Coffee heat rising

Angst

good-BYE, Costco…and dammit, this time I mean it!

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You realize…if you want to buy 89 tons of cheap individually wrapped candies to hand out to the Poor Kids who are bussed into your neighborhood for Hallowe’en, you can get that stuff at Target. Or Walmart. Or for that matter at Safeway, Albertson’s, Fry’s, or Walgreen’s. You don’t HAVE to go to Costco to buy a lifetime supply of junk candy. Or of…well…of anything.

Costco is where I went today, though, by way of stocking up for this year’s onslaught of kiddies and teenagers. The ‘Hood is flanked on two sides by low-income districts, meaning that every Hallowe’en we are flooded with hordes of cutie-pies and silly teenagers in costume. This makes for a great neighborhood party: everyone hangs out on their driveways to greet the panhandling kids, and a grand time is had by all.

So today I was despatched to snare a cache of individually wrapped candies for the coming shindig. Costco seemed like the logical destination, since while I was at it I could stock up on a few things that are running low here at the Funny Farm.

But…maybe not…

Alas. They have decimated their cheap wine offerings. They used to have a wonderful selection of wines in the $8 to $12 range — I mean, awesome. No more. Want a drinkable bottle of wine there? Prepare to spend upwards of 15 or 18 bucks,

No, this is not inflation. Albertson’s, Sprouts, Fry’s, Trader Joe’s, and — hevvin help us — even the ritzy-titzy AJ’s all offer a generous selection of cheapo wines, highly drinkable. Prices are about the same (in the $8 to $12 range), and deliciousness is highly comparable in all the other stores.

The Paradise Valley Costco’s layout is damn near non-navigable. In addition to our communal supply of Hallowe’en candy, I wanted to buy one of Costco’s lifetime-supply bottles of aspirin. Into the pharmacy dept. Search high. Search low. Search medium. Search high and low again. CAN. NOT. FIND. A. FREAKIN’ BOTTLE OF ASPIRIN.

Since this is a commodity you need by the time you get out of the place, presumably my fellow customers have cleared the shelves and gulped down all the product.

Did find a nice package of rack of lamb, one of the things I went specifically to that store to buy.

But…

Y’know…

AJ’s also has superior rack of lamb. And you don’t have to do battle to get to the meat counter for the purpose of grabbing a package of it.

**

But the main issue with Costco shopping is…well…Costco customers.

You think Walmart customers are characters? Jayzuz! Take 45 minutes or an hour to watch Costco customers in action! They leave Walmart People in the dust.

Honest-ta-Gawd, I do NOT understand how Costco employees who work the floor in those stores keep a grip on their sanity! WHAT a job!

Today, as is invariably usual, I got stuck behind some stupid woman who, mesmerized by the glory of the stacks and stacks of merchandise, was rolling her cart right up the middle of the aisles. She would stop, stand there, and stare…while everyone on both sides of her, coming and going, waited for her to get the hell out of the way.

This is not a “sometimes” occurrence. It’s something that seems to happen every time I go into a Costco store.

Y’know, aisles in a grocery store or a drugstore are no wider. If anything, Costco’s aisles are considerably more generous than a Safeway’s or a Walgreen’s. But people don’t seem to pull that stunt in those stores. For the life of me, I cannot understand what gets into people who do that!

Why this is happening — whether it’s because there’s so much variety of merchandise people zone out as they search for what they want or whether a particular type of chucklehead is attracted to Costco — I cannot imagine. All I know is it makes me crazy. And I think I’m not gonna go back there, unless it’s under exceptional duress.

There are things you can’t get in these parts except at Costco or at Amazon. For that reason, it makes sense to maintain a membership, either in order to go there oneself or so as to send Instacart runners. But…if the only time I shop there is when I need something that’s not sold anywhere else and I don’t wanna wait for Amazon to deliver it, I’m surely going to shop there lots, lots less.

Crazier and Crazier

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So a couple days ago I was holding forth about the general looney toons of life in the Valley: the school shooters (real and wannabe), the joy of navigating the city streets around the crashes, the cops, and the lunatics, the endless traipses across the Valley, the fruitless search for a shot of covid vaccine, the ways the city has changed and the persistence of fancy prisons for old folks, the amusingly lurid murders, the daily outbursts of gunfire, the fine self-destructing mobile homes (right up the street from the Funny Farm!), the big business that is the local drug industry,.

