Another Week: Number 81

This was a fairly steamy, sticky week. Rainstorms alternated with sunny heat and the dewpoint hovered around the icky level.

I still have not run my central air conditioning this season. At this point, the experiment has turned into something of a challenge — and I do like to experience the surrounding atmosphere instead of being sealed off from it. Sunday morning at 3:30, hoots and hollers were echoing off the school. I looked out my bedroom window and saw lights and people laughing around a picnic table on the next block.

Returning to bed, I scrolled through photos of the house next door on Zillow. My neighbors put it up for sale shortly after the drive-by shooting next door to them three weeks previous. I’m not sure where Americans can move to be free of gun violence. Japan, maybe?

The outer fan blades of Hurricane Beryl touched us in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, and the day itself was cloudy and still. I laid on my couch reading about human isolation and nakedness while Pandora played Jimmy Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel No. 5” and Sidney Bechet’s version of “St. Louis Blues.” It was kind of perfect.

I watched many hours of women playing tennis at Wimbledon via DirecTV’s cloud VCR. The agony and the triumph spoke to me about attitude. One of the commentators pointed out how the sport’s unusual scoring system allows momentum to be turned at almost any moment if a player can put just a few points together. Initially, I expected Coco Gauff to win the tournament — but then Emma Navarro beat her. So, I began rooting for Navarro because it’s nice to see a billionaire’s daughter finally getting a chance.

Around this week each year, an electric trimmer is used on the yews in the front yard, which always get ratty by mid-July. Adding this chore to watering, weeding, edging, and mowing meant I spent seven total hours on yard work Friday, and I felt it. But it always looks nice for four or five hours after I finish, and I won’t have to do most of it all over again for six whole days.

Amy and I usually attended the annual St. Lucy Festival a few blocks from our house. This year, I went with my brother-in-law Kevin, who was serendipitously gifted with meal tickets for the Friday fish fry. The fried cod was tasty, the Eddie Butts Band was too loud, and the loudspeakers in the Meat Sweepstakes tent were also too loud. Kevin bought me some raffle tickets, and I bought him a beer. We sat in the Seating Tent a talked for an hour or so, then called it a night.

On Saturday, to beat the heat, I made a cold rice salad and Molly Baz’s excellent shrimp cocktail to bring to my Mom’s for dinner-and-a-movie night. Just as we began to eat, the first reports of a shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania started showing up on my phone. We tuned to CNN and watched the national mayhem ritual gear up — tidbits gradually emerging, the video being shown over and over, and various meanings being fitted to the event within the hour. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

In no time, Donald Trump Jr. and J.D. Vance were posting online to take advantage of the turmoil for political gain.

Driving home, lightning and thunder were rolling in from the northwest as I stopped at Walmart to pick up some ice cream.