Social Security

Bureaucracy. I'll be reaching the maximum aggrandizement age of my Social Security benefits within 90 days (after you reach your full retirement date, every year you prolong taking benefits increases your ultimate benefit by 8 percent, up until a certain age when the increase stops, so you want to start receiving your benefits immediately upon that date without any delay) so last week I dialed the SS number, to give myself plenty of time (3 whole months) to set this well-earned and long-delayed lifetime train in motion.

Good thing I started early in the morning, with a fully charged phone. I called and was greeted by a phone menu which took four whole minutes to complete, whereupon the machine prompted me, "In a few words, describe what it is you want, such as the location of my nearest office or an explanation of my benefits."

"I want to start receiving my full benefits," I announced.

The machine intoned, "You must speak with an agent about this. All agents are currently busy. Please call back later." Whereupon the malicious robot dumped me out of the system and the connection went dead.

I hit the Most Recent Call button on my cell phone and dialed back. After sitting through the same 4 minute phone menu again, I was prompted to speak about what I wanted and I slightly changed my phraseology but I received the same curt Busy reply and I was dumped out of the system again.

This same exact sequence happened two more times, with me subtly changing my "few words" of describing what it was that I wanted, with the same hangup result.

The fifth time, almost half an hour after I started this ordeal of trying to contact the SS administration, I broke through the menu because that time, my short statement of desire seemed to resonate with the machine (we connected finally) and it announced that I would have to speak with an agent about that and the sentient idiot said, "Please hold. An agent will be with you shortly. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. We are sorry for the delay."

Thus started an interminable period of listening on my speaker phone to annoying phone music, punctuated every three minutes by interjections of how important my call was to them, or how sorry they were for the delay, or how I could go to www.socialsecurity.gov and enter that on-line moraass instead (go solo), or that I should have my SS number "handy" (as if after decades of life I didn't have that number imprinted on my brain) or that an agent would be with me "momentarily."

I wondered how I could send out for pizza while my phone was otherwise occupied. Then I started worrying that my battery would run out before a real person picked up.  

Almost two hours after I started this project, a nice agent came on the line and listened to me express my heartfelt desire (I want my money!) and she said that I would have to speak to an agent from my "local office" about that. She stated that she would set up an appointment for an interview.

"In person or on the phone," I inquired. "On the phone of course," she said and she put me on hold for ten minutes during which time I wondered why I had to speak to a "local" agent on the phone instead of any old agent anywhere who was in front of a computer.

The nice agent came back finally and told me to write this down. "I have scheduled you for an appointment with someone from your local office," she said.

"It will be on Monday at 11 am . . . ," she continued and then paused, for dramatic effect, I guess. Or maybe she thought I was slow with my pencil or my hand was shaking.

Meanwhile I was thinking, Hot Damn! This is Thursday and I can wrap this up by early next week. Or maybe it'll be some Monday early next month in February, which will still leave me plenty of time in case I have to show a document like a birth certificate or maybe some sort of proof of citizenship like my old, tattered draft card. Then the nice agent, seemingly enjoying her pause, dropped the other shoe.

". . . on March 14th," she continued. "Make sure you're available on the phone at that time and on that date."

I hope she didn't heard my jaw drop. Two months hence. The agency had just used up two months of the three month lead time that I had given myself to undertake this signup procedure, which I thought was wildly excessive but I guess not. I thanked her, leafed ahead two months in my weekly calendar book and carefully wrote down the appointment in red ink, one which I shall be sure not to miss.

The Past Year VI: Summer

2021 was an epic failure--the worst year I have experienced except for the half decade at the start of this sorry century when that covert narcissist, in my opinion, my former wife Sharon Rogers Lightbourne  harassed me with lawsuits to divorce me which used every dirty scumbag scheme her unscrupulous or worse divorce lawyers and enablers could conjure up to murder the childhoods of my children in their avarice and zealotry to destroy me psychologically and financially including directing my then-minor children to sue me over a "fiduciary" matter and turned my children irrevocably against me (which was classic PAS--a form of child abuse).  She was assessed almost $50,000 in penalties and costs ultimately by the courts which turned off the litigation spigot finally.  (This is the last page conclusion of the appellate decision years later which finally ended the litigation where my ex-wife with her coterie of "professionals" tried to throttle the life out of me by "unjustified" and meritless appellate litigation using our minor children as surrogates in James B. Lamberton et al vs. Peter W. Lamberton.  No wonder the boy changed his last name to hers on his 18th birthday, to get rid of the stigma of such an unfavorable decision.)

