dissertations on the profundities of life, one that varied lightly in syntax, "Stay on your feet and limitations," or "Lay on your feet and limitations." It became his paradigm of universal application. 

When he was confounded by the logic of an adversary, he resorted to his store of illustrative fables. It was his riposte. His most pointed rebuttal lay in the story of a man who was sitting on the branch of a tree and sawing it from the inside.  A "professor" who was passing, cautions him that if he continues his action, he will surely fall.  The man, who always replies with pique, responds, "Professor, if you are so smart, tell me when I am going to die."

I do not mean to disparage, though I was told by unimpeachable authority that the high note of his early education in the old country was his feat of tying his master to a tree.

But I temporize.  It seems that in one of the many dissertations with Professor Randolph, the subject of a magical substand, "ergosterol", was revealed to my father. Ergosterol is an enzyme that humans posssess beneath the skin that produces Vitamin D, but only when exposed to the sun.  This revelation had evil consequences of some severity for me.

On the next day after the epiphany, my father directed Mr. Hagiopolis, his employee, to take me to Long Beach for a sunbath.  I was, consequently, badly burned and blistered.  My mother, not yet instructed in the salutary effects of "ergosterol" opined that the event was caused by the "Matia", the evil eye cast upon me by her sisters in law.

The patriarch, however, inspected the areas of holocaust and was pleased. He was of the philosophy that medicine that tastes good is bad, hence, the discomfort of minor burns had to be equally beneficial.

He directed Mr. Hagiopolis to take me back to Long Beach the next day. 

Today's Tale of the Saavy Virus and the Never Ending Proscriptions and Restrictions

I have today, once again, been a good compliant citizen. Frankly, I hate myself for it. And wonder whether there will ever be a time when I will stand up and say "No! This far but no farther!" I went to my local pharmacy and took the booster shot to prop up the vaccination that lasts maybe eight months, but is the sine qua non of permission to move about in our society. 

As I walked to my appointment, I noted the majority wearing their masks outside, though that mandate has not yet been reinstated. I was quasi-amused by a woman who reached her car fully masked and then as she opened the car door, pulled it down and let out a great sneeze as I crossed her path. I noted the streams of dog pee from every planter in front of a commercial/residential building, over which I stepped carefully. But there is no dog pee contamination emergency, so all was well. I was a little early to the courtyard where my pharmacy is, so I sat in one of the public chairs and people watched and read the ever increasing signs on various businesses. One of course, was the requirement to show a vaccine card to staff for indoor dining, where one will still have to wear a mask while standing, but not whilst eating. As I have, and others have observed, this is one heck of a saavy virus, from a medical point of view, because it knows when people are standing and sitting, and when I sit and eat without a mask, the virus is very empathic and does not invade my body. Is that not the science? Airplanes I hear are variously strict (depending on the company and whether the staff were former hall monitors) but when one bites one's meagre food offerings or the ones brought from home, one may lower the mask, but immediately replace it while chewing. That will keep the virus at bay, I have no doubt. Not.

Anyway, back to my people watching. A couple sat next to one another. She was wearing her mask. He was not. They are in love; the virus knows that. It won't allow him to be get infected.

Then my favorite walked by. It was young woman fully masked, again, remember, outdoors, wearing an "Obey" T-Shirt. 

I leave you a link to one explanation of the OBEY shirt line. It was, as I thought, a way to project that you were non-conforming, questioning. 

https://www.highsnobiety.com/tag/obey-clothing/

In the young lady's case, it is a literal truth. Obey. Or be banned. And here, she didn't need to be wearing a mask, outside. But she was. To be fair, as needs I must be, perhaps she has another very good reason for her obedience. But I could not help a slight shiver of cognitive dissonance. 

