Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
Writing again, so soon? What happened? Very little, I just wanted to write.
This is Thanksgiving week and Fresno Fall has arrived with colorful trees and rain enough to measure. It seems to me that Spring arrives slowly, over a month or two, but Fall hits quickly and Winter is never far behind, although local winter is not all that much cooler than fall. I do like this time, as we can settle into our comfortable home and not feel guilty about skipping yard and garden work.
Of course, the yard and garden offer less for pictures, but how many flower shots does one really need? I take those pictures and add them here, just like people pick flowers for table-top decoration. Is the decoration a repeat from last year? Who knows or cares? Besides, a little rain makes interesting details and the colors remind me that Christmas is not far off. As we approach the holiday, this may be the only decoration we have for now.
Activity at home is the same as usual. I follow news only a little, now that the election is over. My New York Times is barely wrinkled before I take it down the street for Vern and Joan to pour over. They definitely benefit from the costly subscription more than we do, but both Marianne and I enjoy the on-line info even if the paper goes elsewhere. For TV news, I am taking a long break. I still dabble in on-line coverage of current events, but not with any amount of enthusiasm.
The other day I finished one book, causing me to inventory my stock to see how many more I need to finish before I should shop again. An even dozen wait for me, scattered among topics from local and world history to spy and murder mysteries. At the top of the pile is Ghosts of a Holy War, the story of a 1929 massacre in Palestine that set the tone for religious war for the next century. Why do I read such discouraging material? Spy stories are better, almost always ending with bad guys dying and good guys winning. Current news, real history, and real life, do not have novels' clarity of good and bad, or live and die. What do you read?
Since we are not traveling to interesting places, my "tourist pictures" are largely limited to screenshots of the volcano in Iceland. I thank drone pilot Isak Finnbogason for these shots and for his enthusiasm for his country's flashiest tourist attraction. This lava-spewing fissure has covered a road or two, but locals have manged to protect other infrastructure with miles of 30 foot berms and occasional cooling water sprays. This is more novel-like in that the good guys are winning. But will the evil of glowing rock rivers overwhelm them? Stay tuned.
And speaking of stay tuned, will we be doing anything interesting in the next weeks? Thanksgiving will have us in Monterey, visiting family and dealing with the mix of fun and drama that sometimes brings. At least our holiday table will not be politically divided. December will start with some medical stuff, but, hopefully, nothing dramatic. The month will end with a bit more family and then probably end with the quiet we usually change years with.
But, how well can we project even these five weeks?
Later,
John and Marianne