Back To Madrid - Horses Are Resting

      . . . . As my personal record of this Viaje it is necessary to include more foto notas from Madrid, as Madrid was our first city on the itinerary.  It was an excellent preparation for all that came next, including getting over the worst of jetlag in the comfort of the 5 star Hotel Prado.  Additionally to the comfort, it was location.  The famous Neptune Fountain is in the circle plaza outside, and a few steps away, cross the street, walk through the tipica big Hispanic city leafy, flowered, grass covered with public toilets, cross the street on the other side, and there you are: at the Prado Museum.

At this time at least, Spain is inexpensive,  which is why we could do this trip as 4 and 5 stars -- the dollar is so strong against the Euro.  However, this isn't the case for changing money. Big fees are charged, so we used cards almost exclusively.

Spain was vastly less expensive than anywhere in the US, particularly NYC.  Last night at our local, we had only wine and an appetizer last night at our local. It cost significantly more than any full meal with wine we had in Spain, including the most 'splurge' meal we had in Cádiz, in one of the very best restaurants in Spain, with an international clientele. 

And, ya, the wine last night was not near the quality of the Spanish terroirs; Europe doesn't tax wine and beer to death as the US does, nor must they it travel across the ocean, or even land -- so much of it is made near the restaurants. Many of restaurants have on their wine list wines available only in that particular restaurant-bar-taberna, meaning a special relationship with the vintners.

First Cena (Dinner) in Madrid, a restaurant that specialized in regional wild mushrooms.  Along with the wine, of the Castile Terroir, this may have also been the very best, most delicious meal we had on this journey. The plates and other dishes all had individual regional mushrooms and surrounding plants as their design.

As she cannot go on such a viaji, the bird pin placed on the design was gifted to me by as friend in her place right before we left. She has for a year been fighting cancer, with extraordinarily difficult treatments, who is scheduled for surgery very soon. 

 The pin was always in my cross body bag. Throughout the journey, at different meals, I clicked this Bird of Passage and texted the fotos to her in real time.  She said they picked up her spirits after yet another round of chemo.

Alvaro de Bazan y Guzman (1526-1588), a hero of Lepanto, 33 years as General Admiral of the Spanish Navy, never was defeated.  I was so excited to encounter this monument to him in an enclosed courtyard on our way to visit the 9th C Muslim Wall remains.  The Battle of Lepanto truly was a one of those most significant events in history.  Though almost a draw in terms of lives and ship lost, it did prevent the Turks from moving into the western Mediterranean.  It also increased, not only Spain's, but Europe's anger and disgust with France. She was not at Lepanto. Thanks to Francis I, France was allied, as she'd been for long, with the Turks.  Something we don't hear much of over here in terms of European history. Spain was one of the few European nations to send help to the Siege of Malta against the Turks.  France was begged to, but did not.

Most of all, I think, I was excited because I knew who Alvaro de Bazan y Guzman was! I didn't need to read the plaque to find out, I just needed his name. I knew about Lepanto and the Great Siege of Malta!  I felt the same way so often in the Prado, looking at portraits of different Spanish court grandees painted by Goya -- I knew who people such as Godoy and Floridablanca were.

This was the first time I noticed that Spain's historic sites have information plaques in Braille as well as print. It was the same at the 9th C Muslim wall remains.

This is one of Goya's historical interpretation of the battles with the French invasion forces. This one features Egyptian Mameluke Imperial Guard cavalry regiments. Yet another stupidity of Napoleon.  By the supreme Católica God who gave Spain back to the Christians after more than 7 centuries, how could he think the Spanish would passively accept a takeover that centered Muslim fighters?
[This is not my photo, as no photography or recording of any kind is allowed in the Prado.]

This Is Not the White House. The royal palace in Madrid, not far from the 9th C Muslim Wall remains.  This was the weekend, and tourists from near (Spain) and far were present even as closing time was imminent.  No, one cannot go in.  Not sure though, whether the flag meant the king was in residence.  This palace is surrounded by vast gardens that are essentially woods. The Spanish kings were even more insane about hunting than the English and French ones. This tradition has continued into the present: recall the Spanish royal scandal not that long ago regarding members killing elephants.

Madrid, our first Flamenco performance in Spain.  We were seated next to a lovely Japanese American couple from Seattle.  This was their final night before flying home from their vacation, which began in Fez, Morocco.  They liked Marrakesh much more than Fez, and Spain more than that. The wife is a Flamenco aficionado, who takes classes back in Seattle.  El V and I were the only audience members who masked.

Red is Passion.  See those hands clapping that distinctive Flamenco cracking rhythm? Despite the late 19th C Spanish officials and intellectuals, and later, Franco's repressive attempts to stop the prevalent popularity of Flamenco music and dance with foreigners and tourists, it was a failure.  At this time there is no national Spanish music at all, except Flamenco.  It is everywhere.  Students come in droves from everywhere to study in every city in Spain, though particularly in Sevilla and Granada, of course.  No matter where you are, you will hear casual Flamenco clapping as men and even little kids practice, even in train stations.

From my seat I had a splendid view of the dancers' feet.  The dancers are percussionists.  They and the musicians and singers are on a particularly constructed platform called a tablao (pronounced tabl-ow! ow like meow). This platform is actually a drum head, with air space between it and the 'ground' that makes for a resonator, as the belly of a non-electric guitar is a resonator.  'Tablao' is used interchangeably to refer to the stage-platform and to Flamenco itself.

New Year -- Here We Are Back Where We Were

     . . . . Last year at this time we weren’t vaccinated, but this New Year, though many of of us are both vaccinated and boosted, massive numbers continue to refuse to do either, or mask, or distance. The pooba$, political and corporate, finance and real estate, insist on leaving things here, essentially, wide open.

Meanwhile school, from pre-K to unis have had to close to massive Covid. Yet both old mayor and the new in-the-pocket of Big Finance and Real Estate mayor, sworn in last night at the Times Square Ball Drop, insist all the public schools re-open on January 3rd.  This despite so many teachers and staff positive and sick and unable to attend to students and classrooms.

Subway lines, restaurants, Broadway, etc. have stopped, due to so many sick, so staff shortages.  Airlines have canceled thousand and thousands of flights. Fire fighters, police, ambulance drivers and EMS personnel are in short supply, as so many are positive / sick.  (Irony, fire fighters and cops are by-and-large refusniks of both vaccines and mask.) Doctors, dentists, hospitals are already broken in other parts of the country.  The stupid streatery sheds are still there in NYC, becoming ever more  more permanent structures w/o ventilation or shielding, so restaurants, like schools, hotels and health care, are so overwhelmed, stretched beyond limits that even more people quit.

Supermarkets are looking raggedy due to staffing problems, and, evidently, scraping bottom of the barrel hiring, have cashiers who laugh in your face about wearing a mask..  We're inundated with tourists from everywhere, while at the same time they and others seem to have decided across the board that Omicron's no big deal so what the hell.  

We are hoping somehow to get through this month of peaking infections and remaining uninfected.  But this seems less likely every day, as already back before Christmas 1 in 150 people in NYC were positive or sick. They Say we may peak with Omicron by the middle of this month. I dunno -- we also have many cases of Delta Covid, which are still increasing too. 

We're fairly stocked on groceries and other essentials, for getting through about a month, and we, double masked, vaxed and boosted, feel we maybe can chance the dash into Trader Joe's or wherever for milk and apples and tea.   I'm more concerned about whether places like this will be able to stay open and stocked.

