The Little Dog Laughed To See Such a Sight and the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon

I am taking a break from lamenting the state of our society in order to publish another Constantine story. Constantine as some of you know, was my father. He died over 13 years ago. While I believe in the eternity of heaven, I also believe in preserving memory and the creativity of those who have died, on this earth. That's probably why I read journals, and autobiographies and biographies with such intensity. I love to "meet" and get to know men and women who have been gone many years, even centuries. Their lives, in a way, are extended by my learning of them and passing my new memory onto others. 

Dad should have been a known writer. He was talented and prolific. But life has tides and eddies such that not everyone who should be known creatively, is known. My little blog entries of his material is my small way of trying to keep him and his life out there.  I am the last in the line of his branch of the family. I have had no children. I have no siblings. So, it is the least I can do to keep a thread of the man, a most complicated, charming, angry, brilliant man out there, here in the mortal realm.

THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED TO SEE SUCH A SIGHT AND THE DISH RAN AWAY WITH THE SPOON

Laughter is more than a muscular response to the autonomic nervous system.  It is a human necessity, a knd of cathartic, something that produces an endorphin--a feeling of wellness.

Now, in the winter of my earthly journey, I do not hear the sound.  It is muted by the cacophony of a noisy mechanical world, its fairy-tale substance submerged in the false truths and revelations of modernity--soundless aginst the coarse bass instruments of today's indirection of purpose.

Laughter is not just a sound.  It is a Being--God generated and inspired. She is the daughter of Zeus--yes, she is a female--Euphrosyne--literally the Greek word for mirth. She is a spirit that delighted with romping for the amusemets of her fellow Olympians.  She and her sisters were the Graces who danced to the meserizing lyre of the immortal Apollo, and delighted the gods, and occasionally grateful beatified mortals.

Once, in anothr environment, she came to Sarah, the childless wife of the Patriarch, Abrahman, and father of a nation.  Sarah was impelled to laughter when she was told by angels that her ancient body would bear a son.  She named him Isaac, which is the Hebrew word for laughter.

In our present day we have replaced Euphrosyne with a kind of imitation laughter--one produced by wires and speakers that can produce laugh sounds--from a titter to a chuckle, thence to a mass of sound of approval in sheep like appreciation of a joke, or the disoriented gyrations of a spastic clown or a pratt fall. 

A renowned producer of comedy left the theater showing his presentation, distraught.

"We didn't get any laughs," he expostulated.  "I know the places where the audience laughs.  Maybe it's because they had to pay over a hundred dollars for the seat."

The laughter I remember to this day cost me ten cents.  That was the fee for a round trip ride on the Staten Island Ferry.  There I heard an echo of that Olympian grace.  It came from my companion.  We stood, close together at the bow of the ship, and the soft sea breeze caressed her hair-gently, lovingly.  I said something that pleased her and she laughed.  It was a sound that came from the cavernous depths of her loveliness, indescribable as to pitch, soft and soul enveloping as it would round my heart and then--it escaped into the limitless space wherefrom it was born. 

Infinite Rules by Infinite People Applied Inconsistently

 I know I have probably reported this childhood incident before. But it bears repeating, in my mind, given the tone and tenor of the society in which I have grown older and which is less and less appealing.

I was in second grade or so at my Catholic girls elementary school. I had been put in the first row because it had been discovered that my vision was not great, and I had begun wearing glasses in the prior year. I was one of those children who had been successfully trained, primarily by my mother, but reinforced by the pre-Vatican parochial school teachers, who was literally terrified to violate the rules, whether it be the theological ones, to the extent I could comprehend them or the ones proffered by any adult whom I was required to obey. Now, there were, of course, children who didn't buy even the most basic of rules. They obviously were resistent to the imposition of a strict frame. But not me. I was an only child who feared becoming invisible to her mother if she transgressed at home, and if any transgression were reported home. When I say, "invisible" I mean that my mother would literally cease to acknowledge my existence if I crossed one of her boundaries. I did not always know what those boundaries were, and so I didn't take too many chances. I in no way suggest I was the perfect child. I was born with a tendency toward sin, just like everyone else. But I can tell you I sweated a lot over what I did and did not do as a little girl. As to my mother, I report this memory with two caveats: 1. who knows but whether my memory of these things is incorrect. We know that memory is often unreliable and 2. even if my memory is correct and my mother's form of discipline was arguably unkind or worse, she was a child of her time with all the forces that impose themselves on each individual making up how she reacted to life and her family. This is something, parenthetically, that our modern society fails to do in its virtue signalling--the idea that you don't judge people of history by today's standards without recognizing the time and the place and the understandings of the time. 

