Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
Another sort-of-normal week.
Twenty-three years ago, our ex-pat-normal weeks ended with the attack on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. Nowadays, September 11th is an undeclared national holiday, filled with remembrances - of the victims and of the firemen heroes who rushed into danger to do what they could.
My remembrance is of an afternoon meeting in the Dnipro Hotel bar with the sponsoring-bank's project manager. This was an important meeting for me because I was about to leave behind the the Chernobyl "New Safe Confinement" project I had spent three years trying to serve. He was unhappy with my performance. (In hindsight, I have to agree with his assessment.)
Suddenly, he got a disturbed call from his London administrator saying we must get to a television to see what was happening across the Atlantic. We asked the barman to turn on CNN and watched in shock as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center. After an hour glued to the broadcast, we left saying that the world had changed. (Our diary memory.)
In 2024, this week featured an element of another world-changing development: the potential return of Donald Trump as US president. The September 10 debate with Kamala Harris offered 90 minutes of craziness-on-display for the past president. He's nuts. We will hold our collective breath before the November election and the January inauguration.
Back at the "normal" stuff, Marianne finished a piece incorporating several ideas from her continuing abstract painting classes. It's generally true that photos do not do justice to artwork, but in this case it is particularly the case. The in-person depth and complexity does not come through, so you will have to visit to see the real thing.
My creativity normal is far more humble. I made another plant nursery from sprouts on our cactus garden. My brother in law had said to be careful since cacti can spread and take over a garden and he was right. Four purchased plants have generated more than a dozen descendants in only a few months. It is fun, however.
Otherwise, we have been preparing for a pair of excursions next week. Marianne will be joining Gabby for a mother-daughter getaway up in Mardis' Camp. They do these things from time to time, but not since Covid and the elephant. It promises to renew bonds that are already as tight as one can imagine. (I'll try to get pictures and stories for diary entries.)
To kill time while my partner is gone, I decided to learn about our not-quite neighborhood. We live in Fresno, mid-way in the eastern side of the San Joaquin Valley and, even after ten years, I feel I know too little local history. This ignorance is particularly true of the western side of The Valley. Nowadays, this means land split by Interstate 5, a completely nondescript river of cars, trucks, and buses rushing from San Fransisco to L.A. and back again.
Instead, I will experience the west valley by slowly driving Highway 33, an old two-lane path that runs from Tracy to Ventura. Next week, while Marianne and Gabby have fun in Truckee, I will cover the northern parts of the old road. I have few expectations of what I will see, but my interest has been piqued by "The Heart of California", a book by Aaron Gilbreath that tells the story of a 1938 boat trip by historian Frank Latta, from Bakersfield to San Francisco. Stay tuned.
John and Marianne