The Turning Point?

DEAR GEORGE, In the grand scheme of things, this is a significant time. One year ago the nation went into a pandemic lockdown, and our lives changed drastically, becoming much more constricted. With more and more vaccinations given every day, we may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. In the midst of this medical crisis, we’ve also just ended the worst four-year presidency in American history, and we’re seeing a gradual restoration of democracy. 2021 looks more hopeful by the day.

Katja and I got our second Moderna vaccination last month, and, paradoxically, I seem to have gotten more depressed as a consequence. While you’d think this would be exhilarating, virtually nothing in our life has changed. I’m choosing not to do online OLLI classes or to go out to restaurants or other public places. No travelling, no gatherings with friends. My doctor has advised me not to return to the fitness center for a couple of months. In part because of my own lack of creativity, the last twelve months have been a loss of priceless time.

On the up side, there are signs of spring everywhere in our neighborhood — yellow flowers, the first white flowering tree blooming outside the bank, green buds on the shrubs and trees. I counted fifteen dandelions on our morning dog walk. Patrons are starting to return to our Ludlow Avenue restaurants, and the art museum resumed its normal hours last week. Perhaps we’ll soon start normalizing too.

One significant event in our household is that the repair technician came last week to restore our Hammond Chord organ that has been languishing for decades in my upstairs junk room. My parents bought the chord organ in the early 1950’s so that we children would have the opportunity to play music. Though not the most complex or sophisticated instrument, Vicki and I were serious aficionados. When Vic and Doris sold our house on the river in the early 1970’s, Katja and I rented a U-Haul trailer and brought the chord organ to Cincinnati. The last time it was played was about 1990 when J crooned love songs to K, his college sweetheart. I’ve been playing it for about an hour a day for the last week. The pages of music have turned yellow, but the books are full of great classics (e.g., Old Buttermilk Sky; Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue; I’m Getting Sentimental Over You), and I’m amazed at how quickly playing the chord organ comes back.

We do have other exciting times coming up. J and family are coming to Cincinnati in April for a weeklong visit, and Katja and I will go to California in July for her niece’s wedding. I plan to return to the fitness center by early summer, I hope that my writers’ group will start meeting by then, and I expect that OLLI will resume in-person classes in the fall. Time to break out of my funk and start enjoying life again. LOVE, DAVE

Netflix and Amazon Prime Favorites

DEAR GEORGE, Like the rest of the world, we’ve watched a lot more TV than usual in the past twelve months of the pandemic, and we’ve run across many enjoyable offerings that we might not have otherwise seen. Katja and I both are drawn to murder mysteries, action thrillers, and BBC productions. Katja also likes historical dramas, biographies, and documentaries, while I lean toward comedies, sci-fi, and horror. Of the approximately one hundred shows that we’ve watched in recent months, here are our top ten favorite series currently available on Netflix and on Amazon Prime. I’ve also included Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer scores for each show [RT]. LOVE, DAVE

TOP TEN, NETFLIX: (#1) Schitt’s Creek. (Comedy) Rich video magnate Johnny Rose and his family find themselves broke and are forced to regroup in Schitt’s Creek. [RT = 93%]; (#2) Breaking Bad. (Crime/drama) A high school chemistry teacher ill with cancer turns to manufacturing meth to secure his family’s future. [RT = 96%]; (#3) Pose. (Drama) The story of ball culture and the gay and trans community in the late 80s and early 90s during the AIDS crisis. [RT = 96%]; (#4) The Crown. (Biography/drama) The political rivalries and romances of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign during the second half of the twentieth century. [RT = 91%]; (#5) The Good Place. (Comedy/drama/fantasy) Four people and their mentor struggle in the afterlife to define what it means to be good. [RT = 97%]; (#6) Fauda. (Action/drama/thriller) The human stories on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. [RT = 100%]; (#7) The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. (Crime/drama) Explores the murder of designer Gianni Versace by spree killer Andrew Cunanan. [RT = 89%]; (#8) The Last Kingdom. (Action/drama/history) As Alfred the Great defends his kingdom from Norse invaders, Uhtred seeks to claim his ancestral birthright. [RT = 91%]; (#9) Marcella. (Mystery/drama) Having left the Metropolitan Police for her family’s sake, Marcella returns to her job on the murder squad. [RT = 70%]; (#10) The Sinner. (Crime/drama/mystery) An anthology series that examines why ordinary people commit brutal crimes. [RT = 90%].

