The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ―Edmund Burke
For a few minutes there, Firefox wouldn’t let me in to Funny, correct password or no correct password.
ohhhh well… Here we are, and the system seems to be working O.K. hmmmm…. For the nonce, anyway.
Onward: A new post is in the works as we gaze upon the site….
Lumbering toward lunchtime:
* A lovely little piece of steak sits on the grill, doused with turmeric
* A fistful of handsome asparagus also awaits it fate
* Yay! A ripe tomato!!! Sliced and ready to eat
* Pistachios to snack, on the side
My righteous son seems to have purloined all the wine, so all that remains to swill down with this feast is some coffee left over from breakfast, served over ice.
Not bad, for a person who refuses to trudge to the grocery store through the heat..
😀
What a strange, almost icky day. High, thin clouds filter the sunlight into a kind of blurry haze. Still hotter than the hubs, though. And humid.
A mockingbird maestro holds forth in the lemon tree: a fantastic symphony of tweets and trills and whistles…bird music.
Wunderground tells us to expect a low of 75 tonight, after a high today of 98. Chance of rain: 0% to 1%. Lovely…what a garden spot.
Switzerland! Ohhhh the terror..
https://www.travelandleisure.com/switzerland-issued-surprising-us-travel-advisory-11740117?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
So here we are with the new computer on our lap, loafing on an easy chair, taking in a lovely morning, watching the pooch celebrate by chewing up a leather fake bone. We have circumnavigated the ‘Hood through the dawn of a gorgeous day. And now, I suppose, all we really need to do is loaf some more.
Loafing: the highest calling in life… 😀
Car? We Don’t Need No Steenking Car…
So at my son’s behest, I’ve been without a car for upwards of a week. I thought this would be a vast inconvenience and PITA, but…y’know what? It’s not.
Weirdly, a week on foot has demonstrated handsomely that in a highly urbanized area, most of the time you really don’t need a car.
Contemplating this weird twist on the present weird state of affairs, I recalled that when my mother and I lived in San Francisco, we hardly ever used the car she had. Really, the only time we needed it was when my father’s ship (he was a Merchant Mariner) came into port in the East Bay. Then we would drive over there to pick him up and bring him home, where he rested until his ship set to sea again, when we would drive him back out to the Union Oil docks. Otherwise, we used the public transit: busses and streetcars.
Phoenix ain’t San Francisco. However, it has little mini-boroughs made up of what one might call clotted neighborhoods. And right here in my mid- to upper-class ‘hood, I can get everything I need on a day-to-day basis on foot!
Yeah. I can easily walk to an Albertson’s supermarket, a Walgreen’s, a Sprouts, a Target, a UPS store, a computer retailer and repair shop, a Hobby Lobby, a Family Dollar, a Walmart, an El Rancho, a 24-hour emergency doctor’s office…and more.
Hey! What else is to be desired? If I need to go somewhere else, I either mooch a ride from a friend or hire a cab.
And y’know…you could rent a whoooole lotta cab rides for what it costs to own, maintain, gas up, insure, and pay taxes on a car of your own.
It gets better: one of the neighbors has gone into the Uber business. If I need some sort of custom ride, I could hire him to tote me wherever my li’l heart craves. And let him pay the maintenance and taxes on his car.
Think about that. Does it not strike you that under those circumstances owning a car amounts largely to an unnecessary expense? A huge unnecessary expense, by the time you account for routine maintenance, repairs, gasoline, insurance, taxes, shelter, and whatnot. Is there really a good, a practical reason to keep a rolling hole in the ground into which to pour money?
Frankly….I begin to think not.
Round and round we go: through the park and over the grassy mounds and around the wee kids playing in the afternoon sun: charming, adorable, and satisfyingly playful. The kids are adorable. The teenagers pleasantly time-wasting. The little dog has a Grand Old Time. The human misses old friends who used to live in the ‘Hood but have moved on. And on. And on…
So absurdly sleepy now! Apparently loafing soaks up a lot of energy! ;-D
Spectacularly gorgeous afternoon: Pillows of fluffy cumulus clouds ride on the breeze. Behind them, the sky is a brilliant, painterly blue.
