Books and More Books

 Good news. The Laurence McKinley Gould Library at Carleton College in Northfield, MN (my father went there) is now reopened to fully vaccinated members of the community, for them to meet in, peruse the shelves and enjoy. (Get your shots.) 

Every year I contribute to the James W. and Barbara F. Lamberton Memorial Book Fund and this year the fund purchased the following books, among others:

All-American Rebels: The American Left from the Wobblies to Today by Robt. Cottrell;

Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masciline Victimhood by Casey Kelly;

Disability: A Reference Handbook by Michael Rembis;

Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our addictions by Michael Moss;

Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy by Adam Jentleson;

LGBTQ Health Research: Theory, Methods, Practice;

Neoliberal Nationalism: Immigration and the Rise of the Populist Right by Christian Lopke;

Queer Studies: Beyond Binaries by Bruce Henderson;

Slaves Among Us: The Hidden World of Human Trafficking by Monique Vera;

The Decline of Marriage in Nambia Kinship and Social Class In a Rural Community by Julia Pauli;

Transgender Body Politics by Heather Brunskell-Evans; and 

Tyranny of Greed: Trump, Corruption, and the Revolution to Come by Tim Kuhner.

Couldn't you just dive into any or all of these books? But do I detect a certain dystopian predilection to the list?

Covid Wars II

 I was perturbed by my potential exposure to Covid last weekend when I spent an hour in close proximity, albeit outdoors but maskless, with my gardener E when I learned at the end of the hour that he wasn't vaccinated. With the highly transmissible and deadly (to the unvaccinated) Delta strain sweeping the country and the world, and breakthrough cases on the rise, I felt vulnerable again, just as I felt for most of 2020 and in January and February and I didn't like the feeling one bit. 

I worked so hard last winter to try to beg borrow or steal a shot and protect myself and others, and now that shots are easy to get (you can literally get a shot anyway anytime anywhere practically), why wouldn't anyone, everyone go get a shot? It protects us all. Could I get infected and be a carrier, although asymptomatic, and possibly infect others?

I have been doing a modified version of self quarantining since the weekend, wearing a mask whenever I'm around people, indoors or out. I had been not wearing a mask when talking with people outside but I'm through with that for now and I will be asking people regularly if they're vaccinated. I always wear a mask in stores anyway, where I live it's just what most everyone does as protection for others because, apparently, there are a lot of total jerks out there who aren't vaccinated for mostly selfish and ridiculous reasons.

I attended an outdoor Episcopal service on Sunday at a church I go to only occasionally, usually only once a year, so the folks there don't know me. It was an intimate service, very pleasant, set on a playground type cement floor outside in a small hollow down some steps from the front door leading to a basement entrance. There were 18 folks there for the hour-long service and besides being an outsider I was set apart because I was the only one who wore a mask. I feel like we're at the entrance again to a dark, forbidding tunnel again that recently had been brightly lit except that the lazy or scared or ignorant or conspiratorial unvaccinated people have doused the lights.

Covid Wars I

 My lawn cutter, whom I regard as a friend, had tens of thousands of dollars discharged into his checking account by his employer a couple of years ago, when the firm changed its retirement benefits,  emptying his job-related 401K and destroying its tax-deferred status without informing him (adequately) of  the consequences.  It might have been an ESL problem.  E recently asked me to help him get the money back into a tax-deferred state after so long a time.  I'm no expert but I suggested using the money in an annual Roth IRA purchase, to restore shielding the money again over time, year after year.

I asked for and received Mutual Fund forms and information for opening an IRA and last weekend, I spent an hour on my porch with E, sitting bent over a Little Tykes table as we pored over the forms and prospectuses in close proximity.  At the end of the far-ranging discussion, I happened to ask if he was vaccinated.  I was stunned when E said, "No."

I was also a little angry, because I had visions of becoming a breakthrough case of infection because of my lengthy close exposure to him even though I am fully vaccinated and it was outdoors.  If I had known he wasn't vaccinated at the outset of the hour, I would have worn a mask.  I told him he could probably throw out the beneficiary forms made out to his children as, because of the virulent Delta variant, he could be dead by the end of next week.  He said that variant was somewhere "out west" and not around here.  I assured him that wasn't necessarily true and that it was highly transmissible and well as being very deadly.  99% of all Covid deaths currently were of unvaccinated people, so without sufficient time to file and publish purchase forms, his estranged wife would get it all.

E said he would get vaccinated that week.  We'll see.

