The sun turned a fiery red...

fire near Redlands - © Retha Evans 2020

It has been such a strange weekend, with the air, fires and oppressive heat. Although the fire is eighty miles away in the Japatul Valley, there was a layer of ash on my car this morning. 

The pollen count is up and I am having a hard time breathing, not helping my asthma at all. Having said that, it was a beautiful sunrise, the sky emulating Jimi Hendrix with its peach colored light. 

To top it off I saw the young bobcat I saw last month bounding right in front of my car, not eight feet away.  Looked so happy and full of life. Has grown four inches, cute as hell. No camera, no time, will have to take my word for it.

There was a photographer taking shots of a model near the pub this morning in the rosy fingered dawn and I don't blame him, the light was truly magnificent. Model not bad.

When I left my house yesterday the temperature gauge in my car, in the shade, read 113°. I traveled about a hundred feet west and it was 114°.

I called my neighbor and she said she got readings of 116° on Saturday on her patio, which is damn hot. So glad I have pool privileges.

It is not helping the flora at my house. My wisteria, which is used to extreme heat, is not doing real at this temperature, when I got home yesterday it was dry and curled and saying, no más. 

Same with the plumbago. And we have been watering the hell out of everything.

Saturday when I came back, the top of Willow Glen was about 107°. As I descended to the river valley I watched the gauge climb a degree about every hundred feet until I was at 113° at the bottom. Damn hot.

The neighbor had a rattlesnake coiled up on her porch the other day and asked me to stop by and help her deal with it.

It had scrambled off by the time I got there but I couldn't help notice the lovely plumeria in her courtyard.

And I'm thinking, I can't even grow a bougainvillea at my house in the extreme winter chill (we have had readings down to 14° at our house, the neighbor 11°.) How does she get off growing a tropical in the cold?

I asked her yesterday and she said it is the stucco wall, the reflective heat is the key. Aha! My other friend said that is why you see them planted near walls in France. Wish I had a wall...

Weather swings are intense. I called my friend Horsley in Colorado. It was near a hundred in Denver and they are expecting snow in the metro area tomorrow.

I remember a sixty point swing once in El Paso when I was a kid. Leslie and I once did a John Morris Michael Grimes show at the University of Denver where it was 85° in the morning and we were packing out in a horizontal blizzard in the afternoon. Rockies are a trip.

I called JB to tell him how hot it was at his southern spread and he was up in the air in Alaska on his way to a far off cabin. He said that it had froze the night before, would be nice to meld the two places. Here is a picture from his cockpit over the Alaska swamp, some of which he says is floating.

I have received some fun photos from you folks the last day or two.

Michael is up in Bend, Oregon with his family and thought this sign was sort of appropriate in a town named Bend. Wondered if the sign or the impact came first?

Lena forwarded pictures from her cousin Denise in Charleston's porch.

The pink birds are roseate spoonbills. I have never shot one except in a zoo.

Millard sent a picture of a deer waiting at an estate sale at Los Alamos. For an incredibly gifted artist, Scrota Voce takes really shitty photographs. This one is fine, most are horrid. Maybe we should set up a page and buy him a decent phone? He sent me a picture of four coyotes that could have been Gumby, Pokey and friends they were so ambiguous.

Saylor found a nice arrow straightener somewhere out in the badlands of New Mexico.

This is my robotic buttermilk pancake from yesterday. Leslie stuck raspberries in with the blueberries this time.

What an incredible difference the tartness makes. Even though the blueberries outnumbered the raspberries five to one, the latter stole the show.

Don has never seen an owl at his house before. Yesterday he had two fly down and land on the edge of his infinity pool in the sherbety sunset.

Shawn sends a pretty pic from Thailand, nice light airbrush effect. I think he has a new phone. I could straighten the horizon but I have not been hired and people get funny about such things.

Dave sends a picture of a college era mois in my terrorist looking stage. Mustache was dreadful, political inclinations obviously already firmly set. I was pretty skinny back then, must have been taking diet pills or something...