♦ This happened right around the corner from where my friend Shannon and her family live.
I pass by this garden spot every time I drive up to the Fry’s or the Paradise Valley Costco.
♦ This: one off-ramp up the freeway from my westside Costco hangout.
♦ This fine institution is about six blocks north of Gangbanger’s Way: you could walk there from here.
♦ This also: right up the road, not far from Shannon’s place.
♦ Here, too: you could walk to this place from DXH’s house; and I can walk from my house to DXH’s without much trouble.
♦ This one occurred right around the corner and up the road from the university: also within reasonable walking distance of ASU West.
♦ This: in a hiking area not far from my favorite Fry’s grocery store and upscale Costco

And…and…as I turn these matters around in my mind, I find myself wondering why on earth do I stay in this place???

Why don’t I pack up the house and the dog and myself and take off for parts quieter, if not damn near unknown?

Well, the main reason is my son. M’hijito has said repeatedly that he doesn’t want me to move. Not out of the city…not out of my (very sweet) house. I suspect the real reason is that he hopes to inherit this house.

And that’s a reasonable desire. It’s a delightful house, very pretty, in a friendly, comfortable neighborhood (albeit surrounded by drug slums), centrally located, close to where his dad lives, close to where some of his friends live. Why would he NOT want me to hang onto this place so he can unload his un-insulatable house and walk into a larger, nicer home in a (slightly) safer neighborhood?

I do love this house, and I also love my neighborhood, with its lush irrigated lawns, its district of million-dollar shacks, its shady groves of mature trees, its large and open park. I think what I could do without is something that plagues ALL of the city of Phoenix. The crime and the drug use and the widespread lunacy make you feel unsafe no matter what part of town you live in. Given that as a basic fact, I would be very sad to leave the Funny Farm and the Hood behind.

Where on earth would I go?

Well…away from lovely Latter-Day L.A.? Here in the state, there’s Prescott, a historic small city favored by the upper-middle-class and the intellectual set. It’s cooler than Phoenix in the summer, though it does get a bit crisp in winter. Prices used to be much higher than Phoenix, but what with the Late Great Real Estate Inflation here in the Valley, they’re about the same for roughly comparable places. Crime rates there aren’t too awful…certainly not like Phoenix‘s.

Oro Valley: a suburb of Tucson favored by aging millenials. Tucson has a nationally respected hospital, a reasonably vibrant cultural life, pretty fair weather, and a major airport to carry you elsewhere as desired. It’s modestly scenic, tucked up against a small mountain range; a short drive into Mexico, and not much of a drive up to Phoenix. The crime rate is middling…at least you wouldn’t risk your life every time you took the dog out for an evening stroll. Probably.

Fountain Hills, right here in the Valley: a quiet, staid development on the highway up to Payson. It’s right next to the Mayo, so the whole trek-across-the-city-to-see-a-decent-doctor conundrum would be mooted. Crime rate there is nothing special: not high, but not rock-bottom low, either. Fountain Hills has two huge disadvantages, though, where I’m concerned: First is the cheap, cheesy construction. The houses, whether “custom” or not, are uniformly tracty and uniformly stick-and-Styrofoam flimsy junk. They appear not to have been intended for for people who live here year-round; apparently the builders expected the place would appeal mostly to snowbirds. And it’s not as quiet as it looks: it’s right under the flight path for jets coming in and out of Sky Harbor! Apparently the natives bellyache constantly (and fruitlessly) about the racket.

Picturesque, arty and interesting Santa Fe is very expensive. It’s beautiful and the weather’s awesome and it has a real cultural life, but… Most humans can’t afford a real adobe house. And so about 90% of those adobe-look homes are actually stick-and-Styrofoam shacks, same as the ones in Fountain Hills (and waypoints). Tarrying there one summer for a conference, I happened to chat with a woman who had moved to Santa Fe from New York, imagining she would get away from the Big Apple’s famed violence and crime. Neighborhood Scout ranks Santa Fe as 9th on a scale where 100 is safest. Lovely!

By comparison? Phoenix ranks 7, making life here marginally more risky.

So….it’s hard to picture where one could go that would be any better than what I’ve got. One or two venues might be safer or less hectic, but they’d have other drawbacks.

Wherever you’re goin’, you can’t get there from here…

Are You Crazy to Have Kids Today?

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Time to move along? If I were younger and had kids, I’d sure be looking at that possibility a lot more closely. On the other hand…move to where? Seems like every part of the country is either off the deep end or teetering on the edge.

