New Hampshire July

Even in New Hampshire, July gets warm now.

Rte 27 Hampton

We are not accustomed to the humidity, but even with it, the eighty degrees F was pleasant enough today and I met a dozen people out bicycling, past the Hurd Farm and along Nason Road to Hampton Falls. 

Winslow Homer

Even the bicyclists  were smiling this day, and that's not common: their faces are usually set in a determined grimace, especially going uphill. Bicycle riders in their Lyra outfits do not look like they are having a good time. They usually  look as if they are suffering a test of character, and not happily. 

Winslow Homer

The one annoying thing about summer in our town is the motorcycles, almost all ridden by balding guys with gray pony tails sans helmets, riding their fantasy machines back into some delusion of what life was life when America was still GREAT. And the motorcycles are always loud. Look at me, the road warrior. Hell's Angels wannabe's. I may be fat, wheezing, arms no longer muscled, guts spilling over the big belt buckle, but I still got it, you know. I'm on this hog. 

Winslow Homer

What are you rebelling against? 
What'd ya got?
That's them. 

But, aside from the bikers, life is pleasant in our little town. The beach is filled, but not overcrowded. Parking limits access. 

Rte 27

Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, John Singer Sargent would all recognize the scenes around our town. 

North Hampon Along Rte 1A

This is summer on the New Hampshire seacoast. If you only have 10 summers left, it's not a bad choice for some of them.

Nuggets

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul--
And sings the tune without words
And never stops--at all.
--Emily Dickinson

The Body Electric --Local Hampton artist, Lilly Dylan

Listened to an entire 90 minutes of a comedian named Jim Jeffries, an Australian comedian. I was pedaling my exercise bicycle or I would have stopped. He had some funny bits, but interspersed with really revolting unfunny stuff. But, at the very end, he started talking about his own experience with depression and he noted that as a fifty year old the dark Depression of his 20's and 30's lifted. 

And it dawned on him why: In his 20's and 30's he still had hope.

At 50 it was just enough to wake up alive. 
Oh, I'm still here. A new day. Wonderful.

There is a bit in "Band of Brothers" when Captain Spiers, a relentless officer, listens to a soldier confess he had hidden in a ditch the night of D-Day and didn't get out to fight until the next morning, because he was too terrified. Spiers, who has run directly into enemy positions, is not disdainful; he is analytical. He asks the soldier if he knows why he stayed in that ditch and answers his own question, "Because you still had hope."

Spiers goes on to to explain, "You have to understand the very simple truth: We are all already dead. None of us will get out of this alive. Until you understand that, you'll try to keep on living."

Mephistopheles tells Dr. Faustus, "The greatest Hell is remembering happier times."

Le sale espoir, "Dirty hope," is a concept well known to readers of Sartre. 


In our youth, the possibility for great things happening to us makes us compare our humdrum lives to the glorious possibilities we fail to achieve. We are sad because we are seeing happier times elude us.
By the time we get to the downhill slide, we are just happy to be on the hill at all.

Maybe this is why so many people find joy in painting as they get older--Churchill, Eisenhower, George W--they all found something in color and paint.  It didn't have to be VanGogh quality. They knew it didn't have to be. They were no longer competing. 

Under Rte 1 Bridge to North Hampton

Chris Rocks

At 53, Chris Rock is better than ever. Like Bill Russell, he is one of the best street philosophers of his time.

There is that flash of recognition when he fastens on a prevailing urban myth, an article of faith, especially when it comes from the mouth of some liberal delusional type:




"They lie to the children. They lie! They say, 'You can be anything you want to be.' Lie! No. No you can't. You can be anything you're good at, IF they are hiring."
Then there is the sly smile,


"And the person telling them this is the assistant principal. Did anyone ever want to grow up to become an assistant principal?"


Then there is the whole schitck about bullying in schools, where strident earth mothers and Tiger moms combine to insist their special children are protected from the ravages of the world, the same folks who breed children who demand "safe spaces" at college, where they won't have to hear and be upset by contrary opinions.
Chris Rock is all about contrary opinions.

"We need bullies! This school, they say they won't tolerate bullying. They say they have zero tolerance for bullies. They expel bullies! That's awful. I pulled my kids right out. Essential part of your education is learning how to deal with bullies. Donald Trump's a bully. Nobody on that stage had any idea how to deal with him. Now he's President."


