Eerie Air

I am waking up this week to apocalyptic scenes in the sky. Because of the wildfires raging all around us, the sky is dusty yellow and the sun comes up red. The birds are silent. The bees haven’t left the hive. There’s a layer of ash on the cars and on the street. And then there’s an eerie silence, as if no human beings are breathing and living. I’ve never experienced this before, most of us haven’t. With virus spikes continuing and now this, it’s a wonder what else is in store leading to the end of the year.

The weather patterns are wonky too. Wyoming is under a blanket of snow while Southern Oregon is up in flames.

Some states are regretting opening their schools because apparently children are the biggest carriers of the virus. Children have always been the carriers of everything. They’re children. They have no sense of distancing on a playground or in a classroom. Nor do they wash their hands that often. What did these educators in their high-tower offices think?

I’ve heard in some cities Halloween is cancelled. Why I wonder? Our masks can blend in with the costumes. So can our uncut hair and wrinkly faces. If we make sure our candies are wrapped and washed down with disinfectant wipes, where’s the harm in that? Next, Thanksgiving is in jeopardy. We’ll be told we can’t buy turkeys because they might be virus carriers. It will be an opportunity for the vegans to shine this year. Pull out your veggie recipes.

And let’s not even think about Christmas. Christmas trees will be cancelled in favor of fake ones where no human has sweated to cut them down.

Calvin says, “That means no doggy bones for me this holiday. I’ll have to educate my palate to gnaw on a cauliflower ear.”

All That Spooks

Thursday night is when all the things that go boo in the night come out. In my neighborhood, that means lots of kids in intergalactic costumes with their parents peering out from our bushes so as not to look like hovering parents, which they are of course, which is a good thing these days, and especially on Halloween night.

I lock Calvin up in his crate and away from the front door, otherwise he’d swoosh out and sniff the kids to death. He doesn’t like it one bit. He feels it’s his night too. But I can’t trust him to behave himself like a decent beagle that he sometimes can be, but not on this night.

Of all the things that spook me on this night are:

why this country has embraced this “holiday” that isn’t a holiday
resorting to this in order to get free candy
skeletons sitting in the passenger areas at the airport
substituting harvest festivals for Halloween in religious settings – what’s the difference? The candy is the same
Alf retrieving his favorite candy and hiding it in a pumpkin jar
Calvin howling his head off and making the kids think we’re killing him

Calvin says, “You are killing me with this lock-down, and you don’t even toss me a Snickers bar, my favorite.”

Gorgeous in Rags

Riding into work this morning on the subway, a tall blonde got on board.

The car was full so she grabbed a strap and hung on for the ride into the city.

I suspected this was her preferred mode anyway even if the car had been empty.

She was dressed in torn, filthy beige overalls. Her parka had layers of grime on it. Her backpack was vintage muck.

Construction tools spilled out of every pocket. Spiral bound notebooks, too. A pencil.

I looked at her face. She was very pretty. Clear skin, rosy cheeks, bright brown eyes, and she looked freshly scrubbed. Maybe mid-twenties.

She was one crazy contrast.

I was intrigued.

I got off at my stop and noticed she did, too. We got in line for the escalator. She was in front of me.

I couldn’t resist.

“What kind of work do you do?” I asked from behind.

She looked down, removed her earbuds. “Are you asking me?”

“Yes, I’m curious.”

“I’m an electrician,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.

She smiled. “I know,” she said looking at her clothes.

“Do you like it?”

“I love it!” she said with gusto. “I can get dirty everyday while working on fancy new buildings.”

“How do the others treat you, being you’re in a man’s world?” I asked.

“Fine. Most of them are wimps. They’re all babies, you know.”

We reached the top and said good-bye to each other. She smiled.

Babies. I think she gave herself away.

Calvin says, “Never judge a person by their clothes. Take me for instance. You’d never guess that a cynical, freewheeling, and persnickety heart lurks underneath this silken fur.”

I Did It

I didn’t think I’d do it, but I did.

I watched the Super Bowl.

These things impressed me:

Every seat was filled with a fan. 70,000 of them.

The maturity of the Bronco team. They played well.

The Panthers bounced around like puppies. Give them another five years.

The half-time, minus Beyoncé, was cool. I didn’t cringe for a minute.

I thought the colorful ending was tastefully done.

And when it was over, there were no dead bodies to pick up.