Will sends a pic of his orphaned rescue cat Bruno.

Cute as a button! Keep them coming... and stay cool! If you have any labors on labor day, may they be labors of love!

Fish slices

Alex Wroblewski - NYT

My wife bought a large package of lox from Trader Joes last week.

When we opened it up last Sunday morning at Ron and Lena's we weren't sure if it was even cut or not, coming out in big glops of salmon.

Tasty but missing something. Texture was all wrong. Seemed like it had been manhandled somewhere along the way. Obviously cut and packed by a machine.

It was of course not always so. People used to have more respect for the delicacy. When Blumers was around, or at Cantors, Nate and Al's or Brents or any great urban deli, the nova would come out paper thin.

It was carved by hand by skilled fish cutters, now apparently a dying breed. You could get nova, which is cured and then cold smoked or belly lox, which typically comes from the salmon belly and is brined, but is usually a little saltier or you could order the more generic lox which is just smoked.

Will sent me this link today. From the Forward a few months back, Last call for a Zabar's lox slicer. The tale of a ninety year old lox slicer, sent out to pasture in the age of Covid.  Reminded me of another article from four years ago, A high holy call for lox and old hands to slice it at Zabars.

Zabars is a New York City institution.

It was not a place I frequented when I lived in or visited New York, preferring the slightly grungier verite of Barney Greengrass the Sturgeon King.

Both have been eclipsed by the cognoscenti at this point by Russ and Daughters.

I miss places like these, fear they will all be gone soon, the knowledge instilled in these old cutters hands after decades of precise slicing not long for our mechanized world.

When I was a kid in New York, often very broke, I would take a subway down to Battery park and South Street and go to the Fulton Street Fish Market. For two or three cents you could get a bowl of hot "sea broth" and all the oyster crackers you could eat. Those days are obviously long gone.

When Leslie and I sold at the Rose Bowl I saw the original Fulton Street Fish Market sign being sold for a measly amount, like eight hundred dollars. It kills me to this day that I didn't buy it.  Place has been open since 1882, been relocated and rebuilt but it's not the same place. Lost its emes a bisl.

Specious species speculation

The Trump Administration proposed one of its patented Friday afternoon rule changes that will make it harder to designate critical environmental habitat and require the Fish and Wildlife Service to put their thumb on the scale and stop species restoration efforts for plants and animals covered  by the Endangered Species Act if industry believes that the economic impacts are too great.

The Trump administration is proposing another measure that critics say will harm endangered species, proposing Friday to further weigh economic impacts before setting aside habitat that could aid their recovery.The proposal from the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) would change what the agency considers before designating new so-called critical habitat, a move that would give more weight to the financial impacts on the oil and gas industry, ranchers and even homeowners.Environmentalists fear the rule would tilt the process to the favor of industry after the administration has already finalized a major rollback of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

If Trump is an environmentalist, as he claims he is, I am the flying nun.  These measures, if enacted, will have a horrible effect on the effort to save endangered species in our country. He is trying to put the final nails in the environmental coffin for the benefits of his special interest donors before he is forced off the political stage. His departure couldn't happen a minute too soon for me.

“Developers and polluters could basically veto any critical habitat protections for endangered species by claiming economic impacts, even without proof,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Wildlife simply can’t survive or recover if they have no place to live, but that’s exactly what will happen if the Trump administration succeeds in turning over the critical habitat designation process to industry.”The rule would also require the Service to consider excluding an area if requested and open federal lands to exclusion for the benefit of special interests exploiting those lands.Today’s rule is the third proposed by the Trump administration to weaken protections for the habitat of endangered species.

My prediction is that when money and economic effects become the principal calculi in these sorts of decisions, plants and animals will lose every time. 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)

Protest

To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticise oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and childbearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.

Mary Mary

Der apfel neine fallen far from der tree

Trump is in a bit of hot water after the Atlantic article was published wherein he castigated war victims as losers and suckers. You can believe that he said it or not, it was corroborated by two high ranking anonymous sources. I happen to believe it based on past statements of the Donald and just the fact that it is so in keeping with other things that have come out of the lout's piehole.