The other prominent sign on pretty much all the transparent doors was the one that said "Help Wanted" for pretty much all jobs. Now, some people say that the reason for there being a job glut in this arena is that people are getting paid not to work. I buy that this was true, for a while. But many people are no longer getting the hefty unemployment. My personal sense? Since people have to work in hot kitchens and run around serving people at a quick pace wearing masks, I think that they find that impossible. I don't have such a job but I find wearing the mask to shop, when I am compelled to go inside any establishment (as I did to get the booster) tormenting, not a mere inconvenience, which I have been told I must believe it to be.For fifteen days, that might have been a reasonable remonstration. But not going on two years. Sorry. No. But people looking for a job can't say what they think or feel because it is verboten. A friend told me yesterday that someone she knows flew about 5 or 6 hours wearing a mask as required, and when he took it off, the area behind his ears were badly irritated. Too bad. So sad. Right? 

My appointment time arrived. I masked up. My free booster. But you see, it's really not free, any more than the original vaccinations were. It gets charged to all those entities which insure me, and you, and for which our hiking taxes go. Medicare if you are that age. Your company's insurance company. Your third party provider. I showed all my documents, my license, my vax card, my insurance cards. Question. As voter ID is considered heinous, how are those folks without identification getting their shots? Maybe there is a program where you can say, "I have nothing to show you but vax away!" And I must assume that none of these people buy alcohol, at least in California, where you must show ID even if you are Methusaleh on a walker. 

The staff makes you wait fifteen minutes, as you know, after your shot. They hold the vax card until you have attained the full fifteen minutes. After that, you can collapse freely, should that be your fate. No liability for the pharmacy! 

I was hungry before I went for my shot. I was hungry afterwards. I really wanted to get something. But, this little hill I have been sort of standing on---imperfectly, as I showed my card at a nursing home the other day, and on a social occasion I had agreed to attend, though once inside most people weren't wearing masks and no one interdicted, and I will rise above my principles, yet again, when I go to another social occasion in December--I said to myself I can resist it here, now. No shwarma. I love shwarma. No Wokcano. I could go for their hot and sour soup. Nope. Nope. Not even Starbucks. No drive in here, which is what I usually do. No browsing at the modern furniture store that I'd usually do. Small resistances for this girl who always has obeyed authority, who thinks we are being groomed for ultimate control. There will always be a good public health reason.

For example, today I heard that there is a new variant out of South Africa, that has a mutation or more than one mutation causing "immune evasion". 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/25/world/covid-variant-south-africa-immune-evasion-transmissibility/index.html

Did you know that the measles is coming back? You know why? Because during the Covid pandemic lockdowns, parents weren't getting their children vaccinated against the measles.

I believe that when the society tolls all the deaths from "Excess causes" down the ahem, "scientific" road, we will read (if the social media and MSM censor trolls don't limit the views) that more people died from other causes, loneliness, suicide, untreated diseases, than from the public health crisis of "Covid". And every freedom that ever defined us will be gone, given to an administrative state for which none of us voted, even the progressives among us. 

For now, most of my "resistance" is verbal. I know what is happening to us. I feel it in my bones. I am among many who do. But unlike others, I am still conceding to getting my vaccinations and this booster. I am in some form of solidarity with them in so far as am avoiding as much as possible going into places that require the proof of vaccination (HYPPA SCHMPA where some bureaucrat says so). But since I do go to nursing homes to visit friends therein residing, and because I have always taken whatever vaccinations required, I have complied. But if, as I expect, I will hear another booster is required, or an entirely new version of the vaccine is necessary, or that there is a mutation that re-requires lockdowns and masking outside again, and not seeing anyone, I will have to reconsider, because then I will be sure of the game I already believe is being played to test the resolve of the citizen to be free. Will I? Probably not. I am a coward, truth be told. That's what the ubiquitous "they" count on.

But I can always wear an "Obey" T-shirt and pretend I am brave.

Los Angeles, Modern Town Without Pity (or, Don't Be Old and Need a Restroom Fast)

 I am sure I am going to hear the argument contra. No need. I know what it is, or what they are. It's because of Covid and it's unsafe to allow. It's because of the homeless. It's unsanitary. 

What am I talking about? I took a very old friend out for lunch this week. 93. Had a stroke last March. Uses a walker. Want to make her life a little like the days when she could go out on her own. When she was independent. When she wasn't invisible to the world that claims its great woke-ness, but lacks even the most basic common sense or decency. 