We are in some very interesting historical times all right, which I am observing and experiencing up close, in person.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Biden can’t do anything. The rethuglican shoggoth cultists, the rethuglican plants in the Dems, and the Dem Party Establishment won’t allow it. Nancy Pelosi personally made enormous amounts doing massive buys and trades of the Big Stocks at the end of this year. “Nothing wrong with senators and reps making Big Stock money while in the House and Senate,” she declares.  

No state official has done more for the rethuglican covid death cult than the governor of Texas, with the exceptions of Florida's and South Dakota's.  Yesterday he was demanding federal aid and assistance of supplies and medical personnel to relieve Texas, because its health system, such as it is, has become utterly overwhelmed.  Yet, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) breezily engaged a question about secession at a recent conservative event at Texas A&M University, saying that he was “not there yet” but that if Democrats “fundamentally destroy the country,” then, “I think we take NASA, take the military, take the oil.”

~~~~~~~~~

Last night about 10 PM or so, el V and I met B at our little local park to celebrate B's birthday.  I gave him a a bottle of his favorite Spanish wine, and el V gave him a box of petites fours from our French Bakery, in lieu of birthday cake.  Since both el V and B are on antibiotics due to dentistry, I was the only one who was able to make a toast with alcohol, a martini that el V had made and brought with him as a surprise.  We had a most pleasant time out there in the 54°.  El V and I hadn't had any f2f interaction with anyone except with each other, other than briefly and to the point, let's get out of here as fast as possible, with dentist, doctor, librarian, retail, etc.  B's behavior is the same.  Again we wondered how the three of us would have made this far through pandemic without each other, and how lucky we live so closely together.  made sure other friends knew it was B's birthday, so they could call or email him.

It seemed generally NYC wasn't partying hard last night (though what could I really tell from a park bench?).  It was really quiet down here.  Though all the restaurants were open, they generally looked to be about only half full, if that much.  NYers are wearing masks, but the hordes of tourists here, are not.  We're number one in the USA YAY for Covid cases now, and if not number one in the world, number two or three.  We have more Covid today than we did in April 2020.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ironically, when the pandemic hit in March 2020, and NYC shut down, I’d just borrowed from the NYP Sharon Kay Penman’s final novel, The Land Beyond the Sea, published January, 2020. Penman died the same month. The libraries closed 3 days after I took it home, so I wasn’t able to return it until the end of August 2020.  Here, at the beginning of this unmerry New Year, a third year of Covid, as we shut down again, if only personally, not officially mandated, which we should be, I am beginning a re-read her final Plantagenet novel, A King’s Ransom (2014). This wasn’t planned. I began 2022 too, with the library. This past Thursday I brought home an armful of light reading -- mysteries, all -- from my Holds list at my local library, which should 'hold' me for a couple of weeks.  Not to mention all the other books I have. There's some good tv, in the offing, not least the third season of Discovery of Witches, and tomorrow night, a David Tennant Around the World In 80 Days.

El V's continuing to trade and is now doing serious editing-engineering on the audio for Tierra Sagrada, which has come out of the video documentation of our last, perhaps, final, trip to Cuba, in which we attended 14 sacred events in 8 days.  He's gotten some AI apps that allow him to do astonishing things, such as one of the lead vocalist's voice was essentially inaudible via the boom mic.  This AI can go through all the channels and pull out a single strand, which in this case is her voice, isolate it and el V can put it wherever he wants in the mix, at which ever volume he wants it!  "AI came along just in time to save these tracks!"  I heard him say on the phone the other day. He wants to have everything as smoothly produced and engineered as possible before he turns it over to the far more skilled, experienced and technically equipped pros.  This is an if, but at the moment it seems that the [redacted] network wants to look at Tierra Sagrada with the view they might broadcast it. That would be most pleasing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is how 2022 begins. I have no optimism that things will be better this year. The anti-vaxers and the shoggoth death cults will never recover from their chosen insanity. 

We Take Refuge Where And When We Can

     . . . . Not been a good month here despite el V's lovely birthday, two superb Postmambo Events, and, additionally, the ophthalmologist monitoring the eye with the damaged optic nerve -- though what's going on can be signs of incipient glaucoma -- found actual improvement from the last check-up.  Maybe it's the new lenses?  Another positive thing is the spectacular greenery and the variety of greens, due to the heat and the moisture. Related to that positive are the flowers, particularly in the community garden that's been allowed to grow as it wants pretty much, without being cut back or off.  The range of vivid blossoms erupting out of the head tall greens is balm to the soul. That's purely personal though. Beyond the purely personal, things are very far away from good.

It's unnecessary for me to provide the details as to why both Haiti and Cuba are tragedies of political history, and our personal histories, that need not have happened, as surely by now all have heard of them and formed opinions, if there is among all and sundry enough interest to even bother forming an opinion -- or learning facts. Climate change feeds into both Haiti's and Cuba's disasters as well as political forces forcing both nations to go without medical supplies and food -- which forces merge into catastrophe for both the island nations. For Cuba certainly, there is no light at the end of the tunnel that begins and ends in Miami. Haiti too, as we've been told that's from where the conspiracy was hatched.

Weather They Sayers announced today our city has the most dangerous air quality of any city on the planet, due to the western US wildfires' smoke blowing right into us. One wishes to wear a good mask if one needs to go outdoors for this reason now too. Rain fell for a little while, so all that particulate from the West and Northwest can be flushed into our gardens, sewers, into the East and Hudson Rivers, the harbor and the ocean.  Like pandemics, climate catastrophe never stays in one place. No man is an island, what affects thee, affects me, and so on and so forth.

Yet despite the experts of many nations begging governments to impose mask mandates in public spaces and limit gatherings, like our own stupid mayor, the politicians and governments everywhere refuse to mandate masking and distance in public spaces now, because THE ECONOMY -- and future office seeking. So -- here we are again, spiking like crazy, including right here, when barely 2 weeks ago, our own zip code and so many others in the city and state were essentially at zero for positive tests, new infections, hospitalizations and deaths. All those anti-vaxxers, enemies of the people, surely are pleased with themselves all over again, as they bring down what's left of a health system. 

Again, with COVID, extreme weather, bikers, skateboarders, stupid tourists, guns/crime/mad/desperate people, mosquitos showing up infected with the Nile Virus, etc. etc. etc., being outdoors means anything but relaxation and refreshment, even at night. In many ways, particularly at night. But for the out-of-control, whether from racist hatred or years of being homeless or the conviction of utter privilege that no laws or regulations apply to ME shoving my Porsche at 90 MPH through the crowded streets and killing people so what? day and night make no difference.

     . . . . Spouses, Lovers, Friends, one way and another, these purely personal relationships are the greatest refuge from the horrors overwhelming our present cursed "interesting times."   About once a week, el V, B and I dine with, and catch-up with, 2 or 3 friends -- all of us vaccinated.  We've been to visit another historian in his Rhode Island beach shack, making us a mini history conference.  At the beginning of August, we will visit one of our terrific Postmambo friends in his beautiful, large old historic house upstate -- with a pool, massive yard and huge screened in annex, where we will have Thanksgiving in August, the Thanksgiving we'd planned for last November, but prudently called off due to Covid spiking, which it continued to do until the blessed vaccines showed up. But we are vaccinated, so we are keeping to the plan made last year to do our cancelled holiday celebration feast with friends this summer. Still, as originally planned, this will be a small gathering of 4 people, perhaps 5, depending on another's work schedule.

     . . . . History provides refuge and escape. One does speculate others too are looking for refuge in the past, thus so very many time-travel series showing up lately -- none of which I have the least inclination to look at even the first episodes.  How fortunate, one further speculates, that it is not possible to subject the present or the past to the pressures of future colonialism for the sake of the yet unborn's survival. The future would have every right to do so, considering how ours and every preceding generation has abused Earth. But alas, we cannot go back in time and save ourselves, since we didn't already do it. Beside, those who benefit would be, as usual the very rich and protected, not the future sort of thee and me -- while the already mentioned 0.01% make massive profit out of our lack of salvation.  Until, perhaps they too, despite anal dildo shaped escape space craft, are crushed by lack of oxygen and water.

