Untitled Pandemic Journal

June Zoom and Gloom

June 1, 2020 (Monday)
I, Mary Langer Thompson, agreed to keep a journal for 30 days for the National Women’s History Museum. I think I applied and I have yet to hear from them, so I will just start and keep track until the end of June. Since they want all rights, I’ll just use this for something else, a poem or an essay, say, should I be selected to have my journal in the museum for posterity. I’m already widely published, being a retired school principal and former secondary English teacher. I’ve been retired, hard to believe, for ten years.

I can’t believe it’s June first. Turn around and it will be Christmas again. These are the days I usually love, the beginning of summer, almost, but nowadays, it’s the time of Zoom and Gloom. Zoom is the latest on-the-computer meeting go-to. I’ve been to several Zoom meetings and plan on more and skipped a few. Most believe it’s getting old and doesn’t live up to meeting in person. Most women hate the way they look on it, and because of CoVid-19 and our National State of Emergency haven’t had a haircut, manicure or pedicure in months. My hairdresser, Shanon, just called today because my salon is re-opening so I have an appointment on Thursday at 6:00 p.m. I told Shanon I’d be wearing a mask (not mandatory in San Bernardino County) and she agreed to wear one as well.

There’s a joke that people working from home don’t wear pants because you can’t see their lower half. In fact, one of our Poemsmiths (our poetry critique group, a part of the High Desert California Writer’s Club) was told to put less light on herself and had to pull up her pants to get up and go to the window and then nearly fell off the couch trying to put a huge curtain up. We should have been filmed as a “what not to do,” humorous training film.

So that’s the Zoom part of the Gloom. As if the Zoom wasn’t a novelty after the COVID Virus where we’re all sequestered, especially us “elderly folk,” the U.S. spent the past 6 or 7 days watching on TV or on our phones the nation protesting and rioting over the death of another black man, George Floyd, by a white police man and 3 accomplices. It was horrible to watch the cop keep his knee on George’s neck and hear him say “I can’t breathe.” The knee was there for eight minutes and 46 seconds!!! And the other cops did nothing. When George took his last breath, the killer rolled him over. Neither he nor the others tried to do CPR—they just rolled him over like he was a big object. The nation, as well we should, went into shock and the protests began and then the burning and looting. Now we’re hearing the violence was orchestrated by ANTIFA or a White Nationalist group or both. It’s like watching civilization collapse right in front of us. Only the governor of Atlanta, Georgia, black herself, read the rioters the “riot act.” Told them “We are better than this. This is not who we are. Go home.” But they haven’t, so Dave and I watch TV until we can’t take it any more and we get something else on if possible or I come to the computer and write.

But more gloom. I’m in my 7th decade, a Baby Boomer, so don’t consider myself old. My mother’s in good health and 96 and lives nearby. But my husband is suffering from non-alcoholic Cirrhosis of the liver caused by medication taken too long for myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease. I’ve called an ambulance 5 times in the last

year. So he has virtually been housebound and I’ve become his caretaker, not unwillingly, because I love him even after 49 years (in one month) of marriage. Diet is my only weapon so now my fussy eater is on the diet I put him on after I got a Stanford certificate in nutrition online. He eats foods “Easy on the Liver” and I do, too. A week ago, after a year of relative stability, although he can’t go out in small or large groups because of the virus—doctor’s orders, he was so anemic that an ambulance took him down our treacherous Cajon Pass to the hospital and he had a blood transfusion. I was truly afraid I was going to be a widow, but he’s back, thankfully, a bit stronger, but still sleeping a lot both day and night. We’ll find out more after his phone consults with 2 more doctors this week.

My mother is getting deafer and deafer despite new hearing aids we got her before the virus hit. She still was painting a picture a week, going to church, and our various clubs—a teacher organization called Delta Kappa Gamma (DKG) and California Retired Teachers, and our writer’s club because since we moved her up here near us to Sun City from her home of forty years in Glendale, California, she got a new lease on life and we’ve been having a great time. But now I go to the market once a week with mask and gloves, come home and divide our groceries, and deliver them to her through her garage door with her waving at me from her laundry room. I call each night and scream at her over the phone. I’m not sure if it’s the hearing aids or the fluid in her ears that keeps drying up and recurring. Our son, Matthew, can’t come to visit any of us.

So life is quite different from when Dave retired and I was still working and until he got sick he was doing all the cooking, fixing of things around the house, and basically babying me. He’d even do my laundry. Now I’ve taken over everything—taking out trash, taking the car in, etc. But I count my blessings. He can shower and dress himself and get himself to the bathroom, pay the bills and order stuff, pick up the paper in the morning (although sometimes he gets out of breath), and converse and remind me of things I need to do, even though my memory is still quite good. But it’s true—we baby boomers refuse to get old or consider ourselves old. We never wanted to grow up and we’re in denial still listening to eighty-year-old rock stars or if they’re dead, attending tributes of them by their look-alikes.

So I’m used to keeping a journal. When we sold our house of 22 years in 2005 to move from the San Fernando Valley to the high desert, we did it so I could become a principal and open up a brand new public elementary school. The interview was so weird that I turned down the job, but they came after me to tell me I would get to hire all my own people and that the school would become a dual immersion school in year two and that they chose me and were going to the board to get me approved right away. So Dave and I discussed it and everything fell into place—the house sold and for more than we asked for it, we found our current house with an office I love and I’m writing in right now, and things seemed hunky dory. But Dave and I discussed that if the job in a poverty area with low scores turned to hell, I could retire and we’d be okay. So just in case the job turned awful, I decided to keep a daily journal and kept it for a few years. It is currently in novel form needing a few more edits: No One’s Pal: My First Year as a Public School Principal. But Dave is my publisher and I can’t push him right now, so who knows if that will ever be published? I’ll probably be referring to incidents from it throughout this journal because so much of what is going on in the world reminds me of those times. I learned a lot about leadership and lack of it.

But like I said, I count my blessings. About four years ago I founded “The Poemsmiths,” a critique group. We meet bi-weekly and comment on each other’s poems and we’ve even performed at a local theater. So in confinement, I had a brilliant idea when I learned about a type of poem called The Mondo. It’s a zen-like, short poem, of only 3 lines. One poet sends a 3-line question to another poet who answers in 3 lines. It was great fun. Then I heard about the Origami Poem Project and wrote to them, sending them 6 of our poems that they will make into a mini-chapbook! I got the acceptance today and e-mailed all the Poemsmiths and told them to celebrate! We’re going to do more of these on a club-wide basis. So that made my day. I also read a lot and do genealogy research.

It’s almost time to watch Jeopardy with Dave, part of our nightly routine. I hope it’s not pre-empted by the protests and/or riots again.

“Don’t Rock the Boat”

June 2, 2020 (Tuesday)
Protests and riots continue across the nation today, and, of course, the commentaries from various friends and politicians about whom are responsible for the looting. In Washington D.C. Trump had police use tear gas to disperse people so he could get a photo op with a Bible in front of St. John’s Cathedral. Some of my friends have no problem with that, but it was offensive to me. Made me want to throw up. I did not vote for Trump, but I am glad that Hilary did not win the last election. She’s as phony as the rest of them. Although I lean to the left, I have become an “Independent,” although that meant that I could not vote for the person I wanted to in the last election. I only turned Independent because they did not have me on any list when I went to two voting sites in 2016 and had to fill out new paperwork in order to vote. At the very least, I think Trump is ADHD and simply says what pops into his head at the moment, good or bad, and most of it is bad or unwise. I can’t figure out his motives and I think Melania is simply a “trophy” wife who is very unhappy in her new role, plus unequipped for it.

But on to how my morning started. Dave waited for his call from the hematologist/oncologist this morning. I dreaded it, because I don’t like her. Not without cause, and I’m grateful that she caught that Dave was on medication for ten years that harmed his liver. If she hadn’t he might be dead now. However, after we went to the liver transplant doc in downtown L.A. and learned Dave’s not a candidate because of his age and that the preparation for it might kill him, we visited this doctor. Now, I’ll grant that one of her patients had just died, but the way she looked at me and said my job was “to not rock the boat” scared me terribly. She added, “Not in any way—physically, emotionally, socially . . .” What am I supposed to do? Wrap him in bubble wrap and call him “Bubble Boy?” Then I said, “Now you said that the medication caused this . . .” She immediately jumped on me and said, “Oh, no! He’s this way because of his obesity and diet . . .” I wanted to say, “Oh, really? Now you’re blaming him and me.” She had no dietary advice for me, however, and so in the past year I have taken an online course, talked to nutritionists and totally changed our diet.” But I never know since her outburst and non-compassion and implication that I had made up that the medication caused this, I haven’t had the warm fuzzies about her.

So she finally calls, late, and I know she’s been studying his blood after his blood transfusion and trip to the hospital last week. The good news is that Dave is “stable.” The bad news is that I think she’s still cold as ice. No nutritional information. Nothing Dave can do. No real praise for staying stable. Does she have a heart of stone? And Dave, not having much human contact in the past year asks how she’s doing. Asks about her kids and if she’s working from home because of this pandemic, tries to joke that at least he tested negative for that. I think I should rename Dave Job, with a long “o” not how one of the counselors pronounced it as “job” as in work in my school district when she gave out an award.

Speaking of literacy skills, even my Poemsmiths, my writing critique group do
not read their e-mails completely. We had an acceptance—we’re going to have some poems published in a “microchap.” I told them I’ll write a group bio. A couple write back, “Do we write our own bios?” Lord help us. I think we’ve all been confined for too long.

My mother’s hearing is better. I think I scared her because I made a doctor’s appointment for her. She called yesterday morning, better, so I postponed it until next week. Do you think we can get her a phone with big numbers on it that she’s qualified for? I asked for the 3rd time when I called for next week’s appointment.

Today I have to venture out with masks and gloves to the grocery store for my mom and us. I grilled hamburgers last night (we don’t eat buns), but I overdid them. We had brown rice (“easy on the liver”) and green beans. I’m not sure which market I should go to. I hope the looters don’t come up here. I thought maybe the Cajon Pass might save us since protesters are in Riverside, but they could come the other way from Las Vegas. Barstow and Adelanto are under Emergency status.

