Chemistry

Over 100F for many days, no rain, no relief in sight.  As to plant life, and we have lots of it, you get to the point where you risk boiling instead of watering. 

What I Mean By That Is

... Strays is going to be more and more like Twitter.  In fact I may migrate to Twitter.  Until I do, aphorisms.  You know, like "an apple a day keeps the doctor away."  (Boy, that one has always seemed like voodoo.  Wear this apple around your neck and mwambajamba no more doctors!)

But where I'm really going to try to apply myself is in Fixer.  Link on the right.  It's going to start trite and derivative.  So let's watch and see if I can find a voice.

Fore

There may be another way to propel this forward.

What impels the words is a desire to share ideas, plus a desire to write, plus a desire to exhibit.  As to the last - otherwise why put it out on the Internet, where it lasts forever, is completely corruptible, and is likely to bring back nothing good.

So you could close it down, call it a day.  Or you could carry on, but try to make it more regular, more urgent, less introspective, less idiosyncrantic, less boring.

Or (and there are lots of other or's out there), you can reframe things as fiction and narrative.

And you can drop the second person when you really mean the first.

Thwack.

Downstroke

Here in America we live and work mostly in daylight, and we dine, dance, and sleep after dark.  The Mediterraneans, with their siestas, know something about another way, maybe because of the heat. Those of us who work across multiple time zones, we navigate another way too.  So you unlink from regular, linear time a little, but at the same you are more wedded to the clock than ever in order to keep your bearing.

Backswing

When the temperature reaches 108F and it's going to be over 100F for the next five days, and there's been no rain for weeks, and humidity is in the teens... well, St. Louis, meet Palm Desert.  Which is pretty good weather for geezers with a/c, but it's hell on the hydrangeas.

Gets you thinking... what if it doesn't rain until September?  It means that all the water I bought, and will buy, over the last months and this summer will be for naught and we'll be losing trees, not just plants, and we'll be facing fires, not just the usual tornadoes and hailstorms.  It's so Biblical!

One sign that it could be the end of the world:  folks are giving away their tickets to the Cardinals games over the weekend...

Back on the Trail

Yeeks it's been another month.  I hope that's over.  I just... well, it's the Meriwether Dilemma.  How can you write a journal when you are busy fightin' bears?

Well, the bears are lumbering off this morning, looking for tastier fare.  And I'm thinking that the rest of my life begins - not today, too obvious - but July 1, 2012.  So I've got this little time for a windup.  Then in about a week I will take off, stop stewing, start doing, ensuring that when my funeral comes around they will be able say more than he was a nice guy.

This is the new Blogger format.  I will give it a try, although I thought the old one was cool, dry-Manhattan cool.  Maybe this will be a little warmer.  A Perfect Manhattan, this time.  Or not, and I will try to re-engineer back.

We seem to be embarking on a new political season and the chatter seems as banal and surface-coasting as ever.  And about money, money, money, or maybe that's me, maybe I'm getting to the sad state  where I think everyone but me is venal.

Just look and listen, and see if any candidate is talking about anything because it's virtuous, righteous, and not because it's politically savvy.  And way more important:  see if the reactions to what the candidates say are based on lack of virtue, or righteousness, as opposed to smart or stupid for the campaigner.

Not to say that process doesn't matter.  There is a trend taking place in California - the place that, contrarian that I am, I admire more and more - where they are trying to throttle back the rules so that the electorate no longer has to choose between extremists on either side.  Lots of ways to get there  - I'll do a really wonky piece about it before election day.

But now, I'm getting ready for July 1.  Where are those running shoes?

Back from California

It’s a grand place, really.   Americans have loved California for generations, and it shows.  San Diego, my principal destination this time, is shiny, massive, unmoored from most traditions except the tradition of the US Navy.  The Midway is parked in front, and Saturday morning the venerable aircraft carrier was swarming with Girl Scouts.   As American as you can get.

Which is one of the ways in which this neo-secessionist movement is so sad.  Its proponents in the so-called “red” states*  think of California and New York and Massachusetts as un-American havens for welfare and disability cheats and freeloaders.  But they should go see the Midway.  There it is in California, manned by greatest-generationers who seem to love their volunteer gig. Not a bum or a panhandler in sight.  Un-American?  Please.

There are homeless people in downtown San Diego, in their sleeping bags, pushing their carts, hanging out in twos and threes with their scrawny but evidently well-loved dogs.  They aren’t in the least aggressive, and they obviously aren’t stupid -  if I were ever to find myself on the street, out of choice or necessity, I’d think San Diego was a pretty fair place to camp.   No wonder the Okies headed there.

It's a wonderful mix, homeless and Girl Scouts and folks in bars and babes in limos and families walking along the waterfront.  Walking back from the Midway, a big graduation ceremony for Phoenix University.  It isn’t blue, or purple, any more than it’s red or green or black or white.   It’s California, and if it’s any color it’s still gold, plus plenty of red, white, and blue.

* I’m sorry, I still think that the notion of “red” as a symbol for American conservatives is  an ignorant joke.

** I have no idea why this post is framed on white but I can't figure out how to undo and I'm sick of trying.  They're just words.