Anyway, my teachers, and any adult were extension of my mother and I tried, as I say, with occasional lapses to follow the rules, which in those days were pretty direct and straightforward and overall were agreed upon by the community of man (which in case you don't know includes wo-man, with which some of us are perfectly sanguine). One morning, in class, some young rebel on my left wanted a note to go to someone on my right. As the note landed on my desk, as mostly happened then, and now, Sister Mary Agnes, saw the note. Would I have passed it on? I don't know. But probably, just to get it off my desk and feeling a rage that quite frankly I have had all my life, that people always feel free to impose on others in a way that potentially harms them and the good of all.

Naturally, when one becomes obsessed by rules there is a danger of obsessiveness, or in religious terms, scrupulosity. I had some version of these. And any violatioin of rules big or small was a likely conduit to condemnation, by me or others and of course, by God Himself. One of my failures ultimately led me to a long separation from the Church. I had forgotten about the part of sin that somes after repentence, true repentence, that is, forgiveness, restoration to the relationship that was ruptured by the sin. Anyway, spring forward many many years and now, there is no general agreement about what is right or wrong, and certainly much of it seems uninformed by God, theology of any kind or the Bible, or even basic clear Ethics. And what's worse, having replaced God, we now have nearly infinite mini-gods, in the government, in your school (think sex ed of the most pornographic time for your children; hey, I don't have children so I have no axe to grind except philosophical), at your local DMV, your electric company, you name it.

The Covid lockdown No. 1 (I do expect a no. 2) brought out the Napoleonic streak in a whole panoply of people. Stand here. (Hand up). Move now. Wrong type of mask. Mask when standing. Ok not to be on when you are sitting. If you went anywhere, you were back in grammar school in line for the fire drill, and required to be silent. Objections will not be tolerated. I obeyed. I got my vaccinations really early, because I am around older people, and I was scared by all the horrors pounded into my head, even though I did not entirely think the things said were rational or even, despite the mantra, that they "followed the science." 

I cannot tell you how inconsistent have been the rules in the name of Covid protection. I particularly have seen it in nursing homes, where alas, I spend a great deal of time. The restrictions are often procrustean in one instance, but things are allowed which in common sense are more dangerous based on their own claims--for example did you know that while you are not allowed in or limited in being with your loved one, many of the staff who work with the elderly are not getting vaccinated? Now, between you and me, I wouldn't care, but then why restrictions on me when someone in there all the time isn't following the so called science? 

Today's example, not Covid related, whic got me started. I went to one of my local grocery stores. They had a cashier, a lone cashier, on one of the far registers, away from the usual location for people to line up, the official location. They have removed the little social distance feet, for now, so it wasn't obvious that I was in the proper place. As I waited I noticed a woman, by the far register waiting to follow someone else. I thought, well, maybe they have changed the location to wait. But if not, I don't want to yell at the woman standing there, who had actually gotten ahead of me by doing that, not merely because I might be wrong about where the line was, but because she didn't look like she'd appreciate any remonstration from me. She had seen me come over and I think she had seen me waiting on the other side. She had that pouty look I have come to recognize in 20 somethings, that said, "Don't talk to me". She had her long silky black hair topped by a trendy fashion baseball cap, and her cell phone primed for use in her hand. She was called to the register.  No one remonstrated with her for being in the wrong place. 

Another cashier arrived. And one of the store employees went in front of me as if I were not standing there to check out her lunch. Now, I spoke up. Excuse me, I am next. The employee let me go, but the cashier, also a twenty something, said with a very serious authority fact, "The line is over there", pointing to the place I had thought was the proper waiting place. I said, "Well, this lady was waiting over here. And I followed her." The lady in question heard me but did not offer any assistance. The cashier seemed offered understanding or apology that perhaps I did not deserve her remonstration. No, I, DjinnfromtheBronx, was in violation of a rule. Why it would even be a rule given that there were so few people on line at that point, only me and the woman who concluded her transaction and left ignoring the proceedings that she had inititated, I do not know. After she left, I tried to explicate with a tone of apology from me for my irritation. A nice employee was kind, soeone who hadn't even been there when it all unfolded. The cashier though couldn't wait for me just to leave. Which I did. \

A friend has been trying to deal with a major bank. I have had dealings with the bank as well. What is the rule about deposits, or withdrawals, or legal documents, depends on which employee you speak to, that is, if you can get them to pay attention to you. They have rules. Unfortunately, the rules change at will. 

One of my last entries discussed the rules about smoking tobacco, as they become more and more draconian up to and including what you do within your own house or apartment. But not pot. Pot is fine.

During the Covid lockdown, we had all sorts of places called essential that plainly were not. But your Church was non-essential. And whether your mother got last rites, hey, that's the price of public health protection. 

Small things.  But these small things are building up. Like being carded at the age of 67 to buy wine. But dare you suggest that asking for someone to be carded to vote, you are an admirer of Jim Crow. People are flowing over the border, while others wait years to come to the country legally. Right now, Cubans who are being repressed can't get here easily, but others can. President Trump was trashed for things currently being done in triplicate by this current administration and is either not spoken about or admired. I am requested to protect turtle eggs and elephant babies, but if I dare to say that abortion is killing your child, I am alt-right. 