I feel for all the women who live alone. Many are scared—those who live up here and friends I have that live in the Fairfax and Venice Beach area, both black and white. When I watch the looters, I feel that our educational system has failed. I’ve felt that way for a long time. Hasn’t anyone taught that stereotyping, name-calling, join the bandwagon, etc. etc. are all logical fallacies? I used to have a game (Dave made the cork board), called Propaganda. I’d give kids a situation or dilemma and tell what people said to argue and they’d have to identify the fallacy. It was fun and educational. I should remember, though, from my years as a principal that this is a new generation of teachers who don’t seem to care as much about curriculum, innovations, development, and worse yet kids in too many cases, and that several absolutely hate authority. I had teachers leave their classrooms unattended, tell parents they were “doing them a favor,” and that their union says they don’t have to supervise. I thought I’d say that here in case my memoir never gets published. It is finished but Dave isn’t strong enough to format it. I was editing ten chapters at a time and he was inputting them, and then he got too weak. Not that I don’t have a myriad of other projects to work on. It would just be nice if I could get No One’s Pal out before the system isn’t even recognizable from the book when everyone goes back to the classroom after this co-vid19 thing.

Earthquake!

June 3, 2020 (Wednesday)
So every morning when I wake up, I have to see what the affliction of the day is with Dave. I don’t mean to be snarky. It’s just that when one is very sick they turn inward and as a caretaker it is exhausting. And with everything else going on. . . Anyway, Dave did

not sleep well last night. Many times going to the bathroom. So he’s tired. I go to get the newspaper, something I usually let him do because he needs to get up occasionally, besides going to the bathroom. Speaking of the paper, nothing was in it about today’s protest to take place 3 miles from our home. My mother found out from Facebook, from one of her Sun City friends. Of course our paper doesn’t want everybody rushing to the spot, so it will probably be in tomorrow morning. So that’s why when we went to Jersey Mike’s last night to pick up sandwiches (on wheat bread, of course), and I wanted to run into Target for Clariton for my mom, Target was closed and there was a truck with boards on it. Dave said, “They’re going to board it up.” I googled “Apple Valley Protest” this morning and found out the protest will indeed take place. They do not need a permit since they promised to stay on the sidewalk.

Dave had his phone consult with the liver doctor this morning. This doctor was more positive. His “Meld score,” the score that qualifies one to be on the transplant list went from 24 (high) to 14. I think that is very good news. He said for me to get some iron pills for Dave, but I’m not going out today for obvious reasons, although they might be protesting tomorrow, too. I am so sick of FB people and others saying “Silence is compliance.” It is not. If I wasn’t a caretaker for two people and of an age that makes me vulnerable to COVID, then I’d be out there, too. Plus, what more is there to say that hasn’t been said with people analyzing what political party and political bent one is coming from so they can smash you? So I will say it here. I deplore (does that make me a “deplorable?”) the murder of George Floyd and deplore the actions of the police bystanders, and ache for his family and for his deceased mother to whom he called out while the knee was on his neck. To see a live murder on television is a horrible thing and what would that say about our country if we didn’t condemn it with protests? The looting and destruction of businesses, however is never right. Violence is never right as an initial action or as a response, unless it is self defense. I hope things stay peaceful in little Apple Valley and the whole high desert tonight.

As though we didn’t have enough to worry about we had a 5.5 earthquake this evening before dinner time. My mother called. Our family has been through several earthquakes—the Sylmar one in 1970; the 91 Northridge one; and the recent ones with the epicenter being Ridgecrest. For each one we were not that far from the epicenter and felt them horribly. We were closest during the Northridge quake and lucked out in that many of our neighbors lost their homes. Dave was stronger then and knocked on doors to check on people and set up our generator. Several tent cities went up in the park. For the Sylmar one, I was terrified. It was my first year of teaching and I was single in my first apartment on the second floor and awakened early in the morning. I really thought that was the Second Coming and repented of all my sins. We’ve learned to take little shakers like today’s 5.5 one mostly in stride.

Today I sent off a picture and bio for our Poemsmiths Microchap and got an instant response, which is unusual when dealing with publishers. I wanted a picture of the origami art from one of our Poemsmiths, but she wasn’t checking her e-mail and when she did she was angry that anything was required new for her “to do” list. So I took a picture of a bright blue mask I’ve ordered that is on our way that says POETRY across it and sent it.

Last night Dave and I watched the 2004 movie, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. I believe I read this in college, and it’s by a favorite author, Thornton Wilder of “Our

Town” fame. It was unbelievable, the similarities of today even though it took place in Peru. There was subjugation of women; the inquisition; an epidemic; censorship; authoritarianism. You don’t know until the end which people will die when the bridge collapses.

So I’ve been doing a lot of reading between my writing. I finally picked up “All the Light We Cannot See.” When I bought it, the used book store lady said, “Yes, it’s good, but it will break your heart.” Lately, my heart is used to being broken—or pierced over and over again.

My Boarded Neighborhood

June 4, 2020 (Thursday)
Things seem to be getting worse and worse. I’m depressed. If only Black Lives Matter, what’s the next step? Saying they’re a Master Class? On last night’s news a young man told a girl to kneel and ask forgiveness of him. And she did! She didn’t even know him. Where is the common sense? What have we taught our youth? Maybe she should have said “Let’s have coffee and talk and get to know each other.”

Mom was very moved by the funeral of George Floyd—Sharpton, the family, the music, including “Amazing Grace” and more, and the 8 minutes and 46 seconds everyone stood for a moment of silence.

Left and right are still angry on FB. There are plenty of rants, preaching, and opinions. Maybe I should get off for a while. Except I love Facebook and knowing what my friends and family are up to.

I went to GNC to look for iron pills for Dave. I found them, but also saw our movie theater’s boarded up, Ulta is boarded up, Bed Bath and Beyond is boarded up, and Auto Club. Although GNC was closed yesterday, they were not boarded up. When I asked the young man who waited on me if there were threats and if the store was okay, he was a little cavalier, saying the protests were peaceful, although they were closed yesterday.

I finally got my hair cut and requested Shanon wear a mask. She had no problem with that, and I wore one, too. A little awkward getting around my mask, but I feel so much better. It’s not mandatory to wear a mask in San Bernardino County, but because of my mom and Dave I feel it’s essential for me.

One of the Poemsmiths (our poetry critique group) got her essay accepted for Persimmon Tree. I sent a notice to our California Writers Club branch members about how they were looking for women over 60 to write about the COVID-19 virus. I guess my essay was not accepted. I don’t know if I can expect an out-out-e-mail rejection, or not. I love that on-line journal, and I am proud of my colleague for getting in.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
George Floyd and Aunt Dora

June 5, 2020 (Friday)
Today I decided to take few chances and just stay home. We started Dave on his iron pills. I learned that V-8 juice has beets in it, so am thinking of buying that because Dave has liked it in the past. So I did some FB browsing and answering of e-mails, but basically

did not get out of my pj’s all day. If I were still going to all my club meetings and church meetings, I couldn’t do that. So I take advantage of that from time to time, but feel guilty. Over the years I have turned into a Type A personality.

But I started reading All the Light We Cannot See. I couldn’t put it down. I did to make dinner and watch Jeopardy, but that’s about it. I love the very short chapters and the two children in the novel, one blind girl who is French, and one German boy who is a genius with electronics and radios. After his terrifying training, he accompanies one of the Nazi commanders and looks for those transmitting messages on their radios which are illegal. The commander goes in and “takes care of them,” until the boy Werner hears the French girl who has left Paris for a little town over the radio. No spoilers, but it’s a wonderful, wonderful story.

I’ve read 3 other Holocaust books during this COVID-19 time: In Alexa’s Shoes, a true story, Mon Amour, Friend or Foe? 3rd in a series by one of our writers in the high desert branch of the California Writers Club of which I’ve been a member for ten years now and on the board, an Irene Sendler story (then I watched the TV documentary) and now this. The Holocaust was included in the California curriculum in 1970, my first year of teaching. So not only did I teach To Kill a Mockingbird, but also The Diary of Anne Frank. I feel I have a personal connection to this time period in that my father, who was twenty years older than my mother, was born in Dresden, Germany. He and his mother and one of his sisters joined his father, a stonemason, in Indiana in 1908, a time during which my father fell in love with America—the school, the people, everything. In 1911, however, his mother took my dad and sister back to Germany because she didn’t want to follow my grandfather all over the nation for stone-cutting jobs. So back my Dad had to go, but vowed he would return, which he did in 1920. He never saw his mother and sisters again, but my grandfather’s sister, my Aunt Bartle, told my dad that through letters they survived the bombing of Dresden, “the Florence of the Alps.” I have been looking for records in Ancestry for years. Even took the spit test. My grandfather lived with us for three years, and then got on a bus bound for Biloxi and disappeared. I paid a genealogist $2,000 a few years ago to find out where he might have died, to no avail. I did get his social security number, but they won’t respond as far as where his last check was sent. It was all he had to live on.

Anyway, I recently did come across a record that confirmed a story my Dad told. He thought my grandmother’s sister, his Aunt Dora, had married a Jewish man, a furrier, with the last name of Apfel, and that she was taken to a concentration camp. Well, my Dad has been gone now 17 years, but what pops up in the Ancestry records but a record that says a Dorothea Alma Elsa Apfel had her German citizenship annulled in 1944. Further research showed that the Nuremberg Laws made intermarriage illegal. Further research does not show her name in any death records, so I may never know what happened to her. Further further research shows there is a monument to women who had Jewish husbands and sons in Dresden who protested their punishment for being married to them. They were about to be carted off and Hitler backed down—let them go!!! Which makes me think had everyone protested what Hitler was doing to the Jews, all those “Aryans” that were so pure, the whole Holocaust could possibly have been stopped because Hitler really did want to be popular. But I guess we’ll never know.

So carry on, American protesters. What kind of a nation would we be if we did NOT protest the murder of George Floyd? I’m aching right now for my poor Aunt Dora

and her family. She must have felt she was safe because she’d already been married a while when she took my Dad out for lunch sometime before 1920.

My father never talked about the 1918 plague to my mother or me and my brother. So much to think about. Personally and nationally.

