So many books, so little time

 I did  lot of reading this year with all the enforced, housebound idleness, along with taking many walks and doing a lot of gardening.  I read more than a dozen books, and these are the best twelve books in the order of importance to me.

1.  The Guns at Last Light--The War in Western Europe 1944-45, Volume 3 of the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson c2013.  

The military campaign that saved Western democracy for you and me, Normandy to the Elbe River.  Atkinson provides a masterful description of D-Day and the Normandy battle in the summer of 1944, and the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's last desperate gamble in December 1944, which was the biggest battle the US military ever fought. 

2.  Dead Wake--The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson c2015.

A fascinating book about the British luxury passenger ship sunk near Ireland by a German U-boat in 1915 during WWI, that almost brought the Americans into the war early on the Allied side.  Germany curtailed its unrestricted submarine campaign as a result for a couple of years while the war turned into a bloody stalemate, then renewed its submarine offensive and America entered (and won) the war.  Larson's description of the great ship going down in only 20 minutes and the agonies of the 1198 people, including 128 Americans, who perished in the water is spellbinding.

 3.  To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee c1960, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1961.  

Scout, Atticus Finch, Boo Radley, Jem, poor Tom Robinson, shooting the rabid dog in the street, who could forget this riveting book?  I think I read it in high school but rereading it 50 years later was like reading a brand new, poignant page-turner.

4.  An Army at Dawn--The War in North Africa 1942-43, Volume 1 of the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson c 2002, Pulitzer Prize for History 2003.

The campaign where the American army was blooded in Africa in 1942-43 in WW2 and started to learn its craft so it could meet and beat the fearsome German war machine two years later in Europe--the big show--in France and Germany and the Low Countries.

5.  Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution by James M. McPherson c1991.

A series of essays turned into chapters that in a clear and concise manner shows the reader how Lincoln saved the nation and won the war against daunting obstacle, and through emancipation turned the American Experiment into a worldly example, however imperfect, for other freedom loving nations to aspire to.

6.  The Day of Battle--The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44, Volume 2 of the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson c2007.

Once the Allies won in North Africa in 1943, they had to go somewhere to fight the Germans because they weren't ready yet to force their way onto the European continent.  They invaded Sicily, which knocked Italy out of the war, and then invaded Italy proper which had been occupied by the Germans.  For the rest of the war the Allies fought a diversionary campaign in this mountainous country, a bloody, slow slog described in a book, though it described an important theater of the war, was a slow slog to read.

7.  Bunker Hill--A City, A Siege, A Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick c2008

I thought I knew about Lexington/Concord and Bunker Hill, but of course there was a long prelude and a lengthy aftermath to these clashes which virtually decimated the small British army in America.  That army was besieged in Boston by 15,000 state militia members, Washington came to command it and turn the congruent units into an army and the British were forced to abandon Boston and take their loyalist friends with them.  The eight year Revolutionary War followed.

8.  American Predator--The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan c2019.

Israel Keys was a loner bisexual serial killer who travelled the country this century killing isolated couples in their own homes after casing them, roaming from his home base in Alaska across the lower 48, killing perhaps dozens of persons by invading their homes and murdering them.  He left caches of guns and cash in many states for future use.  I rarely or never read through the night but I did reading this gripping true-crime book.  Lock your doors before you start reading!

9.  The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan c1959.

I visited Omaha Beach last year on the 75th anniversary of D-Day (well, in March, the battle was in June). I just had to reread Ryan's book on the assault on Hitler's Fortress Europa when I got back. 40 years after I read the book the first time.

10.  Lincoln's Sanctuary--Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home by Matthew Pinsker c2003.

Lincoln's Summer Cottage is a house in Maryland at a soldiers' rest home that Lincoln went to during the hot summer months when he was wrestling with saving the Union.  He probably wrote a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation there.  A National Cemetery is nearby, and Lincoln often used to walk among the fresh graves of killed Union soldiers at night, to remind him of the cost of the conflict, startling sentries assigned to guard the premises when he came upon them.  He was shot at at least once by a would-be assassin while riding out, unescorted, to the cottage from the White House.  There's a lot of history in the place, and this book is a good accompaniment.

11.  Custer's Fall--The Native American Side of the Story by David Humphreys Miller c1957.

A short little book that has Indian impressions of the Little Bighorn Battle, copied down decades later.  Since I have read a dozen books about the battle and visited the site, I found the slim volume interesting but not overly informative. 

