"The young men and women walked round and round the plaza in the hot electric night, the men one way, the girls another, never speaking to each other. In the northern sky the lightning flapped. It was like a religious ceremony which had lost all meaning, but at which they still wore their best clothes. Sometimes a group of older women would join in the procession with a little more excitement and laughter, as if they retained some memory of how things used to go before all the books were lost. A man with a gun on his hip watched from the Treasury steps, and a small withered soldier sat by the prison door with a gun between his knees and the shadows of the palms pointed at him like a zareba of sabres. Lights were burning in a dentist's window, shining on the swivel chair and the red plush cushions and the glass for rinsing on its little stand and the child's chest-of-drawers full of fittings. Behind the wire-netted windows of the private houses grandmothers swung back and forth in rocking-chairs, among the family photographs -- nothing to do, nothing to say, with too many clothes on, sweating a little. This was the capital city of a state."
-- Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
Me and my Dad are living together again, in lovely Frederick, Maryland. We tried a nursing home for almost a year and it wasn't working out. He was bored and listless. He had a few friends, but not many. The staff was fine -- no lashings with wet noodles or anything, but also not enough one-on-one care, more than they could possibly provide.
Also, the place was damn expensive.
So we're trying something new. We've got a nurse coming in five days a week.
It's good. It's tough. I'm looking for full-time work now, and when I find something it means we'll probably have to hire another nurse to come in. I finished up a summer part-time job last week doing job counseling for high school kids, and it was actually kind of fun.
My cats are raising hell. They'll both turn one this October. We don't know their actual days of birth since they were abandoned, so close enough.
My Dad turns 95 this February.
Blogging has been minimal. Political blogging even more so (We're doomed!).
That said, here's an article on how the clusterfuck that is Brexit (British politics even!) killed off something of a Renaissance in British beer making:
"Bone Machine is one of more than 100 small brewers that have been forced out of business in the past 18 months, hit by a combination of Brexit, the pandemic and the cost of living crisis and now threatened by changes to beer duty laws. In June, the accountancy firm Mazars found that 45 small brewers had gone into liquidation, but many more have either been sold or swallowed by rivals."
Let's give Conservative ideology its due -- unnecessary taxes and tariffs really can destroy a fledgling business! Dozens of 'em, even!
"We went into a fast food joint. It proclaimed itself a 'Gourmet Soupery.' What was gourmet about it, I couldn't tell you. I got a little dizzy when I tried to lift the tray with our two bowls on it. Despite chiding HIM about HIS diet earlier, I realized I hadn't eaten anything since yesterday myself. They were saying on the news that more and more young people were forgetting to eat, starving to death.
'This feels kind of embarrassing somehow,' I said as I picked up my spoon.
'Uh-huh.' HE nodded.
'I've never eaten with someone else before.'
'Me neither.'
We ate sitting side by side gazing at the video screen. It's so hard to relax without something to look at. The screen was showing a sunset over some southern island. The camera didn't move, so it was pretty much like an ultravista. Once the sun had sunk fully behind the horizon, the programme changed to Top Forty This Week. That restaurant chain's catchphrase is 'Brand new videos, guaranteed.'"
-- Izumi Suzuki, "Terminal Boredom"
I guess I should be complaining about how the Orioles didn't acquire anything more than two not so great pitchers.
But with so many teams over .500 there just isn't much talent available.
They've got as good a shot as anybody to at least win the American League. The Braves are probably the best team in baseball though.
