There’s a joke to be made about the Waltham Mass but then maybe only because we used to live north of Boston.

Last night: one homegrown Waltham butternut squash–the seeds bought after Sally and others said that that was the best tasting variety. (I’m blanking. Who all else said so? Claim your credit, you earned it.)

Between being ginger with that back and the bit of flu still, carving it in half just didn’t appeal. Not even the method of putting the cutting board (on the floor, if there’s anything breakable on the counter) stabbing the edge of a large knife into the center of the squash and then going HeeYAH! smashing it into the cutting board with velocity so that it can split open and spew seeds under the fridge.

Like you’ve never done that?

Not doing it.

So I simply rinsed it off and stuck in the oven on a cookie sheet at 350 for 100 minutes or so. Whole. Along with the rest of the dinner after awhile, hey, join the party in there.

It was a pretty big one. We had seconds.

I said to him, That’s the best butternut squash I think I’ve ever had.

He looked up from his plate and pronounced, It’s a good one.

Tonight: I took the rest I’d scraped out last night and cuisinarted it with three eggs, a slight chug of milk (should have added butter) and a bit of ginger-infused maple syrup that was one of those weird things you occasionally find at Trader Joe’s that has just been *waiting* for this moment. Regular real maple would be fine, too. Put the mixture in my two quart Jewel-glaze cake pan from Mel and Kris, sprinkled a little brown sugar on top and took its picture because it was pretty–and again, it came out of the oven very very good and the blog still won’t load photos.

Thank you for the Waltham advice, you were so right!

The vice presidential debate tonight.

They walked in, she, clearly comfortable in her own skin, he, face tense, wary of hers and her both.

He pushed at the first instance to see if he could talk right through the moderator and keep on going when his time was up and then did so every single time. She studiously avoided reciprocating, although she did several times note to the moderator that ‘I’m going to finish up my time that he took.’ He interrupted again and again when it was her turn, so often with baldfaced lies that, if she called him on them, he claimed them again.

The moderator kept expecting him to behave better and kept letting him keep right on talking. Every time. It was maddening. Pence was just begging for someone in the more immediate audience to yell out what Biden had only said under his breath last week, “Will you shut up, man?”

Winner of the debate: Harris, absolutely, but also the fly that landed on Mike Pence’s white hair and hung on for two solid minutes, exploring a moment and then head down and digging in.

Remember when the little bird landed right there on Bernie Sanders’ lectern at a campaign event and watched him while he was absolutely charmed by it? The two of them looking like long lost friends, and how it stayed there till Bernie moved his arm? And how the crowd roared its approval of the moment? (It was, as far as I could tell, a Pine Siskin.)

Flies eat at the decaying and rotten to recycle it back into fertilizer for the next generation so that life can continue on.

Even Nature knew who Pence is.

The knitting: the cowl didn’t get any further along today because the afghan did, now that the logjam’s been broken through. Man it felt good.

The blog: I got another auto-update notice and checked. Nope. Still no photo function. Sorry, hopefully soon?

The history, from Michael Beschloss:

“On a cold night, seeing a Secret Service agent outside Oval Office, John F Kennedy asked him inside but was told he couldn’t.

Kennedy brought out two cups of hot chocolate, which they both drank in the cold—years later, the weeping agent said, “That’s the kind of President I’ve been serving.”

Propped my feet up, pushed my back against the back of the futon for support, and started knitting for the first time in nearly a week and was surprised at the intensity of the relief in those stitches.

Just a cowl. Anything heavier is unthinkable at the moment, but green silk with tiny clear glass beads would do. It had been cast on and a row or two done to get it started and then, being too yellow a green for my eyes, it had gone nowhere with the afghan nagging to be worked on. This was to have been a small carry-around for my purse.

Which would have been great if I were going anywhere.

But someone would love it–and I didn’t have to wind any yarn up to get it going again nor did I have to do that first fiddly little bit on the circs.

I thought I would do a row or two. I did a lot more than that before I finally had to put it down for sheer fatigue, but man did it feel good to be knitting again. To be creating, to be anticipating that someone out there was going to absolutely love this after it’s done, when I can go, Okay, now. Tell me who. Surprise me.

Pence thought flying to Arizona would get the Mormon vote to turn the state their way.

And on a different note having nothing to do with that…

This was General Conference weekend for the Mormon Church, broadcast from Salt Lake. There was no in-person audience, the speakers were masked while not speaking and sat socially distant, and the Tabernacle Choir was pre-recorded songs from previous Conferences.

