Does Anybody See?

I believe that, in Los Angeles, where I live, as of tomorrow, anyone who wants to dine, or go to a movie, or to an outdoor or indoor site of more than 1000 people, will have to show proof of vaccination. 

Now to be clear I am vaccinated. I did it as soon as it was available to me, between February and March. I had concerns. I still have concerns both practical and moral, but, as I have told people, and as I rationalize, I used prudential judgment as handed down to me especially by the Catholic Church to conclude I would take it.

Let me back up. As to masks:  I believe they are intended to be a permanent fixture in certain states, and if Mr. Biden has anything to do about imposition from the Federal Government in derogation, in my opinion, of states' rights, it will be a permanent fixture, nationally. What began as "flatten the curve" is now going onto two years after a complete flip flop from "they do no good" to "mandate".  The science of Covid may have changed. But the science of masks surely did not. Now to be clear, again, where I have to wear them, I have, and I do. I really have no choice. Well, there is one choice. I have been attempting to make it as best as one can in a soft tyranny soon to be a very hard one. There are some places where, out of religious or personal obligation, I must go and I must wear a mask. Church is one and various activities on that religious campus. The other is visits to Nursing Homes and Assisted Living facilties to people I care about and have long known. Prior to this month, I had one or two social engagements long in planning and schedule, and I felt it inappropriate to cancel, so I attended masked. I had a yearly day of medical tests, which I might add, I almost cancelled because of the requirement to wear a mask. But I did not. I have another coming up and I will go. I do my shopping mostly on line now, including for groceries. Of course, there too, the mask invasion exists, because you are "encouraged" to wear a mask while receiving your groceries. Sometimes I am able to have them just drop the stuff outside my glass entry way. Sometimes I can't. So, I guess, there are a few places where I feel compelled to  "rise above my principles". But overall, when it comes to going inside for any purposes, the movies, a show, a museum, things that make modern life a pleasure, I will not do so. 

Today I wanted to have my car cleaned. But I realized that I would have to go inside to pay. And there was neither obligation or need. So I cleaned my car in the garage. Since I usually get the full service clean, I saved like 30 bucks. And the car is passably neat.

Now, we have the new mandate, no entry inside without proof of vaccination. The bad and unclean (unvaccinated) will be separated from the good and clean (vaccinated) in ever expanding world of Covid and your medical good as determined by others, not you, and your doctor, or conscience. 

Does anybody see? Some do. They are being told they are nuts. And, in the language of one of my favorite TV shows from the Sixties, The Prisoner, they are being shunned or punished for being "unmutual". They have their opinions "fact checked". Yes, opinions. And these are largely opinions based on the memory of real events of the past where  evils were perpetrated for a good posited by a hierarchy to whom good was an ever shifting matter of personal need and power. And these are opinions based on a terrifying awareness of arbitrary application of the facts depending on who is engaging in this or that activity.

There is no point in my giving examples, related say to Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump. Whether a mission is accomplished beautifully or is an utter human disaster. Or whether who wears masks or does not in the leadership is dependent on whether they think no one is looking. Or when protest becomes rioting or not. Or when the Pope says abortion is homicide but pastors should dialog over it as if endless dialog for fifty years has made a difference.

I would call what is happening now the "tip of the iceberg" but I think that iceberg is turning over to reveal its full expanse.  The truly fearful thing is when people you have known your whole life tell you that you are not seeing the descent to Hades that you are. I can't accuse the people I know of gaslighting, because they, as Marc Antony said of Brutus and Caesar, are all honorable men (and women). But weak though I am, and I am, I have to do something in my small and weak way. So, as far as this new mandate, as long as I live in California, which apparently is eager to continue its socialistic decay, I will be more a homebody than I ever have been. I know that my resolve will not be perfect. But to the extent that I can, I will not patronize inside venues or places outside where masks are required or where vaccination proof is required. I realize since many many people will do otherwise, my little rebellion will have no impact on the larger world, but it is all that I have. And fortunately, I am one of those people for whom being alone is not a particular fear. It is a legacy of being an only child but also of having been someone who was trained to abide by legitimate authority, but not to walk off a cliff because every one else is doing so. But the fact that now we have a precedent for health based masking, vaccination and imposed treatments (or prohibition of treatments people want to try, with concomitant shaming a la Communist China), expect that there will be new crises looming with mandates, enforced as laws, galore. Every action you and I take will be monitored and mandated by other human beings who will happily lie and say "It's for the public good" when it is only about solidifying their power. 

