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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: General Interest
- Published: 08/16/2020
The View From 90: July
Born 1929, M, from Roseville/CA, United States2020ViewJuly (Approx. 1,750 wds.)
The View From 90: July
Author’s Note: About five years ago I wrote a mostly fictional memoir called “The View From 85.” At the start of this year I thought I’d try writing a mostly factual memoir called “The View From 90.” I had no idea that the world would be beset by a virus that would upset all of our lives and that on top of this our country would have a wave of social unrest following the death of a black man at the hands of the police. I began doing a month by month kind of rough pre-memoir and have been posting these on Storystar. Here is the month of July from the point of view of a 90-year oldster.
The June installment of this monthly journal ended on a down note with the coronavirus (called just “virus” from now on) resurging, the rioting that started after the death of George Floyd still going on in some cities, a pending presidential election between two horrible candidates and, on top of all this, a pain in my left hip that proved as stubborn as the virus and wouldn’t go away.
As all the virus numbers went up, our state, California, shut down once again, including, by the middle of July, our county, Placer. This meant no bars, no dining in at restaurants and no more hair and nail salons or tattoo parlors unless these could operate outside. It also included houses of worship. California’s Governor, Gavin Newsome, once lauded as he quickly shut down the state in March, was now reviled for too quickly re-opening it. The New York Times reported that California’s re-opening was a “disaster” and although you have to be skeptical of anything in the Times, since it’s become a mostly anti-Trump propaganda outlet, that wasn’t too far wrong.
At our retirement community the restaurant stopped inside dining and the Fitness Center suspended its planned re-opening. It was also reported that a couple of part-time kitchen workers at the restaurants and a couple of golf course workers had tested positive, so the virus had gotten into our community. The one bright spot was that work on developing a vaccine looked promising. Of course, the President, on every occasion, kept saying that a vaccine was coming soon and, like a lot of other Trump pronouncements, this couldn’t be taken seriously. Still, Dr. Fauci said that we might well have something by the end of the year so there’s some hope there.
The rioting, now called “social unrest,” that had dominated the news for most of June had abated somewhat but not everywhere. In Seattle the mayor finally sent in the police to re-take the “occupied” zone, but only after a few shootings and a demonstration outside her own house caught her attention. In Portland the social unrest was a nightly occurrence, with the primary target seeming to be a federal courthouse. The President sent in federal agents to protect the courthouse and these were immediately called Trump’s Nazi storm troopers while Portland’s clueless mayor claimed they provoked even worse rioting. As I write this, I believe the feds have departed with the understanding that the police would take over, but odds are the rioting will continue indefinitely.
In New York City, the agitators had occupied a park outside City Hall demanding that the police be defunded, the key objective of the Black Lives Matter people, and after Mayor Bill DeBlasio obliged with a one billion dollar cut, which still didn’t satisfy them, they continued their occupation until finally cleared out. I think there were a few other incidents throughout the country but can’t recall them. But a number of other cities proceeded to cut their police budgets while crime skyrocketed in many places, notably in Chicago and New York.
The July 4th holiday took place as usual, but not as usual some people called it a celebration of white supremacy. There was even a suggestion that July 4th be replaced by Juneteenth, the day that, they said, ended all slavery. I’d always thought this was when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. President Trump went to Mount Rushmore despite some Indian protests and I’d say gave a pretty good speech, citing past American heroes, including many of color. And there were lots of fireworks after. Despite the fears of Trump’s critics, the woods didn’t catch fire from the fireworks and the Indians didn’t stage an uprising.
Although the social unrest events tapered off, the demolition or removal of statues went on. The Sacramento Bee had a front page story on the removal of the statues of Columbus and Isabella that had been in the Capitol rotunda for many years. It was unclear where they were removed to, someplace where they wouldn’t offend anyone, I suppose. And in Capitol Park, a group of agitators pulled down a statue of Junipero Serra while Highway patrolmen looked on. A Wall Street Journal columnist wrote that political correctness (PC) had devolved to the cancel culture (CC?), and besides the statue business more names were changed. The Washington Redskins finally gave up and agreed to cancel the “Redskins.” The Dixie Chicks dropped the “Dixie.” The word “plantation” was banned. A high school person was upset by the names that Trader Joe’s jokingly used for some of their brands and Trader Joe’s apologized and said they’d change them, but later, I believe, recanted.