TOP TEN, AMAZON PRIME: (#1) The Night Manager. (Crime/mystery/drama) The night manager of a Cairo hotel is recruited to infiltrate an arms dealer’s inner circle. [RT = 91%]; (#2) The Durrells in Corfu. (Biography/cmedy/drama) Based on the real-life events of the Durrell family as they resettle from England to Greece. [RT = 94%]; (#3) Curb Your Enthusiasm. (Comedy) The life and times of Larry David and the predicaments he gets himself into. [RT = 92%]; (#4) Goliath. (Drama) A disgraced lawyer gets a case that could bring him redemption. [RT = 82%]; (#5) Mozart in the Jungle. (Comedy/drama/music) A brash new maestro stirs up the New York Symphony as young oboist Hailey hopes for her big chance. [RT = 94%]; (#6) The Americans. (Crime/drama/mystery) At the height of the cold war two Russian agents pose as an average American couple complete with family. [RT = 96%];(#7) Line of Duty. (Crime/drama/mystery) Follows the investigations of AC-12, a controversial police anti-corruption unit. [RT = 100%]; (#8) Get Shorty. (Comedy/crime) The adventures of a mobster-turned-movie producer in Hollywood. [RT = 95%]; (#9) A Very English Scandal. (Biography/comedy/crime) British Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe is accused of conspiracy to murder his gay ex-lover. [RT = 97%]; (#10) Vikings. (Action/adventure/drama)m The brutal and mysterious world of Ragnar Lothbrok, a Viking warrior who years to explore and raid the distant shores across the ocean. [RT = 93%];

A Quick Chat at City Lights

DEAR GEORGE, I was saddened recently to read that Lawrence Ferlinghetti, counter-culture poet and founder of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore, had died at the age of 101. Ferlinghetti has always been one of my favorite poets, and, because we Antiochians regarded ourselves as fledgling beatniks, he was a significant role model in my youth. I actually met Ferlinghetti briefly when I was spending the summer of 1959 in San Francisco. I’d driven out before my final year of college to decide, once and for all, whether or not to devote my life to becoming a writer. I saw an ad for a poetry reading by Ferlinghetti at City Lights and decided to go. The Beat Generation had been around for five or six years, and San Francisco (and the City Lights Bookstore specifically) was one of its major centers, drawing icons like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso. Ferlinghetti had recently published his first collection, “A Coney Island of the Mind”, and he was reading selections. By the time I arrived the bookstore was packed to capacity, and employees were putting the few remaining chairs up on the stage. As it turned out, I took the last seat, right next to Ferlinghetti himself who was already at the podium. Before the reading started, he turned to me and asked if I were a writer. I said that I was trying to be and explained that I’d come to the city from Antioch to devote myself to writing fiction. When I expressed dismay at the string of rejection letters I’d gotten, Ferlinghetti was encouraging and said he’d gone through the same start to his own career. That filled me with inspiration and I churned out a dozen more short stories during my remaining month in San Francisco. All of them were rejected, of course. The following summer Katja and I got married and moved to Ann Arbor for grad school, that proving to be the end of my beatnik days as well as my quasi-writing career. However, I still have good memories of my exciting encounter at the City Lights Bookstore. LOVE, DAVE

Is Someone In Danger?