What a place we live in!

Southward bound to the AJ’s, my favorite overpriced gourmet-style grocery store, I was about to turn left off Main Drag East to move over onto Central Avenue, which takes you directly by the front of the beloved store. Idling in the left-turn lane, I looked down in the direction of where I would be east-bound and saw…TA DAAAAA! An army of cops, fire vehicles, ambulances, and whatnot, right down on Central.

HOLY shee-ut! Veer back into the southbound lanes and proceed southward, ever southward, to the first E/W main drag north of AJ’s. Manage to get into the store without incident.

So…chatting with the beloved checkout lady at the beloved AJ’s, I mention that if she’s going out to lunch, she should avoid going north on Central. And she said…a little wrecky-poo was as nothing! The other day the AJ’s crew was witness to a full-blown lockdown of Brophy, Xavier, and Central high schools, fine institutions of learning directly across Camelback Road from AJ’s.

FYI, Brophy and Xavier are elite private high schools run by the Jesuits, who have a lovely church and campus about a block south of AJ’s. Central is THE high school that middle-class parents who can’t afford private schools move into the North Central neighborhoods for: to get their kids in there. If you’re a minority member and live in South Phoenix, you also have a good shot (oops!) at getting your kid into Central. Campuses for the three schools are adjacent.

Apparently a nut-case kid at Central showed up at school with a gun (or not???), and a full-blown panic ensued. From what you can tell by the gnus stories, it appears that all three schools were locked down.

Just imagine. All those hundreds of kids having to go through a terrifying drama like that!

Y’know…. If I were a young person today, you could not pay me to have children.

But if I were of the religious persuasion that insisted I simply must go forth and procreate, then you could not pay me to put my kids in the public schools. Or…as we can see from this episode, in any goddamn school.

If I had kids today, truth to tell, I would home-school them.

Right. Try not to go berserk at the mere thought: it’s not as crazy as it sounds.

One semester I was teaching a class at ASU West — in the evening, as I recall — whose members were mostly adults. Somehow the subject of home-schooling came up — why, I don’t remember — and ohmigawd! You should have heard the conversation that ensued.

As you might expect, a number of classmates were folks who thought that only the crazed and the doctrinaire would even think of home-schooling.

Then the crazed and the doctrinaire spoke up. There were, purely by coincidence, A LOT of them. And…you never saw so many ears perk up in your life!

Not one of the home-schooling parents appeared to be crazy. Every one of them had rational reasons to have their children tutored through the first 12 years of America’s conventional education. All of the kids who had reached college age had succeeded in getting accepted by the colleges of their choice. Each set of parents had made financial sacrifices (i.e., one parent had to stay home from work) to pull off the home-schooling trick. Classmates had question after question after question after question after question. And the parents had answer after answer after answer.

It was THE single most interesting classroom discussion I’ve ever had the pleasure of leading or of participating in.

We spoke together long before the mass-shooting loony-toons our culture enjoys today. But even in the absence of that concern, when you heard these parents speak about the reasons for their decisions, about how they pulled it off, about how they found activities to help socialize their kids, and about the results, you came away thinking holeee shee-ut! why didn’t i think of that?

And you know… I have to say that today, if I had kids (which I probably wouldn’t, under the circumstances), I would seriously consider home-schooling.

What a place we live in! What a time we live in! What an unholy culture we live in!

 

Time to Move Along?

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Mogollon Rim from near Payson

HOLY mackerel! This place gets more and more crime-ridden and more and more violent with every day that passes!

Y’know…I can handle the mailbox thefts. And the burglars. And the cop helicopter flyovers every damn night. The abductions (for the purpose of rape) from the bus & train stops at Conduit of Blight and Feeder Street E.W. can be dealt with simply by never riding a bus or a lightrail train. The transient drug addicts: locks on the doors and windows, plus a large, loud dog. The panhandler harassment at the corner shopping centers: drive to some other district for grocery shopping and drugstore visits. The car break-ins and thefts: close the damn garage door…oh, but first, do park your car on the inside of said garage. The mail thefts: for a mere 400 bucks, install a Fort Knox of a mailbox. The burglars: keep a fine, fully loaded .45 on hand.

But I sweartogawd, every which way you turn, here’s more gratuitous, demented, and criminal violence. And it is too…damn…close to home.

