75 and still dreaming I'm younger and potentially fantastic

Here it is: I'm squarely in my mid-seventies. Today.

Happy Birthday to Me.

Last night I dreamt I was pretending I was some sort of doctor or scientist at a workshop - we all had to participate in the cooking and cleaning up, and although I'd just arrived, I was assigned at the last minute to prepare a gourmet dish. 

People were outperforming each other for culinary speed and virtuosity in the large collective space, and were proving that they were skilled above and beyond their prestigious professional credentials.

I was cooking cauliflower (?brain?) in a tasteless broth, and scrambling for other ingredients to add pizzazz, or at least something. A clever woman with lots of letters after her name was grilling cutlets on her own, not bothering with the collective efforts, and I had to admire her: plus where did she get the personal cutlets? Had she smuggled them in with her running shoes?

And there I was, with the false trappings of a profession I never entered and struggling with a smelly vegetable. Ignominious or what?

So there it is. 

I'm still narrating Dream Tales of the Ego to my subconscious and losing out as an impostor.

What will I be in my dreams when I turn 80?  

A geneticist? A charismatic cult leader? A garden-variety psychic? Simply 80?

HOW DRY I AM, HOW DRY I AM, NOBODY KNOWS.....*

Since January 4th I've been totally dry, the day a good friend sent out a gentle challenge to a few of us to try Dry January, and without really thinking about it I said yes, and then downloaded a British app for the occasion. It's an app you use to test how many units of alcohol you are consuming per week, assigning a grade out of 10 (I won't tell), and offers of many 'astuces' as the French would call them for how you handle those moments when a glass of wine seems like the best idea you've come up with all day and it's only 5 pm. And not fall back on the usual Covid excuse?

No, I'm not addicted, I had no physical withdrawal symptoms, and the first days were easy, even heady with how easy it was. 

Second week not so great, as I began to realize how my day gravitated toward an evening rendez-vous with some fairly decent red wine. I was becoming a bit of a connoisseur, comparing grape varietals with interesting names and the flavors that rolled over the tongue and up into the nostrils. And a subject of my online research and offers of good Bordeaux from French wine distributors which arrive in my inbox daily. 1jour1vin, La Grande Cave, Bodeboca.....

Wine porn? Sort of. I invested in some vins primeurs, which should be delivered to me in a couple of years, after they've aged gracefully in a French cave.

Mindfulness, replacing one habit (reflex) with another, being aware of how/where/when you're missing it (the wine fix) and why. There are countless (boring) recommendations of candles, hot baths, naps, chocolate, more chocolate....

These days I'm browsing online for cashmere instead of cabernet, buying ginger ale for the intense tongue-buzz.

Is today's blog a journal of alcohol-free experience? Well yes, sort of - if it helps why not?

I'd been feeling that some neurons were firing more slowly. Brain sludge. Even this week while I was doing the Quick Crossword in the Guardian I didn't get the clue to which the answer was 'filet mignon' - a cut of beef beneath the sirloin...The week before I didn't get 'deuce' in tennis....I mean really!! I want to stay sharp as long as possible.

I gave up my pack and a half smoking addiction years ago,, I can do this.

But does it mean no wine forever or just resetting the......er.. bar?

I think I'll stay dry  for a couple of months and see if I can write the great expat novel.

One can always see....

*"'The Near Future' is the name of a song written by Irving Berlin in 1919. It is better known for the small part of its lyric that took on a life of its own: 'How Dry I Am'.

The term 'Dry' in that time period meant abstinence from alcohol, and support of Prohibition. Those who took the opposite approach and/or view were often called 'Wet'. Prohibition became fact in 1920, in 'the near future' after the song was issued.

This portion of the song...

How dry I am, how dry I am
It's plain to see just why I am
No alcohol in my highball
And that is why so dry I am

...became known for its ironic use, by people getting drunk and singing it, sometimes in harmony, in all manner of popular media, especially Warner Bros. cartoons. That usage necessitated removing the parts that overtly denied drinking, which tended to reduce the song to these two lines:

How dry I am, how dry I am
Nobody knows how dry I am... Hooow dryyy I aaaaaam!"

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Near_Future

Also:

The phrase "how dry I am" had become structured into song and referred specifically to drinking alcohol by at least 1898, as one journal describes a college drinking song that goes:

   'How dry I am, How dry I am!/God only knows How dry I am'

ESCAPE OF THE WEEK

Week of August 2nd: Swiss Airlines destinations of the week: Porto, Santorini, Valencia 

On Monday Swiss Airlines wrote to us proposing getaways to mouth-watering destinations that are not in flames or, we hope, too risky. Hit the button and you're in Porto in a quick hour, feet in the water or viewing the Douro river, sipping local port and juggling languages. Easy, so easy. 

Or exotic Santorini, awash in blue and white. 

Or Valencia for a big dose of Spain, dense beauty and history.

The airline dangles these destination-temptations before a surfing clientele fed-up with reading about the variant-du-jour.

Apparently as long as you have your Covid 'passport' you should be able to travel easily, and for under 100 francs why not? A getaway is also an attempted escape from fear. 

Much of France has retired to the coasts, foregoing the habitual intense dedication to administrative work.  More time to discuss our bodies, Covid status, families, politics of course, recent operations, climate change, upcoming operations, births, deaths and other human activities.

We continue to welcome friends (with masks), do a bit of gardening, we're eating at outdoor restaurants and taking dips in Lac Léman.