Blood

 Earlier this month I donated blood for the 3d time this year, the 132d time lifetime. INOVA loves my O positive blood.

I received a $10 Walmart gift card for my effort, the third such reward gift card I have received in the last three years for donating blood. Next winter I'll put one gift card in each birthday card for my three estranged adult sons and send it to the best address I have for each one, two in NC (their mother lives there and my sons are nearby because they are all, obvious to me, still in thrall of this, in my opinion, covert narcissist with pathological lying tendencies) and one in Richmond, I think, if he and his achieving wife are still married.  This last child I have never had an adult address for so I just send his card to my house addressed to him in care of me, and then I throw it in his box in my basement which he can have if he comes to get it or upon my demise unless the executors of my estate pitch those three boxes (one for each of my children) in the trash first.

I hope the cards will benefit each of them in some small degree. I also hope that my overarching message to these three special people will resonate with them to some degree that volunteering is beneficial to society as a whole.

 The last I heard from or of any of them was in 2007 when the youngest one was ready for college and he wrote to me ("Dear Peter") asking me to provide for the full payment of all his tuition and fees for the four years he attended, which I did. I was sad he didn't let me know if he actually graduated, although I know full tuition and all fees for eight full semesters were paid for over the next five years (I guess he took a year off, and hopefully he finished up by the end of his eighth semester). Basically he also went to two years of prep boarding school on money my mother left to me to be used for his benefit--which his mother sued me for (she was eventually assessed costs and penalties by the court of almost $50,000 for bringing forth unjustified and harassing litigation) and then used it anyway to get him out of state his last two years of high school because, I believe, she couldn't or didn't want to handle the little darling anymore and so she packed him off without even telling me about it; and then never has a single word been said by any of these three boys (now men) to any Lamberton in over two decades expressing any appreciation or acknowledgement in any form for my mother's (their grandmother) generosity towards them as they each received about a $100,000 fund from her in custodial accounts to be used for their benefit.

The USMC Museum

Last month I visited the USMC museum in Quantico for the first time. It featured a schoolchild art exhibit on the theme Welcome Home. This entry by Jessica Wu, grade 12 in N. Quincy High School in MA was judged best in show. Excuse the surface glare. To me this surreal piece is haunting and gripping because it can be interpreted in different ways. It can be seen, as in almost all other entries, as a joyous reunion of returning or triumphant vets with their families. It could be so here, as the vet stands in the open door, his lower body dissolving into his cast shadow as his wife holds his picture to her bosom and sheds a tear. Her young daughter sees the entering spectral image and reacts with joy. Will the woman turn and fling herself into his arms in the real world? Or is something amiss here, is this a dream of the woman and will he ever return in the real world? I scoured the background for clues, looking for the equivalent of a Gold Star on the walls. The 2 pictures over her left shoulder offered no clue. The clock is frozen at 3:05--what notable event in history or in the past occurred at 3:05 pm? (3:05 am?) The calendar is circled at the 12th day of the month. Why? Are those flip-flops on the welcome mat, or peace symbols? Where is the boy who could be associated with the basketball, as the girl can be associated with the doll house? Is that a leggo or a transformer toy with the other two toys, and why is it there? Is this a picture of loss, or of a return to "normalcy?" I think that it's a great piece.

Here is another, more representative piece in the show, which came in first in its sub-class, submitted by a 7th grade schoolboy if I remember correctly. It shows that the day is joyous, as the returning Marine rushes to embrace his wife but also that times are tough in America as the spouse is in a wheelchair. She is crying, tears of joy no doubt. Or perhaps it's his mother?

Displayed prominently at the museum, along with scores of other weapons, is a tommy gun, the most iconic American personal weapon of WW2, instantly recognizable around the world, the 45 calibre Thompson submachine gun with a 20-round clip. It was designed by US officer John T. Thompson for WW1 to clear a trench of the enemy, a "trench broom" as he called it, but it wasn't patented until 1920, too late that war so it was marketed to law enforcement agencies and adopted with gusto by the gangsters of the Prohibition era. Entering WW2, American services had no other effective submachine gun so they purchased as many tommy guns as could be produced according to military specifications for combat. It was an expensive and time-consuming weapon to make, with metal-milling needed for the firing parts and the barrel, and polished wood used for the stock. It later came out with a 30-round magazine. It was replaced late in the war with the "grease gun," a 30-calibre submachine gun easily produced with stamped metal parts and a wire shoulder stock. But there was no replacing the image of the venerable Tommy Gun in American arms in WW2; think Sgt. Saunders (Vic Morrow) in the 60s TV series Combat.