D-Day

June 6, 2020 (Saturday)
D-Day! I was up until 2:30 a.m. finishing All the Light We Cannot See. We had no milk for breakfast so had oatmeal. When I checked my e-mail, I saw my friend Maureen requesting a copy of the newspaper because of a featured cancer patient who also had lost her mother portrayed as a hero in the paper. I told her I’d save my copy, but it proved to be a good outing because Dave felt stronger this morning. He drove and I, with mask and gloves, went to her front door to ring the bell and leave it on the porch. She came out the garage and I heard her say to Dave, still in the car, “I don’t know you, Sir.” She saw me and laughed and she went back to the garage to keep her social distance and we talked about her cataract surgery, diet, hair cuts (she noticed I had gotten mine cut) and she thanked me for the paper. She laughed and said Dave had lost so much weight she didn’t recognize him. He has, plus he has a scraggly white and gray beard.

We were going to stop to get some milk, but Dave had to go to the bathroom. He said that was fine he’d use the urinal I’d bought him years ago while I ran into the store. I bought it as a joke because David Sedaris talked about a “stadium pal” on a tape we listened to on a car trip and we laughed and laughed, never predicting Dave’s and our “new normal.” Anyway, he couldn’t find it, so we were able to make it home for lunch. I unpacked the lunch I had put into our bag, thinking maybe we could go to a park and sit and get some fresh air. But I take these things in stride now, with the help of my anti- depressant and talking (now by phone) to my therapist. Never thought I’d need one of those and feel a little guilty as the offspring of a mom who lived through WWII and The Depression and a dad who also lived through WWI and the 1918 plague and WWII and the bombing of his home town without needing pills.

While Dave napped I went out to deliver thank you’s to 3 of my Delta Kappa Gamma “Sisters” for their help at the last event I planned as First VP—small calendars with a rose (our symbol) on them and a magnet that says “Real Queens Fix Each Other’s Crowns.” I put them on their porches with a note from me. Our last event was at the 100- year-old Lone Wolf Colony here in the high desert and was a dinner celebrating the centennial of women getting the vote. We played “Suffragist Bingo,” made up by my friend Linda, and my 96 year-old mom won for best costume. I wore a long white dress and she wore a black skirt and white blouse and I had found banners saying “Vote for Women’s Rights” we wore across our top half. She wore a hat. A winner, hands down. I had watched a Suffragette video and had done a little research so talked about the movement which was hardly smooth racially, plus women were arrested in the U.S. and Britain and force-fed. Many died. Somehow they left a lot of that part out of the school history texts. Anyway, I thought it was the best program of the year. This was in February, so I had kept these thank you’s for a long time because of COVID for my “family” of women who had made the desserts, including a rose bundt cake, cookies, and scones.

Later Dave and I decided to go out for milk again and we decided maybe Walgreens might have a “Stadium Pal.” I got the milk, but not the urinal. I tried Target. No luck there, either.

Dave cooked dinner, his delicious quesadillas, a good sign he’s getting stronger, and I had my poem “Mom’s and Masks” published in the online “Silver Birch.” I also signed up for a Coursera course, my second, with certificate for $49.00. The name of the course: “Moral Foundations of Politics.” It’s taught by a Yale professor.

I also called the daughter of a friend of mine who passed a little over a year ago at age 95. Her daughter, Wendi, lost her husband from cancer a little before she lost her mother and moved up here to the high desert. She wasn’t even 50 years old yet. She asked my mother to paint a picture of a cat for a friend of hers, a cat who had lost an eye. My mom agreed and painted an adorable cat based on two pictures Wendi gave her because the real cat is gone. I convinced my mom to mat and frame it, and delivered it with mask and gloves to Wendi a few weeks ago. She came to the door and I pulled it out of the bag believing she’d be delighted. Surprise! The eye was totally missing and it just looked injured. Could my mother fix it? Astounded, I thought quickly for my mother’s sake, and suggested she ask her friend if she wanted it “fixed.” Wendi agreed, I didn’t tell my mother, and I hadn’t heard from Wendi since. My mother’s been asking.

I was afraid to call. My mother’s hearing hasn’t been good, causing me on some nights to almost scream into the phone. But good thing I hadn’t had my mother unmat the picture and touch up the eye. The woman looked at the cat and said it was “cute,” but her cat’s body was rounder. Wendi told her to take it if she wanted it and gifted her a few other things. She took it saying she liked cats and repeated it was “cute.” I changed that word and told my mom she thought the painting was “adorable.”

I’m going to have my mom paint us a cat, any cat, so that’s not the last picture she ever paints, leaving me with that memory. I should write a short story called “The Gift.”

Happy Birthday, Gwendolyn Brooks

June 7, 2020 (Sunday)
One good thing about on-line church is that you can’t be late for it. No more sliding into the pew while the choir files in or the minister is walking up to the platform or my mom is looking all around for me while I step over elderly knees and canes.

Our son Matt called this morning from the lake house where he’s staying. He has to go into work one day a week. He’s an IT guy, a “techie” for our health plan, Kaiser Permanente, as was Dave for most of his working life. Matt’s 45 and has been working there since he got a part time job in high school at 16 making calls for a doctor, a gynecologist. The women told Matt all kinds of things about their childbirths and bodies. After Matt decided college was not for him and he moved back home from northern California in his freshman year and didn’t know what to do with himself, Kaiser offered him a job but he had to sign a 3-year contract. He asked me what he should do. I was thinking he’d re-enroll in the college I attended near our home, but said, “Jobs like that don’t drop in your lap every day, but it’s your decision.” He took the job and has been there ever since. He makes good money and since he’s been on the computer since he was three years old, fixing them and keeping them up and running is his forte.

Today is one of my favorite poet’s birthdays, Gwendolyn Brooks. I put her poem “We Real Cool” on Facebook. It’s a great poem to teach secondary students. And I used a

quote by her in our last book the writing club published, Footprints from Around the World, which was the result of our teaching high school kids how to interview senior citizens (“Memoir Stars”) and write the 3500 stories of their lives. We did this for 3 years at 2 different high schools and went in to teach about 12 lessons and then sent “Mentors” in to work one on 3 with the students, helping them revise and edit. We published a book at the end of each year. Year one: Let it be Recorded: A Collection of Memoirs; Year Two: All Our Yesterdays: A Collection of Memoirs; and Year Three: Footprints from Around the World: A Collection of Memoirs. Each is available on Amazon and our club and I as Director have won several awards. I’m writing a handbook so that teachers can do it across the nation. My favorite is the third book because it’s the most multicultural with stories of struggle that you wouldn’t believe. But the quote of Brooks that I used to introduce this book is “We are each other’s obligation; we are each other’s bond.” I should be writing the handbook during this COVID time, but for some reason I’m procrastinating.

Our minister Peter cried during his online sermon this morning. He gets emotional sometimes. He talked about teaching in Moldavia and having students who had been in Siberia and other camps in Russia. They had freedom, but they were always “looking over their shoulders,” not trusting their new democratic freedoms. He got close to some of those students.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Totalitarianism lately. About how it can come from the right or the left. About how we have to question authority and how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I don’t know if Antifa is behind the riots and looting or not, but someone said they are not hierarchical. They’re supposedly made up of cells that are equal so they can blend in more. If so, have they not read Animal Farm? “Everybody’s equal but some are more equal than others.”

All is True

June 8, 2020 (Monday)
Today was Mom’s debut into the world to see the ear doctor and Kristine, the audiologist. Of course her ears were improved; they improved right after the appointment was made. Kristine showed her how to clean her hearing aids, gave her a slotted neck piece that would better hold her mask in place, and we left happy. I think it perked her spirits up just to see the outside and be out in it for a couple of hours. She has taken her trash cans from the garage to the curb once a week, but that’s been it.

At 4:00 p.m. I attended our Delta Kappa Gamma transition board meeting. I had sent a list of possible programs to my replacement Meg and she thanked me. Also, they all repeated how they loved our last meeting at the Lone Wolf Colony where we played Suffragette Bingo with members and guests and made Gloria the Woman of Distinction. Good thing I reminded them to get Gloria’s plaques made. She’s a Black member and we don’t want to overlook her during this time, especially. And now our new board is once again all white, except for the past President who will attend by tradition who is brown.

Tonight Dave and I watched the movie, at home, of course, All is True, the original name of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. It told of the life of the playwright after he retired. He went home to Stratford-Upon-Avon and tried to get his home life together after being gone for most of his life. His wife, Ann, wouldn’t let him in her bedroom. His two daughters were caught up in scandals and he was grieving the death of his son,

Hamnett who died at eight-years-old. One of his daughters, Hamnett’s twin was depressed, wishing she was the one who had died because Shakespeare thought Hamnett was a genius and would follow in his footsteps. There were lots of surprises in the movie and I don’t know how much is true and how much is fiction, but Dave and I both enjoyed it. It humanized Shakespeare and lifted up each member of his family and showed what the times were like with people dealing with some of the same issues as we do today— the role of women, the Church in the community, and how people treat those who are different, in this case genius, not color.

I-Thou

June 9, 2020 (Tuesday)
Another Zoom meeting this morning for the California Writers Club, High Desert Branch. I used to be a board member a few years back. I was Member-at-Large. This is my favorite group because I write and think about writing every single day and it’s because of the club that I have 2 children’s books published, my memoir critiqued and several awards, the last one being the Jack London Award for contributions to the club over the past ten years. The last trip Dave and I took was to Oakland to receive the award and Dave was doing so well at that time, wearing a suit, and going to the dinner and luncheon with me. Plus he drove the whole way and back. We stopped in Salinas again where I bought another Steinbeck book in the museum there, in Danville, where we finally found Eugene O’Neil’s home. We had tried years before and no one in town seemed to know anything about him, and when we found the neighborhood on our own, it was gated and the house was under renovation. I got someone on the buzzer who told me to come back another day. We also visited Jack London’s cabin where he used to write, moved to Jack London Square. Years earlier we visited his home in Glen Ellen that burned down. And right before this pandemic our writers club held a salon and about ten of us re-read The Call of the Wild and went to the movies to see the 2020 version of it and then went out to lunch to discuss it. The book is always better than the movie. One of the writers called the movie, “Disneyesque.”