Thanks to the pandemic the nation’s economy was still terrible and at month’s end it was announced that the gross national product (GNP) had gone down by one-third. In Washington, there was a battle over another stimulus or coronavirus relief bill. Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats passed a 3 trillion dollar bill (yes, that was trillion) that the Senate Republicans were sure to reject. The bill included direct payments as in the previous one and continuation of the $600 a week unemployment insurance add-on, as well a lot of other things Pelosi would like, such as billions of dollars to insolvent Democratic states. The Republicans were okay with the direct payments but wanted to cut the unemployment add-on to $200. At the end of the month, the whole matter, as might be expected, was in a stalemate. Your government at work.
Another Washington circus event was that Attorney General Bill Barr was called to testify before some House committee whose purpose it seemed was to berate him while not letting him testify to anything. He did manage to point out that trying to burn down a federal courthouse was not exactly peaceful protesting.
There were some significant deaths during the month. John Lewis, a civil rights icon and long-time Democratic congressman passed away and was mourned by everyone. In Sacramento, Robbie Walters, once a sheriff and city councilman, was a virus fatality as was one-time presidential hopeful Herman Cain. And actress Olivia deHavilland died at age 104.
As far as personal stuff, things in lockdown went on pretty much as before. We didn’t have any exciting event such as our smoke alarms going off, which happened last month, but did discover a pool of water under the kitchen sink. The local fire department rescued us in the smoke alarm incident and a plumber who made house calls came, found out the garbage disposal was leaking and replaced it, taking care of that.
I have to say here that Beverly and I, despite smoke alarms and leak problems, are among the lucky ones in this pandemic. Being old and retired, we don’t have to worry about jobs or taking care of school-age children. Being really old, we’d already cut down on our activities. Beverly misses our retirement community’s chorus, of which she was a member ever since we moved in here, as well as her neighborhood card games and various lunch groups. I also miss lunches with friends and our weekly exercise classes. Further, I miss having the option of doing things, such as traveling, although I don’t think I want to get on an airplane again regardless of circumstances.
How do we pass the time? Beverly exchanges e-mails and plays word games on her iPad with a lot of friends (also some strangers). I also exchange e-mails with friends and some strangers. At the onset of the pandemic, our three sons were concerned over our health and I think a little afraid we’d go gallivanting around and get the virus. Neither Beverly nor I have done any gallivanting and I think they’re sure now that we’ll be sheltering in place as long as this goes on. We do have weekly phone calls with them and I call my sister in Long Island every week. I should also mention that I spend some time each day writing, including keeping a journal, something the health experts recommend that everyone do.
We do watch more television than before, including more news, although I often turn the sound off when I’ve heard enough. We are watching more old movies and TV shows. You can tell the old movies are old, even if they’re not in black-and-white, because all the men are wearing hats, also most of the women, everyone smokes cigarettes (they didn’t yet cause cancer way back then), people use clunky telephones they have to dial, there’s no obscenity and no nude scenes. We watched “From Here to Eternity,” which has a lot of scenes in an army barracks but the soldiers didn’t swear they just used a lot of bad grammar with many “aints.” The then controversial beach scene with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr now seems very tame.
Those old movies, even the Oscar winners, now seem, like the old telephones, pretty klunky. Still, it’s fun watching the movie stars we remember from our youth and I got into the habit of Googling them. Most are gone but a few are still around and old like us. I also found out some interesting things, like that Burt Lancaster had a near-fatal gallstone operation, so his experience was worse than mine. Also, Elizabeth had broken her back filming “National Velvet;” never knew that.
July 30th was our 55th anniversary. Ordinarily, we’d have a family get-together to celebrate this, going out to some restaurant for lunch or dinner. This time we ordered in a steak dinner. One of our sons sent flowers, two dozen roses; another son sent Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Beverly’s favorite, another son sent a card. In the afternoon Beverly got a haircut, her first since lockdown, from a lady who came to the house; I told her that was my anniversary present to her.
That capped the month and we were ready to face another month of lockdown; more bad virus news; more bad economic news; more political inaction; and, this being California, more wildfires. And the conventions were coming up, which promised more boring television, while the election was a month closer.