I go by this corner every time I visit the Costco north of the university.

Ruby and I could walk to this dump, if it were safe to do so. As it is, I drive by there several times a week on the way to the freeway or to points west. That’s rather closer than I’d like to get.

This fancy charter school is in the Arcadia district, not far from where my late step-sister lived.

This episode took place in an informal B&B (why are those legal???) that popped up, also in the Arcadia district — an area where the ritzy and the titzy congregate to live in what they imagine will be peace.

A moment of nuttiness took place at a park just south of the university’s west campus…another garden spot that I pass in my car with some frequency.

Central High School is the best public high school in the city (which may be telling you something). My son went to a Jesuit high school directly next door to it — they occupy, in effect, practically the same campus. Sunnyslope belies this figure, though; it also has a reputation as one of the best-performing high schools in the country.

Yet… the violence and the vagrancy and the craziness go on and on and on and on, every damn day! And it seems to get more frantic as the weeks pass.

And y’know what?

I’m tired of living in the middle of a war zone. Once again I’m brought back to the feeling that as much as I love my home and my neighbors and my neighborhood, as much as I like being 8 minutes from the church and 10 minutes from my son’s house (he also lives in a war zone…), it’s past time to move along.

The violence, the crime, and the Loony Toons spread pretty homogeneously across the Valley. Of course, there’s more low-end craziness in garden spots like the apartments that flank the ‘Hood on the west side of Conduit of Blight Blvd and the dank slum directly to the north. But as that cop said after the Adventure of the Home Invasion: “It’s everywhere.”

[Yeah? Well…whaddaya bet some parts of Everywhere have less of it than our part does?]

So…if one were gonna move, where would one go?

Well, if I stayed in the Valley, the two choices would be Fountain Hills or the Cave Creek/Carefree area. I don’t consider the Sun Cities a choice: just not innarested in living in a ghetto for old tolks.

Both these venues are expensive. Fountain Hills has the added attribute of late-model cheesy construction: structures that were built to fall apart. The Funny Farm is probably in the last generation of solidly built affordable residential structures, and even it has a failing in the insulation department. Those houses out east are simply junk: Southern California-style built-to-fall-apart junk. Expensive junk.

Anything that is newer construction shares that fine attribute, and most of the stuff in Cave Creek and Carefree falls under the rubric of “newer.” Ticky-tacky is the name of the Development Game here in Arizona, price range notwithstanding.

That leaves as options some of the outlying towns, or Tucson.

  • Tucson, also plagued by gimme-a-buck developments, has two big draws: the best hospital/medical center in the state (something that looks Bigger the Older you get), and the vibrant cultural center that is the University of Arizona. A lot is going on in Tucson, the weather is far more pleasant than Phoenix’s, and with a fine mountain range behind the city, just about anyplace you can live is fairly scenic.
  • Prescott, a large small town/small city up the I-17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, is a pleasant little burg. HOWEVER…it’s been discovered. From what I’m told, mobs of Baby Boomers and younger people are moving up there, turning it into yet another Southern California East. The weather’s a little cooler (though what you save in air-conditioning you’ll probably spend on heating); it has a supposedly excellent medical center (people who work there beg to differ, interestingly enough); and it’s a straight shot down the freeway to the urban marvels of Phoenix. I’m not at all sure it has enough more to offer, when compared to Fountain Hills, to make it worth a major move and a long drive into town.
  • Payson: Mr. and Mrs. Fireman moved up there, on the edge of the Mogollon Rim. They bought an extremely cool house in the forest, and, given Mr. Fireman’s outstanding handyman skills, have turned it into a to-die-for little palace. Problem with Payson? Rudimentary services and facilities. They had to drive their dog into Phoenix to be tended to by a veterinarian after the poor pooch was attacked by a neighbor’s dog. No Costco: only one Safeway, a store that I would call…well, pretty blah. No first-rate doctors or dentists — they drive into town for those services, too. Doctors? Doctors? We don’t need no steeeenking doctors!
  • Uh huh. Well…if you have to schlep all the way down the mountain — about a two-hour drive — for basic shopping and services, you’d be far better off to live in Fountain Hills.  Not only do they have a couple of supermarkets within the development, there’s a Costco down the road and all the upscale shopping of lovely Scottsdale just a few miles to the west. Plus you could walk to the Mayo Clinic from Fountain Hills!
  • Chandler: Nope. Ticky-tacky suburb Hell.
  • Florence: Nope. No better than Payson, but not as pretty.
  • Ahwatukee: Blech. If I’m gonna live in ticky-tacky mass construction, I’ll take Fountain Hills any day.
  • Tempe: Gawd help us!
  • Sun City/Youngtown: Horrible ghettos for old folks, garnished by cheaply built ticky-tacky.