However there are planetary problems:

Alpha         a torrential rains, flooding summer

Beta            a hot, fiery, devastating summer

Gamma       the continuing tragedy of the world's refugees

Delta           that nasty, international, fast-moving variant     

The devil is in not in the details of smaller concerns, but in the suffering of planet earth and the devastation this suffering brings on.

One continues to seek other frontiers and other messages, but it's our world, and we're still in it.

COV ORANGE 2 - TRUMP GOES TO WALTER REED

 

COV ORANGE -- Improbable scenarios

As if the indignity of the presidential debate # 1 (and perhaps the last?) weren't enough, with the lying and spluttering and interrupting Trump, a quiet-spoken, dusty-throated Vice-President Biden, live mics and a moderator who was a wannabee participant, now we have COV ORANGE. A warning signal to the nation and the world

When I woke up to the news of Donald's Covid diagnosis, and that of Mrs. Donald, I felt sure it was fake news! 

That Trump really wanted to get out of the debate and campaign circuits / circus and was finding an easy out through til voting day. 

Then I had my coffee.

It appears this is real. 

After the second cup, which further awakened my spirits but didn't improve them, I thought of possible scenarios.

Improbable scenarios :

1.  Trump is only slightly ill, and two weeks into it tells everyone No Big Fucking Deal, you're all wimps. Then cut to the final scene.

2.  Trump is somewhat ill and suddenly repents his prior position on SARS Cov-2, truly sorry everybody, I was so wrong. And wins over a bunch of uncommitted wimps who actually warm to this.

3.  Trump is VERY ill, to the point where he can't talk anymore, and the country holds its breath and reads the hourly bulletins issued by White House physicians and.

Recent defectors rally back round, like rats forgetting there was more cheese in the cupboard, speeches sympathy is shared, gushing prayers ooze out, tweets et al. from the hard right span the earth.....

Final scene: then he recovers, making a final sprint to Election Day, reiterating support for his thugs and ad hoc militias and going for broke. 

Disrupting voters, invalidating mail-in ballots.

4. Trump dies of Covid making the above scenarios impossible.

Other scenarios: 

1. The election is postponed and Pence is interim president (ugh)

2. Ivanka is hastily nominated to replace him (!!) (well no, just joking)

3. Melania publishes her memoirs and returns with Barron and her parents to Slovenia, where they retire in splendor and are never heard of again.

to be continued when more news on COV ORANGE is published or perhaps leaked from the White House

"DUE TO THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY IS CLOSED;*

........programs and events at the museum are also canceled".

I thought I had the wrong website.
I was searching for pictures of Martha the last known Passenger Pigeon on the Smithsonian website and this was the banner headline.
https://lexieintrator.blogspot.com/2019/01/passenger-pigeon-tourte-voyageuse.html
http://lexieintrator.blogspot.com/2018/12/please-pass-pigeons.html

It's the temporary extinction of one of the world's finest museums that shows us what makes up our world, who were and are the earth's fabulous creatures. 

On a whim. This crazy, dangerous first-world politician, a certain Donald Trump, has a temper tantrum because his cruel, misguided vision of a physical wall between nations has not been  funded, and he punishes the American people by closing down their first-world government, costing them billions and perhaps the very fiber of their country.

The victims are both people and institutions.
Among others, this great museum is closed.

Outrageous.

And there I was, yammering on about bird extinction, with cultural extinction happening before my eyes. No museum. Martha the last Passenger Pigeon is locked up.


*Note the semi-colon in the title: it's real, a piece of punctuation that's fallen out of use, left over from a time when people could communicate logically and peacefully. A semi-colon did not stop you in its tracks; it guided you to the next thought farther along in the sentence. People could express themselves in full sentences and yes, make some sense of what they were discussing!
Which is more than I can, after this latest hideous jolt.

Martha, your genes are on the table

Passenger Pigeon - Tourte voyageuse - Ectopistes migratorius

       

Louis Agassi Fuertes, National Geographic

The original Passenger Pigeon is indeed extinct.

"The Passenger Pigeon – also known as Ectopistes migratorius – is an extinct bird which was endemic to North America. At one point in time, billions of these birds lived and flew over North America. However, deforestation and massive hunting reduced their numbers from the billions all the way to extinction in only a few years. It is probably one of the largest extinctions caused by mankind."

https://www.newdinosaurs.com/passenger-pigeon/

 "Martha, thought to be the last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo. The eradication of this species is a notable example of anthropogenic extinction." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon

"When she died, scientists packed her into a 300-pound block of ice and put her on a train to Washington."
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/meet-martha-the-very-last-passenger-pigeon/380473/

Fascinating footage on this link, showing Martha stuffed, preserved forever (as it were).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1sWJcc_cY

A touching essay that includes Martha's final years in the Cincinnati Zoo, and her pavillion is now a National Historical Landmark.
https://abcbirds.org/martha-the-last-of-her-kind/

A group called Revive and Restore whose mission to"enhance biodiversity through new techniques of genetic rescue for endangered and extinct species."  In 2015 they held a "New Genomic Solutions for Conservation Problems Workshop". Rather vague cahier des charges. We don't know if they've cooked up anything, but as I mentioned on the previous pigeon blog, people are breeding birds for passenger pigeon qualities. 

https://reviverestore.org/about-the-passenger-pigeon/

Martha, your genes are on the table!

Old picture of Martha at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC