Life of Wry

We have a bunch of random flowers that bloom early every year.. the narcissus, some calendula… but the REAL harbinger of spring is our flowering quince. When those buds begin to open up.. we are on our way.

Without further ado:

And would you look at that blue sky! We are in for an entire week of sunshine …. cold, but sunny.

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I’m not one to tire of winter, and obviously January is my favorite month. For birthday reasons, of course (I mean, OF COURSE), but also because after the holiday mania, it feels deeply luxurious to go inward, be all lazy, work our way through all the Christmas candy and just not feel guilty about any of it. January is a big ol’ do nothing month, made even better this year by all the darkness and rain, and time spent next to the fireplace.

That said, I saw this the other day and laughed out loud, so I’m sharing it.

If feels like it’s happening more and more… icons of my own generation dying. Yesterday, David Crosby passed away at the age of 81, after a long illness, and truly, after all the abuse he inflicted on himself, it’s amazing he lived as long as he did. But the sad point is, the people who influenced and shaped us are dropping off in not insignificant numbers and I’m feeling very bummed about it. It’s a knife to the heart every time and I feel a bit unprepared (emotionally) for the losses. I understand the march of time and the stages of life and understand we’re all going there. Still, a guy who wrote and sang the songs that I listened to during too many key moments in life to ever imagine, is gone.. and that’s a bit of a jolt.

Yesterday afternoon, I’d had my phone in my hand and laid it on the table to do something else, and, somehow, the bump on the table triggered my music app — don’t even know which one — and suddenly a Coldplay song I love spontaneously started to play (Viva la Vida). It was such a random, unexpected surprise that I cranked it up (put earbuds in, since Jim was taking a nap) and started dancing all over the kitchen. I mean really dancing — bouncing up and down, spinning, flinging my arms all over the place. It was so joyful (ok, silly) and fun, I replayed the song two more times and danced until I was just totally out of breath. And that put me in mind of the times I had done that in junior high, and high school, and forever, though it’d been a while. And, sitting there all pooped, I started to think of the songs that used to get me out of my chair, and get me to dancing — in my room, or if nobody was around, in the living room, and remembered Give me Shelter, Jessica, Have You Ever Seen the Rain, This Old Heart of Mine, Suite Judy Blue Eyes… I have such memories funny/great of this.

Dancing in my kitchen yesterday made me laugh (inside)… must have been a sight. The memory of all of that, and the (startling) distance of that past, also made me sorta cry. Just a little. Reminded of Joni’s lyric, “laughing and crying is the same release.” Got profoundly nostalgic. It’s cause for a deep, steadying breath.. not the exhaustion of the dancing part, but the realization that those moments are way, way back there. It was such a long time ago. And how funny those songs are so deep inside.

And this was all before hearing of David Crosby’s death, news of which came just a couple hours later. Another cause for a deep, steadying breath.

This morning I went down a Youtube rabbit hole of CSNY songs and got all weak in the heart. Again… it was all so long ago. The music so incredibly defining, so incredibly deep inside, and so immediately reminiscent of the times. Those songs of the late 60s and early 70s, particularly — junior high and high school — were, of course, our sound track.

No doubt in my mind, no shred of doubt: our generation grew up with the best music ever. I’ve loved a ton of music outside that era too, but I feel like my generation was touched by some kind of miracle of musical grace to be coming of age in the 60s and 70s. Deeply grateful for that carnival of crazy characters, geniuses among them, who wrote the music that defined our times.

RIP David Crosby. Thank you for your music.

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The painting of Crosby is by Joan Baez. He used it as cover art on his last album. So fitting. She’s a great talent.

Since the day Trump got elected, or took office, or sometime thereabouts, I’ve subscribed to a newsletter called: WTF Just Happened Today, written by a guy named Matt who lives in Seattle and has been putting these one-sentence summaries out week-daily since that horrible, horrible day. He (Matt, that is) caught on right way, has a website, merch, etc. He’s a young man with a very young family and, like all of us, is beside himself. I’ve sent him money, not much but some, as have gabillions of others. He actually now has a bit of a staff to help with the daily research and such.

Every day — EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. — has been a true, WTF head-scratcher. His newsletter is always worth the 15-second read. Here is an example of today’s (unless I post this tomorrow, in which case it’s an example of yesterday).

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The “Day 729” refers to where we are in the Biden presidency. He re-started his day count at the administration-shift. The sad truth is, even as we’ve moved on from the disastrous clown car T presidency, we haven’t moved beyond the shit show that he birthed and nurtured. So, WTFJHT continues. Not happy about the continued shit show, but always appreciate the newsletter. Always good for a head bonk.