I know. Most of you don't think that this will happen. Or, worse, even notice that it has happened. Human history is rife with these moments in time. We made the mistake of thinking that America was immune. We couldn't keep our corruption from destroying the ideal. 

What got me on this again? A relative sent me a You Tube piece which I will post here. It is called "Just". 

https://youtu.be/gHrACix89ec

The reality is that it just may be too late. 

 On July 4, my friend Len and I attended our first Hollywood Bowl event in two years. We had last attended in the summer of 2019, and, of course, the summer of 2020 was effectively obliterated by the outbreak of Covid and its attendant devastating consequences.

The headliners were old timers of the Baby Boom Generation, Kool and the Gang. Dennis Thomas was there with his tenor sax. I remember being impressed about his energy as one of the co-founders of the group. And his talent, of course. I don't know if this was his last show, but it was certainly his last tour on this earth. He died August 7 at home in New Jersey, in his sleep.

I keep hearing in my head this phrase from the late psychologist, Harry Stack Sullivan--"We are all more human than otherwise."

Whatever our status in life, our wealth, our intelligence, gifts, liabilities, there are simply some things that happen to all of us. Death, of course, is the last of those earthly happenings. We do a lot in our lives, all of us, to distract from that which appears final, if one does not believe in God or something after life.  And even those of us who believe in the survival of the soul and the resurrection of the body have an anxiety about the unknown-ness of heaven or hell or anything in between, and so we do the same in greater or lesser degrees.

Many of the distractions are essential. If you are a non-religious existentialist, you are fighting, rebelling against the absurdity of inevitable decay and death. (Another friend of mine a couple of years ago said simply, something like, "We are all decaying.") If you are religious, you see it as part and parcel of a larger plan, and you see your time on earth as work toward the fulfilment of that plan. 

But no matter what, believer or non-believer, I think it comes as quite a surprise to see yourself as contingent and readily dispensed with by the universe. Dennis Thomas was a man of 70. No doubt it had crossed his mind, as it does my own, or yours, that there wasn't much time left. But probably not that night of July 4. And certainly none of us in the audience had any thought of it. We were having too much fun. Life was in full force. As it should be. 

But his sudden death gets me back on the subject. And seems to require something of me, though as I write, I am not sure what.

Then a couple of other things I ran across this week emphasize that commonality of humanity and how foolish it is for us to focus on the things that separate us, and to have pride in our abilities to circumvent it. The two prominent examples of not being able to circumvent and I suppose how Hollywood has always attempted to deceive us for our viewing pleasure were courtesy of HBO. 

The first was a documentary on the late Debbie Reynolds and her also late daughter (who actually died just before her) Carrie Fisher made in 2017 after each of them died. 

Carrie and Debbie lived in the same compound, literally next door to each other. Debbie was over 80 by the time of filming of the documentary, called "Bright Lights". She was still working, sort of, going to less than glamorous nightclubs and venues to talk about being Debbie Reynolds to adoring fans of the same age. She had trouble walking. She was forgetful. She often did not feel well. She was like any of our old friends and family except that she had been Hollywood Royalty. Carrie, who also had managed to be Hollywood Royalty, at just under 60 looked just about as old as her mother, after all the years of drugs abuse and the monster effects of manic depression. But watching them in their moments outside of the public view (which of course became public with the documentary), they were familiar and loveable and frustrating, and if it is possible, ordinary "eccentrics" we have all of us known. Maybe we are one of those eccentrics in the view of  those who know us. Both of them were collectors of odd and sometimes wonderful tchotchkes they had gathered over their long careers. They interacted with the same love-hate intricacies familiar to our own relationships with our parents, and children, if you have them. They talked at cross-purposes. But they co-existed in what appears to have been an adaptive folie a deux. Somehow it worked. 