And the whole idea of Donald Trump as the end of democracy, all the weeping and wailing from the mouths of liberal pundits. Chris Rock says he may be a blessing in disguise, he may just "work out," at least for Black folks.


"George W. Bush is going to go down as one of the most important figures in the pantheon of great people for African Americans:  Martin Luther King, George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglass, George W. Bush. After Bush, people were saying, 'Hey, maybe this Black guy, Obama, maybe he can figure it out.'"

And then there are the bromides, the easy answers, things like, "he's quitting because he needs more time with his family," when the politician has just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar or up somebody's skirt. Or what the police captain says when a White cop shoots a Black kid who is running away, in the back.


"They always say, when a cop murders a Black kid, 'Well, he's just a bad apple.' Well, there are some jobs where you can't have bad apples. Like, a pilot. You think the airlines say, 'Well, most of our pilots are really good pilots but every once in a while he have a guy who likes to fly right into the side of a mountain?'"


Rock, in his "Tamborine" show on Netflix revealed just a little bit about himself. I cannot recall his ever talking about his past or his family life before. He grew up in Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, and dropped out of high school


One of his best riffs was about going to court to appeal for joint custody for his children and to settle his divorce. He said he got up that morning and was getting dressed realizing every body else who was going to meet him in the court room was getting dressed at that time and they were all, every one of them, better educated than he was--all had college degrees, the judge, the lawyers, likely the stenographer and even the bailiff. And they were all going there to take money from him. And he says, with no special pleasure, simply with a look of enlightenment, "And that's when I realized: I made it."


Rock does not explain that. He doesn't explain. He grants the audience the respect that he doesn't have to explain; you will figure it out. And there is a certain joy in that sort of exchange. Real respect.


George Carlin, Chris Rock, Robin Williams.  We need these guys. Jon Oliver. Bill Maher. If nothing else--they keep us sane.

The Idea of Manhood

The Brits greeted Donald Trump with a big balloon showing him in diapers. 

That image of him is indelible  and spot on, as the Brits might say.

But why? What is it that people, at least some people, can see in him that his supporters cannot see?

In some way, it may have to do with the idea of what it is to be a man in today's world. 

Cutty, a character in "The Wire" whose given name is Dennis Wise, spent 25 years in prison after he shot a man then called the police to say he'd done it. The local drug kingpin, Avon Barksdale, needs tough, remorseless trigger men,"muscle" for his organization, and when Cutty arrives home from prison Barksdale gifts him a package of drugs. Cutty resists getting involved in criminal activity so soon after his release, but he soon finds there are  no other doors open to him and he gives the package to "Fruit" to sell at a 50/50 split, but when Cutty arrives for his pay off Fruit says the police took the package, a transparent lie, and when Cutty objects, Fruit shoves a pistol in his face and tells him to get lost.  

Later, Cutty joins a planned attack on Fruit's corner boys, ordered by Barksdale to send a message to the rival gang. Cutty finds himself face to face with Fruit, a man agains whom he has a significant grudge, but he cannot pull the trigger and Fruit flees. 

Reporting back, Barksdale asks Cutty how Fruit escaped and Slim Charles tries to say it was his fault, not Cutty's, tries to get Cutty off the hook. But Cutty looks Barksdale in the eye, the man Cutty depends on for income and he says, "No, that weren't it. I had him dead; could have taken that Kangol off his head with half his skull, but I just couldn't do it."
"Why not?" Barksdale asks, studying Cutty.
"Don't know why.  Just not in me anymore, I guess. None of this is."
"So what you gonna do?" Barksdale asks.
"Don't know," Cutty says, "but whatever it is, it can't be this," and he walks out.
One of Barksdale's lieutenants, watching this exchange remarks, as soon as the door closes behind Cutty, "Humph. He was a man once."
Barksdale never even looks at the lieutenant, just keeps looking at the door Cutty just exited and says, "Yeah, well, he a man today."

That idea of manhood, of being able to face the consequences of your own actions, of being able to look at yourself honestly and admitting what you cannot do, and what the truth is, no matter how it may disadvantage you is written into so much of "The Wire." 