This past summer was the best of a miserable year, or at least the least bad part of a terrible year.  I went to Colorado on a business trip for a week which I enjoyed as I was able to see a couple of freshman dorm mates and meet my grand niece whom I had never seen.  Since I was in Louisville for my business, I went on a short journey down memory lane looking at some of the houses we had lived in.  (In Louisville I drove past the house we brought our oldest child, James B. Rogers, home to from the birthing hospital in Denver in the eighties. I planted every green thing you see in the yard. On December 30th it survived the massive conflagration which burned down a third of the town and most of the adjacent town to the south, Superior, although it obviously would have suffered insidious and thoroughly impregnating smoke damage like all the other houses in town west of Main Street.)

I went on a trip to North Carolina to see another dorm mate where I attended a service at a Black evangelical church which was very uplifting to me, witnessing such wholly pious and fervently religious believers.  We also went sailing, serving as crew in the harbormaster's boat judging racing sailboats in a series of races in the harbor.  (And the winner is . . .  the boat with white sails.)

I visited the USMC museum a few miles south of here in Quantico, which I had not been to before and is well worth seeing.  (The Douglas SBD Dauntless Dive-bomber, the American carrier bomber which sunk all four Japanese carriers it encountered at the Battle of Midway.  This plane, hanging from the museum's ceiling with its speed-dampening perforated air brakes deployed, in effect turned the tide in the Pacific War on that day in June, 1942 and doomed the Japanese empire.)

I visited the spectacular Glenstone Gardens in Maryland, scoring a scarce ticket largely by luck.  (Check out the giant horse's head statue behind me on the hilltop made out of flowers growing out of a hollow steel trestle.)

I attended a minor league baseball game in Maryland which was relaxing and fun, especially after a year when there was no minor league baseball whatsoever.  It cost $8 for a ticket and we could sit wherever we wanted to.  (The Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf, home to the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, is a pleasure to watch a baseball game in.)

A friend and I spent a lot of time hanging out on my porch feeding the birds and eating and occasionally having an afternoon drink, just as we had done the summer before, and also taking walks.  The pandemic never seemed to get better despite the ready availability of free vaccinations, thanks largely to the selfish, unpatriotic 40% of Americans who refused to help us all out by getting vaccinated, ensuring that America could never get to herd immunity and leaving us all at risk of disease and possibly death.  (Pizza, a little bourbon and birds to feed.  How idyllic, eh?)

I took up tennis again after an absence of four decades.  It wasn't pretty but it's getting better.  And I jumped cold into pickle ball in a big way, which is both fun and frustrating.  The only people I can play with are seniors who are all better than me, having played together for several years. I lose a lot, a whole lot, which doesn't improve my forever pandemic and soon to be post-democracy gathering gloom.  (I cold-turkey one day ditched the ping pong grip and went to a continental grip.  It helped.  And just this week I received a composite touch paddle as a gift from a friend so I could ditch my wooden paddle and hopefully improve some more.)

The Past Year V: Late Winter

There aren't a lot of days of winter as the year runs out, less than two weeks before the next year starts.  The more lengthy period of winter of course starts a long time before, in January lasting into March as we fled, happily, from 2020.  It gradually but steadily became apparent that the promise of 2021--a sane president, a competent vaccination rollout, more social intermingling, a strong sane stock market, everybody getting vaccinated so we reach herd immunity, an end of the pandemic?--was a chimera and 2021 turned out to be worse, lots worse than 2020, if that was possible.  (Walking to pickle ball on the footpaths I discovered between houses mid block as I found convenient street parking spaces a few blocks from the crowded courts, which used up nearby parking.)

But the last few days of 2021 had certain pleasures in and of themselves.  I enjoyed the physicality of playing pickle ball four times a week, a couple of hours each time, if not the result because I'm not on the level with my fellow seniors who have been playing for a couple of years or more and these players are not shy about crushing anyone.  Pickle ball is a four-player game, at least at my age, and I am death, due to my inexperience, to any partner who has to cycle through playing with me as I am on the losing end 90% of the time and it is very frustrating.  But December was an extraordinarily temperate month, right up to the end, so I "enjoyed" my punishment right to the end of the year.  (The Christmas season is a time for giving as well as receiving so I donated double red blood cells on Christmas Eve, my fifth blood donation last year.) 