12.  The Life of Johnny Reb by Bell Irvin Wiley c1943.

Yawn.  This is considered a Civil War classic, telling how the average Confederate soldier lived, primarily through their letters home and contemporaneous news articles, orders and court-martial proceedings.  The author, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta when he wrote the book, was opinionated against the North and the book was racist in its bland descriptions of slaves and slavery but I am assuming that's how southerners thought about such things at the time.  It took me a long time to wade through it but I persevered given its classic designation, at least in the past.

The best reading I did this year, amongst several interesting books was reading the 3-volume Liberation Trilogy by Atkinson, all 2,277 pages of it.  It was truly literary history, an amalgam of history, biography, political analysis, battlefield descriptions and even literary allusions to the deep past going back in all the way to Greek mythology and The Aeneid.  It was (for me) a page turner, especially volumes 1 and 3, with some slow reading in volume which described the grinding war of attrition in "the soft underbelly of Europe, in Churchill's phrase.  The three volumes literally described how the Americans built up the combat readiness of their forces to be able to combat the fearsome German war machine and then to project American might into the European continent in one swift, surprising thrust onto the Normandy beaches, along with British and Canadian forces, and within the year save the world from fascism.

The penultimate day of the Year That Wasn't . . .

The Year That Wasn't, 2020.  We got slammed by the pandemic, for which we were thoroughly unprepared and remain so even now under the current "leadership," in early March with a general lockdown and it hasn't relented yet 10 months and 340,000 deaths later.

I was terribly sick on Valentine's Day and remained so for the rest of the month, but fortunately, in a brief window of "normalcy" in the time I had left in March before the sudden shutdown, I was able to complete the rehabilitation of my right eye (detached retina) which had necessitated four eye surgeries (two of an emergency nature) and two separate grueling weeklong face-down recovery periods, by completing yet another eye procedure of the affected eye.  My sight in that eye has recovered to near what I had before.

 Then the only real break I had from the daily grind of pandemic protocol was a three day trip to North Carolina in August, my "summer vacation," when I went to check up on a college buddy who had broken his leg and undergone surgery to repair it.  I received a call from a college friend whom I hadn't been called by in decades about our mutual college buddy Jimmy who every one of his friends from college (he has a wide circle).  I lived closest to him so I was the obvious choice by them to go down.

It's 360 miles to Jimmy's house on stilts on the Inner Banks down there and I drove down on a Sunday when traffic wasn't so bad on I-95, as this was at the height of the pandemic.  I got there in the late afternoon and we had a spaghetti dinner that he cooked and we reminisced about the old days in the seventies at CU-Boulder.  He graduated in five years and I, ahem, took eight years, being between semesters for four years at the conclusion of my sophomore year so I could winter in Aspen and summer in Nantucket during that delightful period in the life of a young man.

The first full day in Vandemere I helped Jimmy move a few small articles of furniture into his new house in Oriental and I went to the John W. Bond Beach Park in that town, a tiny strip of sand on a tidal river flowing into the Neuse River that empties into Pamlico Sound.  I had to wade out a quarter mile in mostly sticky mud underfoot before I got to deep enough water to dive into without scraping my belly and I dog paddled back like a log on the surface of the water.  I was fortunate when a boat passed by behind me in the channel that provided a tiny wake that I was able to surf up on the beach upon.  My trip to the beach.  That night I cooked chicken thighs for us that I'd bought at the Piggly-Wiggly.  Going to a Piggly-Wiggly in the south is a real trip.

The next morning I got up early to take pictures of the sunrise over the water and then we drove to New Bern where Jimmy was seen by a leg specialist while I went to a Civil War battlefield, where the Yankees rousted the Rebels from New Bern.  The town was an important east coast port at the time on the New Bern River, and the Union troops freed the artisan and tradesmen slaves there and occupied the town for the duration.

When the patient got out of lockup, we spent a half hour in downtown New Bern where we visited an old style hardware store which sold nails by the handful from steel bins and axe handles, in case your axe blade became dislodged from your old axe handle after thirty years use, and visited the town's tiny beach under the New Bern bridge.  I would call that spot Pigeon Beach.

