The Dreaded Fall

Well, it has happened, every old person`s dread.  I fell on Friday evening.  I was doing my usual early evening walk.  In the ciurse of doing what I call the COVID shuffle, that is, dodging off the sidewalk, to the street to avoid those maskless folks who can`t be bothered to walk single file for a few seconds, when I slipped on a pile of dirt and leaves and went down boom.  This will be short - even typing is painful - so I will spare you the details.  The long and the short of it is, I am home from the hospital with a sling and painkillers, having broken the humerus in my left arm.  I have never broken a bone before; who knew it was this painful?  Friend John and neighbors George and Joan are talking care of me, and I will no doubt live, but shit, man.....  

Wistful

I have been feeling wistful.  Not unhappy, or even sad.   Just wistful.  Anyone else feeling that way?  Maybe it is just that we are not being bombarded with all the usual external stimuli - no movies, no opera (I just haven't been able to get into all the streaming stuff), no other musical outings, no theater, no culinary treats.  More time to think, I guess.

For whatever reason, I have been thinking a lot about the road - roads, really - not taken.  That boyfriend in college (you know who you are): what would have happened had we married?  (Truthfully, who knows whether that was a missed opportunity or just a figment of my fervid imagination - and really, the same is true for the following examples of missed roads...)  That girlfriend who I spent a lot of time with when I was younger (now many years dead, of necretizing fasciitis) - was that an attempt at a sexual connection, which I didn't explore?  Who knows how my life would have changed?  And had my once-upon-a-time fiancee not died of aids in the 80's? And dear, dear Hank.  Before his death, he implied that there was a potential relationship there, that I had "jilted" him in favour of David.  I honestly never saw it at the time.  But if I had?  

Those of you who know me know that, overall, I am not unhappy with how my life has progressed thus far, and consider myself far luckier than most. Nonetheless, one does wonder, what if? 

The more I think about it, though, the more I have to acknowledge that I am damaged goods.  I really am not connected to "normal" the way most people are. I have no family to speak of - my parents and grandparents long dead, uncles and aunts dead, a few remaining cousins far away, and, while not estranged, exactly, are certainly not a part of my life.   (my uncle hated my father, and even when I was little, I knew I was an obligation, not a love interested...  or was that also a figment of my imagination?)

Why?  I have been thinking about that (as well as lots of other things - see above).  My mother died when I was three.  Did I become wary of emotional attachments?  I adored my father, but he really was insane - probably certifiable, if jews did that sort of thing.... and connecting with him was always risky.  My stepmother didn't really like me.  I don't mean to say I was mistreated - far from it - but early on, I know she didn't value anything I valued.  Her idead of an insult was to say:  there you are again, with your nose in a book, just like your father.  So, again, no connection.

Maybe I just got out of the habit......

I am usually not this maudlin.  And, as I say, things haven't turned out so badly.  But one wonders...

All right, enough of that.  What else is new? Nothing much, in the world of COVID.  Of course, there are people who are behaving incredibly badly, and that's depressing for those of us who would prefer to have a glass half full outlook.  That, at least, is more easily solved.  Most of you know I don't have a television - haven't had in years - and if I listen to audiobooks instead of the radio, I don't have to have my nosed rubbed into people's stupidity!  After all, everyone around me personally is behaving well....

Nothing else much to report.  Still walking - trying to keep all the parts moving...

And I almost forgot the reading list.  Lots of mysteries - Martha Grimes (The Black Cat, The Case has Altered, Vertigo42) and Elizabeth George (A Banquet of Consequences) - it seems like there is an endless number of these around, and I do love them.  Agatha Christie's estate has authorized someone to write new Hercule Poirot mysteries.  I am, generally speaking, skeptical of those sorts of things, but the one I read (listenedd to, really), The Killings at Kingfisher Hill, was quite good.  I also listened to Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett.  She is among my current favourite authors, and this is among her best (I had read it before...).  

More classically speaking, I read Young Werther, by Goethe.  My father endlessly quoted Schiller, Heine and Goethe to me when I was younger, but I never had read Goethe on my own, although, of course, I knew all about it, including the Werther mania in Europe...  (maybe one of the reasons I am feeling so - wistful - ).  Also in the classics vein, Fathers and Sons by Turgenev, another one of those things one knows about but often haven't read.  And I am a sucker for Russian literature.  Finally, I am listening to War, by Margaret Macmillan, a well known Canadian historian.  This is a (relatively) new book about the history of war.  She is a good writer (and the reader, who is not the author), is good too, but to say I am enjoying it would be putting too fine a point on it - it is too depressing for that....

Well, that is all for now, folks.  Hope you are all safe, healthy, and happy, and, on this pre-(American)Thanksgiving day, remembering how much you have to be thankful for.  In my case, it is, as always (among many other things), my friends.  Thank you all, for being so supportive, and such good friends.

Take care of yourselves, and each other....

Poor America

I am not quite ready to breath a sigh of relief quite yet.  Trump and his followers can still do a great deal of damage between now and January.  But at least one hurdle has been jumped.  Noone but a lunatic or a liar can say that Biden has not won, both the popular vote and the electoral college.   And the Democrats can still pick up a few Senators - from Georgia, of all places!!!!!

But still.  But still.  Seventy million people voted for Trump.  That is an incredible number of disaffected people.  And we have done this, and with the best of intentions.  Once again, the law of unintended consequences has reared its ugly head.  

 I've just read a book that goes a long way towards explaining this.  It is called The Tyranny of Meritocracy, by Michael J. Sandel.  It talks about the hopes we all had for globalization, and the hopes we had for meritocracy.  If only there were no barriers of race or gender or sexual orientation.  If only there were no barriers to education.  Then we could all earn what we learn, as Bill Clinton (and Obama too, for that matter) used to say.  

But there are always barriers.  Even if we could remove the artificial barriers listed above, and, of course, we haven't, there are still barriers.  People should have equal opportunity, of course, but people are not equal.  And the corollary to the meritocratic ideal of you got what you have by merit, is, of course, that if you don't get it, you don't deserve it.  And if you don't deserve it, then it becomes harder for those that do to say that the common good requires that you have it anyway.

I'm not immune.  I have been known to say that I have gotten when I have on my own.  And, if I could do it, why couldn't every one else do it?

To a certain extent, it is true.  My parents were poor by the time they got to America.  I worked my way through college.  I worked my way through law school.  My clothes - and furniture, for that matter, came from thrift stores.

And yet.  And yet.  We may not have had any furniture, or a car, or a television (until I was 16).  But I certainly won the gene lottery, both in terms of health and, some would say, in terms of brains.  There was never any question that I would go to college.  There was never any doubt that I could do whatever I wanted to do.  I was read to and quoted poetry to from the time of my birth.  I knew more culture before I was 6 years old than most people know before they are 60.  Not to mention the mere fact of the luck of timing.  Work was available.  Even my parents could buy a house eventually; I certainly could.  

So, I am, a bit late, admittedly, learning - or trying to - the milk of human kindness, trying to realize that those without my luck need to have the rest of us work less for ourselves and more for the common good.

The statistics are alarming.  We no longer value work, we value education.  And yet, even in America, only 30% of adults get a diploma from a 4-year college.  And men without a college education have the highest suicide rates, the highest rates of drug addiction/death, the highest rates of alchohol related deaths, the highest rates of what Sandel calls deaths of despair.  Even if they have work, what they do for society is not valued.

This is the wound that Trump ripped the scab off.  This was what even those with good intentions (Hillary Clinton and her Deplorables, Obama, with his reference to those who cling to their guns and pick up trucks) do not want to see.  And this is the problem that still needs to be addressed.

What would I do if I were queen?  I don't know.  A guaranteed annual income would help.  But that alone does not address the need for value and self-respect that comes from working.  How do we go back to a world where work is valued?  How do we get back to a feeling that, as Canadians are fond of blathering, we are all in this together?  How do we re-develop a sense of the common good?

We old people are fond of belittling the young, who can't understand that you can't party right now, that you should wear a mask, that you need to think of someone besides yourself.  But why should they, really?  That is not the example they have been given for the last few decades, is it? 

All that said, my personal life remains pretty benign.  I have set myself a fitness goal - shocking, I know, at least for me.  It is not the arbitrary 10,000 steps imposed by the tyranny of the computer ap, but, rather, the ability to keep up with the as yet imaginary group when travel starts again.  So, I am now walking 1 1/2 hours at a go, and sometimes more.  I mostly walk in my neighborhood.....