Some of these latter sorts are getting spooked by Delta, getting the idea that the economy can tank from it.  This is the only way of course we will ever get a federal mandate anywhere in the world for masking and vaccination.  One does fear it's way too late now.

We continue our own plundering of the Dark Ages with Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000. Wickham's thesis of the real changes and transformations of the West in the 5th century was the changes in the signatures of the wealthy and powerful. Free time, leisure, was the signature of wealth and power. Much of that was spent in the luxury of the country villas, where they cultivated the arts and learning, particularly the literary arts, as well as government and administration.  By the end of the 5th C, the signature of the wealthy and powerful were the manly martial arts.  The ruling class no longer affected togas as sartorial signatures of their status, but dressed like Roman army commanders.  However, even more so, the ruling class needed as much land as they could wheedle, conquer or steal. And steal away they did, which went on for centuries, as we know.

     . . . . Television has provided some good historical escape.

Straight-up historical - period scripted drama created in the present:  El Cid, 11th C, Spain and Andalus, season 2; No Sudden Move, 1950's Detroit, scripted now; The Rising Hawk, 13th C, refugeed tribes in the Carpathians invaded by the Blue Horde, scipted now; Borsalino, which was looked at here last time, is another splendid example, scripted at the end of the 1960's, located in 1930's

Women in the past re-created in the present: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (the 1920s, Melborne, scripted in the second decade of the 21st century); Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries (sequel series scripted in the second decade of the 20th C, set in  1960's Melborne when niece inherits Aunt Fisher's possession and calling) Both of these were eras in which women claimed freedom and rights Horatio had not yet dreamed of. 

The present that is now the past: Bergerac, first season of 9, begins in 1981, on bi-lingual island of Jersey, featuring the young John Nettles who grew up to become Midsomer Murders's Barnaby, scripted then; House of Cards (the original, British version -- forget Kevin Spacey -- scripted then); The Midnight Garden of  Good and Evil, set in the late 1970's, semi-fictional, scripted then, and oops can't forget Spacey coz he's the driver. These three share the commonality of period: late 1970's and the first years of the '80's.

     . . . . Fiction has provided two works of historic escape that eschew cloying froth: Katherine (the Lady Swynford, Duke of Lancaster's mistress, eventually his wife, whose children ultimately ancestored many royal figures, while living in the England of Edward II and Richard and the Bubonic Plagues) by Anya Seton; The Noble Outlaw: Crowner John Mystery Series, Book 11 by Bernard Knight. This is a  series in which it seems to be always cold, always snowing.  "Crowner" in 12th century Essex, is our contemporary "coroner"; author's day job was as coroner.

Summer 2021 Is In the House And Here Come A Lot of Firsts Since Before

     . . . .Today’s the Summer Solstice.  

Yesterday was the first day of summer.  Saturday was Juneteenth -- and a birthday party!

Saturday, f or the first time in nearly 16 months I applied some cosmetic. Lipstick cannot be done until arrival, after washing hands, of course, due to masks. Left the apartment about 5 PM, for the first time in nearly 16 months got on the subway. We took the elevator to Hosts' apartment, spent 4 hours in a NYC apartment, with ‘many’ people – about 20? – all unmasked -- but all vaccinated, it should go without saying -- again rode on the subway in company of some of the other guests,  and got home about 10:45. 

I don’t even know how to describe this thing of simultaneously ‘it was just like life as we knew it Before pandemic with each other and in those rooms’ and ‘what the ??????’  It was so normal. Except it wasn’t.

I seem to have expected that all of us have gone through some great physical transformation. But it was as in Lucifer, the final 5 eps that went up recently on Netflix, after the long hiatus to shoot After pandemic -- everybody everybody looked, sounded and behaved just like themselves -- maybe a bit thinner, but that's to be expected.  Everybody has been productive, come through well. People who were coupled before the pandemic are still with each other, clearly all of us even more strongly bonded with our partners than Before. 

But unlike previous get-togethers, the conversation was dominated, not by discussions of art, technology, gigs, teaching, and so on, but by a pandemic. Other than that the conversation tended to slide around to the real good old days, of UC-SD, and of the Kitchen, the real days of Before, when we all (mostly) met each other first.  And those who might have been with us, but had already gone, well before pandemic.

Some people at Saturday's party had gotten sick with covid. Their experiences were all over the place, none the same, except those who contracted covid did so very early in the pandemic -- and one of them, if I heard correctly, two days before New York locked down in March 2020. Travel seems to be involved one way or another. The second is that the young ones -- I'm talking under thirty -- got it far worse, and were sick much longer than the older ones who got it.

It was so interesting to hear everyone's experiences, reactions and thoughts.  Even though we are all among the privileged (though nobody rich or super rich, but we all have enough, with a little to spare; some had much larger spaces to isolate in, and some of us, well, we didn't, some of us even had even been able to leave the city), still, all our experiences were different -- other than as relationships.  We were all in good ones Before, and it is clear that these relationships are stronger than ever. None of us had seen each other physically in all this time. All of us have just in the last 10 days or week, just now, begun to re-enter 'the world' despite having been vaccinated for so long -- some since January and February even.

None of us have bee able though, or even desirous of flinging ourselves right back into our lives Before, for all kinds of reasons. Some of the institutions where people worked are gone, including a small liberal arts college that closed down for good this winter.  Live music, and traveling for it, is still not regarded as safe among our kind.  Artists have lost galleries, and some have lost their museum commissions, even as the institutions shut down. Flying all over the world, all the time, living half the year in a different country -- none of this is possible right now.  Moreover, none of us really want to go back to schedules we had Before, it seems, particularly the traveling part. That is particularly unexpected by many of us: we liked staying home, with family.  None of us are racing to go to restaurants. We have no interest in going to movies. Any travel this summer is about seeing family, or something like, as in our case, research.  

All of us isolated immediately, wore masks and gloves, disinfected everything, and got vaccinated as soon as we possibly could.  Several of us were among those standing in the extreme cold and snow at the mass vaccination sites -- many of us went through hell trying get a vaccination appointment, not just once, but for the second dose too.  Every one is well informed about covid, and believes another surge is inevitable due to delta and gamma and other variants. 

Out came this big birthday cake -- a carrot cake.  I don't know about anyone else but it was my first carrot cake in probably two years.  

Of course we had a champagne toast. We are all still alive and healthy, still standing, still creating, still loving our partners and families, and each other. How more privileged than that can we get?

We are part of the archetype of our city that makes the fascist international shudder and sneer at it -- yet -- holy cow -- we dare to remain and persist.

Like I say -- privileged, that is us.

And very lucky too. Because the cost of the pandemic is starting to arrive, and I don't mean only with inflation and the higher prices for just about everything across the board, and shortages of things, due to supply line/labor shortages.

The greatest cost is the people we have lost due to them not getting the medical attention they needed soon enough.  A friend died today, of cancer, for that very reason.  He would be alive, if not for the utterly impossible wreckage made of dealing with covid from the frackin' gitgo. We know who is to blame.

Friday 13th: Drifting Into Darkness

      . . . . Friday 13th began appropriately. Woke into cold wind and rain. Then switched on the Big Computer to learn what the latest announcements regarding Covid-19 were for NYC, while waiting for the tea to steep.  But instead ...

What happened, evidently, is MS started installing this massive  update last night and I shut it off in the middle.

But when I shut down last night there was no notification that updates were either pending or happening. Not at all. I always see that message if there are pending updates because it is there on the shut-down menu. If updates are pending, there is a menu of options to upload now and restart? upload and shut-down? Or, updates installing, do not shut off your computer.

None of that there last night. So all was borked this morning when I booted up.  Could not even log on.

And just then el Vaquero calls out to me to look at these computers and tell him if I like any of them, because he's ordering me a new one as we'd planned to do since last winter. 

I booted up the small computer, which is still running just fine though I don't use it for for much, but to watch shows on Brit Box and read downloaded e-books in bed.