Really, in a lot of ways, the ‘Hood IS the best of all possible worlds, at least for someone who’s not swimming in money. It’s an established neighborhood. Because the upscale section has irrigation, we have mature and very beautiful green landscaping. Even over here in the po’ folks quarters, the trees and shrubbery are mature, shady, and lovely. It’s close-in — shopping, schools, entertainment, doctors & hospitals, all right around the corner. We have a park in the middle of the neighborhood. We’re served by a decent public grade school and one of the nation’s top public high schools, plus an array of private and religious K-12 schools. Young upwardly mobile types have discovered it and are madly gentrifying, so there’s nowhere for property values to go but up. Plus: what could be better than young families with young kids playing around the neighborhood?

So…i dunno. It’s a toss-up. So it seems to me…

Times Have Been a-Changin’…

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Couple days ago, I had occasion to drive through the neighborhood around the old-folkerie where my father chose to live out the last years of his life.  It’s over on the easterly side of North Central Phoenix — actually, within (almost reasonable) walking distance of the big North Central house where DXH and I took up residence, just to show the world what we could afford.

Killing time drivin’ around the other morning was kinda fun, kinda sentimental. After running away from the church, being told we had no choir today (why??????), I filled the gas tank and then cruised up into some of the (relatively) old neighborhoods over in the area of my favorite QT station. Part of this area comprises the easterly section of a renowned slum known as Sunnyslope.

My! We’ve been told that the ‘Slope has gentrified…. They ain’t kiddin’!!

WHAT a difference. Houses and whole streets that used to be run-down dumps have been cleaned up and painted up and spiffed up…gosh! Some of those little houses — built as homes for working-class folk, downright tiny — are suddenly VERY cute.

A decade ago, you couldn’t have gotten me even to drive around in there — because it wasn’t safe. Now, if I were in the market for a centrally located house with “charm,” that would be one of the areas where I would look.

Meanwhile, in the center of this middle-classifying neighborhood, the old-folkerie where my father retreated after my mother died has been HUGELY revamped. “Gentrified” ain’t the word for it.

When my father was there, it was a sprawl of single-story garden apartments arranged around a dining/activity center/nursing home. Renamed — no longer “Orangewood” but the ever-so-snootier-sounding “Terraces” — it’s three stories, painted in the latest, most stylish eye-searing white and beige. It’s spread out vastly — probably three times the footprint of the old place. And it looks bloody expensive.

Apparently it is: I hear tell it costs even more than the Beatitudes, whose business model is based on bankrupting the inmates.

It used to be that the neighborhood where this fine institution resided was…well…shall we say trending toward shabby (not to emit the word “slummy).”  Now it’s all been cleaned up, spiffed up, painted up, even in some areas rebuilt! Who’d’ve ever thunk! I would call it an upper-middle-class neighborhood now.

Weird!

In other precincts for the agèd, my dear friend L. (of the J. & L. duo) passed on a few days ago. He and his wife J. had, you may recall, moved into a similar institute called the Beatitudes, over L.’s vehement objections. But L. was very elderly — 94 years old — and his health was failing fast. He’d fallen a couple of times, and J. found she couldn’t help him get back on his feet by herself…so was justifiably frightened of what might happen if she couldn’t find someone quickly to get him back upright. Additionally, they had a demented neighbor who took to making trouble for them. One of this character’s more recent antics was making like she was going to run him down in her car.

So even though L. did not want to go, it was clear that getting away from their pretty little patio home was the wisest move, and, given that, the nursing care offered by the Beatitudes was a godsend for J., if not for L.

On the other hand…speaking of getting away…

J. was right, and within a year or so, L. passed on. A-n-n-d…within a week of the burial service, her daughters packed up what remained of her worldly goods and drove them and her off to California, where they live near Sacramento.

GONE!

So much for the glories of the old-folkerie. As soon as the most pressing need was past, she was outa there.

That has to have been a very pricey maneuver. Shortly after they moved into the place, she told me it cost her everything she netted from the sale of their handsome North Central Avenue patio home to get them in there. Basically, she forked over a huge chunk of her net worth to obtain end-of-life care for L.