When I watched an assistant at one of Debbie's shows help her down a small set of stairs backstage on one of her reminicence tours--and it was a herculean task for Ms. Reyolds, I saw people I know, right now, at a similar stage in their not so famous lives. 

My thought is that we must, must, must prepare ourselves for this inevitability, somehow, and without rancor. It will come to all of us if we live long enough, unless like Mr. Thomas of Kool and the Gang, we are lucky enough simply to die in our sleep. (Oddly, as I wrote this, I find I don't know if I like the idea of dying in my sleep. Hmmm.)

"We ARE more human than otherwise!" The phrase screeches in my head. 

Then, when I came home from my second Hollywood Bowl sojourn, with Dave Koz and the Tower of Power, most of whom are also at a certain age, I flipped on the HBO Documentary called "Val" about Val Kilmer. Kilmer has basically filmed or had filmed most of his life, a video journal. And the Val we see who presents himself with the selected videos of years from childhood to date is nothing like the one you or I would remember. He is a baby boomer like I am, though several years younger (gulp!) and because of the treatment he had for throat cancer he has an artificial voice box and his speaking is difficult and halted. His son, Jack, narrates much of the documentary with Val's words.  This is a physically dessicated man, this once vibrant, incredibly handsome, successful (though difficult it is said) actor. Even in his diminished condition he also goes out on Comic Con type tours in the country to sign autographs for people who seem not to notice his current state, or, if they do, hold tightly onto what was, the fantasy of life as it should be. 

I wondered for a moment why we all (and of course I have) aspire to some fame and fortune in our lives. It is a transient illusion. What difference, really, does it mean if we are famous? Ask say, Ozymandias. How many young people today would know any of the stars of yesteryear, not just the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but the 1970s?

They do have the film, video and digital trails for people to discover. And we all have access to that now, we bloggers, and podcasters, and Tik Tokkers. I find I am glad of that. I am big on the preservation of the memory of people who have lived. But that doesn't change what happens to us in the short time we are here. 

And, if anything makes me feel compassion toward others is knowing that the same things happen to all of us, in variation of the how, but we all end up vulnerable and frail (again if we don't kick the bucket first). This is me. This is you. This is all of us. 

We should not pretend otherwise. And we should not run from the other who truly is us. 

Something Olfactory Amiss in Denmark

 Another Constantine entry. This one isn't a story per se. It is political commentary. My father was often very angry back in the 80s and 90s about politics. He foresaw the catastrophe in which we find ourselves now, the dismantling of the United States, an imperfect, but the best in human terms, nation in the world in favor of the ultimate totalitarianism of socialism that morphs nearly always into Communism and lots of bloodshed. 

So this opinion piece (though opinion is now censored with great glee by the most progressive among us) was written like around the time of the campaigning for the 2000 election.  That's what, 20 or 21 years ago. I didn't always like how my father expressed his dissatisfaction. And even in this piece, I find a few things with which I disagree.  Alas, I now understand exactly why he did say what he did, as I find myself, long after his death 13 years ago, standing with the rest of the citizens of the nation, on the event horizon of apocalypse. 

SOMETHING OLFACTORY AMISS IN DENMARK

Scientists have discovered that both nostrils do not react identically.  My immediate question is how the one modifies the brain engrams to minimize an unpleasant odor, or conversely, enhances the pleasant.

I know how this is done politically.  Take the Democrat nasal aperture--metaphorically, of course. Now, as any observer of the national scene will admit, it is the one considered to be most identified with equalitarian justice.

Observe the unanimity of sensory observation when Bill and Hilary walk into the Rose Garden.  Ask any Democrat about the sudden zephyr that wafts across the land, and you will be told that it is the aroma of long stems, or American Beauties.

This is not something to be criticized in a climate where a presidential seat is the goal, or control of the Senate is the goal. Or, the control of the Senate is in the balance.  It is practical politics.

One would have thought that the Republicans would have learned this lesson in 1992.  They have not. Consider the antics of the six aspirants for the highest office.  Note the fact that candidate Forbes has aready invested a quarter of a million dollars on a single thirty-second advertisement to disparage the only viable candidate capable of ending an eight year tyranny of the proletariat--George Bush.