 

...and mostly alone (the tenor of the times, don't you know....), but sometimes joined by colleagues and friends.  Below, Paul and David, previously seen in these pages.  Paul is a colleague, David a new addition to our group, here having dinner in Steveston..... (after the obligatory walk)...

I think fall is my favourite season.  We are having quite a good one - or maybe I am just noticing it more because usually I am in the desert by this time...

Neighbor and friend John and I sometimes prowl the neighborhood together (although not often - he finds my walks too short and too boring....)

....and John and Dennis and I have been going for longer walks - here around Burnaby Lake - before treating ourselves to a patio dinner at a nearby Earls or Cactus Club....

All in all, I have a pretty small bubble - I think I have seen 11 people all told since the pandemic took hold in March, and all of us are pretty much hermits!!!!

So, what else do I do?  Well, I am actually working, believe it or not.  As most of you know, I was meant to retire, oh, 8 years ago.  And I did, sort of; I've been working on contract ever since.  Some years there is more work, some less, but it all goes to supporting my expensive habits, like opera and travel.  This year looked to be a lean year, but it is picking up, and since I am not ready to risk travel to the Desert quite yet, it is something to do, and it is helping to build up my travel fund...

By the way, they have organized the COVID restrictions quite nicely at work.  They gave all the support staff lap top computers, so they can work at home.  The Vice Chairs, such as myself, all have offices with doors that close, and we have limited the number of Vice Chairs who can be in the office any any given time anyway (by mutual agreement - the rest of the time we can work at home too).  Masks are mandatory while in the office, and they have upgraded cleaning and ventilation, so, really, it is quite safe, or at least feels that way.

So, there is walking, and working, and, of course, bridge, which I play probably on average 4 or 5 times a week, on line, of course, with my Desert brige club pals.  Like everything else in the world right now - politics, the Pandemic - it is a source of some disappoinment in the nature of mankind.  The opportunities for cheating on line are rife, and there is, apparently, lots of it going on.  However, like everything else in my life, it does not affect me directly.  Our club is reasonable small, so no strangers playing.  Also, our directors know our capabilities - at least as far as bridge is concerned - and can follow up if they find abnormalities.  I am pretty confident that we are running a fairly clean game.  At any rate, I win often enough to keep me interested.....

I'm doing a lot of knitting, too.  Like everyone else, it seems in this strange time, my attention span is short, so no sweaters or coats, but lot's of fingerless gloves and socks - all my friends have benefits from what I like to call the COVID bounty.  I listen to the radio or audio books while I am knitting, so am keeping up my multi-tasking skills....

There is always reading of course.  I have been downloading audio books from the library throughout, and the physical library is now (partially) open in our neck of the woods.  Masks are mandatory, of course, and the number of attendees at any time is limited.  Increased cleaning is evident.  And the new book section has been closed - too much handling of books there, I imagine.  But it is better than nothing, and John and I go regularly to get a new batch of mysteries (me) and sci-fi (him) offerings.  My latest were two (old, but not previously read) Martha Grimes, The Case has Altered, and The Black Cat.  I do so love an author who can be relied on to be a page turner!  

I did pick up a `first novel`by Helene Wecker, called The Golem and the Jinni, because I was entranced by the title.  A Golem, as some of you may know, is a mythological Jewish creature made by humans, of clay, to help the Jews in times of trouble.  A Jinni is a mythological Arab creature, you know, the kind that gets trapped in lamps and grants wishes.  These come to gether in early 20th century New York, and although I am not usually interested in mythological creatures of any sort, I must say, I am still turning the pages.  

I've also ordered a bunch of books - unlike the rest of the world, the first and only things I have ordered on line since the beginning of the pandemic.  These will, of course, be reviewed in these pages in due course.  In the meanwhile, it give me a sense of security to have a stash of wool and a stack of unread books at hand!

And of course, there are the Economist (John's offerings) and The New Yorker (Jack's) and miscellaneous bridge books (Dennis's) to round out the demands on my time.

So, with all of that, and numerous daily emails and texts and telephone calls, I am not feeling at all deprived, really, in spite of all those worrying about people's mental health in these trying times.

Hope you all are doing well.  Do reach out:  it will be good for both of us!!!  I would say I will be back to you shortly, but we both know that probably won't happen.  As always, though, I'll try.....