Likewise, I'm Sure

 ... as though it were nothing.

Been thinking about this already

Lately, the President of the United States has let it be known that the sugar-sweetened Coca-Cola from Mexico is superior to the HFCS-sweetened Coke currently made in USA.  My opinion is the same as his.

Begging the question

After publishing an obituary for Dr. Peter Fenwick, who had extensively studied near-death experiences, the New York Times collected readers' recollections.  

I read the eight short stories, and for the first time, I wondered, "These are the people who came back.  How many others got to that point and didn't return to life on Earth?  

If I reach that place with the bright light and the feeling of peace, and I see loved ones that I haven't seen since they died, why not stay?  If my favorite cat is there to greet me, I'll probably say "OK, I'm home now."

IMHO

Wayne Robins on "Yacht Rock", followed by my take. 

My Days

Events in the news are bothering me so much... no, check that, it should be "Pundit reactions to events in the news..." that I've turned off the news.  After Donald Trump's convictions, I was wishing the election would be tomorrow.  I no longer feel that way.  

As if retirement wasn't stressful enough!  For a pastime, I should have chosen a different book instead of William L. Shirer's Berlin Diary.  Either the news or the job status would have required adjustment, but I found that both together aroused an intense feeling of dread, which has mostly been suppressed with the help of sertraline.  Last time I took it, I got off of it quickly because I didn't like feeling a lack of joy.  Now, I greatly want to feel a lack of dread.

"Touch grass," you say?  I've done something better:  "Touch cats."  On the way there, I didn't dare turn on the radio, instead putting on a podcast about John Ford from Turner Classic Movies.  Another TCM podcast on the way home.

I look at Xitter to try to get accustomed to the reactions, or to desensitize myself against the "Cry more" and "Cope and seethe" remarks.  

Thinking for myself:

2016:  Democrats ran the one candidate who Trump could defeat.  A woman, and a Clinton.

2024:  GOP runs the one candidate who Biden can defeat.  An equally old person, a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and someone whose act has worn thin.

Fact-checking the New York Times

Well, not exactly.  Close, though.  A quick check of the indispensable Baseball Reference shows that Jim Qualls was not in the lineup for the Cubs on July 8.  The next day, the Cubs lost 4-0.  (That's the one where Qualls broke up Tom Seaver's perfect game with one out in the 9th.)  

July 10, however...

 

One More Thought

Watched Nuremberg on Tivo and was astounded as ever to see the hundreds and thousands of German citizens who enthusiastically sieg-heiled throughout the reign of the Third Reich.  Smiles on their faces, right arms raised high.  Were they all really true believers at that point?  Wonder whether any of that film had been shot in Dresden.  If so, wonder how many of that group of people survived.

Thoughts While Scrolling

I'm not paying close attention... well, in a way I am, following political Xitter and Bluesky regularly, but more on the Headline News level than in depth.  OK, that said...

Things I've read online, things I've seen or at least heard about on TV, and I haven't heard or read this next put this way:  anti-Trump people are working together with the same goal.  Extreme example: Liz Chaney (who, it must be admitted, was plugging her book) and Rachel Maddow.  True, neither of them are in office, so it's not the best example of politics-makes-strange-bedfellows, I get that...

Being anti-Trump has brought them together, and they're working together without getting deeper into political beliefs.  They treat each other with respect.  If MAGA is defeated, then won't that respect carry over into day-to-day governing?  

These days, the overview seems to be that Democrats think Republicans are evil and out to destroy America, and Republicans are just as sure the opposite is true.  In the good old days, it is said, they'd disagree without being disagreeable, and after the day's battle would go out together for drinks.  So I'm thinking, isn't all this working together now going to help down the road, too?

Reading out loud

From CBSNews.com.  I’m pretty sure they mean “voraciously”, not “vociferously”.

Moxie

Years ago, I went to Knoebel's amusement park, and on the way home stopped at a store where I found a soft drink named Moxie in the refrigerator case.  I'd heard of the stuff, and this was the first time I'd seen it.  I bought a bottle and took a sip.  Then another.  Then I poured out the rest down the drain.  I decided it reminded me of "carbonated liniment."