So I have a bunch of responsibilities because I’m an idea person and they love for me to visit the board. We are going to challenge the whole southern region of writers clubs to write question-answer Mondo poems of 3 lines each and try to find a publisher, we are going to divide up the names and call all 88 of our members and ask them what direction they’d like to see the club go, and put an ad in the paper for one time, 15 minute free consultations on writing. So I have some memos to write and some calls to make.

I finished reading Ticket to Ride by Paula McClain. It was her first novel and her one about Hemingway and his first wife and mistress in Paris was far better. I did learn that McClain was a foster kid, so wonder how much Ticket to Ride is autobiographical. Here’s the review I put on Amazon:

This is a powerful first novel about motherless girls or girls that are strong-willed and caught in unhealthy patterns. I kept reading to find out what would happen, and the only reason I gave it a 4 was because McLain's later novels of historical fiction are so much more sophisticated and riveting. I appreciated this novel all the more when I learned that the author grew up in foster homes. I would recommend this for teens but would prefer an adult read it, also, so they could discuss how girls lose their innocence and how some can never get it back. Good writing, here, as the author describes Chicago and parts of California. I definitely will read the two novels of

McLain's I have yet to read.

This afternoon I watched an ACSA (Association of California School Administrators) video. I’ve belonged to this organization for years. It’s sort of a union for school administrators because they “work at the whim of the board.” I don’t need them for any legal action now, but the retiree fee to join is reasonable and their newsletters and events help keep me up on education. The video was called “Systemic Racial Intolerance.” The black and brown speakers, current or past administrators talked about how the education system has to be changed to be fair to students. More blacks are suspended than whites, for example, although now California schools are using a controversial “talk things through and apologize” technique called Restorative Justice to bring down the number of Black suspensions. When I think back, I only suspended for physical violence or repeated verbal aggression or scary threats. Plus, there are not enough psychologists in any district to handle “talking” everything through. I don’t think I suspended more Blacks than anyone else. I keep hearing the same thing, also. “Don’t say you are colorblind,” and don’t say this and don’t say that. I don’t think I’ve ever said that to anyone, but if we are going to have discussions we’ve got to get everything on the table and talk about why when white people say certain things it offends so horribly. It’s a two-way street, the “I-thou” of Martin Buber.

New Battery, New Age

June 10, 2020 (Wednesday)
Today, my mom and I decided, was the day to call Auto Club and get a new battery for her 2002 Mercury Sable. She had tried to open the garage door and let it sit and run, but one day it would not turn over. While we were waiting for whomever they were sending, I helped mom send in her story “Random Thoughts” to the Sun City magazine, The View. She forgets how to edit and attach and send because she doesn’t do it that often. She sent in a lovely poem last month that they published:

New Age
by June Langer

When I was a child
and my father came home from work at night, he would read the headlines in the newspaper, shake his head and say,
“This country is going to the dogs.”

Today TV news says,
“We have the Corona Virus.” We’ve been secluded for six weeks.

Goats and kangaroos wander empty streets in Australia, bears and mountain lions stop traffic in the U.S.

Gophers are peeking at me from the golf course

Lizards are on my front porch waiting to enter my house.

My father was a prophet.

Anyway, I am so proud of my mom. She’ll be 97 next week, June 21, and I’m not sure how we are going to celebrate. Dave thinks she should come over, and Matt, too, but I’m afraid of a second wave and of getting too casual.

After we got the new battery we decided to go for a drive around Sun City. We both kept our masks on and we waved at some of the neighbors who looked shocked to see us or if they weren’t sure if that was us or not. The clubhouse parking lot had a few cars in it because they have opened the pool and gym. We drove through neighborhoods we had never driven through before.

When I said goodbye to my mother, she had a twinkle in her eye. I wouldn’t be surprised if after I drove away, she went out again for a spin.

Giving a Hoot

June 11, 2020 (Thursday)
I was going to go back to my mom’s house today and maybe go for another drive. But I had another meeting on Zoom, this time six of our Poemsmiths met for our bi-weekly poetry critique and went from 3:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Of course we had to have small talk. We’re all about the same age, five of us retired, and Bob is a substitute teacher so isn’t being called out anywhere. Our group has been meeting for three and a half years now. I lead it because when I retired, I was planning for Dave and me to travel (we did) a lot and that I would write poems as they occurred to me. But then I saw the writer’s club in the newspaper one morning, went to a meeting, found out they were about to lose their charter if they dropped one more member to 14 and if they did not get up a website. So our small group vowed to grow the membership. Today we have 88 members and we hope to get it back up to 100. But in those early days ten years ago, I was the only poet, or only one admitting to writing poetry. So I joined our first critique group, The Wordsmiths and put through my two now-published children’s books, several short stories (some published or won awards), 2 young-adult novels, and an about-to-be- published memoir (No One’s Pal: My First Year as a Public School Principal.). After five years, we grew so big that we splintered off, new members asked about poetry, plus I had taught some workshops for the general membership, and I thought it was time to start my poetry critique group, The Poemsmiths that now has 10 members. We bring only 1 poem and send it in advance, read it aloud, and go around the group telling its strengths and making suggestions for improvement. My goal for me and them is publication. One of our members hosts the Zoom meetings, so we’ve been meeting this way for a couple of months now. It’s quite nice because I don’t have to clean the house and worry about refreshments or snacks and get everything organized, not that I minded. I love my Poemsmiths and the majority has had at least one poem published. We even performed on stage with an outside group a couple of years ago in our little, old (use to be a USO place) town theater. We get along well, even though we didn’t all vote the same way in

the 2016 election. Three of us have ill husbands that shouldn’t be around even small groups, Three are widowers, Two are divorced and two are recently remarried.
So since I shared my mother’s poem, above, I will share the revised by

Poemsmith’s suggestions poem. We have come to have certain things we look for, and recently one really likes patterns, so I changed stanza 3 from six lines to 4 so that all the stanzas are 4 lines.

Giving a Hoot
by Mary Langer Thompson

She caters to families in this restaurant where TVs blare,
on different stations.

She wears a push-up bra
and short shorts,
allows a guy alone with a beer to snap her picture.

She circulates and serves
until called to climb the stage
where she and fellow waitresses dance and sing to the Village People’s YMCA.

A six-year-old sits with her parents, an orange balloon tied
to her wrist that reads
Hooter Girl in Training.

Dave and I watched the movie Tourist tonight with Angelie Jolene and Johnny Depp. I don’t usually like to watch movies twice (life is short), but we didn’t realize we had seen it before until late into the movie. By then we were so mesmerized by the beautiful stars and the racing around Venice and the canals, where we had once traveled, that we watched it through its entirety.

I hope my nephew’s wife enjoys the flowers we sent for her birthday. They live in San Luis Obispo with their two young children, two of my mother’s great-grandchildren. Both my nephew and Chelsea have Ph.D.’s and are super liberal. By that I mean no plastic, including no plastic toys, and one is a vegetarian, and they wanted Bernie Sanders. If there were no virus, and they didn’t have two little ones, they’d probably be out protesting. My nephew is a Spanish professor. He helped translate one of my children’s books into Spanish.

June 12, 2020 (Friday)

In Memoriam

Today is my brother’s birthday. He’s been gone now 6 years. I miss him terribly and so do his two oldest grandsons for whom he set up his old model train and a train for each of them in his garage. They lost both of their grandfathers close together. Anyway, he got lung cancer, but we thought he was cancer-free but he collapsed one morning and passed away getting ready for a doctor’s appointment.

Dave and I were on vacation in Costa Rico. Since my sister-in-law and her kids knew this, they called our son, Matthew, and asked if he would drive out to tell my mother in Apple Valley because they didn’t want to tell her over the phone. So because in 2006 our son lost his girlfriend in a car crash and we were on vacation in Bishop, and when my father, his grandfather passed we were in Big Bear, and now we were in Costa Rica, he called us crying (he’s very emotional) and said, “You have to stop doing this to me.” But he “stuck his courage to the sticking point” and drove two and a half hours and told my mother and spent the night with her. We were all grateful because our tour guide told us that since we were scheduled to leave the next day, we wouldn’t get home any sooner should we try to leave that evening. Dave upgraded us to first class so that we would have privacy and cry off and during the flight home.

So today I’ve been trying mainly to think of his inspiration. He was five years older, and as we were growing up, he was highly critical of me. I played the trumpet because he played the trumpet. But his main inspiration he didn’t even realize. He was a reader, and when he wasn’t home I would sneak into his room and read books from his bookshelf. I started this in fifth grade, so read James Baldwin, Salinger (my mother had to sign for him to read Catcher in the Rye in high school), Eldredge Cleaver and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and other authors like them in between my Nancy Drew and his Mad Magazines and my Archie and Jughead comic books. No wonder I’m a little out there sometimes.

My mom went back to college at the same time my brother Dave did. One day she and I went to a concert and she pointed out my unknown-to-us-at-the-time future sister- in-law, saying they had a class together and she smoked with all the boys at break. That Thanksgiving, my brother brought Conny home for dinner and when they saw each other Conny said, “June!” My mother said, “Conny!” Dave hadn’t told my mother he was dating Conny nor that our mother was her classmate. That story made us laugh every Thanksgiving.

Anyway, he died at age 70, and since our father made it to almost 101, we have a very skewed view of age. He was much too young. I brought my mom some roses today.

Indie Authors Unite

June 13, 2020 (Saturday)
This morning our High Desert California Writers Club met on Zoom. I thought the meeting was to be at 9:00 a.m., but that’s board meeting time, so couldn’t get into Zoom at that time when it dawned on me that the meeting starts at 10:00 a.m. We used to meet in the church I attend, in their multi-purpose room, but decided to wait another month because of COVID. And it’s a good thing we did because our dentist called today and are canceling all hygiene appointments until the beginning of August when they will begin contacting patients again. Our dentist has been the most considerate of his patients, more so than my mother’s doctors and even our church which goes back to regular meetings tomorrow.

Martin Levine was our speaker for the writers club. We’ve had him speak before. He’s a lawyer and an agent, a rare combination and he’s not my favorite speaker in that he tried to get a lot of money from some of our writers in years past. One of our writers, Denny, went with a publisher for his single man’s cookbook and didn’t read the contract well enough that stipulated all his future works had to be with the same publisher. He was planning another book and did not want to go with the same people. So he contacted Levine who tried to get several thousands of dollars to take care of it. Denny couldn’t afford that, so started writing letters to his publishing company. Lo and behold they saw a loophole and freed him. Denny wasn’t the only one. So why our president keeps getting him to speak (I’ve now heard him 3 times in the past ten years) is anybody’s guess.

