Day What?

Hi Dear Folk,

We are on day 96 of this pseudo lockdown state.  We are back to green but with the use of masks strongly suggested, which of course we adhere to.  I take a one time look at the data every day.  Mr. B. was called back to work, but we made the choice not to do so, we are both in that higher risk age group.  We follow the statistics to see if in our area since opening up, is it still tailing down, staying level or going up.  The truth is it is beginning to rise mildly, and we're in a North Eastern State, not a Southern State where it seems out of control.  We want it to go down for all, and then Mr. B. will go back to work.

If you look at the scenarios that they run, projections of how many people will get Covid, how many people will die and they run this with are people wearing masks or are people not wearing masks, and the truth is if you wear a mask less people will die.  Doesn't seem a hard choice, it's like wearing a seatbelt.  Less people die in an accident if they wear a seatbelt, it is mandatory, it safes lives.

I have been able to connect on a regular bases with my aunt Joan and it has been so good, such fun and she is a wealth of information, things my mother never told us.  One story was this, she said she still has a guilty conscience over.  She was staying with my mum, aunt Joan is the younger sister by five years, I was a little girl and a huge spider was on the staircase, they were both scared of it.  I had a little toy dust pan and brush and they sent me up to scoop and brush the spider into my pan, of course, it ran, I ran and they ran, when they came back it had disappeared.  They were naughty sisters, obviously the trauma could not had been too bad, because I do not remember.

This time has given me a lot of time to reflect on just all sorts of things, as I think it has many others. It's like being in the Eye of a Hurricane, total calmness but all sorts of cyclones are going on around you.

I have enjoyed my garden.  Mr. B got an extender for our Wi Fi router to reach the far end of the garden, down to my shed, and that has been great.  It has meant I can sit under the oak tree and be online if I desire to do so.  It was actually The Boy who suggested it, he wanted to be able to use his laptop and tune his new engine and for that he needed Wi Fi in the garage.  I ask the question, why we didn't think of doing this for ourselves, we probably benefit more from it.  But when the children ask, we jump, even now.

If you follow my Instagram you know that Rob has installed a new Honda K engine into his 1997 Miata.  He's pretty much ripped the whole car apart and put it back together.  That's kept him busy all winter he started I think about last October time.

It's truer than ever that you need to enjoy the day to day activities of life, live in the moment and make it the best you can.  Books are a great comfort and I found two lovely ones at Ollies, which is a discount store, buying out lots that don't sell elsewhere.  The Shepherd's View, by James Rebanks.  I instantly knew who it was because I had listened to him reading his book, The Shepherd's Life on BBC Radio 4 and was absolutely inthralled with it.  Lots of wonderful pictures of the Lake District Fell lands and the Herdwick sheep so suited to their environment.  Herdwick comes from the Nordic word Herdvyck which means sheep pasture and these sheep do have Nordic relatives.

I love their Heaf instinct passed down from generation to generation of sheep.  Fell famers have access to Common Land which has ancient grazing rights that go back for generations, in fact many back to the Doomsday Book.  The cottage I grew up in was very old and had grazing rights that went with our cottage, on the heath land, Patmore Heath in front of our house.  The newer built properties did not.  I remember that my mum and dad filed legal documents to make sure that this was passed down with the cottage and so did our neighbor.  Well it was a good job we did because a number of years later a whizz kid builder came along and tried to grab that Common Land to build on, plus he seemed to be in with the local authorities, but the locals were able to stop him, after a big fight.  Not only that Patmore Heath was a biological sight of specific scientific interest, but where money is concerned who cares.

Going back to Heaf instinct of these Herdwick sheep, they know exactly what is the pasturage that goes with their little farm on the fells, they do not wander off, even though there are no fences or outward signs of where one area of farm grazing rights starts and stops.  Thus a herd of Herdwick must be sold with the farm, poor things would become confused.

The other little gem I found, and tied in so well with what my sister and I had just been talking about was Chinese, Celtic and Ornamental Knots, by Suzen Milodot. My sister BB, said she had great grandmas, old wood bead necklace from WWI when the disabled soldiers came back from the war, I think it was the blind soldiers that made wood beads.  The beads needed restringing and to do that one would need to know how to knot between each bead.

I'm happy with the results of repainting a lot of our garden furniture, more to do but we've done a lot. Photos can be seen if you go to my Instagram account on the side bar.  I have a little ongoing project involving an old mirror, I'm hoping shabby chic but who knows.  It all happened because of a bit of a faux pas.  I had an old wood bathroom medicine cabinet, probably about 100 years old, I put it up for sale on Face Book Market Place and it didn't sell.  I had tried to fit it into my shed but it was too big.  I mentioned to the Mr. that maybe if we cut the front from the back I could use the mirror door, and then maybe the shelves inside separately.  He did this quiet promptly, of course didn't someone message me, and somehow I didn't get them until two days later, my lack of technology know how, and of course the deed was done, even though I had taken the post down.  So now I have to follow through, lots of sanding.