I forget when and where specifically I saw this next, but in a recent web story, the author described Moxie as "carbonated cough syrup."  Yeah, that too.  Neither one is palatable, but I still prefer to use liniment, both for the old-fashioned word and for the taste that implies this stuff shouldn't be consumed orally.

Can't... help... myself... must post...

More accurately, "the first American League player to", or "the first MLB player in 52 seasons to".

How do they put it (or perhaps, "how did they put it", I don't keep up with these things)?  Rick Wise says ohayo.  He's probably too much of a gentleman to say anything about Ohtani surrendering one hit.

But I'm confident Louisa Thomas has been corrected by now, even though as of this morning the essay is still unchanged on the New Yorker site.  

At least here, my compulsion to correct is limited to myself and the occasional accidental visitor, plus those multitudinous Singapore bots.  

Headline News

The story reads:  "Donald Trump has decided to drop his lead Georgia lawyer ahead of his surrender on charges of election interference in the state on Thursday evening, according to a report. Drew Findling, the attorney who has helmed the former president’s defense in Georgia, is being replaced with Atlanta-based lawyer Steven Sadow..." 

The website Daily Beast chose the headline, "Trump Ditches Top Georgia Lawyer Before Surrendering for Arrest", but this would have sufficed:

"Trump Fucking Around, Findling Out"

English!

Reading John Cassidy's column on the New Yorker site, I saw the following:

He "yousst" to go.  But then I read the full sentence:

Now I see he "youzzd" the law to go after mobsters.  Do persons learning English as a second language get told about that?  Same word, different pronunciation, depending on whether it's a verb?  

Speaking of which, here's a list, likely only partial, of words in English that are pronounced differently depending on their meaning:

To associate

An associate

To delegate

A delegate

To duplicate

A duplicate

To separate

A separate item

To appropriate

An appropriate reaction

Invalid

An invalid

His conduct

To conduct

A contract

To contract

A present

To present

A convict

To convict

A conflict

To conflict

To confine

The friendly confines

To combine

A combine

To close

Too close for comfort

To estimate

An estimate

I suspect

A suspect

A subject

To subject

To moderate

A moderate

To compact

A compact

To syndicate

A syndicate

To record a record album

What's the Difference?

"Once I get there..."

"When I get there..."

"After I get there..."

OK, I searched...

...and there's no direct reference to the scene in The Four Seasons (which PG is watching now) where one character says that most people she knows at her college like to get drunk and piss off a balcony.  All I could think was that you might piss off a balcony and get away with it, but don't piss off a cop.

And I can't believe no one else came up with a gag like that in the past 40 years and put it in a format where it could be found during a routine web search.  

That's all I'm sayin'.  I say what I think, and I'm not even Italian.

My Days

So this agglomeration of writing began a few weeks after the beginning of the Covid pandemic.  It was "Pandemic Quarantine Diary", soon to become the catchier "Before I Forget...".

The obvious names for ***.blogspot.com were already taken, so I had to come up with something else.  I'd just watched the movie Butterfield 8, and tried summerfield8.blogspot.com, using the name of the imaginary town from the 1940's radio sitcom, "The Great Gildersleeve."  But someone else had already claimed that obscure name in August 2006 for a fantasy football league.  

Well, now what?  I shuffled the possibilities and, a moment later, I found summerfield18 was available.

After setting it up, I posted pictures from the pandemic:  a line of people outside a Walmart, multiple stickers in stores warning customers to practice social distancing.  Also, describing the things I did to get through a day off from work, considering that Tabby's Place was closed to visitors and volunteers.  None of it was intended for the public, a reversal of the usual reason for creating a blog.  It didn't matter whether anyone else saw it, I just wanted to document a period in time.

Then, I learned how to set up an existing domain name with the blogspot site, and the visitor count gradually increased.  I figured it was only made up of search engine bots passing through, but I began to feel uncomfortable, hesitant to write what I wanted to say on a medium where the general public might find it.

It turned out to be simple to create blog after blog after blog in one Google account, so soon I set up a second space for the things I wanted to put on the books, but only privately.  That's the one you're reading now.

I even started a third blog for the most personal things in my life that I desired to put in writing, but that didn't last long.  Using Google blogspot for journaling is to have someone invisibly over your shoulder, with no secrets between you and them.  I erased the few posts I'd made, but kept the Strictly Personal space on the off chance there's a use for it in the future.  Google presumably kept the blogposts for future reference.  

