Just Like Romeo and Juliet?

Normaphoto was taken this sunny afternoon by she who has just helped me through a very hard year.  I was getting out of the car after gassing it up and buying a bottle of red wine from nearby Lodi. Now if that isn't romantic I give up. 

Consider the closing lyrics of a 1964 song (written by Adair, Hampton, Hamilton):

   "Gonna buy something I can ride in
     Take my girl dating at the drive-in,
     Our love's gonna be written down in history
     Just like Romeo and Juliet."

Or, consider the whole song by The Reflections:



"Just Like Romeo and Juliet"

Or not. Let's think about this archetypal affair. Shakespeare drew his material loosely from a story of two lovers from the 1300s. In forms varying from historical to poetic --Arthur Brook, Matteo Bandello (1550s?), Luigi Da Porto (1530s), and various other works. At which point I am reminded of the wonderful Katherine Hepburn, who portrayed Eleanor in the film "Lion in Winter"

I firmly believe she ad libbed: "Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians!" It was kept in the movie.

Hepburn delivered the potential of violence in formative civilization. Even in Shakespeare's time there were confrontations between adherents of Royalty and those of the Pope --most were hopefully settled in pubs, unlike our Hatfields and McCoys whatever that was about.

As you may have surmised, I'm terrible with history but recall the romance between Romeo and his 13 year-old Juliet left 5 or 6 people dead. This seems a high mortality rate for a date at the drive-in.

In an infinite universe, there are many blessings upon lovers and maybe, like in Shakespeare, as many curses. I don't know. I'm old enough to be my own grandfather and I still don't know.    

Fortnight Lily Sighted Over Fort Lauderdale!

Here is an example, provided by Norma, of fake news:

How should we react to imperfect knowledge? We are dealing with enigmas here and know the price of inaction is potentially very high. However, the cost of action is even higher, rather like a first date in high school. 

Consider concepts of pain and truth: an embrace; a memory; a survival. Truth is undeniably valuable, but values not embodied by behavior don't exist. Consider life on the Sun. Life does indeed exist on the Sun, but it's so hot there that each generation lives only a billionth of a second.

Pain and truth. It causes us to suffer anxiety and depression, to take drugs: Celexa, Lorazepam, Lexapro and others that sound even more like porn-stars. I now prefer cabernet sauvignon, but can't get Medicare to cover it.

Pain and truth. Accepting responsibility together despite differences creates trust. It was too late for a lot of us, but on January 21st, 1977 --his first day in office-- Jimmy Carter promised unconditional pardons to hundreds of thousands of men who had evaded the draft. That's the kind of True News that should be made into a national holiday --the kind of news that woke us from enchanted sleep and brought us together. Fake news and Fake enchanters do the opposite.

 Consider Gilbert and Sullivan. The citizens awake and chorus, "Why, where be Oi, and what be Oi a-doin'?"
Gilbert and Sullivan,"Sorcerer"


And keep a suspicious eye out on the giant lily over Ft. Lauderdale.

Why I Don't Write After 10 P.M.

It's  well after 10 p.m. and I feel a need to write something about the first day of spring. Not only does this day mark the renewal of all things earthly; it gives onto my 49th year of marriage to the woman who took this photo:

Between morning rain and afternoon cloud-herds headed for the Sierras, she took some exceptional photos. Observe:

Calla Lilies, open to spring sky.

Joseph P. Thompson wrote: "Real glory springs from the silent conquest of ourselves." But I wonder if it springs from tragedy as well and remains hidden until long after sacrifices are made --I cite the coverage given others by parents and heroes in the pyroclastic flows of Pompeii.

Excuse me for raising the subject of tragedy but, even though it contains valuable lessons, I have never liked it very much. It is real. I am frequently forced to consent to reality but have never quite approved of it, except in the global apology of springtime.

What sad sack I'd be without Norma.

After a decade of drought, this is the kind of rain-laden sentiment I was after.  A Sign!

Poop! A Rural Enigma Revisited

Because we have lately had some rather  urgent enigmas to solve, I have been much away from this blog and wish our current conundrums could calm to the intensity of this post from June 27, 2014. Sometimes I revisit past entries to get a sense of mysteries resolved. This is one of those times.

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{All events in this story are true, only the names are unchanged to protect the guilty. Norma really does email me chores.}

Behind the peaceful facade of the bucolic countryside is a hotbed of intrigue. Consider this email I received from a rural address:

Norma to me---
POOP!
This is not supposed to be on my patio!  A new fence is     
                   needed.

Things had been slow lately and I was admittedly smitten with Norma's profile pic. --eyes that could melt a heart or electrocute  at considerable distance. I immediately made a long arm and hauled my Rural Private Eye Correspondence Course Textbook, by Famous Shamus Gumshoe, down from its shelf, opened its cover and reread what Oscar Wilde Famous Shamusly wrote, "The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

Visible and smellable. Should be an easy case. I responded by calling to the other room, " Ok, but remember, I get $25 a day plus expenses!" No answer. I took that as a yes.