Another little joy was the small harvest off my cherry tree, from which I was able to make a number of jars of cherry conserve and a tasty cherry crumble.  An additional fun project has been the making of elderflower cordial and elderflower champagne, which reminds me I need some gin.  Both have turned out to be quite refreshing.

I can say for June the weather has been unbelievably delightful, blue skies, a breeze and more often than not low humidity, it does make this lockdown period more bearable, today is positively windy and my wind chimes under the oak tree are really chiming away.

We have been graced with no less than three bird nests in our garden, we have, a cardinal nesting right by our kitchen window, she seems to always face inward and you see her tail sticking out at the back.  I left that thorn bush just for the birds, because this would be the thorn bush that they made Jesus crown of thorns from, they are deadly and I've had many a nasty encounter with it.   What we do for the little dears.  The other two nests are gray catbird nests in our hedge.  I always think of birds nesting earlier than June, but I guess not, although cardinals have two lots of eggs one earlier March/April and the other later May/June.

My crochet has been sidelined a bit, although I do have a Harvest Shawlette on the go with a cake ball of yarn in variegated colours, its a lot of backwards and forwards, crocheting in the front loops and the back loops.  I think I will like the finished article.  Some more creative crochet is calling me, like the basket I covered in crochet and flowers.

Yesterday we took a picnic to the park, back to our favorite spot by the cabin, I love the wide open vista there.  A little reading, a little crochet and a little nap.  Just what the doctor ordered.

Well I'm not climbing Mount Everest or have found the code for a break through vaccine, but I am being a responsible citizen for humanity and my neighbors.

Take care, keep safe, be good.

Christine

Re-Posting My Review of The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes.

The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes

The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes is one of the books on the Persephone list, as you may or may not know I am gradually working through all the books they have published and did actually get to visit their shop on Conduit Street in London.  If you just click on my Persephone label you will pull up all related posts.

Again a First Edition published in 1963 from my local library, Dorothy Hughes was an American writer and you would call the style of this book Noir Fiction, with a very American setting and style of writing.  It is a refreshing change to the Persephone Collection.  I also love the dust cover of this book in orange and purple with white and black so very sixties.  It says a Random House novel of suspense.

When you read a book you form pictures of the story in your mind, the characters, what they look like and sometimes it is very bad news to watch a film before you read the book.  That would certainly be very true of this book, because for the first sixty odd pages you have one image in mind and then you read a line and your whole image of this person goes through a 360 degree turn and this is so with this book.  So if you want to read this book and don't want to ruin the surprise, stop right here.

Hugh Densmore a UCLA intern, is traveling from California to Phoenix, Arizona in his mother's white Cadillac, to attend a family wedding, his niece is getting married.  He sees a young teenager at the side of the highway in the twilight of the evening and in all good conscience cannot leave her there, this he does against all his better judgement.  He knows his parents have told him never pick up a hitchhiker it will get you into trouble and other such phrases run though his mind and you begin to think it is beginning to touch on paranoia

"The shadow, raised up from its haunches, waited for his car to approach.  He knew better than to pick up a hitchhiker on the road;  he'd known it long before the newspapers and script writers had implanted the danger in the public mind.  Most assuredly he would not pick up anyone in this strange deserted land."

Bonnie Lee Crumb

"She was a teen-ager, she might have been one of the girls he'd seen at the drive-in.  She wasn't pretty;  her face was just a young, thin, petulant face, too much lipstick on the mouth, wisps of her self-bleached hair jutting from beneath the gaudy orange and green scarf covering her head.... She also carried a box handbag of white plastic."

Such a nineteen sixties picture is now set.

"I go ape over Johnny Mathis."

"Personally I prefer Sinatra."  He wondered if that dated him, as his mother was dated with Bing Crosby.

At last the music kept her quiet and he could enjoy the morning ride.  He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country.

Hugh had dropped her off before the California/Arizona border and bought her a bus ticket, to Phoenix, it is illegal to transport a minor across a State Line, but there she was waiting for him on the Arizona side having cashed in her ticket, he was again put under an obligation to give her a ride.  He drops the girl off and arrives at his parents house.

"I stayed over in Blythe.  It was late when I got off."  He wouldn't tell her the story, he wouldn't worry her.  "Where's Dad?"

When you watch so many of the old American black and white movies, you know it was a tradition for the bride to get married out of her parents house and it is no different with Clytie, his niece.  I think a very nice tradition which has been lost now.

Clytie had chosen to be married in the ancestral home, to walk down the long front stairway as her mother and her mother's mother had before her.  With Grandfather to marry her.  He was retired now, but once a minister of the Lord, always a minister.

"The schedule?"  Tonight's a barbecue at Uncle Dan's.  The whole tribe of course and members of the wedding party.  Sports clothes."

Gram returned for more dishes.  "Barbecue.  Cooking outdoors like Indians."  She didn't wait for rebuttal but trotted back to her kitchen.

Bonnie as you already know, because you know the direction this is heading in, turns up dead.