About the same time, Covid eased back and Tabby's Place opened for volunteers once more.  I didn't feel like writing much, so the posts in Blog #1 and #2 were mostly in the form of photographs.  Also, I removed the forwarding to the original domain name, and traffic stats went back to single digits.  

Keeping all that straight?  #1:  "Before I Forget..." at summerfield18.blogspot.com, which served its purpose for documenting everyday life during a raging pandemic, and has evolved into a place for posting my non-cat pictures.  

#2: "The 2nd Set of Books" at the2ndset.blogspot.com for writing down thoughts that go about as deep as I'm capable of at my age

#3: "Strictly Personal" (inactive) at itsstrictlypersonal.blogspot.com

Now, during the year and a half, close to two years of the worst of the pandemic, I was taking antidepressants after a gap of a few years. It helped keep the emotional lows from going too low, but it also put a ceiling on the opposite end.  I could function and perform at my day job and my volunteer work, that wasn't the problem. I just wasn't doing the extra thinking and the additional planning that normally kept my mind active.  

I'd sit in the rocker-recliner after supper, nap for 15 to 30 minutes, and when I woke up, it'd be Netflix and chill, in the original chaste sense of the term.  If not Netflix, then Amazon Prime Video, or especially YouTube audio files.  I'd listen intently to newscasts and audio ephemera from World War II while letting my eyes and hand play level after level of Fishdom 2.  Put another way, my ambitions for personal time were self-limited.

But as 2022 moved along, I felt like I could get along without sertraline, and I was right.  No depression, more ambition.  (Although I should add that there has been more carb loading than a man of my age needs, and a concurrent weight gain.)

Another thing -- as a volunteer photographer at Tabby's Place, I'd learned about photography and photo editing, and I thought about putting them down in blog format.  

The name "Photography on the Cheap" will give you an idea of the angle I wanted to pursue. Photography can cost you a lot, but the thinking was that I could set down some things as a voice of experience, and demonstrate how I was operating without spending much.

I took a bunch of notes, and they'll be available if/when I want to edit them down to a useful form. The 25 words or less version: pre-owned gear for creating the images, and freeware for editing.  

To wrap things up for the evening, I decided to set up one more blogspot blog only for pictures that were taken at Tabby's Place. Nothing elaborate, just a photo and a link to something on the TP site, either the cat's official description or a blog post featuring that cat.  

The name afewgoodcats.blogspot.com is not being used, but it's not available either, and I don't know why.  Did I apply for it years ago and then abandon it?  I don't recall doing that.  Who else would want to claim it and then not use it?

So instead, taking a lesson from the extended commercials for "As Seen On TV" products that put "try" or "get" before the name of the product, I created seeafewgoodcats.blogspot.com and connected it to the dormant domain afewgoodcats.com.  No publicity, just a soft rollout.  

Maybe after I'm retired, I'll shift to a higher gear. By that time, blogs will have gone the way of the "home page" and only senior citizens will have them, like Facebook.  Everyone younger will be somewhere else.  Some of a certain age will be on Instagram, and some younger persons will be leveraging TikTok, provided it isn't banned as an agent of the Chinese Communist Party.  We just don't know, do we? 

My Day

Nocturia:  1, at about 3:00 a.m.  (Turned the wee hours into the wee-wee hours.)

Sensed light through closed eyes, thought it was BB coming back upstairs with the hall light on, but it was 6:45 and it was daylight.  That's a good night's sleep.

BB went downstairs, and I stayed in bed beneath the comforter and the top sheet (note to self:  didja notice they're both by L.L. Bean?).  She left the baby gate open at the top of the steps, and I heard her directing traffic between Nora going downstairs and Nelson preparing to come upstairs.  Soon, Nelson was in the bedroom, and he hopped onto the bed and came over to me for petting.  That's an everyday thing now.  He used to be more anxious and would whap his tail for minutes at a time, but at age 5, he's calmed down naturally and has grown to like attention from humans.

If I pet him too much or put my hand too close to his tummy, he hisses, whaps, and jumps down.  So I've learned to pet him for a few minutes, then stop so he can lie down next to me.  I touch his head and back lightly while he's there.  At a time of his choosing, he gets up and leaves the bedroom, stopping briefly to claw the carpeting and leave the scent from his paws for Nora.