 So there is the news and it's even darker than usual (except for Biden-Harris, etc. thank all the powers -- and what too those damned powers so goddamned long hmmmm?_ though entirely expected.  Yesterday the Governor announced more travel quarantines and, starting tonight, the restaurants had to close their 25% indoor dining at 9 PM and their outdoor 'dining' then too, though they could continue to provide take-out service and delivery.  Also gyms and other public venues such like are to close.  No public gatherings -- meaning churches, etc. more than 10, or at home either.  But how does one police homes?  Which now is where the real transmission is going on?  Especially when the rethug NY assembly idiot on Staten Island thumbs his nose at the governor and publicly announces his family is having a huge Thanksgiving dinner together and there a many of us and we WILL NOT WEAR MASKS.  That's RED Staten Island for ya, full of cops and other anti-social sorts.

Today, the stupid mayor announces it's likely the city's public school system will close and go entirely Distance Learning, even as soon as Monday, so parents make plans.  But he's NOT closing the stupid restaurants, which, far more than the schools, are places people, especially now, are getting infected.  We're already considerably over the mark he'd declared for shutting them the restaurants but he hasn't, and has reopened hotspot zip codes throughout the city.  What kind of management is that, I ask.

The rain stopped.  Amigo K was in the nabe, so donned my mask and coat, cashmere scarf, cap, gloves and coat, and hung out with him for a while.  It was so great to talk, mask-to-mask, instead over the phone for once.  Good stuff happening with him and C, and I'm so glad!

In the meantime, el V got Big Computer up and running, uninstalling what had gotten installed ... and and and.  (According to the googles, there are hordes of miserable MS users who have been highjacked by this update that never updated.)  But ordering the new computer is still in process; I just have to decide which HP seems best for my needs.

But with shoggoth refusing to concede and desperate for his narcissist-sociopathic supply and the states running out of not only ICU beds, but all beds, medical supplies, medical personnel -- and by golly, even teachers ... this is looking ever more dire.

How in heck are we going to avoid catching it, no matter how careful we are, when this isn't even a wave like last winter and spring, but a national tsunami?

And yet, while hanging with much beloved friend, the sky turned blue and golden leaves fell into my hair.

Anniversary Party

     . . . . Yesterday was our  anniversary.  A perfect July day – appropriately hot but not too hot.  Phone calls and emails of congratulations arrived throughout the day. They were very much appreciated.

Then, off we went, with dear B, uptown to K&C's.  I marveled looking out the window of the service car, at the Hudson River and the city’s River - Highway greenery, extraordinarily lush and intensely, well, green. Or perhaps it's just that I've not been anywhere in 6 months except to where I can walk, so it was all new to my eyes in a way it wouldn't be in a normal summer.  That this isn't a normal summer was obvious because all the greenery of the center lane berms was overgrown and shaggy as our hair. 

Thus the photos K  took of us all last night in their courtyard-garden are all more treasured.  Their yard was beautiful  and peaceful. We reveled in being able to sit out under giant trees' canopy, within so much greenery and not worry about who was approaching us from behind, front or side.  As the evening deepened the fire flies appeared.  Finally so did The Cat reappear, who resented this invasion of how he likes things to be: only his two servants and himself, with no one else around to divert attention from Him.  Then The Cat remembered: O I like these people too -- as long as they go away again!

It being Saturday night in July, their street, filled with residents whose heritage hails from the Dominican Republic generally, or African American, have a party.  We could hear the music blasting and we enjoyed it, did not resent it.  And, thoughtfully, the music stopped at 10 PM.  We were home by about 11:30 -- which was early for us when having a party with K and C.  In Other Times we'd probably not have rolled back here until 3 or 4 in the AM.

C made the very best Salad Nicoise with salmon --  I went to sleep wondering how C got the green beans to taste the way they did -- and woke up wondering the same.  K grilled boar sausage;  there was cold shrimp with a hot mustard rémoulade.  Also cold duck, sliced very thin with foi gras and crisp crackers.

El V had brought a bottle of good champagne, and that, shared among us, was dessert.  We didn't want to leave, they wanted us to stay, but leave we did, when the car service returned to pick us up at 10:30.

To have such friends and have them in such times is a blessing.  There was no one else I would have wanted to be with on this occasion, the first social occasion, since early in March.

The West Side Highway had heavy traffic beyond what I expected, though not what it would have been Before. Before it would have taken far longer than 20 minutes driving between here and K&C's on a Saturday night.  All along the Hudson River, on both sides of the highway, people were packed when we went up -- and there were even more people, and still more flowing toward the River, when we came home.

The crescent moon was dark red-orange, hanging above the Statue of Liberty, throwing its light on the river water.

Back in our neighborhood, the car couldn't drive to our street because the street was blocked off to traffic and it was filled with tables and packed closely with people who didn't know each other, and who did not wear masks.  One fears we will not be able to repeat this evening again for about a year . . . .

Yesterday's E-Letter Answered Today

     . . . . Hello, our dear C!  You know just how to get me laughing:

"The robins try to talk to me and tell me to  go to the garden and dig around so they can get worms, they  have eaten all my strawberries and have started on the blueberries."

​So like robins!  Thank goodness they didn't get all the strawberries; for me personally, it's been a grand 6 weeks of strawberries. I think I'm eating at least two pints of them a week, with other berries and nuts and yogurt.  My breakfast-lunch, and it keeps me going until about 5, when, like the robins, my stomach wishes to start on something else. This is inconvenient because we're not really scheduling dinner until 6:30 - 7:30 PM, pretty much as we have for years.

It's been crazy around here with all the Protests -- we're right in the middle of all the marches coming up out of Brooklyn, coming down from Harlem -- all heading one way or another before or after to Washington Square Park, City Hall Park and so on.  We were ground zero for the really bad weekend of looting, with fires and the rest.  That was scary.  And now everyone is acting as though covid's over, and the people coming in from everywhere to drunkenly howl cheek by jowl, w/o masks or distance, and keeping the vulnerables inside -- the restaurants have taken all the sidewalk space, the parking lanes, a lot of STREET space and the small parks for their tables and bars. There is no where for a pedestrian to keep distance -- and bikers are also riding straight at one on both streets and sidewalks.  At some point I expect drunks and drivers will duke it out . . . . 

El V, B and I go out after 11 PM, to meet in one of the little parks here, with masks, gloves, our own stools, wine and glasses and sanitizer, and sit 6 feet away and chat.  It's really nice. We are very close and very long time friends.  We know he's as careful as we are, and vice versa.  I cook and give B stuff, he bakes and gives us stuff, he's always bringing items from Trader Joe's that I might be out of like onions -- how many onions I use a week is rather astounding. And so has become my spice and herb collection for that matter!

For Juneteenth the pastors, black and white, of a consortium of churches in New England, asked us to conduct a two hour teach in via Zoom around The American Slave Coast.  This was recorded with the pastors asking us questions that we tried to answer, for them to show their congregations this last Friday.  It was a rather exhausting thing since el V and I had to be in a single Zoom box, as having both our computers up and running meant having two microphones open at the same time, and that caused a feedback loop. So we shut mine down.  But as I was in el V's window, which was supposed to be only for a single person, I couldn't move, because, when I did shift, even a tiny bit, my 'portrait' kept blinking in and out, like some sort of weird teleportation action.  That was hard, physically.

El V's continuing the production and editing of the video shot in 2019 and January of 2020 of religious ceremonies.  He's taught himself how to use the programs necessary to do all this -- which is very difficult.  But he's amazing smart and talented, which once again he just demonstrated.  He's and I work together to keep the domestic situation operating.  Before, he was gone so much that even when he was home there was no point in him paying attention to all that.  Now that we're fairly closed down and can't travel and everything is much more difficult and time-consuming due to safety, he's pitched right in. We've been so lucky with whom we are living with.

El V has experienced some spooky health concerns, but they are getting resolved at least, with this reopening, meaning he's been able to have tests, CAT scans and sonograms, and we have learned that nothing is life threatening, i.e. not tumors or infected lymph nodes and so on.