"Like Ringle says, we got a tip.  Right after that report went out on the radio.  this guy says a nigger doc driving a big white Cadillac brought Bonne Lee to Phoenix."

This sentence is where you have to rearrange all your mental pictures and all the little cogs of information have to be taken out of their slotted cubbies in your mind and rearranged and slotted back into the correct cubbies of your mind.  It now makes sense why his parents say never pick up a hitchhiker, his grandfather is a minister, he is able to be a doctor, they have escaped the South and have a nice family home with a staircase to walk down for the bride.

This wasn't the deep South.  It was Arizona.

But prejudices are still high even out of the South.

Innocently involved?  No, he couldn't call it innocent.  Rather, it was mindless.  It was neither;  it was a paper chain of circumstances, cut from sympathy and too much imagination.  Imagination, yes - why else should he have thought that unless he picked up the girl she would be in danger?  Another car would have come along, a family car for which she had said she was waiting, or even another man, a white man.

He Dr. Hugh Densmore, product of his heredity and environment, sufficiently intelligent and well adjusted to his mind and body and color and ambition.

His mother is reading the newspaper.

Hugh could have asked her:  May I have a quick look at the front section?  But what answer could he give to her inevitable:  Why , is there some particular story ...?  And she wold glance at the front page in passing, would see the headlines about the dead girl.  Fear would squeeze her, the fear lying ever-dormant beneath the civilized front, beneath the normal life of a Los angeles housewife whose husband's income was in near-five figures, whose children had been born ad bred and coddled in serenity and security and status.

Somehow he knew, knew with dreadful clarity, that this man had full intent to make Hugh the killer.

Because the wedding was in the home, the guest list was small - the family and a few old friends.  But the reception which followed seemed to include the entire community.  there was no segregation with Clytie's university friends and John's Air Force crowd on hand.  

With all the different friends flying in for the wedding Hugh meets Ellen.

He offered Ellen a cigarette, took one himself, and lighted them.

A scene with a man and a woman smoking together seems dated in this time, but maybe not.

"You need a lawyer."

"No." He rejected it utterly, violently.  "What could a lawyer do?  I haven't been accused of anything. I haven't done anything."  He tried to make her see it.  "Having a lawyer would make me look guilty.  And I'm not."

She smiled wryly.  "Most lawyers prefer an innocent client."  He tried to laugh.  "the Judge's daughter"

The night was sharp with cold at this hour, the stars were broken glass patched against the dark sky.

I do like the above quote.

She had thought it out with care;  she must have been thinking of little else all day.  "A young man, not over forty, but top drawer in his profession;  liberal, but not too liberal, no Civil Liberties lawyer, they're suspect from the beginning because they show up in any case involving minorities.

Trying to check Ellen into the same motel as Hugh.

It was a lie and they all knew it was a lie, but there was no rancor among them.  This clerk couldn't cancel the system;  her genuine friendliness was her contribution toward eroding it.  Five years ago she wouldn't have had a vacant unit;  ten year ago she would have said, "We don't take Negroes,"  if any had had the courage or spunk to inquire.

Skye Houston pronounce  Howston, the lawyer.

His close-cropped hair was sun-bleached to pale lemon;  he was tanned far darker than Ellen, almost as dark as Hugh.

There was no excuse he could give for postponing food; ..."There's a bakery cafeteria a couple of blocks from here.  Not elegant but friendly and the food used to be good will that do?"

"It sounds just right."  She was a different girl since Houston.

The cold of the cafeteria enveloped them like a snowfall.

This so takes me back to when I first stepped foot in the USA in the seventies and what a shock air conditioning was.  Coming from a country where you did not need it and it did not exist.  How one always had to carry a cardigan even in the hottest of days, just for the sake of AC.

He'd have to ask Houston for help.  They'd be afraid not to answer Houston's questions.  It rankled that he could not bring the same force to bear, that he had to forgo his own social position and become a caricature to ask a simple question.  And receive no answer.

"He said lightly, "I hear we have some fine courses in foreign diplomacy.  Maybe you'll decide to transfer."

"Okay, Madam Ambassador."

She smiled at him.  "I didn't choose the field because I'm a feminist."  Thoughtfully, she continued, "We've traveled abroad quite a bit.  Because of my father's various assignments.  I believe there's a definite need for what I call dark diplomats.

This book is far more than Fiction Noir, it addresses the racial prejudices of the era and makes you think about what has changed and what has not.

Christy

I first posted this Monday February 15th 2016.  I think in view of what is happening this is an interesting read.  I was at approximately page 60 before I realized the story was about a black doctor and not a white doctor.  

Posting Comments

Hi Dear Folk,

Just wanted to say, I have tried to leave comments on numerous Blogs that I follow, but there is a problem all the time.  Not sure if I can sort it on my end, something to do with Cache. I do follow along on ones I have read over the years, but I've been muted on what I can post on their Blogs and comments, which is very frustrating.  So girls I have tried.

Do take care in these times.  Be discerning and use ones common sense, because there's a lot of stupidity out there.

Christine