Christmas was a pleasure this year as I didn't spend it frozen on my porch exchanging presents as in 2020, instead I spent it luxuriously and quietly with a friend as we trimmed the tree I brought over, had bloody marys, enjoyed omelets for brunch, and gave special presents to each other (she gave me a real pickle ball paddle to replace my starter plywood $10 introductory model and I gave her a zip-up fleece jacket which she seemed to like).  Will we be able to stroll down a crowded aisle in a crowded store next Christmas season albeit with masks?  We'll see.  Get vaccinated and boosted you selfish, unpatriotic unvaccinated ignoramuses out there and maybe we'll get there.  (A pleasurable day.)

On the first day of winter in December I went on an enjoyable holiday lights perambulation around the District.  It's always a pleasure to see the festive decorations and gayly trimmed and lit trees even though this year certain outstanding venues were closed to tourists like the Library of Congress, the Botanical Gardens and the Trump International Hotel.  It is still holiday season with the MLK holiday coming up on Monday so Happy Holidays to all and maybe I'll see some or all of my children at the Lost Dog at noon on that day for lunch.  Wink wink, boys.  (The beautiful tree at the Willard Hotel.  I was getting the stink eye from the concierge behind me as the way I was dressed, I obviously wasn't a guest.)

A Father's Love

 It's well known that the holiday season is a depressing time for persons who feel a sense of loss, as I do.  Two decades ago my three children were torn away from me extra-judicially by their mother in a classic case of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), which is a form of child abuse in many people's opinion, including mine.  She had plenty of help from the "professionals" of the sort who hang around domestic-law courtrooms, not good enough to get honest work themselves but more than happy to pick up court-appointed work where they can practice their evil ways like "uncovering" repressed memories and slating their anti-male biases as they help in overbearing the wills of tender young children.

In my case, my three boys have birthdays that come hard and fast following the Christmas/New Year week, one in January and two in February.  Happy Birthday sometime this month, middle child Johnny, I feel I hardly know ye since the last time I heard from you was when you wrote to me in 2006 asking me to provide full payment for your four years of college tuition and fees, which I did.  Hey, you're welcome, not that you ever thereupon said thanks or so much as invited me to your graduation.

I'll be at the Lost Dog Cafe at noon on your happy day for lunch, just as I was on New Year's Day, come join me!  With you and yours, if you want, or you alone, we'll start out finishing the rest of our lives one day at a time going forward.  Shed the ugly image of you now being a full-grown hateful man that cuts out an entire side of his bloodline, all the Lambertons beyond your two brothers who harbor the same hatred and spitefulness inside of them, for no reason that's particular to you or them, or at all.

It might continue to be a fool's errand for me to be there, since no one has ever shown in all these years, but a father's love for his children is never extinguished.  Those other two boys, now men, know I'll be there next month for lunch on their birthdays too.  See you there!  ;-)

The Past Year IV: Books

 In 2021 I read 18 books, the most I'd read since before I retired five years ago.  I'll list the dozen books below that had the most impact on me.

Fifteen books were histories of some sort, focusing on WW2 and the American Revolutionary War mostly but I also read a book on the Black Plague of the fourteenth century, the French and Indian War and the Civil War. One book was a play--I try to read a play a year--one book was a biography of an artist with lots of pictures of his drawings, and one book was literature, not fiction but literature as I try to limit any made-up story I read to be a classic as long as I only read one tale per year.

1.  As I lay Dying by William Faulkner, #1930.  I love Faulkner.  Everybody should read Faulkner. Such scathing disapprobation of the racial inequities in the South, but also such love for its uniqueness. And its strong women, what wonderful depictions of them! There's subtle humor that's occasionally laugh-out-loud in them, like when the poor white trash family in this book can't afford to take an adult family member to the doctor after he breaks his leg, they try to fix it themselves by making him a cast out of concrete. But first they have to persuade the store owner to break open a 25-pound bag to sell them 10 cents worth of cement, which the proprietor finally does to get this smelly out-of-town riff-raff out of his store. Having a cement cast does not do the injured family member any good, it turns out. I suppose it was worth a try, in a canny sort of way.