I almost forgot: the truncated baseball season started, as did the remains of the pro basketball season. Our Sacramento Kings, who had a remote chance of making the NBA playoffs, lost their first game. Not a good omen.
###
The View From 90: July(Martin Green)
2020ViewJuly (Approx. 1,750 wds.)
The View From 90: July
Author’s Note: About five years ago I wrote a mostly fictional memoir called “The View From 85.” At the start of this year I thought I’d try writing a mostly factual memoir called “The View From 90.” I had no idea that the world would be beset by a virus that would upset all of our lives and that on top of this our country would have a wave of social unrest following the death of a black man at the hands of the police. I began doing a month by month kind of rough pre-memoir and have been posting these on Storystar. Here is the month of July from the point of view of a 90-year oldster.
The June installment of this monthly journal ended on a down note with the coronavirus (called just “virus” from now on) resurging, the rioting that started after the death of George Floyd still going on in some cities, a pending presidential election between two horrible candidates and, on top of all this, a pain in my left hip that proved as stubborn as the virus and wouldn’t go away.
As all the virus numbers went up, our state, California, shut down once again, including, by the middle of July, our county, Placer. This meant no bars, no dining in at restaurants and no more hair and nail salons or tattoo parlors unless these could operate outside. It also included houses of worship. California’s Governor, Gavin Newsome, once lauded as he quickly shut down the state in March, was now reviled for too quickly re-opening it. The New York Times reported that California’s re-opening was a “disaster” and although you have to be skeptical of anything in the Times, since it’s become a mostly anti-Trump propaganda outlet, that wasn’t too far wrong.
At our retirement community the restaurant stopped inside dining and the Fitness Center suspended its planned re-opening. It was also reported that a couple of part-time kitchen workers at the restaurants and a couple of golf course workers had tested positive, so the virus had gotten into our community. The one bright spot was that work on developing a vaccine looked promising. Of course, the President, on every occasion, kept saying that a vaccine was coming soon and, like a lot of other Trump pronouncements, this couldn’t be taken seriously. Still, Dr. Fauci said that we might well have something by the end of the year so there’s some hope there.
The rioting, now called “social unrest,” that had dominated the news for most of June had abated somewhat but not everywhere. In Seattle the mayor finally sent in the police to re-take the “occupied” zone, but only after a few shootings and a demonstration outside her own house caught her attention. In Portland the social unrest was a nightly occurrence, with the primary target seeming to be a federal courthouse. The President sent in federal agents to protect the courthouse and these were immediately called Trump’s Nazi storm troopers while Portland’s clueless mayor claimed they provoked even worse rioting. As I write this, I believe the feds have departed with the understanding that the police would take over, but odds are the rioting will continue indefinitely.
In New York City, the agitators had occupied a park outside City Hall demanding that the police be defunded, the key objective of the Black Lives Matter people, and after Mayor Bill DeBlasio obliged with a one billion dollar cut, which still didn’t satisfy them, they continued their occupation until finally cleared out. I think there were a few other incidents throughout the country but can’t recall them. But a number of other cities proceeded to cut their police budgets while crime skyrocketed in many places, notably in Chicago and New York.
The July 4th holiday took place as usual, but not as usual some people called it a celebration of white supremacy. There was even a suggestion that July 4th be replaced by Juneteenth, the day that, they said, ended all slavery. I’d always thought this was when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. President Trump went to Mount Rushmore despite some Indian protests and I’d say gave a pretty good speech, citing past American heroes, including many of color. And there were lots of fireworks after. Despite the fears of Trump’s critics, the woods didn’t catch fire from the fireworks and the Indians didn’t stage an uprising.
Although the social unrest events tapered off, the demolition or removal of statues went on. The Sacramento Bee had a front page story on the removal of the statues of Columbus and Isabella that had been in the Capitol rotunda for many years. It was unclear where they were removed to, someplace where they wouldn’t offend anyone, I suppose. And in Capitol Park, a group of agitators pulled down a statue of Junipero Serra while Highway patrolmen looked on. A Wall Street Journal columnist wrote that political correctness (PC) had devolved to the cancel culture (CC?), and besides the statue business more names were changed. The Washington Redskins finally gave up and agreed to cancel the “Redskins.” The Dixie Chicks dropped the “Dixie.” The word “plantation” was banned. A high school person was upset by the names that Trader Joe’s jokingly used for some of their brands and Trader Joe’s apologized and said they’d change them, but later, I believe, recanted.