He tried to save face with the military by cancelling his administration's cessation order for funding Star's and Stripes newspaper, an objective screed that has been around since the Civil War but which did not always toe the company line.

Perhaps the aversion to the military is genetic. A sharp eyed person on twitter dug up an article from 2016 where it was revealed that bonespur's grandfather was himself kicked out of Bavaria by royal decree for failing to register for military service.

Friedrich Trump, a German, was issued with the document in February 1905, and ordered to leave the kingdom of Bavaria within eight weeks as punishment for having failed to do mandatory military service and failing to give authorities notice of his departure to the US when he first emigrated in 1885.
Roland Paul, a historian from Rhineland-Palatinate who found the document in local archives, told the tabloid Bild: “Friedrich Trump emigrated from Germany to the USA in 1885. However, he failed to de-register from his homeland and had not carried out his military service, which is why the authorities rejected his attempt at repatriation.” 

The decree orders the “American citizen and pensioner Friedrich Trump” to leave the area “at the very latest on 1 May ... or else expect to be deported”. Bild called the archive find an “unspectacular piece of paper”, that had nevertheless “changed world history”.

If old Fred had been a true patriot and done his time in the army, we wouldn't be faced with all of the orange one's odious shenanigans and the country would be in a much better place. No more cheap and faulty German imports. By the way, he did leave Germany and ended up opening up a whorehouse in Alaska, where he made all his money. The johns would pay in gold nuggets and he sent them to his sisters in New York to buy property. And so great family legacies are created.

Makin bacon

Deuteronomy 4:26 -  Thou shall judge the infidel by the quality of their rashers. If their bacon is inadequate, dust off your sandals and depart, then utterly smite their town for they are a nuisance and abomination to your lord.

We are making a new bacon today. Lord willing. Applewood smoked bacon with New Mexico Hatch chile. We bought it at Gelsons in Laguna. 

Just had my first bite and it is delicious, subtler than you think, with a nice but not too extreme finishing kick.

Millionaire bacon

Renee and Vern are making their millionaire's bacon today and we are trying to engineer a small trade. Millionaire's bacon is a candied affair made with brown sugar and spicy pepper.

Feel free to cue the jew jokes, my grandpa called it pink chicken. I will deal with any possible repercussions in the afterlife but feel that my pork transgressions will look minimal in contrast to some of my other more monumental failures and sins.

We know a devout woman from Chicago named Henny who will tell you with a straight face that she doesn't eat pork but thinks we somehow get a divine dispensation for bacon. Fine with me.

We have been getting our bacon lately at Costco, uncured, nitrite and nitrate free. Reasonable and tasty. 

But we had bacon at our friends in Orange County last week that was truly superb, Hemplers, naturally smoked, no antibiotics, free range porkers who have been home schooled and fully indoctrinated in the liberal canon.

That was a great bacon.

How Jack Kirby's Religion Influenced His Art

If you like comics you might find this interesting, I do. I was privileged to meet Jack Kirby in the 1970's, He actually drew on a leg cast I wore for a time after surgery. So sorry I didn't keep it. He was a very kind man and it was an honor to talk with him. New Gods and Forever people were two of my favorite comic titles. I knew the King was Jewish but never considered how that might influence his artistic creations.

John Gorka

Scorched earth

Boy was it hot today! Thankfully it has cooled down. Just took this shot in my car at 5:30 p.m., a cool 111 degrees.

In the shade. Guess it hit about 115 today. I think we might be hotter than Phoenix or Vegas.

Power company called yesterday.

They said since I was on an energy saver plan at work, if I used any power after two o'clock this afternoon they reserved the right to charge me exorbitant rates for the privilege.

I shut it down and didn't take them up on it. Jumped in Renee's pool and chilled out as best as I could.

Saturday bag of worms

Photograph from Thailand - Shawn Mayes

Couple disparate things to cover:

Researchers discover a specific brain circuit damaged by social isolation during childhood.