And the idea that the Catholic Church tells a so called Catholic politician he should not be receiving the Body and Blood Soul and Divinity of Christ, well that rule simply is not to be tolerated, even if it is a consistent one from 2000 years ago to date, and is based on serious thought by serious thinkers who the new rulemakers find laughable. 

This stuff is quite simply crazy making, the stuff of funny farms. Our society is insane. 

But maybe that's what is intended, that while we are all going crazy, the new world order is being established. 

Just Wear a Mask, Forever and Ever, and Still, (Surprise!) You Will Die

The virus news is more and more focused on the Delta Variant. And, here's a piece of absolutely expected news, if you are vaccinated, you are still at a risk and WHO says that you should wear a  mask, and socially distance.

Of course, here in California, unlike other states, we are just getting back to a vague normal. I actually went out to dinner with friends like a human being. Oh, yes, some mothers were still putting masks on their two year olds who will live for the rest of their lives with some form of hypochondria, but most of the people were doing something that hasn't been done for 15 plus months---living. 

I know. I know. Lots of you are nodding your heads in disapproval. She (that's me) doesn't get it. We have to protect ourselves. This new variant could kill people. In fact, the way "they" are telling it--you know the people out there, those faceless ones who therefore don't even need a mask--this new variant is even more dangerous than the last one. 

And at the same moment "they" are telling people to get vaccinated, who don't want to, they are telling us that being vaccinated effectively changes nothing. It tells those of us who dutifully did get vaccinations, additionally, that we were stupid to listen in the first place. Vaccinated or unvaccinated, indoors or outdoors, with people or not with them, you are in the profoundest danger. 

I have a personal opinion about the craziness occuring on airplanes, where passengers try to open the door or become violent towards the attendants. People have just spent months completely restricted. And then they go into a space in a tin can, thrity thousand feet up, with limited leg room, no real food, and must wear a mask between bites of that no real food. They go from restriction to MORE restriction. I find flying horrible enough---and have managed to do it from time to time. But not now. I can tell you that before the spate of people trying to open the hatch doors I worried about people doing just that thing. That used to be my OCD idee fixed talking. Now it is valid concern. It is unlikely I will be flying any time soon. I had hoped that things might settle down by next year because my high school reunion is then, but between masks and passenger breakdowns, I may never fly again. I admire those who still manage it. 

Let me just say it straight out. The first spate of masking and limitations damaged a lot of people's psyches. But do it again, and you might as well call it soul murder. Is physical survival more important than the mind and the heart and the soul?

You cannot flatten the curve of mortality. Besides that, I no longer believe, if ever I did, that this whole production was ever about saving lives. Oh, sure, there were people in the wheel of politics and mind control who really were trying to save lives. And I repeat, there was a virus. There are a bunch of viruses. There will always be, as long as humans live, viruses and things that can and will kill us. A friend of mine just died. She got sick. It wasn't the virus.  She had a whole year of restriction, limitation and isolation, and just as it was lifting, she died.

Finally, here is my "conspiracy theory", at least as it involves the United States, and maybe the rest of the world. There has been pushback of late against the contradictory, anti-reality, totalitarian press of Progressivism, and it is starting to meet with some success. It is time to rein it in. What better way than to be sure the people of the World be isolated again, perhaps permanently by telling them they will die if they go out or don't become anonymous mask wearers for the rest of their lives. After all, there's always another virus variant, right?

An Evening Out in the Land of Lilliput by Constantine Gochis

My father's reminiscence about an evening out he and I had back in around 1996 or early 1997 requires, to my mind, a preface.  

If you are a fan of the movies of yore, circa 1930s and the 1940s in particular, you will likely remember an actor named Sheldon Leonard.  He usually played the "bad guy" in the old black and whites, but my favorite role of his was a small one in the still poignant film, "It's a Wonderful Life" with Jimmy Stewart. He's the bartender at the local bar in that one. My father and I both knew real people who spoke and comported themselves as the actor did in his roles, people born and raised in New York as was Mr. Leonard. Tough talking, curt, sarcastic but genuine.  In later years Mr. Leonard became a high powered producer of many of my favorite television shows like "Dick Van Dyke" and "Andy Griffith". When I was a kid, I had no idea he had even been an actor. 

I wouldn't exactly say that Mr. Leonard was a favorite actor to my father, but that New York connection, and the familiarity of cultural background meant that he often mentioned the first role that Leonard had in the movies, one I have never seen still, called, "Tall, Dark and Handsome". I guess it was a sense of "one of us" ordinary folk born and raised in some concrete neighborhood had made it to Hollywood Glamour. 

Anyway, the one thing about living in the environs of Hollywood that I have always enjoyed is running into actors and actresses living their lives and having your life intersect with theirs ever so briefly. I think maybe in one of these blog entries I will list the people I have seen since 1977 or 8 (Michael Callan was the first. Does anybody know who he is? And it was in the long defunct Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Boulevard). 