Boys no older than 14 become men facing the truth on those Baltimore streets. They see that some of their friends cannot pull the trigger and they do not judge them wanting for that.  Michael sees it in Dukie, and tells Dukie he has other virtues, not to worry about not being a killer. Dukie says he cannot be a man; he's nothing better than a nanny to Michael's little brother. Michael, who will kill grimly, is not proud of his ability to pull the trigger. He views his ability to kill as a grim necessity, but he isn't proud of it.

There aren't many truly weak people in "The Wire," but Donald Trump looks like most of them.  Their defining characteristic is not the color of their skin, although most are White, but it is their fear of the truth, the truth about themselves, the truth about their place in the world, the truth about how other people see them. 

That's where Diapered Donald falls in. There is a certain terror in his eyes. He fabricates a world in which he is the tough guy, the strong man, but it's pretty clear he's not. He simply is not a stand up guy. Not the guy you want in the foxhole next to you.  All mouth, no action.

Pathetic really.
And what does that say about our countrymen who cannot see that?

Banned: Punished By Twitter

Every morning I start my day by going on Twitter to see what my dear leader (who has a great personality)  has said this morning. 

One of my favorite things is to answer his tweets in his own voice, extending the logic of what he has said to reducto ad absurdum, but that is apparently not found at all funny by the Twitter artificial intelligence screener or,  possibly by the human beings who Twitter may pay to read posts.

Most recently I was locked out of Twitter for 12 hours as a punishment for posting to our President's description of children crossing our Southern border without documents as "an infestation." I extended his remarks to say we are terribly threatened by this baby infestation, and by other infestations, like Democrats in Congress and we should take steps to exterminate this infestation.

Likely "exterminate" tripped some circuit in Twitterdom, and Twitterdee sent me a stern rebuke for having violated the Twitter rules.

I  can't recall exactly what I said previously which got my hand slapped. Might have been something about "fine Nazis."  It's hard to remember. 

In Twitter's defense, I do sometimes get responses from readers who say, "If you are being sarcastic, okay, but if not..." when I have said something like "Well, we really don't need courts any more. So obsolete. Just make an accusation and run with it. That's all that's necessary in the information age."

So maybe Twitter has a point.  Readership is not all that sophisticated. 
Which is why, one supposes, Twitter is so in love with Mr. Trump.


PS/NEWSFLASH:  Apparently what happened to me was just a part of a "purge" of 9 million bots and trols. Don't know how they did it exactly, but I was warned another infraction and I'd be permanently liquidated from Twitter.
At first I thought, oh, so I'm to watch what I say and not speak freely, even in parody but Donald Diapers can say whatever he wants about baby infestations!?! 
But my children inform me, well, you see, there actually are people out there in Twitterdom who when they say, "Oh, then if this is a baby infestation then we ought to eradicate that and all the other infestations, like Democrats in Congress," they actually, really, truly do mean that. 
I may have been "reported" as being offensive. By whom, I will never know.
Sounds like Soviet Union or the Third Reich. I got turned in for unacceptable speech.

On the other hand, as Oliver Wendell Holmes famously noted, there are limits to free speech, even in America. You cannot falsley shout "Fire" in a crowded theater. 
Of course, that extreme analogy invokes a circumstance where speech calls forth panic and mayhem and death by trampling, whereas "incitement" by bellicose or inflammatory speech presumes the listening is incapable of rejecting the content of the speech. 

I am told there are enough Americans who cannot think through through implications the use of parody and irony is justifiably forbidden, because in certain settings the audience has no reliable way of understanding irony.

How Many Summers? The Arithmetic of Mortality

When I was about 10 years old it occurred to me I might live to see the 21st century. I did the arithmetic and it added up. Unless I died young, I would likely see the year 2000.

That realization did not change my approach to life much. It was an amusing curiosity.

When I started my rotation on the cancer ward, I interviewed the twenty patients on my service, and it was patently clear none of them would survive the year. It was August, a hot summer in New York City, and I was hoping to just get past that summer.  That summer was oppressive with heat and death.  With me was the question I could not shake: What if I were in the position all these people were in, people like me, just a little older, and some of them, those with leukemia, just my age?  

The Seventh Seal

It made life seem so much more urgent, that understanding that death is coming for us all.