Back in Vandemere we spent an hour, "happy hour," at a local bait store called Squidders, owned by the mayor's son, where we palavered with the proprietor and a few other good ol' boys and apparently we didn't offend anyone even though we're both from New York and certainly damned Yankees and probably effin Democrats too.  We're all Americans after all.

In the early evening the mayor of the town dropped in on Jimmy to see how he was doing in his recovery and, I think, to see who his visitor was and if I needed to go into quarantine since I was an outsider.  That night we ate fish as befits a town on the water.

I came back the next day, anxious to leave before I got slapped with a quarantine order somehow, a lightning trip masquerading as a vacation.  But I did get in a swim at a beach and visited a Civil War battlefield.  And that's what I did last summer.

The year so far . . .

 This terrible year is closing down fast.  I am very sad that google locked me out of my former blog this month aftercare than 13 years and over 1400 posts.  December and January are times to sum it all up.  (An early morning austere parkland scene in February.)

One movie seen in a movie house, Parasite.  One trip outside of a narrow swath of area bounded by the Capitol to the east and Merrifield to the west, perhaps a dozen miles long and two or three miles deep.  Countless, endless days spent in my house reading (13 books so far) or just living, on my property planting perennials or digging a trench to drain the water from my yard that new city-certified construction a half-mile uphill from me has caused to sit in my yard after each rainfall killing my mature trees, and on my porch watching the birds in my yard and the persons passing by on the sidewalk.  Since March my living area, my lebensraum, has been reduced to about 24 square miles.  When necessary I drive to: Safeway (2 miles), Giant (1/2 mile), Staples (across the street), the Post Office (3.5 miles), Home Depot (3 miles), the gas station (2 miles) or the bank (1 mile).  A couple of times I drove to the District (7 miles) to park and sightsee in the open air, seeing BLM Plaza and the police riot aftermath in June, and the holiday lights on the Mall this month.  To do my Christmas shopping I drove to Trader Joe's (1 mile).  I drove to a four restaurants with outdoor seating, all within 4 miles, to meet a single close friend or other a half dozen times.  (An occupying army in the District in June keeping the masses away from the People's House.)

That's it in pandemic times except for a trip I took to North Carolina to visit my college roommate, who lives alone, for three days after he suffered a compound fracture of his leg and underwent surgery.   I considered that my "vacation."  (A serene scene in Vandemere, NC in August.)

Plus I have previously described two salient memories of this year, attending a wedding on the new DC waterfront in January and seeing a small fleet of restored WW2 planes fly directly over my house on July 4th.  Also, before the Great Lockdown I did view the nascent Cherry Blossoms late in February and of course, I voted the very first hour that I was able to, in September.  I had previously driven to City Hall (1 mile) to research exactly how, when and where I could vote early.  And though it seems a receding, dim memory, I watched the entire impeachment trial last winter when we had our best chance to oust this crass, corrupt, inept president before the nation suffered over 330,000 largely unnecessary deaths to the pandemic due to him.  There are a few other things I did this year, before I got dreadfully sick with a respiratory illness plus GI issues for two weeks in February which aftereffects I still feel (hmm, I wonder what I had), I was returning to running and up to about 12-15 miles per week but I haven't run since I got sick.  There are a few things I haven't done in this Year That Wasn't, like drive the Skyline Ridge, use my senior pass at any National Park or see anyone on Thanksgiving, and a few things I did do such as see the early burgeoning Cherry Blossoms (before they bloomed fully, when Tidal Basin access was shut down by the District), attend 16 church services before all the (sane) church services went virtual, donate blood four times, and take many walks around the 'hood and one in the District where I walked by Ivanka and Jared's house.  2021, we're all waiting on you!  (Attending a wedding in the District in January.)