DEAR GEORGE: Because of being isolated during the pandemic, I find myself seeking social contact by paying more attention to my neighbors’ conversations on our local NextDoor website. While much of the discussion is about dog poops, lost pets, or people not shoveling their sidewalks, every now and then there is a topic which grabs my attention. This happened the other day when Janelle P. posted a comment titled, “Is someone in danger?” Janelle explained that she regularly drives by a local home that has an American flag flying upside down from the flagpole. It makes her uneasy but she’s not comfortable knocking on the door to check it out. She wonders if it’s a silent call for help. Perhaps someone who is being abused or is being held captive. Since it’s illegal to fly an American flag upside down, it could well be a life or death situation. Danny D. replied promptly, explaining that an upside down flag is a “universal sign of distress”, just like SOS. He agreed with Janelle that flying the flag that way is a very serious issue. He suggested law enforcement needs to do a wellness check on the owner and the property. Not everybody agreed with this suggestion however. Pete J. said that with all the unarmed people getting killed by police who come to their door, calling the police should be a last resort. Martha K. thought it better to call the VFW or the DAR. Jason B. suggested asking a concerned neighbor to check, saying, “Hey I wanted to make sure you’re aware your flag is upside down.” Malcolm L. said that years ago his grandmother’s neighbor, who was a veteran, hung his flag out every morning. When he hung it upside down one morning, his neighbors were worried. They checked on him and found he’d had a stroke, probably just as he was hanging the flag. Thank goodness the neighbors checked. Apparently confused, Peggy G asked, “What exactly is the purpose of this post? I’m trying to figure out how it helps our neighborhood.” Linda K. simply concluded, “The USA is in trouble.” Janelle then updated her original post, reporting that she did call the police and asked them to do a wellness check. According to Janelle, “the dispatcher made it obvious she thought I was a little crazy…and maybe I am.” Alex P. said, “Good Job Janelle!” The discussion took an abrupt turn when Martha S. reported that she knows of two houses on her street that fly the American flag upside down in response to Biden being elected president. It is their way of saying that our country is in distress. Max J. said he has no use at all for the protest message, but he doesn’t deny their freedom to express their opinion. A lot of other people agreed with this. Bobby R. then revealed that he hangs his flag upside down. “It’s to symbolize our countries distress becuase we no longer have a democracy since the election was clearly hacked and stolen. Dark times we live in.” Bobby’s disclosure pretty much ended the discussion, and Janelle cancelled the thread, noting that 50% of her neighbors think her a quack job and 50% think her observant and caring. She thanked all for their opinions and helpful suggestions. I was sorry the conversation came to an end, but the mystery had been solved. LOVE, DAVE

A Touch of Winter

DEAR GEORGE: We got our first real dose of winter this week, a storm that brought in ten inches of snow on Wednesday, then one or two more on Thursday. I always find this exciting. It takes me back to childhood in the Upper Peninsula. Snowmen, forts, snowball fights, sledding, snow-shoeing on the river. Iko, who has spent most of his life in New Orleans, finds the snow puzzling, but I think he likes it all right. Here are some photos of our neighborhood in the snow. LOVE, DAVE

Less Drama Please

DEAR GEORGE, Sometimes it seems like our lives have become completely bland and uneventful. I get up late, walk the dog, eat a bowl of Raisin Crunch, read the newspaper, scan my e-mails, revise a few poems, check MSNBC, have supper with Katja, watch Netflix, walk the dog one last time, and go back to bed. That’s it, one day after the next. Lately, though, things have picked up. Most notably, we set out for the grocery store on a dark, drizzly night last week. My windshield wipers were malfunctioning, and I had trouble seeing the road. Two blocks from home we came upon a cluster of emergency vehicles with blazing lights on both sides of the street. I slowed to a crawl and started driving between them. Suddenly I saw a police officer about eight feet directly in front of me, waving his arms frantically and with a horrified look on his face. I jammed on the brakes and came to a stop a few feet away from him. When I opened my window, another police officer was screaming at me. “Back up, back up, get out of here!” I did as commanded. However, I still feel jittery about the incident. I almost ran over a police officer; I got yelled at by another police officer; and I used bad judgment to try to drive through an emergency zone in the first place.

A few days later I went downstairs to give Iko his morning walk, and what did I find attached to our kitchen door but an Accident Report Form from an Officer Schneider. It listed all the information about another driver and his car, along with the date of the accident (that very morning) and the location (our home address). I couldn’t imagine what this was about since we’d just gotten up, much less had time to be driving anywhere and getting in an accident. I wondered if it was a prank. A while later we got a call from our gardener who had talked with Officer Schneider. It turned out that a young driver had tried to make a turn at our corner at a high rate of speed and lost control of his car. He knocked down the pedestrian walk light pole on our sidewalk, plowed through our garden, and crashed head-on into the sturdy honeysuckle tree that is a mere six inches from the front of our house. The police officer said that the car was completely totaled. The seat-belted driver amazingly escaped serious injury. According to the police officer, had it not been for our sturdy honeysuckle tree, the car would have demolished the front wall of our house and wound up in our living room.