Levine talked about advances, royalties, contracts, and publishers, but only traditional publishers, probably because that’s how he makes his money. But the majority of high desert writers are Indie publishers ourselves who have our own companies. Mine is called “Another Think Coming Press,” because both Dave’s parents and mine used to say this all the time: “If you think that, you have another think coming.” Many have changed that to “thing coming,” and Dave and I used to laugh at their ignorance because that doesn’t make sense, but lo and behold that is now considered correct. Didn’t I use to teach that language changes over time and that will never change?

So I didn’t get much new information from Marty. In the early 80’s I took my master’s thesis and made it into a curriculum with a co-author friend. I went with a traditional educational publisher, then called Perfection Form. We got an advance against royalties of $800. We split it, they sold over 1,000 copies. We didn’t see a cent until the company had earned their $800 back, and then we got checks of just pennies until the company went out of business. I was smart enough to ask for, in writing, all our rights back, but have not done anything else with the manuscript.

When I wrote my first children’s book, about a blue-tongued skink in the “Garden,” I had a traditional publisher say to me (after many submissions to other traditional publishers), “Oh, your writing is terrific, but I could never publish that.” Why? “Because it’s based on a myth I don’t believe in.” That’s when I knew I couldn’t deal with traditional publishers any more. This one was young enough to have been one of my students. Then I went with a small publisher that I paid. That was a nightmare because they misspelled a very important word and I had to pay to have it changed because I hadn’t read the proof well enough. Even a comma change cost a hundred dollars. Ridiculous. So Dave offered to take over and be my publisher and up to the time he got so sick he’s done a better job than a traditional publisher in my opinion. So since that curriculum, I’ve kept my traditional publisher efforts to anthology pieces and let them do all the work on those. Sometimes there are contracts, but I can figure out what they are asking. Sometimes they ask for changes, and I’ve refused, knowing I’m correct, and they back down. I was an English teacher for years, after all.

I don’t write for money. Tonight I submitted 3 “school” poems and shared the market with one of my Poemsmiths because she and I did a workshop for the group the publisher heads and I went to his classroom one summer to teach a poetry workshop to Outward Bound students. I love submitting to people I know, and often they reach out to me, especially during this COVID time, asking for poems. One publisher asked because she was a Poet Laureate and I was Senior Poet Laureate of California in 2012, so she wanted to gather the poems of as many Laureates as she could. I was honored.

All That CHAZ

June 14, 2020 (Sunday)
Six blocks in Seattle Washington seceded from the United States and formed the

country of CHAZ. I kid you not. The mayor said that “Oh, it looks like it’s going to be ‘The Summer of Love.’ Yes, as in drug-taking, homelessness, a run-away haven and general lawlessness. They even have a border! This is not good. I can just imagine if teachers let an unruly class continue, or be condescending to them or even bow to them. They’d be toast. I hope this ends soon, but things are getting worse. A black young man was found hanging from a tree in Palmdale, which is not that far from us. It was deemed a “suicide,” rather quickly if you ask me, and the family is denying he would do that. His name was Robert Fuller. Then in the paper this morning there was another man found hanging from a tree right in Victorville, the town next door to us and only fifty miles away from Robert Fuller. Also, deemed a suicide! What a cooinkidink. Dave and I had an argument about it. He thinks it’s most likely a suicide; I think it’s most likely a lynching.

In addition, another black man was shot and killed in Atlanta. He was asleep in the drive-through of a Wendy’s and cars were honking at him and someone called police. The police questioned him, and it appeared calm enough on the video even while he was given a breathalyzer test. But then the man attacked the policeman and stole his Tazer, ran away, and shot the Tazer at the policeman. So now what? Another moral dilemma: The man was resisting arrest, and if he had tazed the cop, he could have gotten his firearm, although he most likely would have kept on running. Judgments, judgments, judgments, based on police training (or anger instincts?) and based on snap decisions.

I got 100 percent on a quiz in my Coursera course, “Moral Foundations of Politics.” It wasn’t that easy. The Yale professor is talking about Decarte, Hobbes, Locke, the early and more mature Enlightenment, and Utilitarianism so far. This is a longer course than the one I took through Stanford on nutrition. That one wasn’t that easy either, but the stakes were higher for Dave’s health which we’ve managed to at least keep relatively stable, although even that’s an uncertainty. That pretty much describes my life and the world: All is Uncertain, today and tomorrow.

I wrote up the Poetry Challenge for the writers club. We’re going to extend our Mondo experiment to the whole southern region: Mondos From Our Condos and Other Sequestering Places. Mondos are such a simple poem with 3 question and 3 answer lines for a total of 2 stanzas by two people. So zen-like, or based on Socratic dialogue. I hope we get a good response.

I submitted 3 poems to Palette Poetry tonight. They wanted women-only poems. Cost me $20.00. I hope they take at least one. I was also going to submit to another market but after I gathered the poems I was going to submit on the topic of “Humans finding meaning through technology,” I went to the website only to find they had so many submissions already that they had closed them before the deadline.

Today was Flag Day. My mother tells me it was supposed to be Flag Week. I didn’t see a single thing about either the day or week on Facebook.

June 15, 2020 (Monday)

Flaky Fakeness

Dave’s “Affliction of the day” today was throwing up before breakfast and then dizziness. On the radio Bill Handle prattled on about how sensitivity training and anti-bias training has done no good. We need—I need more positivity, especially when everyone’s yelling that the sky is falling and that these are the end times.

So I decide to read and judge the proposals I promised to do for an upcoming college composition conference to be held next year. I agreed to do 15 proposals, but only received 8, and the deadline was extended, so either people don’t believe it will take place or no one has ideas or no one wants to take the time to propose.

So the first one I review is one whose title I understand. Should that be so hard for me? I mean I do have a doctorate from UCLA. I’m not stupid. The author proposes speaking on “Posthuman Ethics.” Good grief, I’m behind. What in the world . . . ??? She names “Posthuman scholars,” that urge us to “value affirmative, life-giving forces” and buy into an “ethics of vulnerability.” Okay, well, I know how to put my biases aside, as asked to do, but holy cow, can’t they define their terms? Does vulnerability mean writing compositions that are confessional and if so, personal, familial or just plain honest— whatever you think goes? Wouldn’t this be better for memoir or possibly poetry? I’m so confused. I wake up Dave to do a rant, and at least make him laugh. Do these first-year of college instructors, who would be the audience realize what students they will have in front of them? English as a Second Language students at various levels of English language development, students who don’t care about writing and are just taking this as a requirement. If they don’t know who will be sitting in front of them because they are new college teachers, maybe they should ask some eleventh and twelfth grade teachers. It seems like they just want to throw out all the composition principles and start from scratch. I’ll get off my high horse now, but I did not rate this proposal very high, and now I’m scared to read the other ones whose titles I can’t even decipher. To teach college, one really should take some teacher preparation courses.

After a while I look at some of the other proposals that aren’t as bad but are what my generation would call “new age” proposals. One is on mindfulness. What it really is is a strategy to focus, which once again is already being used in even kindergarten in my old school, so that by the time they’re in college this will have become a joke. But okay, the authors have done their own research study, so why not have that be a conference subject. If I grade them all low, they won’t have a conference at all.

This evening I attended a book launch of a friend of mine who is selling the books of two merging companies, one from London and one from the U.S. I have trouble finding my way around Facebook to get onto the site. Once I do, I see the books are quality books, but I’m only going to order to help my friend out who needs the money.

My mother is having trouble with her hearing again. She has the tiniest ear canals any doctor we take her to has ever seen. And her allergies cause fluid in her ears. I’m so sorry she has to deal with this. Dave could hear me yelling into the phone.

So the 6 blocks of CHAZ, now called CHOP, in the former Seattle is still going strong. Now they have an advisory for conflict, but they only make “suggestions.” If they continue, this would be a good place for the college graduates trained in “Posthuman Ethics” to retire someday.

I did get a lot done today. I am on week 3 of my Coursera course, “The Moral Foundations of Politics” and passed several quizzes on distributive wealth and utilitarianism (Bentham). Fascinating stuff, read a few chapters in Things Fall Apart by

Chinua Achebe who influenced Toni Morrison, and read from Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil. I also sent my editor chapter 6 on dialogue for the Memoir Project handbook. I also started a poem: “The Prodigal Son Comes Home During COVID.”

I learned that the Spanish flu of 1918 probably did not originate in Spain. Spain was neutral during WWI and so those governments fighting did not want to alarm the public or soldiers so blamed it on Spain who tried to blame it on the French, but that didn’t catch on. Fake news in 1918?

Tonight was trash night. Dave’s not strong enough to take the cans out to the curb anymore, and since our gardener fills one of the cans half full with grass cuttings, it takes all my strength to get them out there.

The new board of my women teachers’ organization sent all our Black members roses in honor of these troubled times. One wrote an e-mail thanking the members and we didn’t know what she was talking about. Wish the board had told us. At least we’re not saying we’re “colorblind.” Would that be a “Posthuman” word?

Justice for All

June 16, 2020 (Tuesday)
Dave had a better morning today. I sure hope yesterday’s throwing up didn’t have to do with his Jersey Mike sandwich. I made sure it was on whole wheat bread and it only had prosciuttini, Provolone, and mayo.

Today is Bloomsday, although I’ve never read Ulysses all the way through. I have a new Facebook friend from my high school class who wrote on Facebook that her favorite story of all time is “The Dead.” She’s a college professor and said she’s taught Ulysses and told me about an edition that has good notes to guide me through the text. I told her that she had convinced me, so now that is on my “To Read” list.

But first I have to finish a number of books. I keep them all over the house so I can read them in little bits of time like Stephen King recommends. From my Coursera course on “Moral Foundations of Politics,” I’m reading about Eichmann and the “Banality of Evil,” which if we’re aware we can see every day. I saw footage of CHOP in the former Seattle. It looks worse than a scene from Hunger Games. A young girl is lying on a bench and takes a marijuana joint from another guy. What if she’s a runaway and her mother sees her on television zoned out like that. She’d need a passport to get to her daughter who is subject to rape in the night. I hear they shrank the country to three blocks from six so that emergency help could get in. The people who actually live in the new territory are complaining, as well they should. There is no “power to the people,” only some people. As I used to say, and I even had a cup made saying it when I was a principal, “You can’t make this stuff up.” Stunned, shocked, open-mouthed when listening to the news—that’s me. I’d like to dump a ton of books over CHOP by helicopter or drone like 1984, Animal Farm, and Lord of the Flies.