2.  The Conquering Tide: War In The Pacific Islands 1942-44 by Ian W. Toll, #2015.  My Dad fought in the Pacific War with the First Marine Division at two horrific battles and was training to be in on the invasion of the Japanese mainland in 1946, with its projected one million American casualties, before we dropped the bomb which finally caused beaten Japan to surrender already.  Sorry, but not sorry at all about that.

3.  Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific 1944-45 by Ian W. Toll, #2020.  The Americans ruthlessly and relentlessly brought the ruthless and implacable Japanese to the peace table just before the Russians' cynical, opportunistic and cheap land grab garnered a prized Japanese island for themselves and communism.  The ensuing Cold War would never have been the same.  The section on the peaceful occupation of Japan itself made the book fascinating and worthwhile.

4.  The British Are Coming! The War For America 1775-77 by Rick Atkinson, #2019.  Volume One of the Revolution Trilogy by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the Liberation Trilogy (WW2, ETO), which I read last year.  I can't wait for volumes two and three to come out.

5.  Stars In Their Courses, The Gettysburg Campaign June-July 1863 by Shelby Foote #1994, 1963.  This is a "book" lifted straight out of Foote's magisterial Civil War Trilogy and deposited whole as a history of the Gettysburg campaign, with all of its star-fated actors, Lee who lost the war on the afternoon of Pickett's Charge, Meade who steadfastly defended his high ground that couldn't be taken but just as steadfastly refused to come out of his redoubt and attack a defeated foe and therefore consigned the nation to another two years of bloodletting, Reynolds who died after setting the Union line in its winning position, Ewell who hid behind the words "if practicable" in Lee's order of the first day to attack the reeling enemy and knock him off of his dominant position and therefore failed to unhinge the Union line while it was still possible and assured the loss for the Confederacy of the key battle in North American history.  I tread the massive trilogy back in the nineties and still remember it as a great read, even if written from a Southern POV.  Every American adult should know something, or more, about the Battle of Gettysburg, it is where slavery was doomed to die in North America.       

6.  The Pacific Crucible: War at sea in the Pacific 1941-42 by Ian W. Toll #2012.  The desperate first two years of WW2 in the Pacific, at least until the Battle of Midway changed the course of WW2 in five minutes on June 22, 1942 when American dive-bombers from the US carriers Enterprise and Yorktown  arrived simultaneously over the attacking Japanese fleet by happenstance from different directions and battle groups and sank three of the four Japanese carrier in the enemy's taskforce in the most momentous five minutes of WW2.  Japan never seriously regained the initiative again during the war, just as Nazi Germany never seriously regained the initiative again after the Battle of Stalingrad was fought to a standstill in 1942, before the Russians annihilated the Sixth German Army in January 1943.

7.  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams #1954.  This play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955.  Who could forget the machinations swirling around Big Daddy's fortune or the tension between his favorite son the alcoholic and sexually ambivalent Brick and his wife Maggie.

8.  The First Wave: D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in WW2 by Alex Kershaw #2019.  Extraordinary heroism at work on the five invasion beaches and beyond by men who were the tip of the spear that pierced the Third Reich and destroyed fascism in the world, at least until it reared its ugly head here on home ground during the last enabling, potentially fatal presidency.

9.  Das Reich by Max Hastings #2013.  The bloody tale of the blood-soaked trail left across France by this elite SS Panzer Division as it made its way from garrison duty watching the coast in Southern France to the battle in Normandy after D-Day.  Traveling mostly at night to avoid Allied planes in the daylight, it took 10 days to arrive at the battlefield as it stopped to exact terrible retribution upon innocent civilians every time it was attacked in any fashion by the French Resistance enroute--spending German fury over losing the war on the hapless French population.

10.  1776 by David McCullough #2005.  The book dragged on a bit as it covered a bewildering cast of colonial characters while it described the important events of the fashioning of our nation like Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill and finally Washington extracting the British from Boston by maneuver rather than battle.