Then my debit card number got hacked, as we learned last weekend from an inquiry text from the bank regarding a charge's legitimacy as we were enjoying a splendid Saturday night dinner. We checked the bank account, and since the 17th the number was racking up charges all over the country!  We reported it to the bank, we reported it to the police, the bank reported it to the police, el V got a temp card and a print out of all the charges, and I already have my new card. Thank goodness, because someone tried to use it with a money transfer site -- 5 figures worth, which would have emptied our account all right! But it looks as of today, that that charge never went through.  

How they got my debit card number I don't know.  I haven't even used the card in months, and certainly not since sometime in April when I used it, over the phone to the service that fills the cash card key with which we can turn on the washers and dryers in the basement. But it certainly spoiled that rarity of perfect balance of peace and contentment and enjoyment that we had been experiencing up to that text message.

The weather has been wonderful until now with the scorching heat having come in.  Nor has it rained for days, after at least two years when it rained nearly every day, and sometimes for several days in a row, and there wouldn't be sun for days.  We could use rain now.

I'm glad you're so well, C.  I wish we could be sitting in your garden like we used to. Dinner parties, o, like you, how we miss dinner parties!  But I think we're kinda stuck with this, at least we here, until deep into next year at the least, since deathcultchief and his cultists are racing around the country and spiking all the new cases by the thousands. The cases all around the country are spiking as badly as they did here in April. 

Yet everyone is acting as though covid's over, and the people coming in from everywhere to stand in place, drunkenly howl, cheek by jowl, w/o masks or distance, and keeping vulnerables inside. The restaurants have taken all the sidewalk space, the parking lanes, a lot of STREET space and the small parks for their tables and bars.  At some point I expect drunks and driver will duke it out . . . .

For another thing, the cases among the under thirty demographic are spiking the highest, and that age group is everywhere, including here, and nowhere, including here, are they practicing any of the safety protocols for themselves or others. They are now the superspreaders. 

The Young are of course among us all, wherever we are. They are where we / you are. And as Young will do / do do, as we did, they move around a lot -- to and from parents, back to apartment, to lover's place in another state, back home here, to visit a friend in another city, back home here. Despite what these governors think they can do to stop it.

In another couple weeks, hoo boy.  Fortunately, it seems people in the Protests aren't sick or getting each other sick either.  They wear masks, and they keep moving, and they are outdoors -- unlike the political yahoos cheering for the man who can send them to the hospital and if they come out alive, they come out accompanied by a million dollar bill.

But [Your Town] continues to thrive, to continue healthy, with the actions of its wonderful residents like you.  I'm so glad there is a [Your Town], that has such wonderful people in it, and is so beautiful.

Love, Us

P.S. Cuba, by the way, is CRUSHING the virus.  Alas though, they are having serious food shortages. .

Even In Lock Down Time Moves On, Things Happen, Change Arrives

     . . . . The Final Class of the semester is finished.  We will miss the class, and the bright, involved, enthusiastic students. The class was was vital in keeping us anchored to time's endless seas ... and sanity ... through these first months of lock down in endless dreary grey and cold w/o sunshine.

Later today, attending a video meeting held by a Cuban government official to inform those who wish to be about the current condition of Cuba in connection with Covid-19.
  
Last night el V signed me up for Britbox. Started watching the most recent Midsomer Murders, season #21!  MM seems entirely lacking now, all the elements that made MM a combination of dependable charming enjoyment, with odd yet interesting characters and settings. With the recent seasons' different cast of actors, the writing has gotten darker, harder – even the police headquarters is now the prevailing nondescript, featureless, glass and steel, corners and lines. There is none of that lightness of touch and tone -- and utter charm! -- that were the hallmarks of the Nettles Barnaby, Wymark Joyce and Hughes Ben Jones's seasons.

So. We have Polar Vortex. Again. Weeks after Spring supposedly arrived. They Say even some snow coming, further north and for parts of Pennsylvania. Which means for me, if I wish to Go Out this weekend, steamed up glasses, i.e. walking blind, which really doesn’t work in cold, dreary 40° rain with mask on.

After the Final Class we went for a walk. This is a clear, bright blue, gold and green day. Just perfect. We went the furthest away from home we've been since this mess. Which also shows how much good el V's workouts (and my own) are doing. He wouldn't have walked that far, that long, Before, without both complaining and saying we had to turn around.

Almost everyone except obvious assholes were wearing masks, though still too many masks are just hanging around necks, not covering mouth and face. But even bikers are wearing masks. Just the goddamn runners aren't with a very tiny number of good citizen exceptions.

Masks are a lot more available, I think. Also the deathcult determination to 're-open' even as the numbers of infection and sickness everywhere outside of the first epicenters like NYC are going up -- shows deathcultists prefer its citizens / voters to die. While NYers, who have been living with this for months are actually experiencing a flattening of the curve of both new hospitalizations and deaths -- though not of new cases. This is the case particularly due to the still way too inadequate testing. Testing barely ramps up little by little due to lack of testing kits, as well as PPE and other supplies, and seemingly no tracking despite the vaunted bloomb task force to do so. Which may encourages us to keep observing the protocols? It does encourage me, for sure. But who knows?  Probably more to do with mask availability than anything.

BTW -- Faux Noose is officially now ignoring the pandemic's existence, so the koolaid drinkers won't know there is such a thing as a killing and maiming disease, even as mom spends the rest of her life gasping for breath, dad's on dialysis after getting infected, and grandpa died of it.

Walking our so well-trod routes, we almost felt normal today -- so enjoyed the sunshine on our bodies. Certain places are relatively re-opening, providing curbside service -- and life to the streets. Our street, between Washington Square and home, could almost have been a street in New Orleans in ye olden golden daze -- Cocktails To Go! advertised every second or third shop front -- yah, loads of restaurants, yogurt places, ice cream shops, bakeries, coffee shops and bars here. Even chocolate shops have doors open and people working behind a counter. Of course anything that's not related to eating and drinking is not open in the least.

When we checked the mailbox on our way out, out of the blue, inside there was a SAG check. So, we stopped at SoHo Wines & Spirits to put in an order for delivery. That check covered a case of wine, two of the large bottles I use for cooking, and a couple liters of vodka. We thought:

 "Despite the Polar Vortex, it will be getting warmer and sitting outside with B and / or other company at Distance with bottle and glasses will be just what we need in the evenings. Drinking wine then, wearing masks, shall be a mutual challenge for us to deal with, doubtless providing dribbling entertainment and provoking goofy laughter. Good for the souls."

Media vita in morte sumus

     . . . . Continuing Reading Aloud: Diaries of John Quincy Adams. 

We are in the middle of his presidency. Again, JQ's got us laughing like silly billies. It's April and he’s drawn inexorably to the Potomac, wondering if it isn’t really warm enough to doff all his clothes and jump in. He’s president so people are always coming to see him about something or other which interferes with what he considers he’s supposed to do (though not, evidently, getting entirely starkers in public to swim in that filthy Potomac), which is be alone and write, and / or, now, study Trees!

He has discovered trees and wants to know everything about them. This office, this living in the White House, is eating all his time for study, and there won't be enough time left in his life when it is finished to learn all needs to learn about Trees!

No wonder Louisa is so often alone in her room, “unwell.” But clearly he’s the sort who believes recording history takes precedence even over he himself in the process of making history.  Hilarious.

But, it can't be foreshadowing as this isn't fiction. He's writing his Diaries in real time. Additionally, for us, there is significance in his recording of the multiple stirrings by and about Andrew Jackson. Dear JQ should be paying better attention to these -- as he seems to be doing to the abomination of slavery that offends him more every day.  He seems to have no inkling that the way presidents are voted for is going to change, despite now dealing with Martin Van Buren. The worlds of politics as he's known them since at least a very young man, is changing. But, he, he's all a-twitter about his discovery of Trees.  No wonder he was gobsmacked by how the next election for POTUS turned out.

I finally concluded reading Ian Mortimer's biography of Edward III.  I'd begun this last year, always saving it, as we also do with JQA's Diaries, for times when nothing else appeals.  I was wondering what else I could slot into this space that would last so satisfactorily long as Edward III and the 14th C.  And it was here in the apartment, and gigantic, The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans, by David Abulafia.