Think you could do better at the Terraces? After a bracing buy-in, you’ll pay a staggering monthly fee. For that you get a far better designed and roomier apartment than the cramped space J. & L. landed in. But…good luck to you if you run out of money before you run out of life.

Heaven help us.

Why should we have to impoverish ourselves, our spouses, and our children to pass from this world in peace?

Life in Hell…

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The day

Ahhh, another lovely August day in Phoenix: 104°, 29% humidity. WHAT a garden spot!

And folks: we got guys out there workin’ like horses in that unholy, soggy heat.

We start the day with a New Yard Dude, a fella I snabbed whilst strolling through Upper Richistan. For slightly more than twice what the beloved but perennially absent Gerardo charges, he agreed to shovel out the seriously neglected front and back yards. Thank you, dear man!!

He does a superb job, not a mere excellent job. The place is transformed!!

  • The weeds are gone.
  • The rampant tree branches are trimmed back.
  • The quarter-minus is raked and smoothed and niftied up.
  • The back-breaking heavy gravel in front is de-weeded and raked smooth.
  • The dog is in love.

Of all those, the last is the simplest, because the dog is in love with everyone.

The amount of soul-crushing work this gent did defied belief.

And then, God help him and all of us, he jumped in his truck to go off to another job!!!

He did miss the weeds in the alley (Upper Richistan doesn’t have alleys, so he probably doesn’t know that alley weeds are the homeowner’s responsibility). But that comes under the heading of No Big Deal: I have a gallon of concentrated Round-Up. Haven’t used it because I haven’t wanted to contaminate my few sprinkling or spraying devices with the stuff. But WTF? Tomorrow ayem I’ll take one of the sprinkling buckets, mix up some Round-Up, and drizzle it on the alley weeds.

One problem solved.

Next the phones/Internet/WTF.

A Cox guy shows up shortly after dawn cracks.

Along about the time New Yard Dude shows up, another Cox guy shows up.

They puzzle and figure and wrestle and wrestle and puzzle and figure and puzzle and figure and wrestle and finally, for reasons that no normal human can conceive, announce that the problem is SOLVED.

Uhhmmmm….

Ohhhkayy…heard that wind blow before.

We experiment with the phones a bit. Looks like probably…possibly…maybe they’re right. I dunno. I can’t tell. What I do know is that if the damn system works while the Marvelous Cox Dudes are here, it no doubt won’t work after they walk out the door.

Ohhh well and WTH. That just means these cuties will have to be invited back in the house. Wot a shame!

In the meantime, I’ve acquired another wireless doorbell to replace the one inactivated by the latest Sh!thead Attack. This, I must unpack, set up, and install at the front door and at the front gate.

Yes.

Unpack.

Have you noticed how spectacularly almost everything is overpackaged?

Took half my lifetime to slice and wrench it out of its ridiculous plasticized wrapping. Finally got it out. Read the instructions.

They want you to install these little flat battery things somewhere. But…but…WHERE is less than perfectly obvious.

After some unholy amount of time (so it felt) trying to figure out what the fuck they were talking about, I finally came to a guess that worked.

Now we have two of these things that have to be installed at the front door and the front gate, and a bingy-bonger box that has to find a home inside the house.

Wrestle wrestle wrestle Rassle rassle rassle Wrestle wrestle wrestle…finally…YES!!!!!! IT WORKS.

Yes. Now after three days of thrashing around, we have here a doorbell that rings when you push its button.

In other realms:

Half of a pair of dear friends passed away a few days ago. Not unexpected, but still…sad. Planned to return to choir this fall, now that the worst of the plague is dying down. But sadly, it looks like the very first thing we’ll be doing is singing at his service!

Heaven help us all. Especially him.

His wife moved them into the Beatitudes specifically so they could get care for a much aging man (he was 94), and because they had a lunatic next-door neighbor who truly was a threat. Never once did she say to him or to anyone else “I’m moving us there specifically to get care for you,” but now we see that must have been the case. Her daughter tells me she’s moving to California to live with the kids.

Where this leaves the beloved Connie the Long-Haul Truck Driver escapes me. Presumably her brother will have to overrule his exceptionally hostile wife to take over the kindnesses their father bestowed. Or else…heaven help us.

As we scribble, a cloud passes over the  mid-day sun, and the room’s light grows dimmer and dimmer…