Churchifying

 I make it a point to attend at least a dozen services at my church, the Falls Church Episcopal, each year.  At each service I sit alone, listen to the scripture readings and pay attention to the sermon, which usually touches upon either the old testament or new testament reading or both, have a cup of coffee afterwards in the rectory and leave.  I have been attending services there for about fifteen years, after being away from the church for decades; I mainly went back when the congregation was reduced to a rump group of steadfast congregationalists who believed in the principles of inclusion and tolerance (forgiveness) who had their church stolen out from under them by the chicanery and wickedness of the former high priest there the charismatic Reverend John Yates who couldn't abide by the fact that the church elevated an openly gay man to bishop and the church started ordaining female priests.  After purging the church membership rolls of undesirables and figuratively having a midnight vote to leave the Anglican ministry and follow some homophobic bishop in Nigeria who reportedly was in favor of executing homosexuals, he squatted in the church property for seven years with his breakaway flock until the slow-moving Virginia court system finally threw him out.  The rump group of astonished, excluded true Episcopalians started meeting in the loft of the Presbyterian Church across the street after the secret vote, a forlorn, welcoming group of maybe a dozen congregants each week, to conduct services accompanied by a single piano recital while the church body slowly grew back in numbers.  I went to support them and just never left.  And God bless the Presbyterian Church which rented them the space for a dollar a year and were always gracious and accommodating for those long years while the true Episcopalians were wandering through the wilderness.  (TFC-E.)

I also like to attend a service each year at nearby St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Arlington because I like their service, it reminds me of the services I remember at St. Paul's in St. George on Staten Island sixty years ago, with their swinging smoke lamps and high board priest hats and I like the priest there, a former philosophy professor at an Ivy League school; I find him interesting.  (St. Peters.)

I also attend a service each year at a different Episcopal Church, and a service at a different denomination church (any protestant church will do, even close-minded evangelical ones, except that I don't feel welcome at Catholic Church services, where they don't allow anyone to take communion in honor and affirmation of our belief in Christ except for Catholics "in good standing" and they have other transgressions against the basic beliefs of Christians also, in my opinion).  And that is the extent of what I call my churchifying.  To paraphrase Yogi Berra, you can learn a lot by listening and by listening to a dozen or more scripture readings a year and considering their import and interpretation in the following sermons, I believe I have acquired a much greater understanding of the bible and the teachings of Christ than I had all of my life heretofore.  (JJ&D circa 1996.)

 It has also greatly helped me to accept the unfair and grievous loss of all three of my children, my flesh-and-blood, by cruel extra-judicial means (PAS).  Christ's teachings as revealed to St. Peter about forgiveness, and St. Paul's writings about character, have especially helped me to suffer through my loss pf all of my children through a better understanding of the travails I have been presented with, which are unfair but, well, life.  Then, after these fifteen attendances at church each year, I slack off because otherwise I'm pretty secular.  But this is the discipline I exert upon myself at the minimum.  Sometimes I'll pick up a few additional church services each year when I'm traveling or particularly troubled, such as when I attended a service at a centuries old Episcopal Church in Cambridge last year and I attended a further service at my church late last year to pray for several ailing people I know and also for our ailing country, and for some divine enlightenment to come to our megalomaniacal, utterly inept president.  (The Church of Trump.)

This year as has been my wont ever since I retired, I went to a dozen services at my church in a row and doubled up on services at other churches some Sundays until I attended a service on Ash Wednesday as my twelfth service of the year.  And then the pandemic December Seventhed u s and all (sane) churches closed in-house services.  But I got my perquisite number of services in, barely, so I didn't go crazy and do something uncharacteristic like attend a virtual service.  And I even attended a service of sorts this month, sort of, on the Mall earlier this month.  When I was doing my Christmas Tree viewing downtown on a past Sunday I passed by a pathetic band of a few dozen Trumpites with their MAGA hats and stupid Trump 2020 flags on the Mall with the US Capitol as a backdrop attending a Stop The Steal rally and open-air service conducted by a couple of evangelical preachers with a chorus of gospel singers at a Church of Trump on the stage set up there.  I listened to the proselytizing and politicizing for awhile on the outskirts of this gaggle of wretched true believers, watched them raise their hands to the sky in delirium and listened to the singing, and moved on.  I wasn't converted, anything but, but I suddenly realized I had attended a service, so I put it down on my internal list as church service number 16 for the year, one above the bare minimum I strive to attend each year.  Shallow, vapid and more than other-worldly but informative of sorts nonetheless and revealing to a depressing degree.  I mostly or somewhat detailed my other other-church service visits this year, January through early March, in my former blog.  (The National Cathedral.)