This one interests me. I went to eleven different schools in my itinerant youth, before college. We moved a lot, tried to stay ahead of the bill collectors. And I think it was good for me, from a social - communicative perspective. Because I know people who were rooted in one town or socially isolated in their early life and they could never get that monkey off their back. You get pigeon holed in a small town and things get worse and worse. I think we are basically constructed between the ages of three and eight. I learned to become socially fluid and adept and adjust the persona as necessary, depending on the burg. They didn't know me long enough to lay anything on me that stuck.

I know perfectly wonderful people, some of whom read this blog, who faced this sort of isolation phenomenon. I think the damage is real.

Massive “Bang” in LIGO and Virgo Gravitational-Wave Detectors: Fabric of Space-Time Shaken by Binary Black Hole Merger.

I know I felt it. Tomorrow.

Hudgins sent this in; How a Plan to Save the Power System Disappeared. "A federal lab found a way to modernize the grid, reduce reliance on coal, and save consumers billions. Then Trump appointees blocked it."

Renee offers this: Burn Zozobra. And the biblical flood that will drown California.

Dave in Japan sends eight things to know before visiting his prefecture, Tottori.

Lena sends horned owl pictures from Garden and Gun. I didn't know there was a Garden and Gun...

My friend Matt likes to take pictures at airshows. Here is a link.

I liked this cute story in the New Yorker, Mrs. Nice Guy. Fillmore thought it was a yawner.

Shawn sent some pics of the beautiful flowers on his fishtail palm in Thailand.

Will sent a story on Oregon's racist past.

Interesting Hal Blaine interview.

Taj Mahal

Stark Rewards

I needed a few things at the store today and decided to stop at our handy local discount store, Grocery Outlet.

They had neither of the items I was looking for, rubbing alcohol and q-tips, but I bought a few things that I saw there that looked interesting, including this quite generic and distinctly monochromatic box of Triscuits.

I asked the checkout girl if there was a reason behind Triscuit's newfound stark minimalism?

She said "Hey, it's 2020, the world is upside down, no one cares about anything. It's perfect."

She had a point but I sort of miss the color, old fashioned romantic that I am.

And the experience today got me to thinking, overactive mind that I have.

Grocery Outlet is a discount supermarket. They must have one hell of a buyer because they find things that are really good, maybe about to hit their due date or bought at close out and they offer them to the public cheap.

But good luck ever going in the store and buying the same exact thing again. Doesn't happen. It is a one time shot. Now there admittedly will always be something cool to buy but those Belgian almond cookies I liked so much, think I will ever see them again? Not a chance in hell, this side of Flanders. Or should I say, not a chance in Phoenix, since it's even hotter than hell?

So why do we all love this store? It's the old intermittent reward theory. It all goes back to a most excellent blogpost I once wrote, Buy stuff, kill monsters, win gold. It was there that I introduced the three major types of rewards in behavioral psychology, constant, progressive and intermittent.

Constant rewards are no fun, hence the blasé acedia of the boorishly wealthy. Can never quite scratch their itch. Progressive rewards are high risk and lead to people jumping out of windows or airplanes, also dangerous.

But intermittent rewards, the type of excursion or scenario where you never know if a payoff is coming or not or the exact nature of the payoff if there is one, they really tickle the human psyche. The most powerful reward there is for us hominids. And that is what a trip to the new version of the discount supermarket is like. Thrill of the hunt.

A friend texted me last night past midnight, not feeling well. Didn't want to go to the emergency room but would I take her there in the morning? Got up at 4:30 a.m. and did the deed at Camp Pendleton, through the fog. Like visiting another country. Thankfully my friend is alright, tragedy is averted but I am wasted and going to call it a day. About a hundred million degrees out there.

Johnny plays politician

Luke Appling

Appling hit .338 in 1936, the highest batting average for a shortstop in the twentieth century. His nickname was "Old aches and pains."

