Posted August 28, 2023: This blog, Time and Place, is my respectable journal. The one where I try to write in complete sentences and post photos that are good-enough. I’m an obsessive recorder of life so I have other journals and calendar books and diaries and big ones and small ones and half-filled-in ones. Upon my death they can all be buried in the back yard…EXCEPT the blog book comprised of all my posts for some defined period of time. Because possibly I’ll have one curious great-grandchild who will not be afraid of words and pictures on paper. (Yeah, I’ve said that before–it’s called ‘whistling in the dark.’)
When this chapter began, spring 2022, I was so over the pandemic. Lucky me, it hadn’t affected my life very much—I just read that introverts fared much better during the lock-down months.
And being a big believer in shots, and a medium believer in masks, I wasn’t particularly afraid.
So, summer came and Celia, Sara, and I did a magical six weeks on the continent of Africa. Later in the fall, Teresa and I visited South America and Cuba. In between and this year, I hung out in California, New York, South Dakota, New York again, Arizona and Minnesota. And friends dropped in and by and over. I did a living room makeover, worked on my book, worked at North Fourth. Now for a while, granddaughter Patricia and her wonder dog Luna are staying with me. Which I find rather pleasurable, surprising even myself.
And for the icing on the cake, there’s some slight hope…slight but actual hope…a slim possibility…an unlikely gift to the universe…that our ex-big man and present sleaziest human being running for office (though there’s big time Republican competition at the sleaze category) will be indicted. Until that happens I remain embarrassed that we have someone running for president who’s the equal in pure loathsomeness to Putin, various warlords around the globe, friend Kimmy in North Korea, military killers in Myanmar, idiot-head in Hungary. What a mess we all are in. But my apocalypse is like Station Eleven’s where, it’s true, most people die, but at least a traveling Shakespeare troupe survives—mine doesn’t have slimy monsters either.
And I am living with the world’s smartest dog, who is the boss of me, and I love her.