I had some bet with Dad. We were always at loggerheads over various subjects and, though at the time I would have denied it vehemently, my late father and I had similar personalities and neither of us would give an inch in a debate. He usually "won" by virtue of his authority as parent, even when I was in middle age. But this time, I insisted that there be a consequence. Dinner on the loser for the winner in a really nice restaurant. Alas, I lost.  My father, a Depression era child,who did not like to spend money on food that he felt he could easily make better himself at home, was prepared to release me from my obligation. I insisted. And he conceded.

Le Chardonnay was a comfortable, dark, classy French Restaurant on Melrose Avenue. Unlike me, my father paid no attention to the other customers or the possibility that any of them might be from the glory days of Hollywood or the more au currant stars. He would not know the latter and the former would require me to point them out. We were waiting to be seated. A threesome came behind us, two women, one with a cane or walker, and a tallish dapper man whom I immediately recognized as Sheldon Leonard. His aura at that moment projected none of the street smart New Yorker of the movies. My father was paying no attention to me, but continued to look ahead. I turned to Mr. Leonard and I said, "Mr. Leonard, my father," to whom I pointed, still unaware of the proceedings, saw your first movie. He shook my hand. I now addressed my father. "Dad", I entreated. My father was slightly deaf, though he usually claimed that his failure to hear was the result of my mumbling, and so he did ot immediately turn. "Dad!" and he turned. "This is Sheldon Leonard". My father said, without preamble, "Tall, Dark and Handsome!". Leonard was visibly pleased. I realized that these two men had much in common. Both had been average New Yorkers who rose in the world, one a bit more famous than the other, but men who pulled themselves up by "the bootstraps". And both, gentlemen. 

They shook hands. It seems to me that even before Mr. Leonard's grasp had broken, he called to his female companions, "This gentleman knows my first film." They were unimpressed. And uninterested in the exchange. Both Dad and I later said that Mr. Leonard was about to invite us to join him and his companions for dinner, but was interdicted by their annoyance. 

I never thought that my father was much impacted by meeting Mr. Leonard. Actually, Mr. Leonard died not long after our accidental meeting. I was surprised, as was my father, because he had seemed very hardy when we saw him. That was 1997.

My father died in 2008. As you know from all of my transcriptions here, Dad left behind lots of stories and commentaries. Among them was a short reminiscence of that night which he sent to TV Guide in the hope that they might publish it. I could have told him that TV Guide wouldn't accept a submission from someone outside their writing pool, but he didn't ask me, and until I found it I did not know he had even made a submission. I am amazed at how our memories of that evening are fairly comparable, except perhaps for the exactness of some of the quotes. 

His submission letter said the following: "Sheldon Leonard's passing had a deep impact on me. I felt as if we had, somehow, a long association. You see, our paths crossed, one night, on an after summer night, as told in the accompanying effort. He appeared strong, years younger than his stated age, vital, and on his way to a gourmet meal.  I will miss him."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-sheldon-leonard-1283571.html

                                     AN EVENING OUT IN THE LAND OF LILLIPUT

Given a choice between two similar items, identical in al things but price, Djinna will choose the more expensive one.  It is as if some shadow of opprobrium affixes itself to a bargain.  I feel as if I am commiting "heresy"; that I am ungrateful, particularly since I have been the beneficiary of this profligacy, to wit: an eight hundred dollar refrigerator, a cruise to Ensenada, a bowl full of book matches that announce to the world I have been treated to most of the trendy restaurants of this town, and then some.

I am not surprised, therefore, at the opulence of her choice, for the evening, a very French, "n'est ce pas", restaurant called "Le Chardonnay".  It has a narrow anteroom, kind of like Gibraltar is to the entry to the Mediterranean, through which the patrons must pass and be verified before being seated.

A well-appointed gentleman arrives behind us. We are importuned further by two elderly women, one assisted by the other and a walker. They are impatient. 

"Excuse me," says the more ambulatory lady. The two squeeze themselves to the front, where a Maitre D' posts himself. "I'm sorry," says my daughter, to no further acknowledgement.

"Sir," I hear Djinna's voice. This is my daughter's name. "I do not generally do this, but are you Sheldon Leonard?"

"I am", he says, very pleased.

"My father is a long-time fan of yours," she adds, though I would characterize my interest in celebrity as somewhat less than adulation. Generally, my expertise consists of faces that are familiar, whose names I don't remember from various movies.

"Yes," I say. I really enjoyed your film, "Tall, Dark and Handsome".  It actually is the only one I remember.

The still pleased Mr. Leonard addresses the two ladies in a loud voice. "The gentleman remembers a nineteen forty one film!"  My daughter recalls that he refers to it as his first film. 

The ladies are visibly annoyed and make no response.