~~~~~~~~~~

Stimulus, and, audio royality, chex, arrived today; the first via post office, and the second via email notification of direct deposit.

Bistro’s doors are open and action taking place inside, el V reported from going out for a breath of fresh air. The so familiar from so many years Chinese cook was sitting on our doorstep, smoking his break cigarette as I've seen him doing for so many years. Everyone in the Bistro family are fine and well, including the barista and wait staff, including brother, co-owner S, who was being given chemo and getting cosmetic surgery for the cancer on his cheekbone when this blew up. Some good news for a change!

Beloved B left a new batch of cornbread at our door (he has keys to the building and our mailbox and apartment).  I’m forcing him to use our laundry card to get his clothes washed this weekend!  So, including yesterday's grocery delivery of everything on the list, we are so fooded. It was advertised as on special, a 2 lb. bag of cleaned, split, cooked and large frozen shrimp!  We each ate three of those shrimp last night with the Spanish rice; they were y high quality: firm, textured, not in the least soggy. They went so well with the chili flakes among the herbs put into the Spanish Rice. So I made a much larger batch today to divide up among B, across the hall neighbor, and H, who is elderly, diabetic, just can't understand what is going on, can't cook, like mentally ill neighbor has none of the tools for cooking, and is dying not so slowly of loneliness.

~~~~~~~~~

Tore the month of April page off our wall calendars today.  How many more monthly pages will I tear off of 2020 before there is life outside this apartment for us?

I do fear though, for many of us, it will never be able to happen. Like the Bubonic Plague was never over for the vulnerable for nearly 300 years. The rich now experience with how they can deal with Covid-19.  Epidemic / Pandemic, etc. – it never changes whatever time of the world. The rich and powerful get away and sequester themselves in comfort, and are serviced by the poor and vulnerable. Like all the other of us nobodies, they get sick, they die, which is inconvenient and quite inconsiderate. Or with this one, even if recovering from the so-called mild forms can suffer kidney, heart, lung and many other ailments forever. Two of el V's students have gotten sick from it.  One fairly mild and recovered, sort of. The other just this week, and she's not doing well. They are both young, fit and healthy, or were.

We know certainly NYC will be pretty much locked down through May -- at least it should be -- though They Say that upstate, slowly, around May 15 maybe? They may begin to re-open some things in 'blocks', though certainly not the schools.

Gosh. Two months we've been living like this.  It's hard to believe.

Thursday Turned Out Well!

     . . . . Thursday, we arose before 7, dressed after not sleeping all night, and went out to the supermarket. Who knew how lovely it is out there under a blue, sunny sky so early?

MW was nearly empty when we got there, but by the time we checked out it was filling right up. $300 of Stuff.

Thank goodness for the wheeled Italian granny shopping cart that has been leaning against a wall here unused for umpity years. Not only could we get so much Stuff at once, we didn't need to use one of MW's carts. We shouldn't have to do this again for another week, I think.

~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . The reports are that the Zoom courses are immediately becoming a lifesaver for the School's students. And not only here. I'm getting that info from all sorts of friends who doing college and university distance learning. Like the Cuban Music students P's unanimously requested their classes meet twice a week rather than once. They can see each others' faces, they can all talk.

Others we know, too are saying that immediately they felt the students were focused on them and the content in a way they never were in the physical classroom. E has students who say they are so lonely in their isolation from their peers this is keeping them sane.

Plus, the music classes -- afro latin, Cuban classes -- with the music that is the subject, are so cheerful and interesting. For this hour and 15 minutes the students don't have to think about C19.  Also one can have fun in other ways with Zoom.  At one point the students were asked to stand up from where they were sitting in their locations and do some dance steps.  Hilarity ensued as moving has the effect of cutting off heads, leaving other parts of the body moving on the screen, etc.

After trying to do some straightening and putting away the Stuff from the incredibly stressed shopping, and then the class,  we were both chilled. We'd no sleep Wednesday night, stressed about shopping. Our metabolisms were screwed from rushing to dress, not having breakfast or anything before shopping, and then at home trying to get certain things out of the way before 11 AM. and the course meeting

So, after class, el V and I did something we never do. We shut off all the devices except fones and went to bed. We spent the afternoon getting warm and talking and reading and laughing, and answering phone calls.

The heat came up and I began what now I regard as a 'treat' dinner, after four days straight of variations on the main of kidney beans and rice (ya, rationing and frugality from the start, yanmo?), a fresh (not thawed from the freezer)  pork roast from the shopping, in a slow oven with lots of the cheap white wine, onion, some dried 'shrooms, etc. fresh asparagus and yammy yams!  And wine, the good stuff, of which we drank some! And read to each other and talked and laughed some more, while listening to music. I ate whole (smallish) meal. I've been forcing food into me because I know not eating won't do any good. But have had little to no appetite for weeks now.

Then came a phone call, and like so many others, we were saved by our friends!

K and C's hardware store up on Jumel Terrace had a big supply of gloves and masks. They got us some. We could reimburse them via PayPal, in which someone just yesterday deposited exactly the amount they'd spent on us. Dear, beloved B biked up there and did a hand off -- it took him less than 45 minutes, and there's a big hill, that's what kind of biker he is! So B and the mother of his daughter, el V and I all have masks and gloves now. Plus they threw in some quarts of Parmalat, they'd picked up for me earlier because in their neighborhood evidently nobody drinks the stuff and it just sits there on the shelves.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Plus el V was called to write some press releases and other promotional material for some latin artists -- $work$!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Loaned across-hall neighbor a Hudson Bay wool blanket. It's warm/ish outside but this building's original lack of insulation (the post Civil War era) makes cold accumulate and just hang when the radiators aren't on, at least until the hot weather comes to stay. Wednesday night it was down to 37°.  So ya, it was cold in here.  Plus the blanket, a box of 3-minute oatmeal that she can cover when it sits with a plate -- nor does she have an attention span, I think, longer than that, due to her mental illness and the meds that keep sort of balanced. She still hasn't taken the steps to get some cooking gear -- she does have the mean$ to do so.  Gave her some of our hot mashed yams to add to her soup - beans, along with some boiled eggs. None of the asparagus or pork, because she doesn't eat that. Today I gave her a quart of the Parmalat.

It's not as pretty a day as yesterday was, but I woke this morning for the first time without feeling sick to my stomach. I still haven't listening to the news or even read it, because everyday Death Cult Jim Jones declares something worse, and a greater determination to kill us and all Dems, insuring his reelection.

The Battles of Saratoga and Rip Van Winkle

     . . . . At the Saratoga battlefields Friday, we were surrounded by birds, butterflies and bees, as well as the multiple varieties of wild flowers I didn't know, milkweed, Queen Anne's Lace as well as lots of chamomile flowers -- the air was delightfully sodden with chamomile scent.