I did a grocery store run to get food for both my mother and me. There are still many people not wearing masks or keeping their proper social distance. My mother was so glad to see me she turned off the TV and we chatted while I unloaded the bags and put stuff in her refrigerator. I didn’t stay long and we continued our conversation by phone later in the evening. I told her how I don’t think I could have opened a school and run it without the help of the city police. In an emergency, the district folk rarely answered the phone or my “alert” e-mails. So when the two first graders brought a gun to school, you

bet I was going to call the police. Together the policeman and I solved where the gun came from (the grandfather’s home). When a woman was going to protest a daughter’s suspension with lawn chairs at dismissal in the parking lot, the police came and politely told her she had the right to protest, but it had to be within a certain distance on the sidewalk by the school. When a parent gang member threatened a rival parent gangmember to “get” him at the kindergarten graduation, I welcomed the 3 armed police people who stood in the back of the auditorium because the teachers were scared and the room was packed to see what would happen. Of course the superintendent tried to sweep all this “under the carpet.” I had police come to assemblies to talk to kids and to get to know them with a police dog of which kids could shake his paw.

Defunding the police is not the answer, but on the news I see a principal just got fired for making that very statement.

School Poems Published

June 17, 2020 (Wednesday)
3 of my school poems were published today online in Spectrum Schooldaze along with one from another Poemsmith. In 2010 when I joined the writers club, I wanted to show
off the literary people in the high desert, to show we are having a Renaissance of literary excellence up here because I was so impressed by the work coming out of my critique group, The Wordsmiths that I was in for five years. But then I met Thelma in a park that was having a literary festival in Duarte. I arranged for her to come speak up here. Then I reconnected on Facebook with Don who invited me to his classroom and Outward Bound program and lives near Pasadena. So, in short, I became involved with several other poetry and writing groups in California and often get work published elsewhere and gradually invite others in the high desert to submit to their journals and publishing companies. Then because my mother started painting when she moved up here in her
80’s (a real-live Grandma Moses), and Don was asking for art work, I took a picture of one of my mother’s schoolhouses that is framed on my wall and sent in one of my
“Found Poems” as well. And he published all 3 of my works and my mother’s watercolor!

My mother was delighted when I told her her artwork was published and she was able to see it online. Dave fixed her up with her computer when she moved up here, so she does all her online banking, orders from Costco, and now we’re trying to get her on Zoom since it’s her 97th birthday this coming Saturday, June 21st, the first day of summer. She was born in June, named June, got married in June, and had my brother, in June, my brother who passed away at age 70.

It made our day, and Dave had a good day, health-wise. I’m going to share one of my school poems below, a poem that comes out of my experience as a vice-principal of an elementary school:

Social Studies
by Mary Langer Thompson

"What was America's reaction to British rule?"

the teacher asks. George shouts, "Screw the rules!"

George's mother copiously copies definitions from The
Cambridge Dictionary
of American English:

Screw: to cheat or deceive; to waste time

Screw up: to spoil or destroy or to damage someone;

to strengthen or
to make more powerful; to twist or crush paper; to make a mistake or
to spoil something.

She adds,
“I am sorry that screwing up my son is your primary concern.”

My Friend, the Daughter of a Clown

June 18, 2020 (Thursday)
Today is my friend from high school’s birthday, Bonnie. I got in touch with her when one of our classmates started a FB page just for our class of ’66 in preparation for our 50th reunion. Bonnie, I saw, had published a book, so I ordered it. It was wonderful, about growing up in our home town, lonely, because she was the daughter of a famous clown. Her father was on Ed Sullivan and drove around in a tiny car on the stage and then stepped out of it to show his tall, lanky form and then even pulled out dogs. Her mother was also a clown, and left the dad with Bonnie as a baby and moved to our town where Bonnie grew up. One day, at about age 3, she was taken to the circus and a clown picked her up and kissed her. That was her father. A reporter shot the picture and it is on the cover of her book because when Bonnie was grown she searched for her father all over the United States, finally finding him and reconciling with him before his death. He introduced her to the circus world and she accepted an award for him posthumously. She also found a half-brother. Bonnie is a psychologist and a very warm and loving person.

At the time I found Bonnie, almost six years ago now, she was living in North Carolina with her son and daughter. We reconnected personally at a writer’s conference in San Diego and had dinner with more of our high school classmates one night and heard speakers like Anne Lamott and Jia Jiang who wrote a book about how he challenged himself to purposely get rejected in various ways.

I invited Bonnie to speak at our writer’s club and stay with Dave and me for a couple of nights. She and her daughter came. Because she was on a special diet, I shopped for a number of things I’d never even heard of before. Dave cooked for her and helped her daughter with her computer and she showed movies of her mother and father at our writers club.

I saw Bonnie and her daughter again at our high school reunion, which turned out to be a lot of fun, even though I was a nobody in high school. Bonnie was a prom princess and very popular. She told me that another, now friend, Maureen also lived in the same town I am now living in and taught high school here for twenty years. Maureen and I now get together once a month (before COVID) for lunch or just yogurt, and we go to a monthly diabetes class together (before COVID, but now on Zoom) for Dave’s diabetes and hers, led by nurse April who has a grant to run this free class.

Bonnie desperately wanted to move back to California and her daughter’s birth town for a long time, but could not afford anything here. Her house had burned down in North Carolina and she was living in another dwelling she never said much about on the property. She has no pension so said she is going to have to work and have clients for the rest of her life. Her beautiful daughter teaches dance.

So one day about a year ago, her daughter got a job with a national dance company and the two of them were able to move to New Mexico where they are loving it. Her son stayed in North Carolina. Bonnie has been in the hospital, however, recently, with issues, so Christiana wrote that she is very happy that Bonnie made it to this birthday. Bonnie is the type of friend you can tell anything to. She exudes empathy.

Juneteenth

June 19, 2020 (Friday)
Today is Juneteenth, a day many have never heard of, but one Dave and I have been familiar with since we came across a little town in California on a trip. This town, Allensworth, is now a National State Park, and was a completely founded and run by former black slaves. Now abandoned, it has a church, a one-room school-house, a store, and a few houses that can be toured. The man who began it went into Pasadena one day for supplies and was hit by a car and died. Some say he was targeted and murdered. I was so moved by the story of this man and town that I wrote a poem, and sent it to their address. They published my poem on their website.

Allensworth, California

This dream town is left to parched ghosts whose promised water rights vaporized near tracks by-passed by trains that refused to stop
for former slaves
or their leader, murdered under
muddy wheels.

I look through foggy windows of a cash store with no cash schoolhouse with no students church with silent bells,

no dry-mouthed choir to sing Amazing Grace.

Leaving on the rough, two-lane road
toward Route 99, thunderheads appear. I see the sign, "Subject to flooding."

I’ve always wanted to go back and visit the town, especially when I heard that Amtrak goes and stops there every Juneteenth for those who want to celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation, even though the slaves weren’t really free until two years after it was signed. The train trip was canceled because of COVID this year, and I missed the virtual 10:00 a.m. tour.

Yes, I think that Juneteenth, the Fourth of July for Blacks, should be a national holiday.

Be Still My Heart

June 20, 2020 (Saturday)
Last night Dave was talking about going to my mother’s house today to install Zoom on her computer so that we could gather online to celebrate her birthday and Father’s Day tomorrow since I told him we couldn’t take the chance because of COVID to gather in person, even outside on the patio.

So when I got up and fixed my coffee and cereal and was still waiting for Dave to come out of the bathroom, even after he said he was “fine,” I was stunned to see him winding the toilet paper around his hand and shaking and looking not “fine” at all. He kept repeating he was fine and I told him he didn’t look it. I went to get a bottle of Ensure, but he wouldn’t or couldn’t drink it. I went to get his insulin and he said “no, he was fine.” I told him I was scared, and I was going to call an ambulance. “No,” he said. “I’m fine.” I asked him if he knew who the President was, and he just smiled a little. Then he looked at me and said, “Can you see me?” I stayed calm, and said, “Yes, can you see me?” That half smile again. He was clearly out of it. He couldn’t get up. There was quite a bit of blood in his stool. So I called the ambulance—again. Is this the 6th or 7th time? He just talked to his doctor on the phone yesterday who said his potassium was a bit high so to cut his potassium pill in half. Dave asked, “So I can plan to be here for Christmas?” The doctor said, “Yes.”

I called my mother to tell her that Dave has been taken to St. Mary’s across town. We were interrupted by a call from the hospital that asked if I could give consent for a number of things. I said, yes, and asked for an update. They said he’d only been there about ten minutes and was in a bed, but was he always confused? I explained his history.

I swear, I am totally numb. I am typing this because I can’t just sit and stare into space. The ambulance guys told me that I probably wouldn’t be allowed in the hospital because of “You, know—the current situation.” Yes, I know. I’m supposed to call back in

about two hours if they don’t call me first. My mom and I are praying. I’m still numb. I wish I could cry. I don’t want to tell anybody else right now because I always have to wind up comforting them and keeping it together when I’m the one who needs comforting. I particularly don’t want to tell our son Matthew who has the strong emotions I wish I still had.

I’m not telling our neighbor, Al, who has a sold sign on his house now and is moving to Florida because this neighborhood has too many Republicans in it. Dave loves Al, but Al, because of politics no longer loves us, if he ever did.

They transferred Dave about 4:00 p.m. to Kaiser in Ontario. I called and he didn’t know who I was, but the lovely nurse talked to me for a time. She said they had to restrain him. He wanted out of the bed and to go home. I answered a few of her questions and she said to call back later to see how he was doing.

I called back at 10:00 p.m. and because he refused to take his Lactolose, I suggested she get a straw. She asked me to encourage him to take it on the phone. He took it. He also took off his wedding ring and lost it somewhere in the bed or on the floor.