Been waiting for a slowdown in the action to find the time to post my annual collection of Peterson Family Calendar photos. I make a calendar each year for me and the bros.. and the offspring, and their offspring, and the spouses and/or significant others. When you add all that up, there are twelve of us.. which, you know, kinda works well with the Gregorian calendar. Would that 1) we had more months in a calendar year in order to be able to add cousins and aunts and uncles and inlaws and 2) I was not so anal as to not find a creative way to squeeze dozens of family members into a 12-month template. Nobody in my immediate ‘calendar family’ better multiply, or I’m in trouble.

The other thing that mostly works out about this 12-person group, is that nearly each family member gets their photo on their birth month. There are a couple exceptions to this, but nobody’s complained about being mis-monthed in all these years.

Here are 2023’s photos (all having been taken by me (except where noted) in 2022… with he exception of Jay, whom I did not get to see last year… so chose a 10-year old pic, which completely captures him even ten years later).

(These are not in month order, or any order, actually, it’s the gallery view that WordPress randomly produced. Hope they’re big enough to see.)

From top to bottom, left to right:

• Jim, Peter (with Maya), Moi
• Chris (with Pam), Matt, Juniper (photo credit: Alexis)
• River, Alexis, Magnolia (photo credit for all three: Alexis, though not sure who shot the photo of her)
• John, Michael, Jay

Chris calls this his, “how to be an adult” calendar, because it contains not only the photos, but also every birthday, anniversary, notable death of not just us twelve, but extended family, as well. He never misses a birthday now!

I am SO tired right now. Too, too many late nights (why, I don’t know… I think I’m accepting that I am both a night owl and an early-riser-wanna-be and can’t seem to get enough REM in between). But man… all I can think about right now is walkin’ down the hallway to the bedroom and disappearing under a mountain of billowy down and falling into a deep sleep. I can barely keep my eyes open … (it’s not even 8:30pm).

What I’m likely going to do, however, is blog (committed to daily blogging in 2023, new year’s resolution, you know), clear out my email inbox (inbox zero is another new year’s resolution), make sure all my texts are answered, check the calendar for tomorrow, avoid, hopefully, Instagram, THEN head down the hallway, do all the bathroom things, THEN THEN THEN disappear under that down cloud and ……. complete the NYT mini crossword (a nightly competition with Jim and Peter), dash off about fifteen games of Words With Friends (w/ Matty), then maybe go a few rounds of Spider, then, maybe, probably fall asleep with my phone in my hand around 2:00am.

My new year’s resolution about getting more sleep was too vague and nonspecific so I’m finding it hard to honor. Heh. Maybe in 2024.

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday today (celebration thereof). I’ve spent the better part of today reading this book by former Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs. It was completely unplanned, but nonetheless serendipitous, that I’m reading this book on this day; it’s been a very, very good way to spend this day of remembrance. (I’m reading it for a gathering of my book group tomorrow.. so you could say I’m cramming, having procrastinated until the very last minute.)

The book is putting me in mind of the grinding poverty and unconscionable social inequities that exist throughout the country/world, the vast gaps between the privileged & power classes and those who try to survive — much less thrive — with far, far less. Half a century later, the societal, political, economic conflicts are still glaring and painful. It’s a good, if frustrating and shameful, read.

MLK would be despairing at our collective lack of effort and progress.

Exacerbating the problem in 2023, thanks to today’s demoralizing, dispiriting state of politics, are those denouncing woke-ism. “Florida is where woke-ism comes to die,” bellows Ron DeSantis so very ignorantly. Seriously, how stupid. I’m only halfway through the book, and not sure Tubbs will address the anti-woke, right-wing hysteria of today, but I liked something he said about how we might try to address the disconnects for those in denial-land. He was reflecting on conversations he’d had with fellow Stanford students when on a study abroad program in South Africa in around 2010, and wrote, “Although exhausting and at times infuriating, these conversations helped me recognize that ignorance (willful or not) helps perpetuate racism in our country, and that mass education, a safe space to ask dumb questions and enter dialogue, is needed.”

In today’s parlance: critical race theory.

For starters.

Anyway, lots more thoughts… but gotta finish a book before tomorrow.

Maia and Diana are visiting from Alexandria and the plan was to gather at Monica and Dror’s to meet Diana, who’s now 8 months old. But, somewhat predictably, one of us got covid (this time Monica, her first bout) and we were forced to move the gathering to Zoom. Not a bad way to go (esp as the prospect of driving to the Bay Area during [yet another] atmospheric river event was unappealing).