And the song they started out with (video link) was, “Oh Say What Is Truth”. The sheet music is in the link below.

31243, Hymns, Oh Say, What Is Truth?, no. 272

1. Oh say, what is truth? ‘Tis the fairest gem
That the riches of worlds can produce,
And priceless the value of truth will be when
The proud monarch’s costliest diadem
Is counted but dross and refuse.

2. Yes, say, what is truth? ‘Tis the brightest prize
To which mortals or Gods can aspire.
Go search in the depths where it glittering lies,
Or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies:
‘Tis an aim for the noblest desire.

3. The sceptre may fall from the despot’s grasp
When with winds of stern justice he copes.
But the pillar of truth will endure to the last,
And its firm-rooted bulwarks outstand the rude blast
And the wreck of the fell tyrant’s hopes.

4. Then say, what is truth? ‘Tis the last and the first,
For the limits of time it steps o’er.
Tho the heavens depart and the earth’s fountains burst,
Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,
Eternal, unchanged, evermore.

Text: John Jaques, 1827-1900

Music: Ellen Knowles Melling, 1820-1905

There were messages of inclusivity for all and they meant all in order to measure up to the teachings of Jesus.

President Nelson said, “I grieve that our black brother and sisters the world over are enduring the pains of racism and prejudice. Today, I call upon our members everywhere to lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice. I plead with you to promote respect for all of God’s children.”

One of the other things he said leaped out just for me. “We can do hard things.”

I instantly decided to take it personally for my right here and now. My back has been so bad that I couldn’t roll over and get out of bed by myself, which wasn’t helping Richard’s iffy back any. Alright, consciously loosen those muscles. No tensing from fear it’s going to hurt that makes it hurt. You can do this. And yes it will still hurt some, but it won’t get better without doing that.

Richard five minutes ago, watching me rise from a chair and turn to go in the kitchen to get a glass of milk: “You ARE feeling better!”

Better being a relative term, but, yes I definitely am and I’m not afraid of it anymore.

I will add two things: I’m still not stupid, though, and, I have very good friends. Phyl and Lee walked over, watered my wilting veggies and a few trees that needed it most, harvested the four butternut squash that were ripe and at my previously-stated insistence, took one home. I waved thanks and goodbye through the window so as not to give them my flu.

Husband and daughter negative for covid, just a bug, I finally caught it. Flu shots never entirely take with my immune system (they got theirs two weeks after mine) but they do ameliorate it; fever overnight, already much better but I wrenched my back hard. Ice helps. Tomorrow will be better.

You’ve probably already heard that Trump’s at Walter Reed Hospital with Covid-19. Per CNN, he has an underlying heart condition,along with his weight and age. Melania tested positive.

Hope Hicks was on Air Force One three times this week with him and tested positive after being symptomatic just before Trump decided he was going to meet with 100 donors anyway. Because money. And seeing people who still supported him.

He is not capable of supporting them back by intuiting that it would not be good to risk making them sick. Even his own Secret Service agents have complained that he’s no longer having them tested after they work his rallies.

Kellyanne Conway has tested positive. So has Ronna McDaniel, head of the RNC.

Republican Senators Thom Tillis and Mike Lee, and John Jenkins, President of Notre Dame, were in the Rose Garden Supreme Court nomination ceremony last Saturday where people were maskless and seated close together, and now they have it. (Nominee Barrett’s been there done that.)

Lee started having symptoms but still attended a Judiciary Committee meeting this week, as usual without a mask, before bothering to go and get tested–which means that that’s about to get interesting. McConnell was there.

There will surely be more names in DC tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

Everybody who attended the debate Tuesday agreed to wear masks and the Trump family walked in wearing them–and then all took them off. When offered masks, because, y’know, they’d specifically agreed to this and besides it’s basic human decency in a pandemic, they refused. They were not escorted out in front of the cameras but they should have been, and after today’s news maybe they would be.

The virus doesn’t go by political parties but Trump’s been working hard on that.

I wish them all well, I really do (or in a few cases I’m really trying to at least.)

One wag said that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had argued her first case before G_d and won.

Four years after I bought the seeds, I finally planted and harvested a Bradford watermelon, once the most popular in America. But the coming of the railroads pushed them almost to extinction: their rinds were too soft to stack, they didn’t ship well, their market fell apart. Cue Bob Dylan singing, “It’s a hard rind…is going to falllll…”

This article shows you what watermelons looked like in Renaissance paintings; mine with its thick white inner portion isn’t too far off from that.