I am familiar with crap and the size of bricks. This brick is a standard 3 1/2 inches, which narrowed suspects to Hoodle The Hawk, any coyote --of which we have a sufficiency in this region-- or some undetermined dastardly defecator. I gave my preliminary report: "Examination of evidence suggests presence of a wild animal of unknown genetic persuasion. Please keep me informed of unusual feral activities."

Soon another email arrived:

Norma to me--

There's something nasty in the woodshed!

When one finds a opossum nesting in a bag of Styrofoam pellets, it is prudent not to disturb the poor creature in daylight. I advised my client accordingly and suggested we discard the bag after the opossum moved to other lodgings. She asked how I could be certain the creature would move away.

"Madam, my methods are my own."

"I'm paying 25 dollars a day for that?"

"And expenses."

Her eyes amped up to electrocutive magnitude. 

"However, in the matter of my fee, it is a fixed sum which never varies lest I remit it altogether."

"In return for what?"

"Your withdrawal of the proposition and insistence that I build a new fence.

"D'accord."

Everyone, Famous Shamus Gumshoe graduate consulting detective or not, has a non-aggression pact with wild animals, against whose intrusions fences, old or new, are useless. This saves labor on both sides. It is also helpful,  to a detective, if one's client does all the detecting.
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However, along with new enigmas we must now deal with neighbor's chickens in our yard. They call me "Buck". That is not my name!

 

The Disparity Between Arithmetic and Efficiency

I have been away from posting for some days, ten days that included a new roof for this crazy old farmhouse and my recovery from all the noise such advantages furnish us --we who are too old and tired of rebuilding roofs ourselves. I hired it done. Let's begin with a Normaphoto:

The photo shows how things were left the 1st day of scraping, dynamiting and exposing all the weaknesses of my work 30 years ago. They made me park our car next door until they could haul this calamity away in trucks. I get choked up just remembering, so more Normaphotos:

Unused to asphalt shingles, Roofcat was OUTRAGED!

--which brings us to arithmetic. It is not my strongest subject but I've had ample time to think about it. 

If 5 men (roofers, carpenters, inspectors, etc.) can reroof a crazy old farmhouse in 5 days, then 25 men (5x5) could do it in one day. 

And, since there are 1440 minutes in a day (I don't show my work here but you may trust my calculations are accurate or closely approximate), 1500 men could do the job in one minute. By this line of impeccable logic, there being 86,400 seconds (1440x60) in a day, a crew of 90,000 craftspersons could have reroofed my house in one second --costing me about two dollars instead of what it did for 5 days.

However, the result is the same:

Whee....

....NEW ROOF! 

Raining in Earnest, On E(a)rnest

Last night poured wind-driven rain here, all night. We went out this morning to survey the damage. Earnest found us at the side gate.

Geo.: E(a)rnest? You ok?
Ern.: I'm wet. I'm cold. Nothing feels good. Wind knocked the chicken coop over! 

Geo.: We don't keep chickens anymore, E(a)rnest.
Ern.: I know, but I was in it.
Geo.: I thought you bunked in the eaves, downslope from Roofcat.
Ern.: Roofcat snores, Geo., out both ends!

Geo.: So you've been sleeping in the chicken coop, I see. What happened then?
Ern.: " The wind began to switch - the house to pitch and suddenly the hinges started to unhitch!"
Geo.: That's from "Wizard of Oz".
Ern.: Uh, I got flung into a ditch. Lookit me!

Geo.: Ditch...unhitch, that's very good. But yes, I see you're uncomfortable. Your poor tail!

 Ern.: Alas.

 Geo.: Can we help?
 Ern.: Do you have a little towel?

Rainy Day People Puzzle

As you may surmise by Norma's back porch photo, it is a rainy day.

I like to sit at the table under this window and write rainy day questions in hopes of finding an enigma. They often look like this:

This second photo was taken when the sun was out, but the idea is sound. "If we lived in a just world, more people would be jailed for crimes against themselves." This premise was questioned 2 days earlier, and over it, in shadow: "Accident or belligerent reality?"--(Trap, pg 41)refers to a play I wrote (performed in 1966) --not sure what the heron has to do with anything (or am I? --parentheses are fun!). 

Other lines emerge --as when one falls in the dark:
She: I found you on the bedroom floor!
Geo.: And here I always thought we met in a        library. 
Much as I would like to follow my inner voice and say she is wrong, I concede my inner voice is wrong far oftener.

Rain resumes and all enigmas seek the same shelter --the human mind-- towel each other off and huddle for warmth. 

(Gordon Lightfoot, "Rainy Day People")

Stay warm.