11.  Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the US Navy by Ian W. Toll #2006.  An interesting account of the nascent growth of the US Navy from gunboats guarding the rivers and coastline of thenited State to a few warships (six) able to challenge British warships in the proper one-on-one situation and to project American power overseas, especially against the Barbary Pirates.

12.  "A Few Acres Snow" The Saga of the French and Indian War by Robert Leckie #1996.  A French minister consoled the French king who was lamenting losing Quebec and the upper Mississippi Valley to the British during this war by describing the loss as a few worthless acres in a winter wasteland when France still controlled rich sugar-cane islands in the Caribbean.  How did that work out for the French?

The other six books were hardly worth mentioning but I did glean a few factoids and interesting tidbits from each of them, I suppose.

The Past Year III. Autumn.

 In the fall, I went with a friend to Great Falls National Park, to Skyline National Park, and to horse and wine country in Virginia, and we saw some pretty vistas.  The Potomac rapids below Great Falls are sightworthy.

The views from Skyline Drive, either eastward or westward, are worthwhile.  Looking eastward.

Western Virginia provides pretty vignettes.  Even on a grey day.

Halloween has become a big unofficial holiday around here and we took several walks around town to look at the spooky decorations.  I also drove to my sister's house in Ohio for Thanksgiving.

The Past Year II. It sucked or maybe life just sucks.

It was a terrible year.  It's bound to be a worse year.  We were all stupid as December wound down in the dreadful year of 2020 thinking that 2021 would of course be better, we elected a competent president, the vaccinations were rolling out and come January 20th things would start proceeding normally as in the past, solving seeming insoluble problems as Americans do, like you know, landing on an enemy-held fortified continent on D-Day and saving the world for democracy, landing a man on the moon, stuff like that.  But then January 6th happened that threatened and still threatens to end democracy in the world, and the cuckoo-heads won't get vaccinated so we can't get out of this covid soup.  On a personal note I picked up pickle ball in August and maybe I'm playing above my level but I continue to lose 9 out of 10 games despite my continuing improvement, and it is terribly frustrating to go along with not having any children, not knowing my grandchildren, losing a third of my 401K and owing another third of what's left on April 15th to the government in taxes due to a disastrous conversion and, well last year sucked even during attempts at recreation and this year will suck just as bad or worse I'm convinced (I went 0-6 today) and maybe life just sucks.  (Wanna win?  Play against me.)

I tried my hand at political cartooning.  Whaddaya think?  This is the twice-impeached, disgraced, unfit former president plotting a coup with the squirrelly Pillow Guy.  (You can be my Albert Speer in my dictatorship, Mike.)

Was everything last year terrible? I liked my trip to Colorado in August to check on my rental house in Louisville.  And then it came within a hairsbreadth of burning down on December 30th as half the town succumbed to a raging, wind-driven wildfire, and it undoubtedly suffered smoke damage and possibly scorching, I just don't know yet.  The holocaust leveled the row of houses a mere two blocks away.  (At my sister's house in Denver I discovered on her mantle this cross-stitch piece which I had stitched 40 years ago and given to my aunt in Colorado.  My sister acquired it upon my aunt's death a few years back.)

I did take a two-hour hike in Rocky Mountain National Park.  That was a short bit of relaxation and beauty in the vast Saragossa Sea that was 2021.  (A high mountain meadow in RMNP.  The friend I was hiking with pointed out that a wildfire in the mountains came down from up high a few years back and came roaring across this meadow and caused the evacuation of his town, Estes Park, although the fire didn't reach the town that time.  Since he is president of the board at the town's sewer plant, he could not leave, as he had to stay and try to save that public utility in the advent the wildfire consumed the town.)

The Past Year I

 2021 was sucky and I'm not sorry to see it gone in the least.  In fact, it was horrible, from the Maggot Mob's murderous and seditionist riot at the Capitol in its first week to the acquittal in its penultimate month of the teen misfit thug Kyle Rittenhouse, who as a 17-year old in 2020 illegally possessed and transported across state lines a weapon of war, an AR-15 assault rifle, to a protest march far from his home and used it to gun down three protestors, killing two of them and maiming a third, thus the blubbering pork-faced killer became a l'il darling of the right.  (Crocodile tears.)