The Trump rally in Tulsa Oklahoma was portrayed two ways. On MSN, it showed one person in the stands. On the news, the place was packed.

Nothing to do now but wait, try to sleep, and call Dave again in the morning.

Happy 97th Birthday, Mom plus Father’s Day June 21, 2020 (Sunday)

Dave is back with us cognitively. Thank the Lord. He asked me this morning on the phone, “How did I get here?” and remembers nothing about yesterday. I’m waiting for the doctor to call after he or she makes his or her rounds. He has a new nurse this morning and he doesn’t speak very clearly. I couldn’t even get his name, and I don’t have a hearing problem. Or maybe I do. Nothing’s certain anymore in the world or my home or head.

So Matthew, our son, didn’t get my message that his dad is in the hospital. Why didn’t I tell him immediately? Because he’s super emotional and I didn’t know anything yet and this is Dave’s 6th or 7th, I’ve lost count, trip by ambulance to a hospital. But he came over to our home with gifts for his grandmother who is 97 today and for his dad. He was surprised he wasn’t here, but not outwardly upset.

He was upset about the world situation, and I think, scared. I tried to be the voice of reason but he almost got up and left three times. We went to the store and I got my mom a rose, a roasted chicken, and a tiny cake and candles. We brought it over there. Matt wore a face shield, not a mask. I thought they gave it to him to wear at work. No. He bought it. We went into my mom’s house, sang to her, and waved kisses, but left her to eat because I didn’t want to take off the masks. Matt thinks the whole virus is a hoax. He is a doomsayer and I got very upset later when I asked him to stay for dinner. I think he left disgusted with me, but he had to get home before dark. He lives by himself. I am more worried about him than I am about Dave, but I told Matt his father was my main concern right now.

I figured out how my body deals with stress. I get all stuffed up. I get breathing problems. I can’t cry, but tears fall down my face unbidden. My heart hurts.

I called Dave about 8:30. He’s still cognitively okay but waiting for his procedure tomorrow morning. He wishes he had his cell phone and eyeglasses, but I wasn’t about to

drive an hour one way to deliver them when they wouldn’t let me in to visit anyway because of COVID. Besides my mother worries every time I go out in the car. What if I had an accident? Who would attend to her needs?

There was a murder of a newly graduated teen in CHOP last night and a critically injured man, too. They would not let the cops get to the victims. Threw rocks at them. Who is notifying that boy’s parents? Can they identify him? I suppose so, if someone knew he was a recent graduate. They think this was black-on-black crime. This is only day 13. Didn’t anyone else see this coming? We could have tear-gassed them out early on. Tear gas doesn’t kill.

What’s that poem about “The center will not hold?” That’s how I feel. I had to go to the Psalms to calm myself down and get some sleep:
“I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord make me dwell in safety.” (Psalm 4:8).

Things Fall Apart

June 22, 2020 (Monday)
Still upset about Matt, I wrote him a private FB message: “Thanks for coming

yesterday and for having dinner with me. I know we don’t always see eye to eye, but I still love you to the moon and back. I’m here if you need me.”

Called Dave and they were just bringing in the gurney for him to get his procedure and look inside him. He was cognizant.

Had my Rice Krispies and turned on the news. A 3-year old and others killed over the weekend in Chicago. A Black woman (B in Black is to be capitalized now, I read), was saying that Blacks need to discuss Black-on-Black crime. I remember when Matt was three. He was the most beautiful child I’d ever seen. This child on the news, now gone, is also beautiful. I pray for his mother. I pray for all mothers.

I wrote an e-mail to the president of the writer’s club. I’m supposed to call on eight people and ask how they’re doing. I asked if someone else could take my people. I’m not in a good enough emotional state to talk to that many people, especially those I haven’t talked to in a long time. I usually do everything I’m asked, but there’s a limit. I have to start saying “no” sometimes.

Today I did some watercolor pictures. Threw some out. They were only on notecards, so no big deal. I just need distracting things to do, like Found poems, crossword puzzles, the laundry.

Talked to Dave two more times today. No results. He saw no doctor. He’s just lying there, waiting. He ate lunch. I don’t know when he’s coming home and either does he. I know they’re treating him well, and in a way, this has been a little respite for me.

My psychologist never got back to me. I wanted to talk to him today about my worries about Dave and Matt and the world. It seems weird that I would need a psychologist at this time of my life. My faith should see me through like it did my parents through WWII, at least my mother. But sometimes you need someone objective to talk to. The first time I called my counselor Dave’s mom had just died. We had been estranged from her, even though she lived blocks away. Dave learned she died on FB, just as he learned his father died on FB. Dave was sleeping more than usual and when I talked to him, it seemed like we were reasoning in a circle. I was frustrated that he wasn’t listening

to me. I didn’t know if it was grief, Myasthenia Gravis, which is a muscle disease, PTSD as a Vietnam Vet or has never wanted to talk much about that experience, or what. Then Matt walked away from his mortgage. I was beside myself between them. I don’t like to worry my mother, in her 90’s. She should be enjoying life like she is as much as possible for as long as possible. Anyway, I found Ted, a man of my faith. He convinced me to give Dave an ultimatum to find and talk to a counselor, too. Things between us were improving. Dave liked Marie and she liked him, and I swear, she was a miracle worker. I was even able to say, “I think you should discuss that with Marie . . .” But recently in this year, Marie moved back down the hill, and Dave says he doesn’t need her. I think he does, but we are dealing with his daily afflictions and I don’t want to interfere, but I think I should ask Ted about it. I wanted a man counselor in order to understand Dave and Matt better through a male perspective. We recommend books to each other and simply talk like friends. One day he revealed that he is married to a Black woman and she doesn’t want him to have pictures of her in his office because somebody might judge him, I guess. I wonder what she thinks of this whole cultural revolution we’re in.

I read a chapter of Things Fall Apart today, but I need something more light right now to read.

Not That Bad Off?

June 23, 2020 (Tuesday)
I waited and waited today and during that time talked to Ted, my psychologist. He’s overloaded and sounds burned out and was only able to fit me in today because it was his normal day off. His mother has to be watched by him and his wife because of memory problems and he’s tired, too. He suggested I get a support group I could talk to. I’m an introvert. There’s no way I’m going to another group of strangers (one who went on the radio to get me fired when I was a principal) to hear their stories and solutions. Dave and I went to one a couple of years ago, and it was horrible. So utterly depressing and one couple wanted to be friendly but they had to get home to their depressed adult son who lives with them and whom they couldn’t leave alone for long. I really felt for that mom and worried about her for days. So I agree that I’ll talk to a friend. I have the feeling I’m too much for him right now, or that I myself am not that bad off and that I don’t need him as much as his other clients do.

At the end of my call with Ted, Dave’s doctor at the hospital called me. He comes home today! He had a bleeding lesion that they cauterized and they’re trying a new med that should keep him from getting confused. I’m to wait for the nurse’s call to make the hour and a half drive down to get him.

So I say goodbye to Ted, call my mother, eat lunch, pack some snacks, get the call and drive down the hill listening to a new James Taylor CD. I have to park this time and get a prescription for Dave. They tell me in the front that my mask is not a good one— good for me but not for them, so I put one they give me over my mask. Then they don’t have enough of the pill he needs but wind up giving me the rest of what they have, a 30- day supply. I go back to the car, call upstairs to Dave’s floor and they tell me they’re calling transportation and I’m to pull the car up to the front door. I only wait about ten minutes and they bring him down. It’s good to see him. Thank God, he knows me. We drive back up the hill and he stays awake the entire time and as we near home tells me they gave him Sherbet or something like ice cream and could we stop and get some. So I go to Staters, see that sherbet has corn syrup in it, which is a definite no-no, and buy him

a small container of ice cream for 230 calories that only has skim milk and cane sugar in it.

At home, I call mom to assure her we’re back, Dave looks good, and we’ll be having dinner, which we do, Kid Smart Mac and Cheese which Dave and I both like, made by a pediatrician dad with carrots and veggies cooked in, but you can’t tell. We watch Jeopardy and then a very different and dark Perry Mason and go to bed.

Another Day At Home Within the New Normal June 24, 2020 (Wednesday)

We went for a little ride today, just over to my mom’s to deliver her mail and then home. I wrote an apologetic post to all the Poemsmiths because I was “absent” for awhile. We’re going to meet tomorrow on Zoom so we all need to send in a poem if we plan to attend.

I wrote my poem this evening concerning the Teddy Roosevelt statue that looters want to tear down. I looked it up and found that Roosevelt specifically asked his wife not to have any likenesses of himself put up. So there is the statue with him in the center and an Indian on his right and a slave on his left. If the people want to tear it down, I can understand, but it really should go before a council, or a simulated trial so that it’s the people, the taxpayers who decide. There should be a process. And maybe we’d all learn something. Anyway, my poem, since Roosevelt was responsible for them, is from the point of view of Teddy Bears. “Are we next?” I wrote it tonight.

I listened to part of my Coursera course, Moral Foundations of Politics, and took a quiz or two and passed. A lot of names to keep straight, and philosophies like Utilitarianism, Neo-Utilitarianism, John Mills, etc.

We had peanut butter muffins for dinner tonight because I read how good peanut butter is for the liver. I hope so. Dave’s doing pretty good. He’s not going to the bathroom twenty times a day. He let me drive to my mom’s house today but walked out to the car just fine. I’ve got to get him walking more, little by little. His sister’s right: “Sitting is the new smoking.”

Speaking of Dave’s sister she sent my mother a Subway card for her birthday. Dave doesn’t want to talk to her yet. Now my birthday is coming up in July. They extended my driver’s license. I don’t have to go in until November now. Good. I’d forgotten about it.

A Talk with an Old Friend

June 25, 2020 (Thursday)
I said I’d call at 9:30, and I did, after Dave and I had Rice Krispies and Cheerios. It was good to hear Kathy’s voice. We met in our Master’s program back in 1976. We moved for Dave’s job to Colorado for two years and she visited us there for a week. We wrote a curriculum together on Moral Education called Free to Choose and published by Perfection Learning. After two years, we were ready to move back, but I had no job, so Kathy invited me to teach in her Catholic girl’s high school. “I’m not Catholic,” I remembered saying, but I needed a job, they interviewed and liked me, and I stayed for 3 years because the girls were not a discipline problem, I liked the curriculum and had more choice in it, and I simply wasn’t ready to flee that nest. But I encouraged Kathy to go to my old district and teach junior high and she went through the ranks until she

became superintendent in that district. I went back to my high school district, rose to ESL Specialist, then moved to another district to be A.P. for about seven years, and then moved from my house of 22 years to near where we are today. Both of us are retired now. Before COVID we’d meet at least once a year with Dave and John her husband, an ex- policeman. We’d go to a museum or a play or restaurant.