We walked past old neighbors’ homes, all of them as well preserved as if they’d been built yesterday. And hardly changed! Does NO one ever change the color of their house’s paint?
Sally’s house: still a staid landlady green…the paint in good condition. No hint that the place needs to be repainted. My old house: untouched: same colors and (so it appears) the same paint as when I lived there in another lifetime.
***
Time passes…
***
And now here we are at M’jito’s house.
My, it’s a nice place. Handsome Saltillo tiles throughout. Manly, heavy French doors opening out from the dining room onto the back porch. A handsomely accoutered kitchen. Oh: and don’t forget the big fish tank adorned with aquatic plants and a tribe of beautiful blue, silver, and orange residents.
LOL! He has Amazon trained to feed him various reminders. It just urged him to check the chow on the stove. 😀
The Dwelling is in a neighborhood of pretty brick homes built in the early 1950s.
LOL! Who knew there were humans dwelling the the Valley during 1951?
Seriously: this place must have been out in the country back in the Day. Today it’s a pretty neighborhood, somehow urban and suburban-looking at once.
Hmmmm… Would I like to live here myself?
Can’t say as I’d mind. Exactly.
The issue for me, though, is that these houses with their vintage construction are poorly insulated: expensive to run through the summer. Back in said Day, Phoenix residents didn’t stay here through the summer. They would own or rent places in Prescott, Payson, Flagstaff, and waypoints atop the Mogollon rim.
As Phoenix metropolitanized ( 😀 is there such a word?), developers began to build houses intended for people to live in during the entire year. Air-conditioning would still be expensive, but it wouldn’t bankrupt you. A year-round job became a practical choice.
So it goes. Now what was once a bloated small town is L.A. East. Real, serious careers are to be had. You need not own a summer home.
I tire. And so, let us move along…. <3
Whew!! For a minit there, I thought WordPress was NOT gonna let me back into Funny.
But amazingly, after a few tries it gave up and dropped me into the website. Weird.
Why is everything weird? And have you noticed that some days stuff is weirder than on other days? Why, I ask. WHY?
Ohhhhh well. I’m back from a hot, miserable stroll to the neighborhood shopping center, there to stock up on my favorite inebriants. (To wit: one bottle of cheap white wine…)
That mall has the sweetest little liquor store. And I do mean LITTLE. The shop couldn’t be any larger than my dining room. The two guys who run it are just plain nice. Always quiet, always friendly, always accommodating. You come away wanting to go back soon.
Walking up there and back provides an opportunity to pass along the street where SDXB and I lived when we first moved into the ‘Hood.
Oh, my: I loved that little stretch of MittelAmerica. The neighbors — mostly middle- to lower-middle-class types — were such nice folks. The houses were (still are!!) modest but nicely kept up.
We moved out when the City installed the Accursed Lightrail up the middle of Main Drag West, kindly bringing endless noise, crazy traffic, and crowds of bums and flakes. We didn’t move far away — actually, we’re still in the ‘Hood — but just a couple of blocks worked to get us away from the CLANG CLANG CLANG of the accursed lightrail and from most of the bums the lightrail hauled into the ‘Hood.
Walking back from the booze shop took me up the street where SDXB and I used to live, past the homes of all those beloved neighbors. My, I do miss them: about half of them have moved to other precincts; the rest have died or ended up in nursing homes. Such good people!
But — returning to the topic of an earlier paragraph — there is something weird about it.
There’s a strangeness to revisiting a cluster where you used to live.
And a strangeness to knowing most of your friends and neighbors are gone…but a few are still there.
A weirdness to walking up the street and hearing sounds that didn’t exist when you lived there.
A pleasing eeriness to encountering a friendly, glad-to-meetcha owner at the wine shop.
…The wine shop that didn’t exist when you lived there.