I’m told my oldest uses watermelon rind in curry but I wouldn’t have a clue how or for that matter why one would, so for the moment there’s a lot of flavor-free melon part that I can’t see what to do with. The actual part you do eat as, y’know, watermelon, is okay but frankly ordinary.

But I can see how it would once have been a very practical thing to have around when you’re at work on a farm on a hot summer day.

There’s a book in the Wizard of Oz series where a little girl (Betsy, I think?) and a man she called Cap’n are shipwrecked at the start of the story. There were melons growing on the island they found themselves on, and Cap’n took satisfaction in that: melons were both food and water, he said; however long it might take to be rescued, they were going to be okay.

That stuck with me because I couldn’t see how you could think of a melon that way. Any melon. Forever after I wondered what the author knew that I didn’t.

Now, I think I do, and I realize that L. Frank Baum was much closer to the time of melons like mine than today’s. And I finally see where the name water-melon comes from.

So much fluid suspended in those cells. Just picking seeds out of one slice I was able to pour off a bit and sample how the juice tasted.

Michelle’s flash of brilliance was that, rather than try to pick all those seeds out, how about using a potato masher on the slices–since there are only three of us to eat all of that and fridge space was at a premium.

I got out one very large bowl and one barely-fitting slice at a time and proceeded to do just that. The Bradford was crisp but collapsed almost without resistance. The interior became little pink icebergs floating in the sea; the seeds rose to the surface and were easy to pick out.

I did it. I grew it. I don’t think I’d ever seen a watermelon growing before. I hadn’t even eaten a watermelon in years. It was fun.

And, curiosity satisfied, I am not spending hundreds of Californian gallons to grow one again.

Mercifully, I no longer remember his name.

I woke up this morning with the thought that I now understood what last night’s debate reminded me of.

Back when my lupus was newly diagnosed, I was doing swim therapy at a pool where you had to have a doctor’s prescription to go there–so that everybody was dealing with something, everybody knew it, and people tended to look out for each other. At 31 when I showed up I was the baby of the morning group, which but for a few middle-aged car accident victims was all elderly. The pool was set up in a T shape for exercises on this side, with a wheelchair ramp going down into the water, and laps on that.

There was one notable exception to that camaraderie.

My hearing wasn’t as bad back then, but still, I left my hearing aids in my locker because you can’t get them wet so every conversation required my full attention on the person speaking to me from a near distance; having to put my glasses down next to the pool didn’t help. So I would be watching closely and hanging on every word.

There was this one guy old enough to be a WWII vet (he told me how sorry he was that he was too old to sign up for the Gulf War going on at the time, he liked being one of the boys) who really got off on that attention, and probably my relative youth. I couldn’t just catch a few words from a distance and brush him off and he caught me off guard the first time. The second time conveyed that that hadn’t been a one-off, it was the pattern: he was a full-on dirty old man who enjoyed making you squirm and when he tried the third time and it was more of the same I wasn’t going to be subjected to any more of that. We’re done here.

He took exception to that.

I was doing laps, wrapped in my own thoughts, and was just coming up for the next breath when I suddenly found myself grabbed by the arm hard and held underwater. I couldn’t believe that old man had that much strength. I tried to fight him off but was totally overpowered. He held, and held, and the lifeguard was derelict and oblivious just then. (It was not Jonathan. Just wanted to add that. And I did reconnect with him after I wrote that post, which he got to read.)

Finally, at the desperate moment when I was sure I was going to drown the guy let go and I came up spluttering and furious and he finally got the attention he’d been craving.

He wasn’t the one I had words to say to though because I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction–although I’m rather sorry I didn’t scream for the benefit of everybody there. But I was just working too hard on gasping in the blessed air to be able to.

The lifeguard’s boss apologized over the incident and told me they’d pulled the guy aside after my complaint and told him that if he ever touched anyone there again he would be banned for life.

Word didn’t need to get around–the old ladies all already knew about him.

Then management told me that I didn’t have to do laps in a lane next to him anymore–which started out sounding good, till they added, if there’s an empty lane next to you when he wants one you’re the one who’ll have to come out. Or you can stay. If he’s already swimming laps and a lane opens up next to him you can wait till there’s another one but we’re not going to make him get out.

But he nearly killed me!