 Check out this cover from the Saturday Evening Post periodical from October 1942, showing an American scout pushing through the jungle, probably on Guadalcanal, looking for Japanese positions while cradling the iconic 45 caliber tommy gun.

Sigh

 Recently I checked in with the Trumpite side of my family; after radio silence from 2016-2020, I call a particular relative on the far side once or twice a quarter. We usually pose one political question to each other (from our last conversation--which upcoming month do I think Harris will take over the presidency from a doddering Biden vs. do you actually think Trump won?) and do minimal sparring during the 20 minutes of conversation.

This relative has exactly the same educational background as me, graduating from an east coast prep boarding school and a liberal arts college, with subsequent very heavy exposure to the field of law. Yet somehow it's yin and yang, with the two touching but never overlaping anywhere apparently.

Among other chatter, we agreed to disagree about the Texas state legislative body--I learned that the irresponsible Texas state dems were taking a taxpayer paid two-week vacation elsewhere instead of doing their jobs, and my relative learned that the state repubs were busy enacting voter surpression laws and overthrowing popular will (democracy) instead of, for instance, addressing the dangerous state of their power grid which killed hundreds of Texans last winter.

I told my relative that I heard on MSNBC that 99% of the 6,000 COVID deaths in June were of unvaccinated people and I was imparting this news because I cared about my relative. My relative told me that 4,000 of those deaths were due to other causes and were labeled as COVID deaths because hospitals and doctors get paid extra for so labeling them.

I learned that this relative had already had COVID and was therefore immune for life whereas my relative learned that antibodies to COVID reinfection fade after a few months and getting vaccinated is the best way to avoid a possibly lethal or debilitating (long haul) reinfection.

After learning from my relative that the administration is trying to get everybody vaccinated for "unknown reasons" with unknown effects upon their bodies, we agreed to talk next month. Two Americas.

Hauling the tank in . . .

They're still drifting back in, battered and worn, two decades after they went missing. The little green army men, played with last by my middle son Johnny in huge battlefields ranging across the back yard and beyond, before the long, bitter divorce and the long, tragic estrangement.

 

I found a wasted, kneeling sharpshooter in March, washed to the surface by a heavy rain. Sitting on my iron chair in the back yard, I lazily looked across the lawn and noticed a small splash of greenish blue color at odds with the verdant hue of the lawn. The maimed soldier, missing his right leg at the knee and a hand, was recovered and brought home again, washed off carefully and placed in Johnny's box in the basement, my last remembrance of the sweet lad (now an apparently hate-filled man in his thirties).

Last week I found his battle mate, a grenadier, where he was making his last stand out beyond the back gate in the area we used for a garden, buried under a compost heap for twenty years which I am currently digging up. It's bittersweet to welcome these long-lost troopers home, because their commander and his progeny are forever gone.

Over the weekend I came across debris from the desperate battle, an olive-green side panel of a little green army men tank consisting of sprockets and a partial tank tread, blown apart during the battle and degraded further by the forces of time and space during the long years following the fracas. This detritus was also recovered and brought home, too far gone to be useful even to be cannibalized for spare parts but turned into a memorial to long-past battles that forever reside in the memories and psyches of the participants. Some affected persons never fully heal, like the mother who won't even tell the other parent if the three children are well, have wives or children or are even alive, the children who nourish hatred in their stony hearts for the father and his entire family, or the father who has no progeny as he ages into his seventies and wonders what was the point of marriage and fatherhood or even life; all those years changing diapers, watching perambulating youngsters, coaching even soccer, working decades to bring money home to the family; mostly pointless apparently.

Sharon Rogers Lightbourne

 Happy Passover to my love, I love you forever because you are the one woman I trust absolutely.

It's also the birthday of the mother of my 3 children, and I've forgiven you, Sharon Rogers Lightbourne, for ruining the lives of our three children, which grieves me to the depths of my soul because their childhoods were destroyed by you and your coterie of paid mercenaries like Joe Condom, Bill Reichardt, Meg Sullivan, Victor Elion and others I still don't know about, during the multi-year quarter-million dollar divorce during which their immature wills were overborne by you and your minions as stated.

You always implied or pleaded in your lying sworn representations in court, in my opinion, that I would go to hell, and if so I'll see you there.

The New Way To Donate Blood

This week I donated blood at INOVA, for the 130th time lifetime but it was more difficult than normal. When I arrived for my appointment I was asked to sign in and then directed to a bar code placard on the counter and told to use my phone to download the questionnaire and fill it out.