Sheldon-I feel I may take this familiar tone--shakes my hand.  He has a strong grasp. He is led--before us-by the Maitre D' but I do manage to make on parting comment.

"Mr. Leonard, you were indeed a great 'bad guy'.  I know he would like to hear more about the days when his bulging eyes, sneering lips, and menacing Bronx acccent brought terror to the screen's 'good guys' as in this case Cesar Romero. I would have liked to pursue this discussion. I have always been curious about the female lead, Patricia Gilmore. I sense that he would also like to talk about yesteryear. I suspect, also, that one of the impatient ladies is his wife, the other, perhaps, his mother in law.  What mortal man can deal with this immortal combination?

My daughter and I are seated. Our waiter is, of course, French, wise and experienced. His outer conformation, though, gives the impression of the look of an Irish Leprechaun. His is formal, at first, but seems to warm up.

The splendor of the high ceiling, the enormous plate glass windows, the elaborate wine list, from an expensive twenty five dollars "ad astra" which is a way of saying, "to the stars", an a la carte menu of gastronomic opulence, with prices to match--I could not have expected less of my beloved progeny.

I do not recall what my daughter ordered. For me, I saw futility in looking for moderation on the menu.  I went for the best-- a Gibson, with three onions, Lobster Bisque, superb and only ten dollars, Filet Mignon, perhaps two inches thick, a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse, wrong with red meat, and likely to raise the eyebrow of the waiter, but a wine I like. I had, also, two brandies, Remy Martin, and an expresso. I left the tip, out of mercy.

On the way out the sartorially elegant proprietor beams, and bids us good night. 

No Smoking, or Vaping. But Pot's Probably Perfectly Fine

This is probably another in a line of my apocalyptic entries. Perhaps it  is not quite so dramatically apocalyptic. But these days pretty much everything points to the apocalyptic to me.

When I was a kid, living a privileged life in a Bronx tenement (it really was a nice one bedroom apartment for the three of us and I got the bedroom), whenever your building was starting to slide into decrepitude, signs would appear.  Not figurative signs, but the real ones. The signs would be posted on the brick walls telling the tenants, and their children who played in the courtyard, what they must and must  not do. Things like, "No loitering" and "No ball playing". While I have always followed rules, something which these days I question when the rules are insanely inconsistent, in this case, like the other kids, I continued to bounce my Spaulding pink ball, and sometimes on the very sign that forbade me to do so. That is probably the extent of my intentional rebelliousness to date. 

As so many others, our building, in which my grandfather had actually once been Superintendent when my mother and her sisters were young, fell into complete disrepair. The patches of grass surrounded by lovely wrought iron was pulled out and the ground painted over. The dog poo was about everywhere. The garbage often did not get collected. And the landlord occasionally tried to burn the building down. The good old days.

I was reminded of all this when I came home to my West Hollywood Condo Building today. I noticed a sign taped on the glass entrance. 

I took this picture. I wondered, "Does that include pot?" because in this building there is a great deal of pot smoking. I often will be sitting outside on my terrace when an invisible cloud of scent comes over me. The smell of skunk to me. Between you, me and the lamp post, I'd would rather the smell of tobacco over the stench of pot. But there you are. I lack the progressive gene. I have actually never tried the stuff. I have, however, been beneficiary, if that is what one might call it, of a lot of second hand pot. Of course, we must extend the prohibition to vaping. If you were to say that some vaping can be done without the use of nicotine and thus all of the deficits carried with tobacco, the default is, "No, that's bad too." We don't want to encourage the idea of smoking to impressionable teenagers. It might distract them from the abortions they can get without parental permission.  Let us add to the things I cannot do in my own space. Don't use too much electricity, the forbidden amount determined by LADWP. You may lease your property but only if you do so for a full year. I thought of one of my neighbors, a man on the first floor, from some Eastern European country where they are probably still smoking with abandon, who probably took his first draw when he was 10. In the past, where it was only our CC and R's that forbade smoking and noise after 11 (which young people you know, don't follow under any circumstance), he was sort of grandfathered in to being allowed to smoke. Looks like he might be in trouble now or there is inequity in the application of the rule. Will someone complain? Not me. I only care about the insanity from a philosophical point of view when it comes to smoking. Since I don't smoke, I have no stake in this skirmish. 

I forgot to get my mail, distracted by the door's missive. I came down again. I realized there was another item posted on the other side of the door.

Ahhhh we have the word on high. The City. It is, at least one can so interpret it, based on the plain language of the posted notice that only tobacco is impermissible. They only use the word "Tobacco". 

Note, that right now you can still smoke tobacco in your apartment and on your exclusive use balcony/terrace assuming your building is not new, where then you cannot.  But as of 2023, nope nope nope. You cannot even smoke in your dwelling unit or your crummy old balcony. Well, tobacco. Smoke your pot up with abandon inside, outside, anywhere your heart desires. 