No consequences. I could not believe my ears. They said, Well, we didn’t witness it happening.

I debated calling the cops and saying I’d been assaulted but a friend who had been a cop told me that without the pool backing me up it would go nowhere. The Me, Too era was a long way off. It wasn’t till years later that I wondered if he was part of the non-profit’s funding.

Meantime, the guy complained to me in the whine of bullies everywhere, “Can’t you take a joke!?”

I moved over to the Y after that and never came back.

A few years later one of my old swim friends let me know that Dirty Old Man had moved away and I never had to worry about running into him in the grocery store again. It was an intense, immense relief.

And that’s how we’re going to feel when those votes are counted and in January if we do our part. Let’s be done with this ugly dirty cheating controlling hateful old man. We don’t have to drown our democracy in his lies anymore.

And on a completely different note, since we could all use a bit of relief after that, it’s Fat Bear week at Katmai National Park in Alaska. Vote for the biggest bruin!

1. Happy Birthday to Spencer! Who, like Little Cindy Lou Who, is no more than two. A soccergame-type bag full of toddler-sized balls of various sports like his older siblings play with started the little guy’s day off in just his style.

2. The phone finally rang.

They want you *where* in twenty minutes?! (Mentally counting the number of cities away.) Did they know where we live?! C’mon, let’s go! I have never dropped my knitting so fast. He was actually only three minutes late, but I got him there before they closed and that was the important part. Yay for pandemic rush hours, I guess?

3. And then there was the debate.

Trump tried to badmouth his way through the entire thing, loudly, angrily, nonstop, utterly bulldozing Chris Wallace and thinking he could shake Joe Biden that way, who at last said, “Will you shut up, man?” It’s already been made into a t-shirt. Except that you’d have to wear that face.

Kudos to the caption writers who managed to get most of both men’s words even when both were talking, one’s lines in line above the other’s. I don’t know how even people with normal hearing made out what they were saying otherwise. Biden was not going to let Trump simply steal all his time–he wanted to be polite, y’know, have a debate, take turns, be respectful, do it normal, but that just wasn’t possible.

So. We learned that when asked directly, repeatedly, even by someone from Fox that no, Trump will not renounce racism. Instead, he called on the violent militia men like in Charlottesville and Portland to “Stand Back and Stand By,” and to (illegally intimidate) at polling stations (one guess as to which ones). It was a clear call to arms and not as a metaphor. When asked if he would abide by the election results he would not answer but instead called on the Supreme Court to, clearly, call it for him.

Biden, meantime, was trying to put out a firestorm of lies with a single garden hose: “That’s not true,” again and again. A couple of times he simply laughed, because, what are you going to do? You can’t change this guy and get him to abide by the rules or even plain decency.

Biden talked directly to the American people. He said he would not defund the police as Trump claimed but rather would give them actually more resources, not less–so that they could hire mental health professionals to help deal on scene with those who could be helped that way, and so that the police could get better training. He proposed bringing people together in the White House, Black Lives Matters activists and police activists, for them to see that much of what they want is the same thing. More justice. More awareness of how it is to walk in each other’s shoes.

More peacemaking.

You’re only going to get that from one of these guys.

Every vote matters.

A few months ago, I placed an online grocery order that came with frozen water bottles to help keep chilled things chilled during delivery. They were cheap ones that threatened to break open, not helped by having been frozen, but they did the job the sender had intended.

I’m not a fan of non-reusable plastic water bottles, but there they were, so I put two in the cabinet and one in my car because you never know–hoping it wouldn’t split and spill.

We’re having another freakishly hot spell in northern California. It is 103 out there.

I have an old high school friend who lives in New York City who’s been fighting cancer and, along with her husband, a bad bout of covid that started some months ago. She explained long hauler syndrome before I’d heard anyone else describing it.

Saturday, she was talking about mailing a ballot to avoid the crowds, given everything.

I asked her if she was allergic to wool and what was her favorite color? Thinking, that, at least, I can do something about.

When she answered, I sent her a link to some Malabrigo Mecha and told her to scroll down to the Teal Feather color. She thought it was exquisite. She loved blue greens.

It was nothing fancy but it was very soft and warm and already done and all I had to do was run the ends in and that hat could go off in the mail today–even if it’s not cold here now, it will be sooner there.

She gave me her address and I did that.

But first, I thought about something else I maybe should mail or maybe should wait on and there were reasons for both and why make two trips but really, you should first do… I found myself spending way too much time not putting on my shoes and getting out that door with that one package all ready to go and what was up with all this anyway? Rush hour is coming. Just, go!