Farewell, Tom Seaver

I followed quite a few teams as a kid but truthfully, I don't think I missed a single Mets game in the miracle season of 1969.

Living in Syosset, not too far from Met Ron Swoboda, in junior high, the transistor radio was firmly pressed to my ear, even in class. The teachers understood. I was no different than any other kid in my class.

I never liked the Yankees, always went with the underdogs and there were never any bigger sad sack underdogs than the Mets. 

The amazing Metropolitans had a lot of heroes that year, Jones, Agee, Kranepool, Tug McGraw. None were greater than the masterful ace pitcher with the incredibly powerful legs, Tom Seaver.

Tip your cap to a legend and a class act. It is easy to throw around superlatives but he is one of the greatest pitchers of all time in my book.

*

It is funny to write about Seaver passing, the same day I received the greatest baseball or sports memorabilia collection I have ever been involved with.

Which included a Seaver signature on this 1973 Mets team signed ball, which also included Willie Mays.

I personally watched Willie, my all time favorite player as a kid, put one over the fence on opening day at Shea. The say hey kid was in the twilight of his career but it was still a major league thrill for me.

I look forward to sharing more pictures from this incredible collection with you soon.

Quotes from Gore Vidal

• The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes. 
• Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
• He who is last had best laugh.
• It's always best to stay out of other people's divorces. And their civil wars.
• The unfed mind devours itself.
• Never offend an enemy in a small way.
• A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
• Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

The Rip Chords / Jan and Arnie

Start your engines!

Not that I went a lot but I do miss going to the drags at Pomona. Was a really good time and fun shooting. The first time I ever posted shots of the drag races my friend Brenda wrote me and said that she basically grew up on the track and the shots brought back great sentimental memories of her youth.

Since I have been hanging out with the car guys in the morning I thought I would write her and see if my pals knew her pop. She sent some pictures and a note today.

My dad worked the starting line at OCIR 1969-1974. He and Jerry Stroner were the guys that did all the big events. There were a bunch of guys that took turns on the Wednesday night grudge matches and bracket races. Jerry was the number one starter.  Jerry built a hot rod that was featured in a 1947 Look Magazine article. (Google Stroner/Crawford hot rod).My dad was a printer, offset lithography, and this was his side hustle. It paid for our vacation place at Parker AZ aka “the river.”

Her late father was Rob Wieser, the co-starter at Orange County International Raceway. The raceway was a combined ​1⁄4-mile US dragstrip and 2-mile road course, plus a motocross track. It was located in Irvine, California and operated from 1967 to 1983. It was the most modern of raceways and was known as the "Supertrack."

She sent three more pictures. Jungle Jim Lieberman in 1969.

Tony Nancy in 1972.

The original Rat Trap fuel altered c.1970

I sent her note to drag racing friend Jay Carpenter and got these two pictures back from my buddy.

Jay's car at Pomona, 1971.

Jay with his friend Dominick Cardoza near Jay's current ride, a pre 1970 top fuel car.

Leica S

Kip bought a very nice new medium format camera, the current Leica S. He brought it over today to show me and brought along some prints. They are really nice. I hope to go shoot with him soon. I would love to have one of these one day. I shot with one a few years ago and they take some work to use effectively but the bouquet bokeh and glass is wonderful.

He took this shot of yours truly this afternoon in front of my store, close to wide open. Very nice camera. Subject not so great.

Polluters suck

Clean air and clean water should not be a partisan issue in our country. Unfortunately it is. One party does its best to protect us and the other party does its best to tear the safeguards down and reward their cronies and the fossil fuel donors and lobbyists.

The Trump administration is doing its best to destroy environmental protection in this country. I am not going to recite a comprehensive litany, I have already done that too many times. Instead I will just write about two issues that came to light this week.

The EPA is relaxing the rules that limit toxic waste from coal plants.

The agency weakened Obama-era rules meant to keep metals and other pollution out of rivers and streams, saving industry tens of millions of dollars.