Neilson Farm, where Major General Benedict Arnold had his headquarters during Freeman's Farm battle, first battle of Saratoga, September 17, 1777.  Farmer Neilson was a Patriot.  Farmer Freeman was a Loyalist.  Freeman's farm was entirely destroyed by the British Army. Farmer Neilson brought enforcements from Schyulerville for the American army.

As at the pivotal War of the Rebellion Gettysburg battle site, at this pivotal battle site of the War of Independence, we were surrounded by contemporary farmland and -- vast tracks of trees and swathes of grass and dense woods, which one knew were filled with deer, deer who were populated with ticks.

There are still uprooted trees and broken trees everywhere from the terrible storm this last spring. Park service employees, or at least hired help with chain saws, were working in various parts. They sent up so much sawdust / chaff that people with allergies and other respiratory sensitivities had to stay far from where they were working.  So we missed some overlook sites of significant events of the two battles and the surrender.

Bemis Heights.  The American's cannon were able to shoot down at Burgoyne's forces holed up in a mess of gullies, ravines, and woods, where it was very hard to maneuver.  Way over, past that ridge of  woods, was the Hudson River, which the Americans controlled.

The battle of Freeman's Farm was September 19th, 1777, which Burgoyne barely won, with a greater loss of men than the Americans.  The battle of Bemis Heights was October 7, 1777, which Burgoyne definitively lost. The surrender by General Burgoyne came, finally, ten fuming days later, on October 17th, 1777.  General Burgoyne negotiated with Gates to turn the signing of a surrender into the signing of a "convention."  (How could he, a British lord, lose and surrender to hicks?) So we have the "Convention of Saratoga."  General Gates allowed Burgoyne to keep his sword, and the mostly Hessian army was awarded the honors of war -- doubtless the cause of yet another heated exchange between him and Arnold.

Both Colonel Morgan. who had served in Arnold's abortive campaign to take Quebec, and Colonel Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko played important roles in this pivotal historical event. 

Kościuszko Bridge across the Mohawk River

We, meaning our dear friend, Ben, Ned and me, cheered wildly when we crossed the  Kościuszko Bridge, on our way to the GWB -- i.e. the George Washington Bridge, which always tells us we're nearly home -- well, nearly home, depending on the traffic.  We happened to make great time Saturday -- no traffic.

At the battlefield park, we often we chose not to walk to overlooks of various sites of the battles because, despite the grass have been mowed short, it was still grass and we kept thinking of ticks, even though there were no overhanging tree branches -- but the grass was surrounded by trees. 

Despite the great damage wreaked by the spring storms up there, with the high heat, the high humidity, the rain -- it's become jungle-like. Things are beginning to look more like what the Dutch must have seen when they arrived in the 17th century, one imagines. 

Our Saratoga experiences were far from our everyday lives and environment. Monsoon Friday night -- Host's pool had to be out-pumped as it was overflowing from the amount of rain (more than one deluge) and then again starting about 7 PM. There are so many large windows in his wonderful house, that Saturday morning when we got up to go home, with the mist, the lowering skies, intermittent mizzle, and the condensation on the pane glass -- we felt we had been put in a massive, comfortable, mysterious aquarium. There was a world outside but we were imprisoned, thus shielded from it. Internet remained wonky at best, which it often is up there, particularly with as much thunder and lightning as went on Friday night. Somehow, nobody thought to turn on a tv or a radio. There are televisions in Host's house and state-of-the-art video / streaming hookup to them though there are no radios.

Host says he's forgotten about the televisions. They were used constantly while, over a very long year, his beloved, still mourned, wife died of a terrible cancer. During that year she watched repetitiously a certain cycle of BBC series. Once they reached the end of the final season, they'd start over immediately from the first episode of the first season. He hasn't bothered with television since her funeral.

As we drove home yesterday through the encroaching dense tree verges, under low clouds and rising mist we felt out of time, speeding silently among the strange and unknown. "Where are we?" Our lives seemed very far away and long ago. We were just -- here. We couldn't believe how short the time by clock was that we actually had been gone. In fact, almost immediately we arrived in his driveway, Host lost his watch. Had we been enchanted, we wondered as we drove south, back to New York City. 

Catskills, Adirondacks, they are really all one. Maybe we caught a whiff of what inspired Washington Irving to pen “Rip Van Winkle.”

It didn't hurt anything either that several sign-ups for Postmambo events came in while in Saratoga, and more after we arrived back home. -- events which also take the participants entirely out of their lives and where time stops, except for the rhythms measured by the drums.  Our Host has been on these with us.  He is going on two more -- to Haiti and to Havana. El V played Host Vodun muisc and showed videos recorded during his prospecting journey back in July.

Within 15 seconds of we having left his driveway, Our Host's watch reappeared.

La Vie en Rose - Babylon Berlin - Sala One Nine

     . . . . Friday night the temperatures plummeted again.  The wind blew mean and sharp.  Yet two of our most beloved friends joined us at Sala One Nine to celebrate my birthday, with an endless flow of tapas dishes and wines, concluded with a melt in the mouth, not too sweet not too bland, but all perfectly balanced Almond Cake with a mountain of whipped cream, port and coffee.  The mostly Cuban music played was of the best -- and there are no televisions anywhere in Sala One Nine, a basic criterian for us all.

 As Darling C, who creates, fabricates and sews high fashion and designer outfits happens to be doing the costumes for Ballet Hispánico Nueva York at the moment she wore over her sparkly dress an authentic matador's jacket, which is part of the entire costume she picked up some time back in Mexico, though it was constructed in Spain. Sala One Nine is owned and principally staffed by a family whose home town is Madrid. The gorgeously handsome young maitre d',  as well as the rest of the attractive staff who were serving us, immediately noticed this jacket, and swooned.  They recognized it as the real thing of the most high quality.  It turns out their uncle back in Madrid manages matadors.  Trust Darlin' C to always be wearing the exactly right thing at the right moment in the right place!

"La Vie en Rose," Winter, NYC 2018, by Darlin' K

I have been watching Babylon Berlin, the German television series set in Weimar Republic Berlin, adapted from the Detective Gereon Rath novels of Volker Kutscher, becoming more enthralled with every episode.  Though netflix doesn't so designate -- it doesn't break the available episodes into season 1 and season 2 -- the first two seasons are both up. The third is being written now.

It took nearly three episodes, watched far apart, before I submerged into this narrative cop drama. I'd read the first novel in Kutscher's series, and there was little on screen that resembled that book.  Also, unlike RAI TV's brilliant Gommorah, or its Suburra, which consciously follow in Italian fashion the US treatments of such crime dramas, this German production isn't in your face.  It is as stylish and elegant as the Italian show, but deliberately understated, in that restrained way of Mitteleuropa.  Both taste and proportion are exercised in every frame, even those of torture and sexual abuse, but there's ample tension and suspense. Which is funny in a way, since the Italians are doing opera, and the Germans are doing the nightclubs, music halls and bars.  O lordessa -- the song and dance sequences of Babylon Berlin are worth the price of time alone -- they are just brilliant.