I’m concerned about her kids and she’s concerned about mine, especially since we’ve known each other for so many years. Part of our concern is generational, gleaned from what we can tell is their philosophy that runs counter to much of what we believe. Her daughter and my son have dealt with some tragedies in their lives, too. Anyway, we want to help each other and each other’s kids adjust to life better emotionally so we’re going to talk once a week. In light of the current situation, too, and us both being retired educators we’ll be discussing that, too, plus life in retirement with men who have been ill, one a retired policeman and one a retired IT guy who is also a Vietnam Vet (mine).

Our Poemsmith critique group met on Zoom from 3:30-7:00 p.m. There were five of us today. They loved my poem called “Lament of the Teddy Bears” and gave me a few clarifying suggestions. It’s about the demolition of the Teddy Roosevelt statue in front of a history museum. Turns out he never wanted any likeness of himself and the one he got has an Indian and a slave on either side of him. But since the Teddy Bear was named after Teddy Roosevelt, my comments are from their perspective. Our Zoom host went and got all her teddy bears, one 100 years old, and lined her couch with them. The rest of us all talked about childhood bears, too, except the one man in our presence whom I don’t think could relate. After we were finished, I edited my poem and sent it to an online journal that prints one or two current event poems every week. I hope they take it.

Morals and Poland

June 26, 2020 (Friday)
Stayed home all day and watched part of my Coursera Course on Moral Foundations of Politics. I’ve passed all the quizzes and tests so far. It’s an eight week course and I’m on week four, about to go into “Marxism.” So far, we’ve covered Utilitarianism, the new and mature Enlightenment, and John Mills and his essay “On Liberty,” which talks about “The Harm Principal.” I don’t think Mills would approve of the CHOP people in Seattle, especially since death has occurred there. What he would say about tearing down the Emancipation Proclamation statue of Lincoln because there’s a slave there in a lower position that Lincoln, I don’t know, except that why aren’t they going through a legal procedure and where will this all stop?

Dave and I went for a little drive today to pick up my mom’s mail for her. She’s well into the James Michener book on Poland I gave her for her birthday. My grandmother, her mother, escaped Poland in about 1904-5. The book is making her sad because Poland has always been so hated. I haven’t started my copy yet, so I wish she’d slow down. I have a couple of other books going that I need to finish first.

I signed up to read some poems on Zoom at our next meeting of the California Writers Club, High Desert branch along with three other Poemsmiths and some other writers who are reading stories or excerpts from their books on July 11th.

Testiness All Around

June 27, 2020 (Saturday)
I slept in today until almost 10:00 a.m. and I was still tired. Later in the afternoon, I asked Dave if he wanted to go for a drive again. I said I would drive and he said okay and then said, “Let’s go out the front door.” I followed and saw him get into the driver’s seat of his car. I opened the door, but said, “I thought I was going to drive.” He got a little testy, so I shut up.

Making our first turn I noticed he looked to the right and left, but not to the left a second time and a car was coming but I couldn’t tell how fast. I said, “There’s a car.” Well, he got testier and said, “I saw it!” I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I try so hard not to emasculate him, but I can tell when he’s shaky and not as alert as he used to be driving, and I get scared. If we’re in an accident and something happens, what will happen to my mother? I feel overwhelmed sometimes.

We stopped and got her mail, all without speaking. As I went into her house to deliver it, I prayed that I would not start sobbing. I can’t lay this stuff on her. She’ll just worry. I managed to hold it together, probably because even with a mask and social distancing, I don’t want to stay too long.

I got back in the car and when we got to the corner I didn’t say a word but Dave started in again on my telling him how to drive, then said “let’s just go home.” I said we didn’t have anything for dinner, so why not get a pizza? That I hadn’t said anything. He calmed down and we drove to Pieology and got a pizza and all was okay for the rest of the evening.

Maybe we’re watching too much news.
The Masked Visit and a Hug

June 28, 2020, (Sunday)
At around noon there was a knock on the door. Our son Matt, masked, with a regular mask, not his shield that he wore last weekend. He came to assemble the 3-D printer he gave Dave for Father’s Day. He had watched a video in preparation and after talking on the phone with Dave the other day probably realized that Dave wouldn’t have the energy to be doing it anytime in the near future.

I decided that because Dave hadn’t seen him in months, I’d just go with it. Matt is so much like Dave. When he has a project, he’s going to do it until it is done. They both have a kind of genius with machines and putting things together that is so outside what I can do and how I think. So, although it took a couple of hours, Matt succeeded and started to make a cat in 3-D. We’ve all had several cats over the years and we are cat- lovers, although Matt also bought some specially colored ink so I could make a skink from my authored children’s book, How the Blue-Tongued Skink got his Blue Tongue, and a seagull, from The Gull Who Thought He was Dull” which I also authored. Very, very thoughtful and kind of him.

Matt stayed for dinner. I ran to Jersey Mike’s and got some sandwiches on wheat bread and a turkey wrap for me. We did have to take off our masks to eat. Matt had to head home before dark and I actually hugged him before he left. First hug probably in a year. Pathetic.

I hope Dave or I don’t get sick.

I called Mom and got her grocery list of what she needs and saw that I got rejected from the online journal for my teddy bear poem and from another journal for

other poems, too. Oh, well. We had a good visit with Matt. Marxism, North Korea and Coronavirus

June 29, 2020 (Monday)

Very tired today. But Dave’s perked up. He got the newspaper and put out the trash cans. He drove me to Target and waited in the car while I shopped for a few things for us and my mother. When I came out he was talking to one of our cousins who has nineteen grandkids. She and her daughters and husbands all want to move to Idaho, and several already have. They’re thinking of buying property and dividing it up and building on it. I feel my family drifting away from me—all of them. Another cousin by marriage had a new boyfriend after being widowed. Well he had Altzheimer’s and killed himself this past weekend, which reminds me of one of Dave’s and my good friends and a brilliant writer who had cancer and killed himself. His wife found him. All of this is almost too horrible to even consider and think about.

I listened to my course on the Moral Foundations of Politics. The professor talked about Marxism for the first time today. Marx actually believed that democracy was the basis, a good place to start, but that it would burn itself out. Next would be socialism, and then after that communism. Is that what some of our lefties are believing? That once we accept and move on from democracy the “democratic socialism” will be next. Is communism really on their agenda or do they think it will naturally follow? Can’t they look at Cuba and North Korea? In 1992, I was selected to go to South Korea with a team of educators from all across the U.S. and tour and share our educational system with them. It was summertime, so we never went to any of their schools, but we stayed in the dorms of Seoul University, about 30 of us, and took courses during the day. We ate Korean food, shopped at Itaewan downtown where all the bargains were, including strands of real silk beads in all colors for $1.00, and toured the countryside. They were going to cancel our trip to the DMZ, but some American veterans insisted they wanted to go. So we did and sat at the conference table and had our picture taken with a North Korean soldier. Then we looked over a propaganda village that looked like a real town that broadcasted anti- American propaganda all day and night and lit up at night. No one lived there. It was eerie, and like President Clinton said, “evil.” I’ve read several books on North Korea. You can get put into a camp there just because your family doesn’t put up a picture of the “leader” and work slave labor with maybe a bowl of soup at night. It’s a living hell on earth. Our young people need to learn that totalitarianism can come from both the right and the left.

We’re living in a time of great uncertainty, and many can’t live with that. The protesters aren’t giving anyone time to think, saying that our silence is evil and demanding we prove we’re not racist. I’m just tired and most of our other problems didn’t go away when the health crisis hit, and then this revolution. People are unemployed and trying to feed their families and many are still homeless. Some are fearful still of losing their jobs. Our California governor is reclosing all the bars that just opened because of a spike in Coronavirus. Others come on and say, but the virus is happening in younger people, and those younger people aren’t dying. All I know is that I have two vulnerable people to worry about and a son who works in health care but thinks the whole thing is a conspiracy.

A Spike in Cases

June 30, 2020 (Tuesday)
In the paper this morning there was a robbery of a Stater Brothers in the nearby town where I was a principal. Four women or three women and a girl of twelve were asked for a receipt as they left the store and all refused. The clerk followed them out and they physically attacked him or her, threw a boulder and hit the clerk, and kept hitting him or her with a backpack and other things. They had about $60.00 worth of merchandise. I wondered why he or she didn’t follow them out quietly and get the car license or call the police? Oh, that’s right. This is an area where they are actively asking for the defunding of police. I think the employee is hospitalized. And the twelve-year-old is out of school. Have the grab-and-go lunches stopped and they were hungry? Our paper is so thin, I don’t even know what’s going on in the high desert.

With the spike in cases, it looks like we will be staying in on our anniversary that’s in a few days. 49 years. What a ride! The world should work more like our marriage. Dave has supported me as I got a Master’s Degree and then a doctorate, and then when I worked part time so I could be home with our son. We’ve canceled each other’s votes out several times and we both have moved for each others’ jobs and lost jobs. We’ve dealt with relatives who’ve needed financial and medical help. We’ve been through serious illnesses and worries that did or did not come to be. We’ve disagreed passionately about one thing or another and sometimes stuck to our guns and sometimes compromised and sometimes gave in. We’ve been poor and we’ve been comfortable. We’ve gone out of our way for each other’s friends because we both have unique talents. Linda Pastan, a favorite poet ends her poem, “I Married You” with these lines:

How wrong we both were about each other,
and how happy we have been.

I hope we make it to our fiftieth. And if the citizens in our country cannot learn to love each other, then let’s show respect for each other. Each of us is a mixture of good and bad and each of us is capable of helping or harming another, intentionally and inadvertently. Human nature is the same the world over. But we are also capable of growing and developing into so much more. My way to help will be to pick up my pen and to write, write, write.