I debated at the corner: this post office or that one? Right or left? I started to pull right and then somehow decisively wheeled back the other way and went left and didn’t think much of it.

The air conditioner was very slow to kick in but it had a lot to deal with. Man, it was hot.

I got there, mailed my package, got in my car, and waited as several other cars ahead of me pulled away and out of the parking lot.

There was an older man sitting on the curb over there in front of his old minivan. It looked like he’d had a breakdown. He pulled out his cellphone as I waited for the cars in front of me to pull out, then as I rolled up to the road beside him his shoulders slumped. Whatever answer he’d gotten, it was clear he was going to be sitting there awhile. No tow truck comes fast. Friends might, but the look on his face described his day.

Someone was coming up behind me and I was blocking them. I pulled onto the road.

And thought at myself, Are you KIDDING me?? Is this even a question?!

I swung back into the entrance just ahead, stopped the car, reached into the back seat, got back in, pulled around and back to that point, window rolled down.

Sir?

There was no way that stranger white lady was talking to him and he glanced the opposite direction so as not to embarrass himself thinking I would.

Nevertheless I persisted, water bottle held straight out.

Sir? Would you like some water?

The thought hung in the air between us a moment as he tried to take it in.

His sun-worn brown face broke into relief, gratitude, love, joy, even–and he stood and, hunched and walking like someone with a bad back and aching hips, he made it over to my outstretched arm and received that bottle. As I knew in that moment he would have offered me had we been reversed. “Thank you!” he smiled, thick with emotion.

He’s someone’s grampa out there.

I figured he could deal with his car and his phone better than I could with my hearing, and the people in the post office were right over there if need be, he just needed to get through this part right now in that heat.

It wasn’t till I got past the next light that it hit me that all that indecisiveness and dithering over whether to leave yet and the string of cars leaving the post office in front of me and every step along the way had landed me at that spot and seeing what I needed to see exactly when I needed to be there to see it for his sake.

I went home and put the rest of those water bottles in the car. And added a coconut water for good measure.

One last note that I saw him busy typing into his phone at the curb, so he didn’t see me waving hi and I let him be.

Quote:

I just picked it up. It is fabulous.  Thank you so much!

This put a big smile on my face:

“If this is still available, I could really use it. My trumpet case is
held together with tire tubes, staple gun staples and duct tape.

Joe”

And so it is off to a good place and Joe’s note made me feel like, okay, that’s what it’s been waiting here to find. Go Joe.

Musings during the ongoing toss-and-organize and a wow, do we still have that.

Way back when my kids were in band I bought a seriously padded trumpet case. It’s big, because it was the most protective one I could find, because, kids.

It was in the back seat twenty years ago when my youngest and I were rear-ended into another car so hard that the car crumpled up to the back window, the glove compartment spewed open and all over us, the rearview mirror twisted sideways, I lost my sense of balance for life hitting the headrest so hard and the trumpet went flying into the backs of our seats hard enough to seriously damage the bell despite all that padding. West Valley Music spent a month repairing it. But that case helped keep that trumpet from doing worse to us and to it.

So it holds a lot of memories and it has taken a hit, but all you can see is that one side curves inward somewhat. The trumpet continued to be in it till the younger son lost interest after middle school and the older son, who’d had it first and had always done more with it and wanted it more, took it home for his own kids and let it live happily ever after.

In a different case that fits better in their space.

I just offered the padded one (which came from West Valley) to one group, and if that doesn’t work I’ll ask the school district’s music department.

Couldn’t hurt to mention to Panasonic that their microwave died just outside of warranty and left a customer unhappy, right? So I sent them a message and it was answered today with a link.

Which showed that a new inverter part, which might or might not be enough, was $118.95, probably plus shipping plus the time spent waiting for it to come. And then the next part. And the next. And the hassle of playing repairman, although, he could do it.

A new microwave that was essentially identical to the one we had, was, it turns out, $119.99 if you bought it inside the local Costco so they didn’t have to ship it.

I debated spending five times the price to get a fancier brand–not that I wanted to spend that kind of money at all but it would be so nice to have something dependable. Doesn’t exist. At least this way I’d get five years of warranty with five microwaves.

And so I blew that extra $1.04. Call me the last of the big spenders. First time I’ve been inside a Costco in seven months, but tomorrow’s hot cocoa made me do it.