Now, I do not consider George Bush an ideal choice.  Nevertheless, choosing him is far more intelligent than another Bob Dole image, and a consequent inevitable defeat by a Clinton Clone, one similarly oriented to socialism, but without the Protean coloration of the master of smoke and mirrors.

Steve Forbes has that "lean and hungry look" of Cassius, a perennial candidate who loused up the previous election for the Republicans.  He did this with his intransigent ego and his flaunted inherited millions.  He is, futher, barely prettier than Bob Dole and perhaps not as rich as Donald Trump.  The Democrats have had a monopoly on pretty, as any political ingenue will testify.  It is far more potent than foreign policy knowledge about knowing the peregrinations of any mid-eastern Ali Baba.

Gary Bauer is somewhat medieval for our times, a one note Savanarola, without the brains to see that his campaign can only impede the conservative survival in a world that is still entranced with the promise of eternal governmental dispensation of good.  Moreover, abortion is here to stay.  It was here when the only solution was the knitting needly and it will be here even when a careless lady forgets to take the now legal morning after pill.

Now, Orrin Hatch is more palatable, though I think he has a greater talent for comedy than Presidential office.  I always felt he was a pseudo-conservative, especially when he rode the teeter board towards a policy of chastisement for our priapic President.  I wonder that he never used a few one-liners on the athletics in the dome.

He cannot win even the nomination process.  Wherefore does he try to injure the only viable candidate to a victorious Gore, or Bennett, depending on which promises more.  What, you may well ask? More anything, as long as it is somebody else's.

If it were possible to pick a candidate on the pure merit of what he says is Alan Keyes.  He espouses, in the purest oratory since Cicero, or Demosthenes, the stated principles of our constitutional promises, most of which have been abrogated. I like to think he believes what he says, but he is, after all, a politician in the luxurious postiion to say anything he wants.  He knows he cannot win so why not exploit the luxury? I would pay premium ticket prices for a national debate between Alan Keyes and Donna Brazile.

Who is Donna Brazile? Why she is running the campaign for that great egalitarian, Al Gore.  She cannot be chastised, certainly not by the media, for any form of racism. But she considers that African-Americans like Keyes and Watts are "Uncle Toms" as she describes them in her fashionable innovative rascist oratory. 

Does Donna apply this characterization to Hilary and her projected meeting with Al Sharpton? Or will Al smear the princess with the dung he used befor on a guilt ridden public--a blatant, fabricated lie--on his climb to political identity. ****

As for Gore and Bennett, the personality kids, the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum of their soap operas--pick one.  Just add up the dollar amounts each will steal from a worker's pocket to bestow on the world.  The edge may be with Al, since he invented the internet and was the basis of that touching melodrama of a film, "Love Story."

Of course, one has to credit each of the with some expertise.  Bill can probably still toss a "three pointer" into the basket, and Al does have religion.  He is a Southern Baptist, so I suspect he prays. Now I only mention prayer because the issue was raised by George Bush. We know that Al is tolerant outside his Bible Belt affiliations, as he did attend a Buddhist ceremony.

George has exposed himself to great censure on the matter of his propensity to pray.  If I can offer him some gratuitous advice, I suggest he do so without kneeling in the Oval Offie as this genuflected position has cone into great disfavor of late. 

**** For the several generations not born at the time, Mr. Sharpton took up the cause, with great vehemence for which defamation was later found, of Tawana Brawley who claimed in 1987, that she had been raped by a number of white men, the letters KKK written on her chest and left smeared with feces.  She said that two of the men were from law enforcement. It was demonstrated that Ms. Brawley had lied in order to avoid being punished by her family for running away from home. Today, we have Ferguson, where a jury found for the police officer who killed Michael Brown, with the untrue mantra, "Hands up, don't shoot", or the Kavanaugh hearing where a Supreme Court candidate was accused of sexual misconduct without ANY evidence in order to prevent him from being appointed for fear of his conservative credentials. Up to here, the fear was unfounded. He appears to be more liberal than conservative in his interpretation of the Constitution. 

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.