Best of all, which takes a while to notice, there are many small moments unlike any usual television moments (it's that inability to resist being in the audience's face of this selfie era perhaps), particularly not 'cop' television or movies, and they are adding up to be more than the sum of their parts.  As well, without changing any of the beats or emphasis of the historical - political events in Germany at the end of the 1920's -- and in the larger world, particularly the Soviet Union -- these  have disturbing ripples when looked at in the context of our own mid - to end second decade of the 21st century.  Yet, as the Cubana who sang us boleros Valentine's Day evening said so movingly, "In these times we still must look for and make the light in any corner that we can."

I think the photo by K has captured both the disturbance and the light perfectly.

A Civil War Posy

     . . . . A compelling pre- Civil War, Civil War and post-Civil War posy of characters: Julia Dent Grant, Varina Davis, Mary Todd Lincoln, Mary Boykin Chesnut and Harriet Lane Johnston. 

A young 19th woman makes up posies.

Young woman braids a posy in her friend's hair.

These women have more in common with each other than what they do not in terms of the events they lived through, not just as citizens but personally. All of them were more highly educated than the average woman of the era.  They all read widely. All of them were widowed. All of them lost dearly beloved children.  All of them were married to primary figures of the war. From their birth, all five of these women had intimate experience of the center of the casus belli for the War of the Rebellion, of slaves and slavery. All them knew what it was to own slaves, if, that is, if her uncle, James Buchanan did free the two slaves he brought back from a southern relative's estate to his own Wheatland estate in Pennsylvania (some think this is white washing by the Lancaster Historical Society -- I do not know).

Varina Davis and Mary Chesnut became close initially in Washington D.C., when their husbands were in the government there and lived, I think, in the same boarding house.  They were neighbors in Richmond and very close friends during the war -- did they ever meet in the New York years?

Julia Grant and Varina Davis become excellent friends in New York. Julia Grant and Harriet Lane certainly met Mary Lincoln -- many sources say that Julia did not like the company of the First Lady, though it's difficult to determine whether this was true.  It has been repeated as truth by many historians that it was and that because Julia so disliked Mary Lincoln, she persuaded General Grant  to leave the capital that fateful night rather than join the Lincoln's at Ford's Theater as they were invited to.  It is also said that she'd had a terrible premonition that something awful was afoot for that night. On these subjects the information is contradictory and fragmentary, so one cannot say definitively.

I have been thinking that during Chesnut's New York years of revising and pulling together her tremendous Diary From Dixie that she'd become well acquainted with Eliot's Middlemarch (1872), to the great benefit of herself as a developing, self-taught writer, and to the Diary as the great work it is, though it wasn't quite finished when she died. By all assessments, she did achieve her long-strived for goal, however, of becoming not only a very good writer, but an important one -- though of course, since it was The War of Rebellion, and she a woman, it took over 100 years for that to be recognized and admitted to, though (male) scholars always made good use of her work.

I don't know about Mary Lincoln, but the other women in that Civil War posy liked to write, even before the war. After being widowed, Varina Davis was regularly and frequently published in her New York City years by Joseph Pulitzer's New York World -- her daughter Winnie (for Varina), with whom she lived in New York until Winnie died from pneumonia, published several novels, that received middling success. Both Varina and Julia wrote their own memoirs of their lives with their famous husbands.

Named for Washington's very popular hostess, Harriet Lane, the Revenue Cutter Harriet Lane forces the merchant steamer Nashville to show its colors during the attack on Fort Sumter, April 13, 1861. "The Cutter Harriet Lane Fires Across the Bow of Nashville" by Coast Guard artist Howard Koslow.  During her days as Buchana's First Lady the presidential yacht was named for her—the first of several ships to be named for her, one of which is still in service today.

Harriet Lane made the low-neck lace bertha and posies her distinct fashion trademark

Harriet Lane Johnston was the richest of them, and began that way, thanks to her prosperous uncle, James Buchanan, for whom she served as First Lady in the years he was in the White House. I wonder if she and Julia, at least, ever met in New York after the war.  Though Harriet based herself in D.C. she traveled frequently and widely.  As the disgraced Buchanan's niece, she wasn't much, if at all, in D.C. during the course of the war itself.   She didn't marry the Baltimore banker, Johnston, until the war was effectively over in 1865, though they had known each other for years prior. She left a lasting, significant mark on art for the public in public spaces and institutions, as well as other works for the public good, particularly caring for orphaned and severely ill children,

It bewilders me rather, that Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of the martyred president, did the most poorly of these five women after the war, even though she had a prosperous, adult son, Robert (he seemed to hate her -- she died at the home of her sister, not in his home). Mary Lincoln had to lobby Garfield over and over to receive a very small widow's pension as the survivor of the greatest President of the US, as he was called even then. After Lincoln's death though, she did nothing but scrounge for money and / or be put away in an institution. She had serious health problems, that seems obvious, but what's odd is how no one even now seems to have any sympathy for her emotional / chemical distresses. Documentation of the period that would tell us whether or not Mary Lincoln was indeed widely disliked in Washington appears to be difficult to track down.  There is speculation that much of this is rumors, spread deliberately by Kate Chase (Sprague), whose  father, Salmon Chase schemed relentlessly to become president himself, and who was entirely supported in this by his daughter.

It's particularly interesting that the happiest of these women were Varina and Julia, both widows of primary actors of the war and the peace after.

The difference between them is that Varina was often unhappy with Davis, both early and late -- who by all primary evidence was unfaithful to her after leaving incarceration, but she could not, of course, divorce him. After his death, she heartily enjoyed her life in New York.

The young Julia Dent

All the primary documentary evidence points to Julia always having been a happy, contented woman and never once regretful of her choice of a life mate, nor he of his.

Their romantic courtship could have been written in many a sentimental romance novel of the era. They both loved riding and were superb riders.  They took long jaunts together in the early mornings and the evening twilight, in between reading together novels of Walter Scott and others. They both loved reading as much as riding.

 I think of Julia, as she was falling in love with her 'Ulys, or Lys," as she called him, taking early notice that he always treated women, children, the enslaved and animals with respect and kindness, not least the horses they both loved so much. This is notable in an era in which white men treated all these classes with casual brutality either as a matter of course or a way of relieving frustration. She must also have taken notice of how interested and curious he was about everything, which made him more interesting than most other men. Their whole life together seems to have fulfilled their early romantic promise

This is not something that could not be said of many a marriage of the time -- as with Kate Chase Sprague, who was so unfortunate to marry a drunken abusive man, and left her in penury, peddling vegetables and eggs from her own garden and chickens to former peers in D.C. in order to survive.