I made three trips of any note in 2021, all of them notable but only one of which was worthwhile, a business trip to Colorado.  I drove to North Carolina in June so I could visit a friend, swim off a beach and attend a black spiritual church with said friend.  (Jimmy and I attended a service at Pierce Chapel at the A.M.E. Zion Church in Oriental.)

The service at that church was an enlightening experience as I had never attended such a spiritually inspiring service before.  I also did some sailing and swam in a couple of pools so it was a refreshing trip although I was happy to get home after a few days.  (Driving home from NC I stopped in at the USMC Museum at Quantico where I saw displayed the weapon my father carried during his two campaigns in the Pacific, the single-shot M1 Carbine with its 15-round magazine.)

I flew to Colorado to inspect my sole retirement investment vehicle I had set in place to provide a modest stream of income, a rental house in . . . get this . . . Louisville, Colorado.  Yes, the town that half-burned down on the penultimate day of last year, as in, the day before yesterday.  (Thursday's wildfires which burned a third of the town to the ground came within two blocks of my house.)

I saw some people while I was there, my sister in Denver and my niece and her husband there and their daughter, plus two college friends, and I conferred with my property manager and had lunch with my realtor in . . . Louisville.  For relaxation during this business trip I fit in a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park and also around the Independence gold mine in Victor, and I enjoyed a brief stop in a casino up on Cripple Creek.  (My sister in Denver was nice enough to let me stay at her house on my business trip.)

For Thanksgiving I made a whirlwind trip to Columbus, Ohio, driving there on Thanksgiving day to enjoy a festive repast with my sister there and her family.  Then I helped her with some moving of things and sorting for a couple of days and drove home on Sunday.  (On the day after Thanksgiving, my sister and I enjoyed a delicious lunch at the original City BBQ restaurant in Columbus, my favorite barbecue joint anywhere.)

That pretty much sums up this past year when we didn't get out of the pandemic thanks to the selfish, unpatriotic 40 percent who eschewed vaccination.  Aside from the three aforementioned trips, I made it into the District three times on a perambulation around the Tidal Basin in the spring to see the Cherry Blossoms and two Christmas Lights traipses in December, and I went for a drive in the fall on Skyline Drive with a friend.  (Skyline Drive.)

And by the end of the year I had lost a third of my 401K in the stock market and incurred a tax liability of well over a hundred grand in a disastrous and ill-considered conversion, which unbeknownst to me at the time could not be re-characterized thanks to the GOP's tax giveaway in 2017 to corporations and the 0.01 per cent when they changed the conversion rules so that the middle class could pay for their largess to their donors.  Hello 2022, what do you have in store for us that will equal or be worse than the last dreadful year?  (Amerika.)

Old Christmas Lights

 As I said in yesterday's post, the Trump International Hotel is actively excluding the public this month from its lobby, even though it is a public space since the property, the Old Post Office Pavillon, belongs to the federal government and is leased to the failed businessman.  Here is the Christmas Tree inside the space from 2019.

I was very disappointed that I couldn't get into the Library of Congress this year to see its tree, despite presenting myself for admittance on two different days.  Once the library was closed to the public per its current posted hours (closed Monday and Tuesday) and the second time, a Wednesday, I was told that reservations were required on that day to be admitted, a dictate I was told, on the spot, that came down "that morning," particular to that day for undisclosed reasons.  Here is the tree from 2019.

The Peace Officers Tree is a live tree outside the DC Courthouse that is short, a transplant of recent years, from around 2017 I believe, when the live tree formerly there was suddenly gone.  Here is a picture of it from perhaps 2015 when it was tall and robust, before it vanished, to be resurrected later in the form of a newly planted tree.

The National Tree used to be a more spectacular display than its current version.  Here is the tree from around 2012.

The Christmas Lights

(The Union Station tree.)  Every year I venture to the District to perambulate about to see the beautiful Christmas Trees there. I used to sometimes do it at night, running, sometimes leading a group of runners from the Ellipse ( the National Christmas Tree) to Capitol Hill (the Congressional Tree) and many of the points in between. Indoors, outdoors, most are beautiful. Those years when I was injured I used a Capital Bikeshare bike to get about to see whatever trees I could find, as I did this year in two trips to the District earlier this month.  (My tree.)