So we did this:

And the much better screen shot version..

Turns out Maita also was at the tail end of Covid, which is why John’s in the garage. Lol.

Marty was coming to us from France where he’d just returned from a first night dinner and was needing to head to bed. No Peter and other-Maya, no Ben and Nina, no Mark, no Teri and Chad… but a good gathering nonetheless.

Star of the show: Diana and Maia, at whom we pummeled questions (Maia) and made googly faces (Diana). How fun is that? Only thing missing, according to Monica, was the chance to squeeze her very plump little thighs (Diana’s, that is). Got a bit of intel on sleep patterns, eating preferences, her latest conquests and obsessions. As Maita pointed out, it was so wild to see Maia as a mama. And as Marie pointed out, we are witnessing the next generation coming in on the heals of the passing of the patriarch (Dean). Lot of head nodding at both of these realities. Yet, to me, it also seems completely normal to see Maia with kiddo. Comfy, confident, capable… or so she seemed on Zoom! She already had the shrug mastered, as she explained, for example, ever so casually, that she and Diana probably picked up Covid on the flight, and, it’s just no big deal. Cold symptoms.

Could easily be another year before any of us meet Diana (or Tim and Ted, for that matter). Unless we plot to descend on them for Thanksgiving next year… could happen!

What a lovely evening we just had.

It’s a real testament to greatness, that a person who does not know much at all about classical music, and less about the violin, can feel like she’s floating out of a concert hall after two hours of classical violin music. It is certain that I got less out of tonight’s concert than a person who knows what to listen for, but: I/we got to hear “the world’s reigning virtuoso” of the violin; I was moved — at one point to tears — by the beauty of his music and his obvious joy in playing it; and I will always have Itzhak Perlman as a reference point when listing to violin music from here on out.

He played with a pianist, Rohan De Silva, accomplished/famous in his own right. The two together: gorgeous. My comment to Jim as we walked home was, “how does so much music come out of two instruments?” Honest to god, if I’d closed my eyes and you asked me how many musicians were on that stage, I might have guessed 4-6? I can’t say too much more about the whole thing, other than it was beautiful. Though we had pretty great seats in the orchestra section, I was glad to have binoculars so I could really see his expressions and watch his fingers. It was mesmerizing and moving. For me, the piece that stuck out — completely because it was familiar and haunting — was John Williams’s theme from Schindler’s List. (That was the part where I teared up.)

They did not want photos taken while they played, but I got a quick one when he addressed the audience during the final 5-6 short pieces (which were not on the program). He looks a bit older than his program head shot, but was as charming as people say he is.

I enjoyed the whole damn thing. Was so glad we went and hope Jim enjoyed it too. Can’t wait to talk to Peter and Maya about it; they saw him a couple months ago in Ann Arbor.

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We got lucky with weather tonight. It rained most of the day — sometimes incredibly hard — but stopped for the time it took to walk to dinner and also for our walk home. We ran into some folks we knew at Bernardo’s who were also going to the concert and since it was raining cats and dogs as we finished dinner, they offered us a ride to the Mondavi. How ’bout that.

We saw photos on Facebook this afternoon of Putah Creek significantly overflowing its banks, so (of course) we walked home via Putah Creek.. but by tonight the water was back down to normal flow (“flow”… it’s not actually a creek at all, it’s a very long lake). There were some pockets of standing water, but nothing we couldn’t easily avoid. T’was a nice walk home.

Holiday season lingers on…

And this isn’t even the half of it. Because of ants, we put most of the cookies and a lot of the candy in the refrigerator.. some in the freezer. (Not all of this is sweets.. some are nuts that live on the counter year ’round.)

I’m tellin’ ya.

These sweet flowers are not quite a harbinger of brighter Spring days….

The weather people tell us we have another two or three (or four?) atmospheric rivers to go before this assault is said and done. I actually don’t mean to call it an assault.. we certainly have needed the rain and snow and I’ve been as gleeful and relieved as every Californian at this amazing January (which began in December.. and didn’t we also get some rains in November? I think so!)

But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been violent. I was in Sac yesterday for lunch with Susan and saw these two houses on Capitol Ave (next door to one another, probably victims of the same fallen tree). I pulled a u-ey and circled back to get a shot. Jim said he saw the same photos in the New York Times (somebody else’s, obviously).

This completely motivated me to contact the City again about our neighborhood redwood. They got back to me today to say, sorry, not a City street tree (they’ve always come out in past to evaluate it, but not this time). So next contact is the owner of the house next door to see if they’d be willing to remove it. Stay tuned.