We were on our way, in an area near the Hollywood Bowl where alas there aren't a lot of choices for the bladder emergency of anyone, let alone an old person. I slipped into the one mall that I immediately saw. It had several well known entities, one independent restaurant and a mini mart. All have to have restrooms for the people who work there. And yes, I know, those bathrooms are not generally open to the public. That's fine. But in this strip mall there apparently was not one available place to pee. In one, a major chain, the sole employee, with my elderly friend standing on her floor holding it in as best as she could, said no, it's not open to the public. "I understand," I said, "but this is an old person with an emergency." "I can't," she said, "I'd get fired". This was already my third place. We got back into my new leased car, and tried two other places I found along the way. Same answer. I made a turn on Cahuenga that other drivers found offensive in order to try to make it to the Starbucks down the way that the two clerks told me really did have a public restroom. 

My friend made it. As you may recall Starbucks that HAVE restrooms (many don't) got zapped a while ago for not making their restrooms open based on claimed racial bias, so happily this one did and it was open. 

Let us look at the choices in this situation where we are protecting restrooms from the homeless and Covid infection. My friend could have lost control, easily, or anyone in this situation could lose control in this situation, and just let it flow. How is that sanitary? How is that a protection against Covid? And about those homeless? They are right outside your local establishment peeing and pooping on the sidewalk. And we cannot say a word about that because our wise leaders claim we are giving the homeless their dignity. Now before you say that I don't care about the homeless, over the years I have done my share to try to help. And I know it's a complicated problem. But trying to treat everyone exactly the same has resulted in treated many people, including the homeless, badly.  The dignity of my older lady friend be d---ed. And common sense, that's in another universe.

If a homeless person pees in public, nothing generally happens. I know nothing generally happens because I've seen plenty of homeless people with their pants down pooping and not out of sight.  But if my friend had to find an. . . .emergency place, an unauthorized place because finding an authorized place if you are a regular citizen is impossible, you could get arrested. And given what I have seen these last few years who gets arrested for what in this nation, I would almost expect it. Oh, yes, there are defenses. But it isn't going to help in the moment of need, is it?

I wonder what I would have done if I were that employee in that fast food place with a little old lady and a panicking friend on the edge of her own dotage before me one of whom really had to pee. Lord, I hope I would have taken the pity that the society will not. Would anyone have known if she had helped? Probably. Because there are cameras all over the place these days. So a good deed would be considered a bad deed, and thus we find the reality of our world. 

In some states, there is a law, called Ally's Law, which applies mostly to people with Irritable Bowel Sydrome. Like old people, they never know when they will have to go. In those states that have this law---California, the wokest state outside of New York does not--your doctor provides a card which you present (assuming you have the time) in order to be allowed into a bathroom. 

So, here are the choices when you are old.

Never go out again.

Go out and hope you don't need to pee or poop in an emergency. In legal terms we call that impossibility.

Always carry a small portable potty (a bucket with accoutrements to help you break down and carry away the remants) in your car when you are driving an old person around. Of course, even if in a bucket it would probably still be considered public indecency if not public urination. 

Hope your family doesn't believe in euthanasia when you get old and your body starts inconveniently to break down and things get a little. . . .unsanitary. 

You think I'm exaggerating? There is current talk of "rational suicide". There has been such talk for years, usually in relation to the elderly. If you get to old age, in 99 percent of cases, there will be health and other problems. It comes with the territory of life and death. I know and you know for a fact how many children refuse to take care of their elderly parents. So do you think in a world where an old person is refused the bathroom that I am exaggerating?

I don't think Orwell himself adequately predicted the insanity of our modern world. 

My view? I got a dose of reality about our state, our nation, our world without pity, the other day that should make all of us sick. 

But the most important thing in the world here in California is wearing a mask and getting a Covid vaccine. You will be happy to know then that my friend and I are both properly vaxed. That and 1.75 I think it is will get us a ride on a Metro. I wonder how they view it if an old person can't hold it in on the bus? 

https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2020-07-25/public-restrooms-are-disappearing-here-are-survival-strategies

Shatner's Crossing of the Karman Line to Space, the Final Frontier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6S0ykPrxKE

I have always loved Star Trek, in pretty much all of its iterations on the big and little screens. I was probably more a Spock fan than a Kirk fan, and definitely more a Leonard Nimoy fan than a William Shatner fan. You hear the Hollywood talk of who is nice and not so nice, and, Mr. Shatner is not known for his warmth and generosity to his co-stars of the Original Series. Whether there is truth or not to these stories, alas, they have an effect on one's perception. And sometimes, as in my case living in the vestiges of the Dream Factory,  you know people who know people who reside near the "stars" and the reputation for getting along with neighbors is not exactly pristine. 

But you cannot help respect a man who has reinvented himself multiple times in making his living in the industry from his youth to 90 years old. Well, I can't anyway. To me, also, there is always a bit of a pleasure in the meeting of fiction (Captain Kirk) with reality (a trip to the edge of outer space, some 62 miles ABOVE the earth) with non-fiction, that is, the short but dramatic ride of the actor who played a Star Ship Captain in a rocket seeing the earth below and the darkness of space above. 

I hadn't really planned to watch any of it as it was occurring at 8 thirty or so Texas time, and 7 thirty mine, and I am not an early morning riser. But I just happened to wake up, and thought I'd watch. You Tube had a couple of channels devoted to the event live. What first caught my attention and to me was a mark of our rather dismal if not horrible times were the live comments being made by those with their feet on terra firma, mostly cracks about Shatner, about Jeff Bezos, about space, about the earth, nearly almost all smug and snide. Lots of talk about how this wasn't really a big deal, since it really wasn't space that Mr. Shatner was going to, and of course, lots of talk about his feuds that have become so public over the years. The usual comments about billionaires and the waste of time and money to think about outer space---that's a spirit that wouldn't have taken us out of the age before fire was invented.

We wouln't have all those darn space shows if people didn't look to the wonders of the universe outside of our own and seek to discover and coexist with them.

Lots of talk included his appearance. He's got a stomach, Mr. Shatner. He always battled his weight. Don't you? Don't I? And I don't know, how many 90 year olds do you think look as well as he does, or still rides horses, and shows them, and still works? And seems to enjoy it? Whatever else he is, he is one of the most alive people I have ever observed from afar. 

And to do what he did, at any age, particularly as the nay sayers were insisting that the rocket ship (which like five year olds people like to note is phallic) and process might be compromised, was extraordinary. I barely can fly in an airplane 30,000 feet up. I can't imagine being shot into space 62 miles up! I'd be dead just hearing about it. 

To me, and I know that my opinion doesn't matter, though I hope it is kinder than so much of what I saw this morning, this ordinary an, an actor, is to be admired for this thing he did. Now, I know, in this society, unless other human beings denominate that you are perfect, as they are perfect, you get torn down, both literally, if you are imaged in a statue, or figuratively, if you are a flawed person who happens to be in the public eye. 

I would love to have the courage that this man had to grab a piece of space and time that few men have or will ever do. This man has voyaged well. And it tickles my imagination. It's a nice moment in a really difficult time. 

Panache

 I think it must be that I am either in, or close to, my own dotage, that I feel a certain urgency to get as many stories of my father's on the ether here. Will it last? Will it get seen 50 years from now, or beyond? I don't know. When I am gone it won't matter. It only matters now, and I do what I can do, albeit not much to give my father (and at some level me) a bit of earthly immortality. So, yesterday I posted one. Today I post an even shorter one.

Panache

I recognize him immediately as he descends the stairs of my building to greet me. It is my old street-bum friend Diogenes, who I have not encountered for more than a year. He is greatly changed. I sense this immediately since he does not extend his palm and ask for spare change immediately.  I am concerned for my old friend.

"Diogenes," I sy warmly ". . . it is more than a year since your last visit. I sense there has been some travail in your life."

"Indeed," he replies, "I just return from New York, where I spend the last eleven months in the pokey.  I get one month off for good behavior."

"How horrendous," I say, "does the IRS get you for tax evasion?"

"I will tell you, but first, can you advance me a few bob, as you are the first friendly face I see in these warm environs.  I get a chill in New York one January night and have not felt warm since."

I hasten to accommodate my old friend as he continues.

"I get caught in a blizzard in Washington Heights so I seek shelter in a posh apartment house lobby. It is one o'clock in the morning.  I am wearing an old pair of Italian shoes which I find and is no protection in snow. I notice that the tenants leave their galoshes and rubber boots in front of their doors, as they do not wish to track in the snow. I find a pair of Western boots that seem my size, so, I appropriate them. The long and the short of it is that I get a twelve month stretch."

He recites his tale with a kind of humility. Diogenes seems chastened. I am curious as the Diogenes I know is a real bum, but he is honest.

"What makes you do such a thing?" I ask.

"I do it because I could," he answers, looking me directly in the eye, though I am almost sure there is a tear breaking in the corner of his left eye.

I feel that a little more spare change is in order. Somehow, there is something heroic about the act and the manner in which he faces up to sin. I watch him depart, his shoulders bent, disconsolate but courageous. There will be no memorial library for him, but he does have an air of greatness, a kind of panache of great rogues.

Written May 2004.

Diary by Constantine Gochis

My dad was an early perspicacious observer of the evolution of too much government, particularly of the administrative kind, at among its earliest iterations, back in the 1960s. Not merely was it of "too much government" but government claiming conscience and having none. 

Where are we today? Lots of money has been thrown at helping the communities purportedly served, like education. Has education gotten better in the last over 50 years in any big city? Much has been thrown at homelessness and now homelessness is out of control. Where did the money go? What is it always about? The feudal fiefdoms of too many professing concern for the citizenry but in truth and in fact shoring up their wealth while taxing the rest of us. That's what lots of us think. 

Dad's subject, his story revealed in a few fictional diary entries, is a neophyte New York City manager in the early halcyon days of the superagencies that now populate multiple cities in which death and destruction and poverty reign. This particular man might not exist, but he could be any one of the leaders of a certain age, who dismiss the populace with their multi versions of truth. Dad has been dead over 12 years. Even he could not imagine how bad things could become and how bad they are, except that he knew something was coming. 

The short short story is called "Diary". Dad wrote it over 25 years ago.

You must not ask who he is or how I came to have access to his diary. You see, he is currently among us, very active in his chosen profession of politics.  In fact, he occupies a seat in the current Congress--much older, though still unregenerate, opportunistic, a mountebank and a scoundrel.

I have decide to share with you some pages from his almost daily recollections, assiduously and unreservedly recorded.  The copy I have is a part of a set, though it covers a period in which we were both employed in the first years of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society"--in fact at one of the first social agencies to be funded to distribute aid to the poor, circa late 1965, to begin with.

There is probably no story here.  Some of the entries are banal, perhaps even uninteresting. I selected them probably because the settings and the incidents are largely within the ambience of the times and places and the ritualistic universality of the activities described.

December ---, 1965

I finally got my interview today. Deputy Commissioner Long said, "Read your application with great interest. We need men like you in these revolutionary times." I smiled modestly and thanked him. Privately, I felt it was the extra 100.00 I had to pass on to the "Man" in City Hall.  Thankfully, it was the last of several expensive paving stones.

I don't recall that he told me what my job would be, but the salary arrangements were as promised.  Anyway, the "manna" came in the nick of time.  My last year was the seventh of those scriptural lean ones.  Now, I have a job, an office and am the head of a Department. 

January ---, 1966

It has been a pleasant holiday season. There isn't much direction or organization. I have a Secretary, named "Deelores", an unusual spelling of a familiar name.  I call her "Dee". She has a maximum output of perhaps two letters a day, or three memos, with never less than three misspellings per sentence.  I am constrained by the proprieties of the time to accept this minor impediment. If the matter is important enough I retype it myself.  Dee does have a placard on her desk that announces her name, and her title, Executive Secretary.  It seems to fulfill her aspirations at the moment.