Exeter, New Hampshire

Or, as the bard said, "Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore."  I missed that line in "Oh, Sister" but my friend pointed it out to me. It was the one line in a song with a lot of interesting sentences, but she honed in on that line.  She has that capacity.

And now I've done another little calculation. I did not even need my calculator, which I now need for most any calculation now, but not for this one.

Obadiah Youngblood: North Hampton Salt Marshes 

I likely have only 10 more summers left. If I am really long lived, maybe 15. Notice, I did not say, "If I'm really lucky, maybe 15." To wish for long life is not to wish for eternal youth, as Merlin discovered, to his chagrin.

Ten more summers. 

This realization, like the one on the cancer ward, puts a certain pressure on the time I may have left. 

For one thing, if Trump is President, then 6 out of those 10 summers will be spent reading his tweets, fuming over his determined stupidity, getting aggravated by his obstinate ignorance and magical thinking. 

That would leave only 4 summers of peace of mind, assuming someone liberal replaces him.

Winslow Homer

So, I have resolved to not let him get to me. He just isn't that important, or shouldn't be in my own particular life. 

I cannot control his raging over baby infestation, over his invention of a horde of MS13 gangsters defiling our nation.

Trump cannot stop the apples from growing at Applecrest orchard; he cannot stop the ocean from rolling in at high tide at Plaice Cove. (Although, if he destroys the EPA, the beach may be closed for more days of the year because of E.coli contamination, as it was this week.)

The administrators at the clinic can push me to increase the number of patients I see by 3% every 6 months, but so what? If they think I'm "unproductive," I'll simply quit.

But what can I do with the precious time, the precious little time remaining? 

Incomparable Van Gogh

I'd love to write, produce and maybe even direct a wonderful TV series, like "The Wire."
I'd love to paint a picture every day, as Van Gogh did, and to paint as masterfully as he did.

Van Gogh

I'd love to play piano better.
I'd love to learn Icelandic and Swedish and German and French and Italian and Spanish.
I'd love to wake up tomorrow morning, 20 pounds lighter, beautiful and 20 years younger.

Klimt

But I'll count myself lucky if I can just learn something really astonishing each day: Like, did you know, mothers of sons have cells with XY chromosomes growing in their brains?  
How to explain this? 
Maybe the technology is wrong. But if it's correct, how did a male cell get into a female brain?  
We know fetal cells circulate in the mother's blood. (Don't ask me how we know that--the technology is beyond me.) So, most likely these are fetal cells which implanted downstream, crossed the blood/brain barrier and took root. Another possible explanation: It's possible these mothers had fraternal twins with whom they shared a womb, who died at an early stage before anyone knew their were two fetuses in that womb. 

VanGogh

There may be other possibilities I haven't yet thought of yet.

But that's mostly what I have left: wonder. I can still wonder about stuff. 
That will have to be enough.

What Endures

Donald Trump, even in his 2nd term will eventually fade into oblivion. His Trump towers in New York and Chicago and around the world will be sold as surely as his casinos and they will be renamed. 

He is simply a lightweight. 

But some people, who were neither famous nor successful in their own lifetimes do work which lives on.

Girl in White in Woods --Van Gogh
 

Van Gogh died without knowing how important he was.

He is the antithesis of Trump who believes he is important. Van Gogh simply did his work.

And he is buried next to his brother Theo in Auvers, France, and people still visit his grave, 150 years later.

Northern New England on the 4th of July

When you think about it, it started in Boston, but it quickly spread to New York, Philadelphia, down to Virginia and Yorktown. 
Even at the beginning, events conspired to unite the different parts of this country.

In my lifetime, we had Joseph McCarthy, and before that there was Father Coughlin, Henry Ford and George Lincoln Rockwell. There was George Wallace and there was the Ku Klux Klan. So Donald Trump simply fits into a long list of scoundrels, imbeciles and haters.  None of them have brought the country down, although they did stain the fabric. 

But here we delight in things which have nothing much to do with politics.

My friend, neighbor and co conspirator sent along this picture of an "immigrant" she noted outside her getaway in Maine.

On my bicycle ride most mornings, I pass by this mailbox, which I like simply because it is whimsy in wood, very New Hampshire.

There are things up here which seem untouched by the lunacy in Washington, D.C.

We're doing okay. We will persevere. Which is not to say we will win.