  The notable services I attended this year, beyond the comfortable services at the Falls Church and St. Peters, were an Episcopal service at the National Cathedral in DC with a friend who is a member there, and the full-blown mega-evangelical Anglican church that has arisen in Fairfax from the activities of the band of exclusionists that stole the Falls Church Episcopal property for seven years in an act of astounding hubris and despicable chicanery.  That service didn't even have Communion and was a self-absorbed hour of writhing frenzy by the congregation as soft rock Christian music played, the priests spoke to the masses with their hallowed discourse flashed in transcript form above them on two giant overhead screens and the successor to the now-retired Reverend Yates gave a sermon that was very charismatic and even included a reference to Tolstoy's Anna Karina.  All the flash and dazzle didn't move me though and I won't be back for more of that particular brand of self-centered and revenue-seeking spiritual inspiration.  (Falls Church Anglican.)

The Day After Christmas . . .

... was even colder than Christmas day.  But mail resumed today after the holiday (I didn't receive any mail on Thursday, December 24th), and I got a card from my BFF Erik from PS15R (Public School 15 R, R standing for Richmond County, which constitutes Staten Island, the fifth of NYC's five boroughs) in upstate NY, postmarked 12/19/20.  Seven days to travel a few contiguous states down the Northeast coast, a little over 300 miles, to get to me in VA, ain't America been made great by Trump?

I spoke with two of four of my sisters on the phone, leaving VM's for the two who were too busy to answer my Christmas calls.  I didn't call my brother because I don't think I know his latest throw-away cell phone's number and I have been addressed once too often by this conservative of the family in the subject line of an email from him to me as, "Hey Government A**Hole."  He needs help I think, and I particularly didn't appreciate his last email's closing line, "So, how are your kids?"  How wickedly clever of Jack, he knows I haven't had any information about my kids in a long time.  His brilliant Yale and Wharton pedigree shined through on those emails, late night shade thrown, some deep-in-his-cups rumination fer sure, but I found them offensive beyond remediation.

I spoke today with my college roommate who now lives in rural NC, to congratulate him on becoming a grandad this week for the fifth time, courtesy of his two children; we speculated on how many grandchildren I currently have because my three long-estranged kids, all boys, are now men in their thirties.  I have no doubt that my former wife, Sharon R. Lightbourne (nee Rogers), would NOT tell me a single thing about any of them, not even if one of them were to suffer a tragedy, get married or have a child.  The last time I saw Sharon in Virginia on a public street, when I happened to drive by her while she was walking a German Shepherd dog with her latest husband and all of his adult children, I parked, hopped out of my car and as she walked by asked her regarding each of our three children: if he was alive, well, married, a father and where did he live, and she stonily did not answer a single one of the 15 queries.  What kind of a person is she anyway, who wouldn't impart this basic information to the other parent?  This same question goes for her latest husband Jim, who easily could have blurted out to a heartsick father that his three children were all alive, at least.

The Christmas holiday is behind us now in this gruesome year and in a week we'll be in the new year, which surely has to be better.  Within the fortnight my middle child Johnny, the serious, sober one now flashing through his thirties, will have a birthday.  That day I'll be at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover as always at noon to procure lunch; maybe I'll see him then, or another child of mine, for the first time in well over a dozen years.  Although I'm a cynic, I'm also the-glass-is-half-full type of guy, at least until suddenly the glass is not only empty but completely broken into pieces.

The Current Day

 I spent time on Christmas Eve attending to last minute things for Christmas, like bringing the tree out of the garage, looking for onaments in the basement, shopping for milk so my friend could have a regular cup of coffee on my porch when she came over to exchange presents and giving out holiday cards to local friends.  Christmas day arrived bitterly cold with occasional snow flurries, and I righted the tree on the porch which had blown over during the night, set out a few ornaments to put on it (it was too cold to hang very many on it), wrapped a few presents and called all my sisters to wish them a happy holiday (one called me first).  (Giving my main man a holiday card at his street corner.)

The Turkish cafe and grocery outlet we discovered recently, Borek G. Turkish Mom's Cooking, was open and at 1 pm I met my friend there and we ate a hot lunch alone in the spacious dining area (it was too cold to eat at the tables outside); I had a delicious gyro on rice and she had an eggplant dish over rice which looked sumptuous, and turkish coffee, and we both enjoyed a pastry dessert and then we went to my house to trim the tree on the porch and exchange a present or two.  Post Office backlog created this past year by Trump's calculated machinations to steal the election having prevented any packages my sisters mailed to me mid-month from arriving yet if ever, the two of us enjoyed each other's company and opened our gifts in a biting wind.  (A delicious Christmas meal.)