October---, 1966

The Agency is growing. We now occupy several floors of a city-block skyscraper. My windows look down ten floors to a very busy Church Street. I can see the turn of the century watering hole, Bar, to the uninformed, where I generally stop for a quickie, before the long subway ride back to Queens, and the walk up I share with the mother of my children.

It never ends up just one, as I am usually joined by Kevin Rauch from Public Relations and Sam Starns whose function is locating new Federal Grants.  Sam is tolerable, though his drinks magically appear on my monthly tab. I don't like Kevin, though, till today, I had no tangible reason for my dislike.

There's always a story to tell.  Today it was my turn.  I relate my adventures rarely. But after two martinis I become very voluble.

"It was right there on the top of a very full in-box. A check for seven million dollars from Washington, no note, no explanation, nothing indicated on the check, except "Office of the Mayor" and an address.  I spent the day going from Commissioner to Commissioner trying to get someone to take responsibility for the item.  It's kind of revelatory--and a little discouraging. One of those New York Post reporters that eavesdrop on our dialogue--see--there's a hot shot reporter from the Daily News. Boy would he like to get a whiff of how the Agency administers government money. Don't look now, but if he leans any more toward us, he'll fall off the bar stool."

Kevin asked if I had solved the problem. I said I hadn't, and the check was still in my box. He said, "Bring it over to my office". I knew immediately why I didn't like him.  Arrogance? Some advantage of angle? I'll have to watch this bum.

December --, 1968

There won't be a Christmas Tree in the East side home of my Boss, Commissioner Rawlings.  At our first conference together, I had the feeling he should never have come East for this job.  First of all, most appointees don't know anything about the jobs they inhabit. Rawlings knew less than most.  What he khew least about is the insidious virus originated by the serpent in that famous garden.

Her name was Sheba, as apt a name as is possible to describe her. I can imagine the throes old Solomon  might have suffered at her blandishments.  The original Sheba, I mean, of the Book.  

It was not an affair. Sheba did not believe in long term associations.  From what she told me, it was a series of intermittent meetings for appropriate consideration, from which Rawlings ultimately tired.

Whether she was invited to the party he threw for his staff last month, or not, she was there. She came, wearing a satiny white garment that clung to her body like natural skin. It was sheer enough--I suppose not sufficiently woven by a modest Arachne to obscure the triangular shape of her very black underpants.

Rawlings resigned today.

I do not know if he will rejoin his family whose transport West I arranged last week.

January --, 1969

Replacing a Commissioner is no problem. They are lined up like ticket seekers at the Roxy for any available spot. Rawlings' replacement was on board before the fizz left the champagne of last week's party. He came with an entourage. How to describe him? Anti-civil service type might be appropriate. His Administrative Assistant is an exemplary specimen. Rose. She is married to an author, who has just published a paper back called "Street Corner Pimp".  She is proud of her literary spouse and has distributed many copies of the book.  Her assigned office has achieved notoriety as a result of the banner that occupies the wall behind her desk wth its pithy challenge to the Patriarchy, "F---- housework!"

I met my new boss and his acolytes at a party in Soho, which is nothing more than "South of Houston Street". This once industrial center of New York and its empty warehouses now house the avant-garde who convert the expanses into bizarre living quarters.

It is in one of these apartments that Seymour Barber, my new boss, introduced me to his dependants--one of whom he announced would be my deputy. 

He said I would find her interesting. "Very cooperative and forthcoming", as I recall, were the exact words. 

It's Here. . . .!