By now, it's about 8:15, and only then do I get up and prepare for work.   

Power up the work laptop, boot the home PC, start up the soundbar and press start on all the monitors.

Both machines have SSD boot drives, so I don't have long to wait before they're ready.  

Start the email program on the work laptop.  Start Chrome on the PC and decide whether to listen to something on live terrestrial radio (bookmarks for public radio from the states of Vermont and Nebraska, from Philadelphia, Houston, Austin, Toledo, and San Francisco, and KING classical from Seattle) or choose audio from YouTube Premium Music.  

Listening to Kate NV's Room for the Moon a lot more than anything else.  It's musically interesting, lyrically unintelligible for the most part, and distant the rest of the time, just the way I like it.  And it isn't the same stuff I've listened to since high school!  Don't get me wrong, Steely Dan and the Fagen/Becker solo material is still at the top of my list.  But it's healthy to search out sounds created by musicians born after Gaucho was released in 1980.  Early St. Vincent, the middle two Vampire Weekend albums (plus Cape Cod Kwassa Kwaasa from the 1st one, and so far, nothing from Father of the Bride; I don't know why or what the difference is.), and now a Russian woman whose career is growing by word of mouth.  

I could link to the New Yorker article where the author describes being told about her, or to one of the online pieces where St. Vincent tells about Cate LeBon recommending her, and mentioning to one interviewer that the current song she can't get out of her head is Plans.  Then I saw that interview and the link.  (Binasu is pretty good, too.  Johnny T. says check it out.)

Enough about non-work activity for now.  I check my mail and begin to organize and plan.  

Downstairs around noon for a cup of tomato soup and chips.  (Trader Joe's Organic and Utz Kettle Chips made with peanut oil.  You're welcome.)

An afternoon of work.  No walking outside due to the rain.  A cookie around 3:00.  Log off, sign out, power down around 5:00.  

Beanee weenee with hot dogs for supper.  A couple more cookies mid-evening.  At 6:30, Good Queen Swirly got in my lap, and I nodded off.  I woke up before she left around 7:15.  

Listened to 1939 news broadcasts on YouTube while playing Fishdom to keep my eyes and hands occupied.  Heard faint hope that war would be avoided in the voices of commentators Murrow, Shirer, Elmer Davis, Kaltenborn.  Then the newscasts of September 1.  

And now it's 9:30, and I've described this day in detail.  It's the kind of thing I'd be interested in reading from someone else, once.  

Hey 2056, how ya doin'? How in the world did you find this?  I was born a hundred years ago, when Eisenhower was President, when the U.S. had 48 states, and the Dodgers were in Brooklyn. When commercial TV was only about a decade old and there were 3 networks and therefore 3 channels per market; when the Miss America pageant and the Oscars were important telecasts; when Time, Life, the Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest and TV Guide were popular magazines; when people got news from morning and afternoon newspapers. (In high school, I'd read the teacher's Toledo Times in the morning and the Toledo Blade when I got home.)   Among other things.

Oh, and when you had to go out of your way to find porn.  It was a different time.

Learned Hopelessness

 https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1442172987772268545?s=20

Nobody asked me, but...   so many comments on that tweet, asserting that things are never going to get better, and when they do life will still suck because they've seen what people are really like.  

American history, less than a century ago, 25% unemployment while the powers that be assured everyone that prosperity was just around the corner, and the resulting disillusioned resignation from everyone except the fortunate few with a good job and money.  

Do humans have a short memory for this kind of thing?  A lack of interest in history and its lessons?  ("We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.")  First thing that comes to mind is the memory of reading what others wrote about people within the framework of Living Through the Depression; those who endured it and made it out the other end, the writer observes, those humble citizens remember the tough times and are accordingly extra careful with money, including saving and washing and re-using disposable items. Not so much the interpersonal aspect, though.  Well, maybe some "people helped each other out more back then."  But that angle might be more in view in writings from a country that lived under fascism and its people's loss of faith in human nature after learning what they're capable of.  

A long pause after finishing that last sentence.  Maybe that's all I have to say on the matter.  Yeah, re-read it and proofread it, and leave it at that.