It was by pure chance a bacchanalian theme for the gifts, my friend gave me chocolate, a bottled salsa concoction and one hundred proof bourbon, and I gave her chocolate, a jar of pickled herring in cream cheese and vodka infused with cherries and ginger distilled at the local distillery a mile from my house.  She was anxious to try the bourbon she had carefully selected for me after much research into various bourbon aficionados foodie sites, which talked of the smells and tastes and hints of fruits and such in the bourbon, which needed to be "smashed" in any case; and I poured her, and myself, an ounce of the amber elixir into two glasses neat and we took a taste.  (A cold Christmas.)

It burned in my mouth and was strong but good, but I drank my share of Jack Daniels back when it was 90 proof and I like bourbon and it went down easy; her expression however was one of alarm as she held the small bit of straight bourbon in her mouth for a very long time with increasingly narrowing eyes--she's not much of a drinker--and she obviously couldn't discern the fruit hues in it or the hints of chocolate or whatever past the fiery effect of a mouthful of strong bourbon, and I asked her if she wanted to spit it out over the railing of the porch into the sleeping flower bed, 'it might wake the perennials up," but she swallowed it and conspicuously didn't finish the swallow of bourbon that remained in her glass.  She seemed crushed that after all her research it was terrible, but I reassured her that I liked it.  (The cornucopia of Christmas.)

We took a short walk in the increasing cold and deepening gloom of the late afternoon, and after a few more pleasantries and a very short and standoffish holiday hug (the pandemic you know) she drove home. The muted and truncated celebration of Christmas being over in The Year That Wasn't, I policed up my porch, returned my tree to the garage and the few ornaments to the house, and contemplated the coming year, which just has to be better than the year just past.  (This year's tree.)  

The current year

 It's Christmas time, a time to see family, normally at least.  Except in times of pandemic.  And in cases of Parental Alienation System.  (Yesterday.)

Hope springs eternal for changing these anomalies.  A vaccine, even though available doses are way less, for now, than promised, will ameliorate the unchecked nature of the raging deadly coronavirus and when the next administration institutes new measures such as mask wearing and contact tracing, the pandemic might finally start to be subdued after a ten-month false or non-start.  I have hoped to see my three children, now all in their 30s, ever since the last time I saw or spoke to any of them around mid-decade after the turn of the century.  Every holiday or birthday when I am in town, continuing on to the present, I have lunch at the gourmet pizzeria near where they grew up, detailing my intentions, and describing the lunch afterwards, in my former blog dcspinster, but not one has ever showed up. (End of February.)

This year I was at the Lost Dog Cafe pizzeria on their three birthdays and most holidays--the restaurant wasn't available for inside seating most holidays after mid-March until recently, but I won't eat inside a restaurant during these times of infection and sickness, so I order a pizza to go from the parking lot, receive it a quarter hour later, and remain for a time afterward to see if anyone who could conceivably be one or more of my sons shows or even my daughter-in-law shows up, but no one did so far as I know.  Que sera sera.  The restaurant is closed on Christmas so it won't happen tomorrow.  Or maybe ever but that's all right; although I love each of them as any father would love his children, I have come to know their characters through their unbelievable and unjustified actions in casting out their father and his family based upon brainwashing by their mother and her paid coterie of family wreckers as adolescents. (Mid February.)

I want to wish a Merry Christmas to JJ&D, and Laura too, wherever she may be, and the grandkids.  Next year will be better.  (First week of January.)

Past Trees in the District

 This year's traipse around the District to view Christmas Trees was a little bit of a bust, I was blocked from seeing the National Tree by the Secret Service and all the inside trees in the museums and hotels were inaccessible or non-existent this year due to the pandemic, except for the old stalwart Norwegian tree inside the desultory, nearly-empty Union Station.  (2020.)

But memories of past trees viewed around the district abound in my mind, most recorded on pictures if I can locate them on my computer, associated with many wonderful wintertime 3-5 mile runs at noon from my workplace, often accompanied by running friends. Last year's clear winner in the b best tree category was in a place I had never stopped in before to see if they had a tree, the Library of Congress.  (2019.)

Several trees were twinged with political associations, like the Occupy movement of several years ago when the 99% were protesting the fact that the 1% own most of the wealth in this country, and around the world.  After a few months of public parks becoming tent cities, the police moved in and moved the protestors out, and years later nothing has changed although life goes on and every year I trim my own tree, although not always in my own house.  (2015.)