The Great Pandemic made it hard these last two years, many of the indoor venues were closed up tight, especially last year, and many outdoor sites were scaled back.  But I continued the tradition and here are some of the pictures from this year.  (The Peace Officers Tree.  Each ornament represents a local fallen police officer over the years.)

The most beautiful tree was the tree inside the Willard Hotel.  I really wanted to see the Library of Congress tree, which I saw in 2019 and considered then to be the most beautiful tree I had ever seen in the District, but it was closed on the Monday when I went this year and I was denied entry on the Wednesday when I went when it was supposed to be open.  I was told on that day it was "Reservations Only" although there was absolutely no line and they hadn't made that qualification apparent on the Monday when I had talked to them about when I could come back.  Too bad!  (The inside Willard Hotel tree.)

A great tree every year is on the outdoor plaza at the Canadian Embassy where it overlooks Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol.  It's across the street from the FTC, where I worked for a quarter century.  (O Canada!)

The Congressional Tree on the lawn on the west side of the Capitol is always a great tree.  The Capitol backdropping it had a fresh coat of whitewash around its lower level, due to the murderous Maggot Mob that desecrated the People's House earlier this year as they tried to usurp our government as they pushed the Big Lie to invalidate a majority of the presidential votes cast last year.  (A wreath-like holiday decoration on the facing of the Smithsonian Textile Museum.)

There was a creche on the Ellipse, along with the National Tree and a small tree for each state or territory, and not much else. No Menorah or Santa's Shop or electric train running around the National Tree.  It used to be so much better.  (Meh.)

There were indoor trees at Union Station (no Norwegian mountain village this year), the Navy Memorial, the Hotel Monaco, the Smithsonian Castle and nice holly decorations around the enclosed central courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery.  New this year was a wreath-like decoration fronting one of the Smithsonian museums.  (The Smithsonian Castle Tree.)

There were stacks of coal heaped outside the Trump International Hotel where a sign warned away anyone entering who wasn't a guest or a gust of a guest.  This hotel inside the Postal Pavillon is leased from the federal government and is in effect public property and in years past has had a pretty tree, just as it probably has this year.  (The Congressional Tree.)

Meanwhile, I can't wait for this year to end.  The Boulder County wildfire spawned by 100 MPH winds even as I write this is burning up the very area where my rental investment property is.  I'll have to wait and see how that comes out.  One last kick in the ass by 2021 as it goes out?  (The interior courtyard space at the National Portrait Gallery.)

How Bad Was 2021?

 Well, it ain't over yet. But it's been bad, terrible in fact. And we came into the year with so much expectation that it would of course be better than 2020, it just had to be. But it was an unfulfilled expectations, majorly so.

First came the murderous right-wing riot at the Capitol on January 6th. The maggot mob want us to live under their thumbs and so they engaged in sedition, majorly so. They already turned the USSC into a radical far-right body with three stolen seats that doesn't even purport to represent the vast majority of Americans. How did seven Catholics get on the high court, with the holy see's perverted viewpoints on a woman's right to choose what's best for her own health and future (and her equal place in our society) and the separation of church and state. 

Trumpers claim, it's my body so I don't have to wear a mask (and I'm free to infect the rest of you with covid or delta or omicron) or get a vaccination so the rest of us can  get out of this covid miasma we're stuck in with the virus having free rein amongst the unvaccinated to bring variants and breakthrough cases to the 60% of us patriotic Americans who have rolled up our sleeves for ourselves and our loved ones but also for the common good. Then how can they exclude women from exercising control of their bodies in their choices for themselves. Effin illogical hypocrites.

This year has been the worst I have experienced since my disastrous multi-year quarter-million dollar divorce early this century which cost me extrajudicially my three children through the real phenomenon of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) perpetrated, in my opinion by their mother and her unscrupulous coterie of "professionals, whois I believe a covert narcissist. Look up covert narcissism, it'll make your blood curdle. Only that half-decade was worse than this year has been. And next year and the year after that, and 2024 might be progressively worse yet. I fear for America and think it might break up into several nations as a result of the tyranny of the minority (the less populated, less productive and crazily evangelical  hinterland) that the likes of Mitch McConnell and his ilk have forced upon the majority for decades now through quirks in the constitution such as the electoral college and each state having two senators so California's teeming millions can be negated in the Senate by Wyoming's few hundred thousands.