Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
These diaries record what we've been doing. This time it seems that, mostly, I've been worrying. To a degree, this was brought on by the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. A young man's irrational violence with an assault rifle should not come as a surprise, given American gun worship. It will not stop before that worship of armed action is brought under control. Making DT the victim and his raised fist proclaiming "fight" will only make it worse.
The current Republican coronation ceremony is as frightening as any North Korean mass march in honor of THAT dictator. Election of a Republican president and Congress will stop the US efforts to limit climate change, including any shift to electric vehicles. And the burden will be carried by the middle class as taxes on wealthy will be reduced in exchange for increased tariffs affecting the things we all buy, day to day.
These increases are part of the Republican isolationist retreat from world leadership and that retreat may see war in Europe succeed in expanding the Russian Empire, first Ukraine and then the smaller Empire neighbors. NATO-without-America will not be strong enough to resist. In Asia, Chinese "influence" might grow to the point of another kinetic war. The parallels between 2020s America-Russia-China and 1930s Germany-Italy-Japan are unmistakable. Except now, we are all armed with nuclear weapons.
BTW, as I write this, the world is suffering a "worldwide, widespread, internet outage" caused by an error on the part of "CrowdStrike", an internet security service. They reportedly made a mistake when updating their Widows computers. If an "oops" can ground planes around the world, worse will happen when bad actors learn what happened and how to repeat it. There are plenty of bad actors.
Closer to home, we have the elephant-in-our-room. Ironically, the "widespread internet outage" seems to have blocked viewing results from yesterday's blood tests, tests necessary to continue the chemical fight against the animal. Marianne checked results in the middle of the night and did not like the results. We do need to confirm and get advice from the oncologists. In the meantime, we need to reduce the risk of infections, almost a return to Covid-type isolation. Kind of.
The other animal-in-the-space is Aging, with a capital "A". I have restarted efforts to increase my resilience with organized exercise and conditioning. I have rejoined a gym and arranged for a few session with Eddy, a trainer with lots of experience with our vintage contemporaries. I hope it works, but so far all it has gotten me is a strained calf muscle. (I have hated running for 70+ years and this convinced me I have been right.)
Of course, a variety of other decisions face us as we finish our eighth decade: General medical care; invest for five years or fifteen; a care community, or at least a single-story home; maintain family and friends connections; solicit new friends as emotional support; etc. Lots of etc.
Enough of what's worrying, what mundane happenings can I report? All the streets in our neighborhood are being rebuilt. Neighbor Vern, a Cambridge resident for 70 or 80 years, says it's the first rebuild he can remember. I suppose this is a positive sign for one form of aging. In any event, we do appreciate the crew's efforts in the 112F summer sun.
Last week we managed to swing by a pair of favorite galleries for ArtHop, Fresno's monthly cultural event. At Scarab, we visited friend Marina to pick up a few more Ukrainian flag pins and enjoy the current exposition of stained glass. Not our normal fav, but art's art.
Back in the neighborhood, I have manged just a single photo walk. Bees, a little sunflower-sipper and a big black-bomber were my favorite subjects. This excursion had to happen before temperatures soared toward 100F, meaning before 10:00am. Hopefully, we only have a month or so of triple-digit weather. Or, we need to go on vacation.
The only flowers in our backyard that can handle the heat are the yellow cactus blooms. They last for less than a day before being baked to death, but we get excited when they pop out.
Maybe we can do something interesting in the next few days and, if so, I'll append a story or picture. Maybe.
Stay tuned,
John and Marianne