It has been interesting over the years to view the different trimming of the same trees, including the growth of live trees such as the Peace Officer's Tree outside the DC Courthouse.  And to reflect upon the changing lineup of running partners I had over the year, from Rhea to Leah, all fading into memory by now as they all moved away, stopped running or just drifted away after I retired.  (2017.)

Christmas Trees in the District

 At least once every December I traverse the Mall to see the Christmas trees and lights there. On a moderately warm Sunday recently I went to the District, actually found free, unrestricted parking and set off on my annual quest, bicycling down to the Ellipse using the Capital Bikeshare system ($90/year, a free bike for 30 minutes from over 300 docking stands, unlimited daily usage) but I was disappointed in not being able to view the National Christmas Tree because the Secret Service Police had it closed off for some reason.  (O Canada!)

Proceeding east towards the Capitol from the White House, I passed by the Willard Hotel and the Trump International Hotel, but both places, which customarily have beautiful trees set up in their lobbies for any passerby to come in and see, restricted entry this year, due to the pandemic undoubtedly, to registered guests only.  However, there was a pretty tree set up outside in front of the Willard Center on Pennsylvania Avenue, although the avenue itself, usually adorned with a multitude of Christmas decorations on outside shrubs and dressing up window fronts, was notably spartan this year.  (The tree outside the Willard Hotel.)

Four old standbys did yield their traditionally beautiful yuletide trees in this Year That Wasn't, the Canadian Embassy, the DC Courthouse and the Capitol west lawn showing off decorated outdoor trees and the usual indoor tree inside Union Station was up and trimmed.  I liked the Peace Officer Tree on Indiana Avenue outside the DC Courthouse the best, it featured a blue theme as its ornaments are all memorials to local fallen police officers and its crowning star is police uniform blue.  The tree on the veranda outside the always welcoming Canadian Embassy was pleasing in the extreme as always.  The Congressional Tree before the Capitol Rotunda was tall and exquisitely trimmed and the Union Station Norwegian Tree stood lonely and forlorn inside the cavernous terminal mostly empty of people and bereft of most businesses and all other holiday decorations.  (A blue-themed tree.)

The museums were all closed until further notice so I couldn't enjoy the holiday trees customarily set up in the Library of Congress, the National Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian Castle, the Navy Memorial and Log and the underground African Arts Museum, nor could I enter the usual food courts around the Mall such as at L'Enfant Plaza or Penn Quarter which have pretty trees each year otherwise.  Still, the Mall was nice to be on on a warm day and I even paused for a few minutes at a hybrid Pro-Trump Sunday evangelical service and Stop The Steal rally on the Mall, attended by a pathetic knot of about fifty Trumpites waving their stupid blue Trump 2020 flags and stretching their hands beseechingly towards the heavens whenever the name of their cult leader was invoked by the preacher.  Next year will be better for viewing the holiday decorations for sure, it couldn't be any worse, and come January 20th, hope will be restored for America with the incoming change occurring starting that day.  (The Congressional Tree.)

Privacy

 A friend entered my address into her I-phone recently to get directions to drive over to visit and was shocked to see a curb-view picture of my house pop up--with me sitting on the porch impatiently waiting for her.  That last part isn't serious, I'm joking, but there is a man sitting on my front porch in the picture that appears like he could be straight out of Deliverance. Can you hear the Dueling Banjos playing?

It's me, I remember the time I was sitting on  my porch surveying my domain when a car drove by with a google-earth logo painted on it which had a long upright rod attached to its roof with a rotating camera atop the apparatus.  It got by before I had time to react and give it the bird.  I value my privacy and I certainly don't want my ex to know what I'm doing or where I am at any particular moment.  But interestingly, my face is obscured in the image, which makes me wonder what kind of fantastic technology is in use here that can automatically blot out every face in the millions of pictures they must have with people in them.  I assume the faces of animals aren't obscured, although if a person were walking a dog and the dog was recognizable, a pretty simple inference could identify the dog walker.

It's a good thing my other girlfriend wasn't sitting on the porch with me at the time.  There is all kinds of inadvertent mischief that can arise from this--affairs exposed and families broken up, burglars thrown in jail, porch package thieves caught in the act, UPS drivers out of their area on frolic and detours.  