In some years--I will probably be long dead---people will hear about all the lawsuits over pot smoking and what was known all along, that it was far worse than tobacco, and that it was a gateway drug, and lots of people that didn't need to be died because of it. Worse than tobacco ever did. 

By that time, the state will have bugs in your apartments and be telling you what to eat, when to get up and what thoughts to have. Some people think we are already there. 

What It Was Like to Live During the End of the American Experiment: A Letter to the Future (if there is one).

I have all the volumes of Edward Gibbon's the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. I haven't read them. But they look lovely in my library, in which reside many books I have actually read. I think it came as some special gift in a book club and I liked the look of them, and I did hope that one day I would open up the first volume, at least. But it didn't happen that way. There's still time. Well, until this particular part of Western Civilization, once known as the United States of America, falls, a circumstance that feels to this denizen of Los Angeles imminent. Our Lord said of the Catholic Church, also on a downward spiral in modern society, that the "gates of Hell shall not prevail against it".  He did not say thusly about the United States, and I fear therefore that my hope for and faith in the Church of Christ does not translate into a similar hope for and faith in the continued survival of the United States. 

Rome, in its various historical iterations, lasted about 500 years. The United States has been in existence 245 years. If things continue apace, I don't think the States will make 300 years, and even that I 'm not sure of.

Sorry to be so gloomy. It's one of the reasons I haven't been writing too much in this forum. I did publish, two or three weeks ago, a writing of my father's. A friend God bless her, actually wanted to hear more from me rather than one of his stories. (She might regret that if she is reading this now). But I haven't had the heart. And I might add, if my father were alive right now, and he had gotten into blogging, there would be volcanic fire, verbally speaking, flying from his page. My father was predicting all sorts of dire things back in the 1960s. I'd say, "I should have paid attention", but frankly, I don't know that my attention would have made any difference. So much of what is happening seems the inexorable result of human hubris that never stops to learn from anything in history. It's easier to rewrite history. And it absolves, secularly speaking only, of all societal sins. Until the next time. There always is a next time.

So, what's this entry about? It's a kind of letter to the future, if there is one. A letter to whatever the United States becomes, devoid of its founding essence. And perhaps to the remnant of Western Civilization, since that has become anathema, its culture, its writing, its music, its philosophy, its theology, all useless to the wisdom of feeling and power that characterizes the ruling class of today and while telling the Glory of the West to stop imposing itself on them, imposes every burp, giggle, and pleasure need onto the rest of us. Morality is an ever moving goal post, born of the id and untamed by the ego and definitely without any reference to a superego in the secular sense, and in a frenzied rejection of anything so silly as a God of the Universe in the theological sense. 

You want to marry yourself? Go ahead. You think men have babies? Of course they do. You think abortion is a right? You are a high schooler who thinks that it is a positive good? If I showed you an abortion, little girl, would you think it is still a great thing? That's why they won't let anyone show pictures of abortions. It's a little too much. Too alt-right. Alt-right is now anything that used to be of societal value, those things we all used to agree upon. Not perfectly, but more than now when everyone is placed in opposition to one another. If a baby is aborted, it's a choice. If someone is for capital punishment, she is a viper. No logic ever considered that the child is ab initio an innocent, and there is a question about the person subject to death by the government after a trial. (Now by the way, I am not unerringly pro-capital punishment; but there is a distinction, a nuance). And you know what, if someone showed that "courageous" high schooler an abortion, I suspect that she and her followers would say, "so what?" It's just not as important a life as mine.  Since the wisdom of the elders is meaningless, those elders being attached to that despicable Western Civilization, nuance is irrelevant. And if the person who articulates that perhaps there are truths, and goods, that do not require one's subjective approval, and they are part of your group, and they are going against "your truth", they are simply said not to be a member of your racial, social, religious, cultural, or experiential frame. They are, well, cancelled. They are made invisible. And, in time, that history which is being rewritten, will be repeated. 

This civilization killing mentality about the big things in life also appears in the little things. The other day I got a letter from my city leaders. I got it because I own a private piece of property.  I happen to live in it right now. But the letter advised me of the laws regarding renting my private property, about how long the lease HAD to  be, and some other things that really are none of anybody's business. And then a while back I got a letter from my electric company. They let me know that I had during the previous three months used a bit more electricity than my neighbors, and they had advice for how I could reduce my electric use. Now, anyone who knows me, knows that I hardly use ANY light. My apartment is virtually dark. I like it that way. But I think in those previous winter months, during something, what was it, I think they called it Covid-19, I was using my electric heater more because I was compelled to be AT HOME. The lovely state that I live in is going to increase property taxes for water runoff for the three or four days of rain we receive every year. I guess my neighbors are better people than I am. Perhaps so.

There is no consistency in any rules that are being imposed. It is purely a matter of control over the organs of the society, and their power. I said that before. What you or I are required to do or to forbear doing depends on who has power, and they no longer have to exercise it according to a common principle upon which we all agree. So, during Covid, there were some businesses or non-profits, and even now, when purportedly the society is no longer in the throes of Covid as we were months back, that had very strict rules. Hospitals and rehab places and nursing homes. And others, not so strict. I know this stuff not by report, but by experience. In one place you were allowed to wear a certain type of mask; in another, you were told you couldn't. Each place had relaxed or strict rules according to who was in charge. "The CDC! The CDC says this!" I have seen some cruelties imposed in the name of public health. There are the big public ones like putting old people with Covid into nursing homes. But mama couldn't be visited by her own family and died ultimately of isolation. I know of at least one priest who in these later days of Covid protection, who had been visiting people in a hospital was suddenly stopped by the powerful person du jour and not allowed. 

The times, they are 'a crumbling. That's the glory of change which doesn't replace the foundational stuff that it is overthrowing, overtaking, destroying. And more than that, where human beings put priority on their desires and every private urge they have and pronounce that "It is good". There is a billboard on my main drag. It's just another exampe that everything is permissible, big and small, as long as someone can make it so.

It's very cute, I am sure the publicist, the creator, the managers, whoever, told each other. It's a new TV series. "Tell Keving to F--- Himself". The F word is purported covered by the face of one of the stars. 

There's a cute little cartoon out there too. It is "educational". It teaches children, little kids, how to well. . . .pleasure themselves. Make sure it's private they are told. Why? Why? What is the reason it must be private? It can't be any objective moral reason. It has to be that someone in control says it must be private. Until they decide it doesn't have to be. We are at the bottom of the slippery slope. There really is little slope to go. 

There are a million things that I see day in and day out, that those of us without a voice see, day in, and day out. It is mind numbing. More so that so many are embracing it. Walking off the cliff with a smile on their faces.

So, if you are able to read this say, 100 years from now. . .and boy do I hope that I'm wrong that the United States is long dead and that the frenzy of pleasure and power have brought about a cataclysm, what was it like. It was soul killing. I am hanging on merely by virtue of my faith, and the support from the leadership is, as I have said, less than stellar.

What's worse about being in the middle of it? It didn't have to happen. Human beings did it to themselves. To their fellow human beings. They chose it. They chose to destroy. And they told themselves as they did it that it was not merely fine, but good in some definition of good that I will never understand.  It would be so much easier if I didn't care. I'm old. I have no kids. (I do worry about the children of good friends though and some of them I love much and hate that they might suffer). 

I feel like I am in the middle of a Biblical conflagaration. And I don't want to be there. 

And I have no choice. That's where faith has to keep me afloat. Suffering for a purpose. Some purpose I do not yet know, in terms of my little part of tthe tapestry. 

Will your generation do any differently? I doubt it. Until you learn that Man is Not the Measure of All Things. He is a Creation. And he has to answer to a Creator. 

But I'm not betting on that lesson ever being learned by a human civilization. And this one, the United States, it had a real chance, once. 

A Constantine Story After a Month Plus Hiatus

 A kind friend of mine who is a regular reader of this blog noted that I hadn't posted anything for a long time. I had no idea myself that it was well over a month, nearly two months, as ye old crow flies. Aside from the still as yet not flattened curve of Covid after nearly 15 months (I hear that we here in California might actually be freed from all things mandatory on June 15; I am not holding my breath), I have been distracted by life's other expected and unexpected burdens. The burdens have not lifted entirely (do they ever? And for my spiritual views on THAT subject I refer you to my Podcast on Podbean.com, "Ordinary Old Catholic Me". You can hear it on Amazon, Spotify, Tune In, etc.) but they have become a tad lighter to carry in the last couple of days. So, I thought it might be a good idea to add another one of my late father's writings.

Here's one written probably over 20 years ago. Dad has been gone 13 years and this was written before he moved from his address near Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles in 2002. 

It has no title. It is written in Damon Runyon present tense style which Dad favored for a while and it has all the tongue in cheek cynicism that characterized Dad in his prime. So here goes. . . . 

You know, I am convinced that if you stand in front of Canter's Delicatessen long enough, you surely meet someone you know sometime a stratosphere away in time and place.

I am savoring the aftertaste of a pastrami sandwich, as I leave the restaurant. The guy in back of me, who I guess has the same gourmet delicacy, is sucking residual remnants from his teeth. I look around to examine the source of the sound effects. He is very familiar, but I cannot place him exactly in whatever orbit we inhabit together.

"Don't look so startled," he says, "we share the same room, some twenty-five years ago. I study you at great length while you chomp on that oversized sandwich, and I remember like it is yesterday."

I remember immediately.  Of course I never consider sharing a room with him, nor would I ever consider such arrangement unless I am brought there, unconscious--which by the way is almost the case.

We share a hospital room in Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, for perhaps seven days.  We also have two other roommates of whom more later. 

Age has altered him, but I recall the mole just beneath his chin that is there, a little larger, but still ejecting a single overlong hair. 

I even remember his name--Sal. It is probable that I think at the time that the name suits the person, as I associate him with the subordinates of Don Corleone.  This, I think, makes it easier to remember him.

"Sal," I ask him, "do you still have your prostate?"

I remember that he goes through some surgery.  I recall he keeps me up one night with his muffled sobbing. I forgive him. In the morning after his doctor ministers to his problem, my anger turns to sympathy.

The physician, a short, portly, bald guy with an unlit cigar in his teeth, removes a gold mechanical pencil from his lapel pocket and probes the tip of his patient's appendage with the instrument. There is the inevitable gush of repressed urine and blood.

"See," says the healer of men, ".  .  . it is nothing with nothing."

"Sal," I observe, "why do you not bash that fat little medic when he operates on you with hi pencil, and does not even pull the curtains?"

"I give this serious thought," says my long lost friend, ". . .but he is my brother-in-law and I am into him for ten gees, if you do not count the cost of the operation."

"Do you remember any of our other roommates?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says, "the old guy the docs keep telling he has nothing wrong with him--the one whose lady friend shares his meals.  You know they do not have restricted visiting hours. She takes up residence with him, practically."

I remember the couple.  They are in their mid-seventies.  She is clearly there for the meals, maybe also for the shelter.

Since I am sufficiently uncomfortable with my own after-surgery concerns, I pass most of my meals on to them--except for the beverages.

His companion mades the necessary apportionment.  She also continues to threaten him with leaving. It always has the shrill complaint, to wit: "After all I do for you!"

In those days hospitals do not hustle the patients out. 

Sal reminds me of, as he puts it, "the old geezer they have to tie down so he does not open the stitches." One night, he surely falls out of bed.  He is a veritable Houdini who causes much discomfort for the nurses as he unties his restraints continually.

"He had a hernia operation," I say.  "I think double."

"You gotta remember Joe Hollywood," says Sal.

Indeed I do. He is the last to arrive and his noisy night peregrinations cause me additiional discomfort.  I summon the nurse and she gives me a sleeping pill. They tell me later it is something called Halcyon. It causes me to sleep walk. 

If a nurse does not catch me in the process I leave the premises in my hospital gown. She stops me at the elevator and asks me where I am going. I tell her I am going home.

She says, "Let me take you," and she does. The doctors she summons ask me to stay awhile.

It is in this context that Joe Hollywood brings the "joie de vivre" of youth to our room of dismal dramatics. I do not tell you his name, since it is an even bet you see him in many movies.

He arrives escorted by two adoring nurses. They carry his valise, though I do not think this is hospital related equipment or usually permissible.

He does not get into a hospital gown; rather he dons athletic shorts and begins a series of exercises, knee-bends, push ups, then proceeds to a mirror and does facial and neck gyrations.

My headache from the previous night's experience is violent. A caravan of nurses comes and goes with trays, and other emoluments I do not identify. LAter I find out they bring him little extras not on the menu and osme glasses for the bottle he keeps in the valise he brings.

"You know, Sal," I say, "when they bring in that folding room separator and enclose his cot, I am fit to jump out of the bed and belt him one.  He is a snob and I think he does not wish to have unnecessary contact with the rest of us."

"He is a star," says Sal, "and he comes there since the hospital holds the only surgeon who can reverse a vasectomy. Besides there are no private rooms available."

I know--everybody knows.  He gets the vasectomy since his first wife does not want to have children.  His intended does.

"Is it true that his fiance is really a nun who has left the convent?"

"Indeed," says Sal. "One who insists she wants a family."

When she comes in for the first time I reflect, despite my physical travails, that it would be a sin to enclose such physical attributes in a convent.

Now I do not suggest that when she repairs behind the room divider anything untoward occurs.  Still, the sounds emanating from that quarter are like unto the sounds pigeons make outside my current bedroom.

"Sal," I say, "since I leave the hospital before you do, I never find out if they repair his fertility. Also, do you know if they marry?"

"I do not hear if the operation is a success. I do hear them in a very loud argument. She says she cannot marry him since, as a Catholic, she cannot marry a divorced man. He says, that is not a problem, since we can get a civil ceremony, or better still, we live together."

"It is a mortal sin," she says.  "We get a dispensation from the Church, as you have plenty of bread, and then you convert to the true faith."

"So I do not think they marry," says Sal further, "and Joe is rather wroth, as he is vocally protesting all morning that the nurses do not give him enough medication to relieve the pain in the area of the family jewels. He says he does two conversions already, which is enough for one lifetime."

Sal takes on a very reverent look.  "You know, I am very saddened she does not return as she is very good to look at.  Also I have to take her side as I am a good Catholic.  Of course, I do not attend Mass, and all that, but one thing I can tell you.  I never in my whole life eat meat on Friday."