July 16, 2024: God Bless America sign on 56th St. in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Another Week: Number 82
I have heard about the lives of small swift birds.
They dazzle with their colour and their deftness through the air.
Just a simple glimpse will keep you simply standing there.
Legendary journeys made on fragile hollow wings.
The night skies rich with whistling each and every spring.
And then there’s the day we look for them and can’t find them anywhere.I’ve been told that it’s just the way life goes.
– Cowboy Junkies, “Small Swift Birds’
Sometimes life has an aspect of magical realism to it and you start to wonder whether you’re imagining the whole thing.
My entire “moving forward” project so far has consisted of going on some occasional walks and establishing a couple of places to sit. I have two decent chairs in the living room, and I have spent many hours tweaking my backyard. Amy and I used to sit out there and bliss out in lounge chairs watching and listening to birds — especially hummingbirds.
This seems like the sort of cheap therapy and continuity I need, so I have designed several garden beds to be irresistible to hummingbirds, with petunias, salvias, cleomes, a Butterfly Bush, and Mexican Sunflowers. Some money and quite a bit of effort has gone into this scheme, and it looks fairtly attractive to me.
But there have been no hummingbirds. There was one at my feeder back in early June, but after gulping sugar water for a day and a half, it disappeared.
Oh, well — so I have Jazzberry® petunias. They’re okay, I guess. And I still have all the other birds that eat seeds and worms. Most of them seem to be getting used to that guy in the yard.
On Sunday afternoon, though, as I was mentally lamenting hummingbirds and frowning at my ratty bed of Maltese Cross plants, I noticed a tiny bird systematically working the spent blooms. It stayed a few minutes, then whizzed off out of my yard and across the street as if late for an appointment.
The next day, I was staring at my two Wendy’s Wish salvias, wishing the hummer would find them instead — and, as if by magic, the bird reappeared, drinking from those flowers. Moments later, it was chased off by a second hummingbird, and for ten or fifteen minutes, I enjoyed the same dogfights that had made us laugh so much last summer. (Hummingbirds are fiercely territorial.)
Somehow, this seemed like a lesson in faith. The thought crossed my mind that imagination is a muscle.
On Saturday, I bought a Hallmark card along those lines for my niece Katie, whose high school graduation party was held Saturday afternoon at her home on Camp Lake. Toward sunset, my brother-in-law Kevin indulged me by bringing out his guitar, and we traded tunes in front of his tolerant neighbors for a couple of hours. It was a good workout.
This week I walked 5.63 miles.
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Trump assassination attempt / Republican National Convention
With former president Donald Trump having been shot Saturday evening at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, all news coverage Sunday was devoted to endless replays of the attack. The anchors, analysts, and reporters searched for explanations and meanings all day long.
All I know is that — after teetering on the brink for the past decade — our country came about a quarter-inch from being thrown completely up for grabs.
The Trump campaign and its inner circle immediately began trying to turn the horror into a political advantage. One of their main talking points was that Trump’s miraculous dodging of a bullet was a clear sign of divine intervention — that God himself had obviously spared Trump’s life as a sign of His preferred candidate in this election. Later in the week, during the pensive first movement of his interminable acceptance speech, Trump himself declared, “I had God on my side.”
A couple of things about this:
First of all, “divine intervention” seems to coldly disregard Corey Comperatore, the Trump supporter killed by the shooter. Did God not find his life worth saving? Would it be beyond God’s power to make the gun jam, so no one was hurt?
Secondly, keep in mind that Adolf Hitler survived at least 42 assassination plots, in some cases quite miraculously.
Third, regarding the notion that surviving an assassination attempt automatically ordains one the winner of an election, remember that Theodore Roosevelt miraculously survived a shooting in Milwaukee, declared himself “fit as a bull moose,” and went on to lose.
Speaking of Hitler, on Monday afternoon, the first day of the Republican National Convention just up the road in Milwaukee, Trump chose Ohio Senator J.D. Vance — who once suggested Trump might be America’s Hitler — as his running mate, reportedly at the insistence of Donald Trump, Jr.
So, thanks to Trump’s overexcited idiot son, someone with that level of wildly unreliable judgment could soon be one heartbeat behind a 78-year-old fast food fan.
I watched the convention every night but didn’t see much of it. Instead of lending their platform to the torrent of lies and nonsense, MSNBC’s anchors mostly cut away from it to interpose facts and mockery. This was surprisingly entertaining, and laughing at the insanity felt refreshing.
On Thursday, after God knows how many reprises of 1984’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” — and following vein-popping presentations by Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan, Trump walked out in front of his own Elvis lights and recited the story of his shooting in an oddly subdued voice and lifeless cadence. Then he spent about a half hour on random ad-libbed shout-outs to people like Kid Rock and “the Hulkster.” Finally, there was a third half-hour of dark lies and grim threats drawn from his regular rally routine.
In the end, the whole bizarre week ended up in the same broken-record brain dump Trump’s been babbling for years. “Drill, baby, drill!” — despite the fact that the United States already produces more crude oil than any country, ever. “Hannibal Lecter” — a movie reference from 1991. And on, and on, and on.
Even Trump’s delegates were checking their watches.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
On Thursday night before Trump’s monologue, I had my mom and my sister Karen watch Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — directed by Mike Nichols and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis.
Based on the 1962 play by Edward Albee, it’s a psychological wrestling match. Liquor is poured continuously. Taylor emasculates her husband Burton. They both terrorize their late-night guests Segal and Dennis. Fertility, finances, and the politics of academia are all wielded as weapons. The writing is razor-sharp. The characters are both vicious and vulnerable. The black-and-white cinematography is art.
Karen had never seen it, and I thought she would enjoy it. She considered it a masterpiece.
Our mom had seen it when it was released and didn’t enjoy it much then but appreciated it more this time.
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