I don't think the photo is flattering in the least, the person sitting around looks like a sluggard without a care or a clue, and it's pretty easy to see that it's me given that the address is identified in the picture.  But I want to clear up one other possible misimpression--that is a cup of joe in my hand and not a can of beer.

Five

 We used to be five. A family, three boys and a mother and father.

Then the divorce was filed in a sneak move, using spring break to remove the children from the home and going to her father's compound 500 miles away and calling from there to tell him to move out or she wouldn't return with them and when the children flunked out of school for for non-attendance, it would be his fault.

That was the tenor of the bankrupting, time-sucking (years) court litigation that showed him that Mother Knows Best when the two contesting litigants showed up in American domestic law court. The first time the court-appointed psychologist speciously stripped the father of all visitation ex parte for no account (this charlatan clashed with him because the dad wouldn't kow-tow to this preening Captain Bligh with a cracker-jack-box prize degree), with the first opportunity to appear in court in response a long ten weeks later, the father thought that was a devastating and soul-sucking time (70 days!) to be unable to see or talk to his children (she and they didn't answer his calls), but now, thanks to her Parental Alienation machinations, over a dozen years without seeing or talking to them, makes that 70 days mere chump change.

Oh yeah, the dad got plain vanilla visitation and full joint legal custody of the kids at the end and the judge termed her actions "unconscionable," but law is the minimum of morality and she was the underlying floor, sunk eyeball deep in the swamp.

That's western domestic law. Any man is a phone call away from disaster, and the children are the dangling hostages for the basest of players.

Four

 Three kids. Plus at least one is married, or was, several years back, so I guess the number is now four. Jimmy, Johnny, Danny and Laura, JJD&L. (Welcome to the family, Laura.)

JJ&D haven't spoken to a single Lamberton in over 15 years (that is a hallmark of PAS, to smear all the relatives on the side of the cut-out parent with the same lies and notions of unworthiness that the estranged parent has been painted with). These children, when their wills were being overborne as tender minors by their covertly narcissistic mother, in my opinion, a form of child abuse according to some, were not responsible for their actions then but now that they are all in their thirties their continuing actions speak to their characters as the people they are. They take after their mother obviously. (She looks like such a nice person.)

Jimmy is sort of shiftless and unfocused, a bit of a user, he went to the best magnet public high school for science and technology in the country, Thomas Jefferson in Northern Virginia, but he didn't get their degree, rather after four years they in effect discharged him with the third tier of a Virginia public high school diploma, the equivalent of a shop degree as near as I can figure because he slid through his four years taking advantage of the chaos of my and Sharon's quarter million dollar multi-year divorce. He never went to college. His mind works like this: On his 18th birthday he legally changed his last name from mine to hers knowing that I would eventually find out and be hurt by it he hoped I am sure, and another time he came into the neighborhood and knocked on the neighbor's door to say hello but not on mine, knowing that months or years later it would inadvertently be mentioned to me by them and I would be, he hoped,  hurt by learning that he eschewed to knock on my door when he made a point to come to visit in the 'hood. (He looks like such a nice young man.)

 

What was it that Melania Trump's dumpy jacket said when she went to the southern border a few years back to inform herself on the state of caged children down there--I Just Don't Care? It's been so long since I saw or heard from or about any of my children (over a dozen years) that I  doubt that I'd recognize any of them if I walked past them on the street. Jimmy was the only child of mine that was ever held by my father, just before he died at age 61 of lung cancer in 1986,  and I'm sorry that Johnny and Danny didn't have the honor to feel the embrace even as babies by that once-strong, capable man; I think that probably Jimmy would express Melania's heartless refrain--I Just Don't Care--about having been in his grandfather's arms. (Grandad, Dad, Auntie Kate.)

Threesies

 One movie. Two salient memories. Three children.

That's the Year That Wasn't. A vaccine is on the way. And when, blessedly, the new year arrives, three weeks in a new president will start his first full day in office and things will finally start to be addressed in our (formerly and future) great nation after four Years That Weren't.

The movie sucked and I started getting sick during it anyway, as sick as I've ever been. The two salient memories were brief but intense for being in the Year That Wasn't, one during the pandemic and the other just before the scourge arrived full-blown on our our shores although it was already striding the earth. The three children, well, they just Aren't.

Jimmy, Johnny and Danny. JJ&D. Here's three more words, Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), very, very real and striding our western world.