We’ve been craving more excitement in our lives, but now I’m more into appreciating peace and serenity. Hopefully our lives will stay boring for a while. LOVE, DAVE

De-Cluttering

DEAR GEORGE, I’ve been having the same dream for years and years. All of a sudden it dawns on me that I rented a hotel room a year ago in another city, and I’d stored my huge book collection there. I’d forgotten to pay the rent on the room, and now the bill has run into the tens of thousands of dollars. I want my books badly but I can’t imagine paying this amount of money. Usually I wake up in a panic when I’m unable to figure out a solution. What this dream has to do with, I’ve decided, is my and Katja’s accumulating endless possessions over many decades and having to figure out what to do with them before we run out of time. The photos above illustrate the problem. I took these a few weeks ago in my second floor room. It’s been my home office since the late 1970’s as well as a warehouse for all sorts stuff I’ve collected since that time from yard sales and flea markets. Dogs and cats, elephants, soldiers, cowboys, angels, Statues of Liberty, superheroes and villains, jazz musicians, skeletons, ducks, Marilyn Monroe figures, Disney characters, sports trophies, birds, pumpkins, Santas, and many other categories of interest. I didn’t have any system to my collecting other than a rule that nothing in my room should cost more than twenty-five cents. There are a few exceptions, but, by and large, I stuck to my rule. By the late 1980’s I started collecting antique and vintage postcards, and soon my room was lined with steel file cabinets which held my burgeoning collection. Then, perhaps a dozen years ago, everything became completely out of control. I just started putting new acquisitions haphazardly in ever-growing piles in the middle of the floor. I’ve thought many times over the years about doing some house-cleaning, but the task has seemed insurmountable. I’ll do it when I retire, I thought, but now twelve years have gone by since that milestone. Recently we learned that we needed to have a house appraisal in order to renegotiate a home equity loan. The idea of an appraiser coming in and inspecting my catastrophic room horrified me. So I started working on my clean-up task. Now, after twenty-two days, I’ve made major progress. Among other things, I’ve taken about twenty boxes of treasures to the Goodwill. I have to admit that this was a very engaging and satisfying pursuit. Katja says that it’s the most concentrated work that I’ve done since I retired. However, big tasks still remain. If my room was out of control, our attic is even worse. I think that will be the next phase of my activity. It will probably keep me busy for the rest of the pandemic, and, when I get done, I will be ready to re-enter the world of the living. Below are pictures of how my de-cluttered room looks now. I hope I can keep it this neat and orderly. LOVE, DAVE

The Biggest Day

DEAR GEORGE: Around noon today we watched Joe Biden take the oath of office and deliver a stirring inauguration speech. Then an hour later we drove over to the UC Med Center and got our first Moderna vaccinations. Two life-changing events in the course of an hour. I can’t remember such a time in my life. Watching the inauguration I felt my whole body suddenly relax, and I realized I’ve probably been in a constant state of muscle tension for the last four years. My main aim has been to live long enough to see the end of the Trump presidency, and I can’t express how satisfying that was (though I know that many have the exact same feeling). I realize that the damage that Trump caused will last for years and even decades, but there’s that reassuring sense that the country’s course as been righted, at least to the extent that that’s possible. I also think it’s remarkable that we got our anti-Covid vaccine on the same day as the inauguration. That’s also a great relief and a concrete sign of hope for the future. Frankly, I was amazed that it came as quickly as it did. For me it means a return to the fitness center and my aerobic exercise classes by early March and many more public events that I’ve been missing by the autumn. Like Trump, the country’s recovery from the pandemic will likely take years, but the growing availability of the vaccine is an occasion for optimism and rejoicing. I think we’ll just sit back and enjoy this happy time. LOVE, DAVE