Three years ago the Trump administration delayed the Obama regulation, the EPA had estimated that it would keep 1.4 billion pounds of pollutants out of U.S. waterways each year. The new rule pushes the final deadline for compliance to 2025, and it exempts several dozen plants from stricter water pollution limits entirely, on the grounds that they will be retired between now and 2028.

*

Diesel fuel spill - The Ledger - Pierre Ducharme

Trump is also fast tracking over 21 major fossil fuel drilling projects and reducing the required environmental review on over 70 projects in the guise of cutting red tape.

These include oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA).

A number of highway expansion projects are also on the July 15 list given to the White House, an outline of more than 70 projects expedited by Interior that was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Center for Biological Diversity

The June 4 order from Trump waived requirements under a suite of environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires thorough environmental review of major projects, as well as the Endangered Species Act.
It expedited the permitting of construction and energy projects overseen by several federal agencies, using emergency authorities to skirt the regulations with little public notice.

I don't see how you can say that you want to protect the environment and vote for this man but that is your business. NEPA has protected our country and served us very well. In fact it was signed into law by Republican President Richard Nixon under the direction of the wonderful William Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the EPA, in 1970.

Under new "modernization" of NEPA, public input will be severely reduced. This last minute shoving of these potentially destructive projects down our collective throats is both despicable and un American. And I am sure that many of my rich pals have stock in these polluters. All I can say is that your precious IRA doesn't trump my right to breathe and drink clean water.

*

Microplastics are now everywhere on earth.

Janice Brahney, a scientist at Utah State University, stumbled onto plastics while she was studying how winds spread nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus across the western U.S. “I study dust and how it transports nutrients to remote ecosystems,” she says.
But as she examined samples collected from 11 national parks and wilderness areas under the microscope, she was shocked to find tiny plastic fibers.
“At first, I thought I had contaminated my sample,” Brahney says. “Then I realized we should not have been surprised.”
She concluded that more than 1,000 tons of microplastics a year drift down on the wilderness areas and national parks of the American West. Her analysis, published in the journal Science, found that microplastics traveled at different levels through the atmosphere. Larger particles are deposited in wet weather and most likely come from nearby. Tiny, lightweight fibers travel long, cross-continental distances, becoming part of the global movement of dust, before settling to the ground, usually in dry weather.
“Plastic is falling out of the sky into everything,” Brahney says. “What should be imprinted on the broader public view is although we’re only noticing this problem now, it is not a new problem. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. There’s so much that we don’t know, it’s really difficult to fully comprehend the implications of plastics that are absolutely everywhere.”

EPA sued over perchlorate, a chemical that causes brain damage in babies.

 

Tokyo Groove Jyoshi

Bonsai

Bill called and said that to was time to pick up my newly pruned and remediated bonsai tree.

He put many hours of work into it and took a lot of superfluous branches and leaves off.

He told me to not touch it again for about six months, to let it set. Will give me a chance to learn what to do.

My job is to keep it alive and I plan on doing so.

He did a great job!

A few more postcards for your virtual vacation

Sunday, Monday

We had a great weekend. A friend of mine gifted me a lovely bonsai tree that had been neglected for a while. My friend Bill Cade is a bonsai expert. I brought it to him and he spent about four hours  trimming it up and taking off dead wood.

He says that there is about seven to eight more hours of work necessary, which I myself am going to take a crack at.

The bottom branches are coming off at the same height so he says that it will never be classically perfect but I think I can sculpt it into something wonderful with time, experience and patience.

He showed me the shears and pruners he favors and I will probably buy them for myself. Should be a fun project. Bill has been working on some of his specimens for over ten years.

Leslie made her special baby back ribs with the thai chile barbecue sauce yesterday morning, a four hour endeavor. We then went over to our friends in Cardiff, Ron and Lena for a wonderful lox and bagel, pickle and olive brunch. Afterwards we took a nice walk through the Cardiff canyon. Had a great time and showed them Leslie's new car.