I consider that a successful Super Bowl.

Now let’s get back to real life.

Calvin says, “My favorite commercial was those wiener dogs. A clever idea for those runts.”

Two in One

Alf and I made our semi-annual trek to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival last week. I was craving the fall colors, the rushing creek, and rain, lots of rain. To my disappointment, everything looked dry and dusty, as if it had come out of grandma’s attic for airing, and too much like drought-intolerant California. Even the theaters had the air conditioning on. In October. Shakespeare would have stopped writing and gone to the Black Sheep for more pints.

Ashland’s city leadership is a protective bunch of environmentalists and zoning Pharisees. Over the years they’ve been very careful who builds what and where. They give out building permits sparingly, but lately, it seems to me, they’ve been imbibing at the Black Sheep too many times themselves, and loosened their grip. So there’s a condo boom in town for rich retirees coming from California who want a little bit of city with their Shakespeare setting.

There’s an Ashland we discovered on the other side of the city. It’s on rolling hills with horses and sheep dotting the landscape giving it a pastoral look. Some of the properties have vineyards that wrap around the houses like scarves. The homes are large and impressive affording views of the city and the majestic tree-studded Mt. Ashland, which in winter with its snow hat on must be a glorious sight.

We saw Ado Much Ado About Nothing, a hilarious romp with a lot of word sparing set in today’s society. While I applaud the effort OSF is making to hire actors of different ethnic backgrounds, the actor who played Claudio needed some help. When he first came on stage and delivered his first line he sounded like he had eaten a mouthful of tortillas and he never really swallowed them during the rest of the story. The other play was a Chinese classic that defied clarity. It was two plays in rehearsal on the same stage, which eventually morphed into one love story. It took dogged determination to stay in your seat to the very end because nothing really made a whole lot of sense during the first act. In case you don’t want to see it when it comes to town, it’s called, Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land. It’s been a raging hit in China since forever.

Calvin says, “They forgot to throw a dog into the Chinese mix. Hey, they had everything else including an actor in a wheelchair, why not a dog? He could have howled his way through both stories.”

Top Will

I just returned from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

I’ve been going there for 20 years and I’ve seen a lot of people come and go from the company.

Will is still a staple – barely. He’s hanging on by his thumbs from Juliet’s balcony.

He can’t be fired because he has top billing.

But they’re trying.

Shakespeare is not a go-to author for most young people.

I admit even in my day I didn’t take Pericles to the beach.

So they’re marginalizing Will and inserting musicals.

This time it was Guys and Dolls.

So what.

But the young loved it.

And that’s what it’s all about.

The next generation.

I’m so sick of hearing this.

It’s as if the world will topple if the young aren’t drawn into the things we love.

I say let them create their own fun and leave Will to hoof it on stage for our sake.

Besides, we’re paying for it, they’re not. They don’t have any money.

Calvin says, “‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.'”

Shakespeare with a Spin

We just returned from the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon where we saw four plays, two of which were from the Shakespeare canon. The Comedy of Errors was ridiculous, The Tempest was great. The other two were modern dramas full of angst and despair, the kind of thing I like because it’s kinda where I live. It also brings out the best in a cast.

Alf and I have been going to Ashland for 27 years now so you can imagine how many plays that translates into – yikes we should be experts, but we’re not. Acting companies muck around with the settings and costumes and even with some of the lines so every play looks and feels different from year to year. We’ve seen Julius Caesar performed in gym outfits, The Taming of the Shrew in a boardwalk setting (right picture), and Romeo and Juliet with a Mexican backdrop.

This year an African-America cast did the Comedy of Errors (left picture) and the director set it in Harlem, so you can imagine the farce and mayhem on stage. The costumes were everything you’d expect to see in a Sunday church setting. Alf loathed it. I enjoyed the spin.

Our biggest adventure was missing out on the Groucho Marx play, The Cocoanuts. All the other plays were at 8 pm and I assumed this one was too, but no it wasn’t, it was a matinee, and we were at the mall shopping while Groucho was yucking it up with the audience. I could have kicked myself. We rushed to the box office, told them our plight, asked to be added to the next performance only to be told it was on the day we were going home. So Groucho came and went without us. “Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.” Alf couldn’t agree more.

Calvin says, “All those settings, all those new smells, why don’t you take me with you? I know the hotel takes pets. I checked online.”