Well, I was a little ahead of myself in September when I said that a new mandate was rolling out. As you know, if you read this blog, I live in Los Angeles. I was vaccinated, early and fully. And Los Angeles, the City, has indeed made it a mandate that the unvaccinated may not enjoy indoor activities. If you don't have proof at the door of a restaurant or any indoor venue of your proper status, you cannot enter. In that this mandate is to protect the health of the populace, it is not considered, by the Garcetti gang, to be a restriction of freedom or a form of segregation based on a power enforced category. It will go into official effect November 4. As I  (and far more well known people) have been Cassandra-ing since last year when masks became the new delightful (not!) accessory of the hip and elite, it is precisely another lasso to assure the corraling of every one of us and complete control of every aspect of our daily lives. It has been the classic use of an opportunity of which the Democrat party had long promoted. You take a real situation and you mold dealing with it in a way that has profound, and disastrous ramifications on the very nature of the society in which we used to live in an illusory comfort. It was perfect. How can anyone argue against public protection? The hook. And the net to reel us all in. Do you note that now any objection to anything being imposed arbitrarily and inconsistently is being compared and then identified with domestic terrorism? 

I have had a battle within myself. I am not young. My sojourn in the work world ended a long time ago. I have no children or grandchildren about whose fate I must worry as did my father about me when he predicted years and years ago the crumbling of this society. From a practical point of view, I do not need to care about any of this. I have neither power nor given my age and life expectancy statistically, a stake in the long term corruption of the nation and the world. I could take the "So what?" position. Who cares if the government restricts my freedom as life itself is more toward the end than toward the beginning. I have enough to get along in my little space, with my cats, my music, my books, my television, my pretty terrace with hummingbirds. I can talk to people on Zoom or some other app. What's the big deal in showing my vaccination status and proving that I am among the clean and safe? What's the big deal at having to wear a mask for five, six, or ten hours to travel in a plane? What's the big deal to pay 25 dollars for a movie where I have to have a mask? As my friends who try to tell me it's not so bad say, "When you sit down you can eat the whole time so you can get away without wearing it." Unless you get one of those flight attendants or movie ushers who will have you arrested if you don't keep the mask on between bites. So, what's the big deal? 

I found and find wearing the accepted mask unbearable over anything more than a short period. I could get by wearing a plastic mask that covers nose and mouth.  I was told that it isn't as effective. This makes me laugh, with irony, as the accepted masks do not prevent the small droplets of infectious germs from getting in, in addition to how much the masks are handled in the average passing conversation. In the early days of the pandemic lockdown, my wearing the tolerable plastic mask was rejected nearly everywhere. Apparently, the business and local powers that be have forgotten about that, and lately I can wear it mostly everywhere. So, it is less for me a big deal to wear the plastic mask. To the extent I might want to get out and about, I probably could tolerate that kind of mask, and maybe shoot out to the occasional movie or show. 

So what we are losing our freedoms? So what that in every part of your life you and I are being tracked and mandated by technocrats and unelected administrators? I am a less than a grain of sand in history. 

But, on the other hand, I have loved and love my country. I have loved and love my Church. I see both crashing out of the usual human hubris that always seems to corrupt civilizations. I am here. I sense in some deep place that I, that you, are here for more than just passing through and taking no stands. This country had the answer in hand, the very principles on which it was founded. If human beings understood that it was the best we humans could do given our inherent imperfections, we would not be so eager to destroy it. Our pride caused the fall. And our pride makes us deny the fall and to insist we can be perfect without the principles of Eden. The way I see it I have an obligation to blow on the embers of the God and Country. Now, all that means for me, at this moment in time is that  as best I can, I don't collude with the morally wrong if I can avoid it. So, I will not participate in the segregation of those who have made the health determination or the moral determination that they will not be vaccinated. The covid numbers have been going down, so what is this about? Do you not know that a large percentage of the unvaccinated are in the minority community? Do you not remember what happens when people are segregated according to some physical reality about them? 

There are some things I cannot avoid. I cannot always avoid a store, as much as I have done, and try. But I can avoid my pleasures in solidarity with those who are being segregated. If most of us did that, I believe the mandate would end, because alas, it would affect some decent small business owners as much as the earlier lockdown did. I am not the kind of person, at this point in my life, who recommends that groups go to restaurants and entertainment places demanding to be let in. The business owner cannot overturn anything. But if we withhold our attendance under the terms proffered, I think the fall out would immediately cause a reversal. At least that is my hope. 

Do not collude with the segregation to the extent that you can. My entertainment and yours is not worth the continuing encroachment and the new serfdom. 

That's the big deal.