After I stood stupidly before the cardboard cutout design for a minute waving my phone around in front of it, a technician came over and told me to take a picture of it. I snapped a picture of it. Shaking her head she took my phone, did something with it and handed it back to me with a questionnaire pulled up on it.

I laboriously answered the 80 questions on my tiny screen with my fat fingers, taking much more time than using the old pen and paper method. When I finished I pressed Continue and the screen asked if I wanted to Print It. Since I don't have a printer currently and I already know the answers, I pressed the Done button. That caused the entire questionnaire to vanish and I couldn't get it back.

I was called into the exam room and the tech tapped around on her computer for while, obviously searching. She asked, Where is your completed survey? I shrugged and showed her the picture on my phone, below. Shaking her head, she started asking the questions one-by-one and entering them, saying that it was a new system and confusing for some in order to mollify my increasing mortification. She didn't look anything like my 3d grade teacher trying to teach me cursive writing, maybe it was the facemark that ruined this mental image for me.

When we got to the exciting section of the survey, Have I paid for sex lately, slept with a man ever or gotten a tattoo recently, she looked tentatively at the open door and asked if I wanted her to close it before I answered further.

I assured her that my life was so humdrum that all the answers to the entire survey were typically normal except that I had been abroad in the last three years (England, Fance and Eire for 10 days in 2019) and I had received a vaccination in the last 8 weeks (dose #1 of Moderna a fortnight ago). So I passed and a finger pricking and an arm piercing later, I departed leaving a bag of crimson gold behind.

O+ blood, very desirable since it is the universal donor type. I get blood donation solicitation calls weekly from the Red Cross and monthly from the Cincinnati Chapter of Blood Support, the latter because I donated blood in the Cincinnati airport once during a layover over a decade ago. No matter how many times I assure these phone volunteers that I will not come to Cincinnati to donate there again since I live a thousand miles away, I can't get off their Call list.

Now to learn how to download a survey (or a menu) on my phone when presented with bar code and how to save it when necessary. 

The lost platoon

I was perambulating around my backyard today, looking to see if any of my springtime perennials were poking up, when I noticed a small flash of bluegreen resting flush amidst the grassy stubble and dead leaves. Knowing it had rained recently, I suspected it might be a small upheaval surfacing from twenty or thirty years past. This had happened before and it always saddened me when it did.

You might know that I haven't heard from any of my three boys in about 15 years, the divorce you know. I used to have on a shelf a half dozen weatherworn little green army men, a leggo piece and a small child's toy plastic grenade that had been buried or lost in the yard and surfaced after hard rains. My middle child's toy pieces from long ago, Johnny's, now 34; he loved to conduct army battles with toy figures in the yard digging little trenches and riverbeds for the opposing troops. I hadn't recovered a returning missing toy soldier for a couple of years now. There in the backyard was a missing warrior returning to base decades later. This breaks my heart each time.

I'll wash this little trooper off, missing a limb and with his rifle broken, allow him to dry and then put him in Johnny's Box in the basement where he can rejoin the rest of the lost platoon. I placed the rest of these found little toy pieces in that box a year or two back, all that's left of Johnny's presence in my house now, having taken them off their shelf of remembrance as I moved on in not having any children anymore. The three of them as good as died twenty years ago when their mother drove them away to her father's compound in Cleveland during spring break under false pretenses, so she could file divorce papers and achieve first, and ultimate, as it turned out, possession of our three children despite the full joint legal custody our divorce decree ordered after several years of litigation. Their immature minds had long since been turned against me by her by then.  It's called Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) and it's real and pernicious, ruining lives.

I hope Johnny, and Jimmy and Danny, are well.

Doodles

Current day Republicans are an odd breed.  Their chief characteristic would be hypocritical.  I'm trying to practice charity here.

The second impeachment trial of the "former guy," as the current president refers to him as because he is a charitable man, was a foregone conclusion.  That seven GOPers found him guilty was staggering, like a vote of No Confidence in a parliamentarian system that will topple the government and force a new election within six weeks as in England, but our constitution created an impossible burden to remove a president of a two thirds vote of the senate so it is unworkable.  A violent insurrectionist went free.

Some day the dictionary will include a picture of the first guy in this toon next to the word liar.  It will include a picture of the second guy next to the word traitor.  And it will include a picture of the third guy next to the word idiot.

Then shall he answer them, saying: Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.  And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.  Matthew 25:45-46.