We took off in the early afternoon to drive to Corona Del Mar to see R & D. In Newport we saw a Bentley SUV on the street, a first for me. I would be willing to bet it never sees dirt its entire life, it was so stupid. They start at $168,000 and get between 14 and 23 miles to the gallon. This sort of conspicuous consumption embodies everything I dislike about Orange County.

We had another feast that night, after a cheese and caviar plate we had the delicious ribs, corn salad and potato salad. We had picked a whole bunch of fresh valencia oranges from our trees and we had fresh screwdrivers. I don't normally drink but it went down real easy last night and I had a ball. Segued into tequila. So I had my third, fourth, fifth and sixth drink in two years, all in one night. Leslie also brought along a nice French champagne.

Our friend's house is beautiful, after a candlelight dinner on the patio we walked down to the beach for sunset. Lovely. The coastline there is magnificent, truly spectacular.

Finished the evening off with New York cheesecake. Told stories and laughed, so nice to be with old friends we rarely get to see.

Lena sent me pictures of these beautiful and unusual mushrooms that sprang up in her yard in Cardiff. She called them snowflakes, so white and pure.

I am not a mycologist but went hunting online and think they might be Bovista californica or a relative of that fungi but I am admittedly out of my depth here. Does anybody know? - Leucocoprinus cretaceous

I had a strange dream last night.

I was with Steve Stoops doing an antique show in Las Vegas but our customers were all rough looking bikers and cowboys.

I couldn't sell anything. Last thing I remember the casino/hotel was trying to settle my bill and I watched as every credit card I owned was successively declined.

Next thing I knew they were kicking my ass out in the middle of a very hot desert. Thankfully I woke up.

We headed back home early today. Nothing too momentous, we drove back through Laguna and Dana Point, stopped at Gelsons for a minute.

Funniest thing was when a woman in a Range Rover tried to cut into Leslie's lane and my wife blurted out "I don't think so, ducklips." I looked over and Leslie was right, the woman had obviously gone a bit overboard on the collagen injections.

The other thing we noticed is that a lot of the luxury cars look like your basic funky sedans if you detach your attention from their upscale branding. She showed me a Jaguar that resembled her Mazda, a Maserati that could have been a Ford and a few other similar cars.

We were talking about Audis and the problems they had as shown on carproblems.com, drive it ten thousand miles and throw ten thousand more dollars at it.  And these cars are everywhere up there because they have a very successful marketing campaign and people have so much money that they can obviously afford to throw at them.

The neighborhood we stayed in in Corona Del Mar was very nice, the gardens and homes were gorgeous and the people all seemed very nice and friendly.

But even if I could afford it, which I can not, I would probably rather be someplace else than Orange County. Too much money, too status conscious and too much compression for me but that is just me.  Been out in the country too long. To each their own.

Saw a bunch of stickers on a truck on the way home. When I pointed them out to Les she told me they were Q stickers. Figures.

Got home, removed a volunteer phoenix palm and a variegated agave, trimmed the wisteria which was strangling my lawn furniture and pruned the raphis palm.

Very happy to take a rare Monday off, tomorrow I get to pay bills again. Joy.

Acedia

Acedia

noun

sloth (def. 1). Compare deadly sins.

        laziness or indifference in religious matters.

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That Covid 19 confinement malaise getting you down?  Probably won't make you feel any better but there is a word for it and it has been around at least since the fifth century, acedia. Cloistered monks experienced the same angst, sort of a divine melancholy and the ancient Greeks even gave it a name. Hit the red link and read Jessica Stillman's riff on the subject as it relates to the current pandemic.

Homer mentions Acedia in the Iliad, Dante refers to it in The Divine Comedy as the sin that led him to the gates of hell. And Chaucer uses the term as well in The Parson's Tales:

For Envye blindeth the herte of a man, and Ire troubleth a man; and Accidie maketh him hevy, thoghtful, and wrawe. / Envye and Ire maken bitternesse in herte; which bitternesse is moder of Accidie, and binimeth him the love of alle goodnesse.

It is an interesting word, one I was not familiar with and I thank Renee for bringing it to my attention.