Thanks to the pandemic the nation’s economy was still terrible and at month’s end it was announced that the gross national product (GNP) had gone down by one-third. In Washington, there was a battle over another stimulus or coronavirus relief bill. Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats passed a 3 trillion dollar bill (yes, that was trillion) that the Senate Republicans were sure to reject. The bill included direct payments as in the previous one and continuation of the $600 a week unemployment insurance add-on, as well a lot of other things Pelosi would like, such as billions of dollars to insolvent Democratic states. The Republicans were okay with the direct payments but wanted to cut the unemployment add-on to $200. At the end of the month, the whole matter, as might be expected, was in a stalemate. Your government at work.
Another Washington circus event was that Attorney General Bill Barr was called to testify before some House committee whose purpose it seemed was to berate him while not letting him testify to anything. He did manage to point out that trying to burn down a federal courthouse was not exactly peaceful protesting.
There were some significant deaths during the month. John Lewis, a civil rights icon and long-time Democratic congressman passed away and was mourned by everyone. In Sacramento, Robbie Walters, once a sheriff and city councilman, was a virus fatality as was one-time presidential hopeful Herman Cain. And actress Olivia deHavilland died at age 104.
As far as personal stuff, things in lockdown went on pretty much as before. We didn’t have any exciting event such as our smoke alarms going off, which happened last month, but did discover a pool of water under the kitchen sink. The local fire department rescued us in the smoke alarm incident and a plumber who made house calls came, found out the garbage disposal was leaking and replaced it, taking care of that.
I have to say here that Beverly and I, despite smoke alarms and leak problems, are among the lucky ones in this pandemic. Being old and retired, we don’t have to worry about jobs or taking care of school-age children. Being really old, we’d already cut down on our activities. Beverly misses our retirement community’s chorus, of which she was a member ever since we moved in here, as well as her neighborhood card games and various lunch groups. I also miss lunches with friends and our weekly exercise classes. Further, I miss having the option of doing things, such as traveling, although I don’t think I want to get on an airplane again regardless of circumstances.
How do we pass the time? Beverly exchanges e-mails and plays word games on her iPad with a lot of friends (also some strangers). I also exchange e-mails with friends and some strangers. At the onset of the pandemic, our three sons were concerned over our health and I think a little afraid we’d go gallivanting around and get the virus. Neither Beverly nor I have done any gallivanting and I think they’re sure now that we’ll be sheltering in place as long as this goes on. We do have weekly phone calls with them and I call my sister in Long Island every week. I should also mention that I spend some time each day writing, including keeping a journal, something the health experts recommend that everyone do.
We do watch more television than before, including more news, although I often turn the sound off when I’ve heard enough. We are watching more old movies and TV shows. You can tell the old movies are old, even if they’re not in black-and-white, because all the men are wearing hats, also most of the women, everyone smokes cigarettes (they didn’t yet cause cancer way back then), people use clunky telephones they have to dial, there’s no obscenity and no nude scenes. We watched “From Here to Eternity,” which has a lot of scenes in an army barracks but the soldiers didn’t swear they just used a lot of bad grammar with many “aints.” The then controversial beach scene with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr now seems very tame.
Those old movies, even the Oscar winners, now seem, like the old telephones, pretty klunky. Still, it’s fun watching the movie stars we remember from our youth and I got into the habit of Googling them. Most are gone but a few are still around and old like us. I also found out some interesting things, like that Burt Lancaster had a near-fatal gallstone operation, so his experience was worse than mine. Also, Elizabeth had broken her back filming “National Velvet;” never knew that.
July 30th was our 55th anniversary. Ordinarily, we’d have a family get-together to celebrate this, going out to some restaurant for lunch or dinner. This time we ordered in a steak dinner. One of our sons sent flowers, two dozen roses; another son sent Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Beverly’s favorite, another son sent a card. In the afternoon Beverly got a haircut, her first since lockdown, from a lady who came to the house; I told her that was my anniversary present to her.
That capped the month and we were ready to face another month of lockdown; more bad virus news; more bad economic news; more political inaction; and, this being California, more wildfires. And the conventions were coming up, which promised more boring television, while the election was a month closer.
I almost forgot: the truncated baseball season started, as did the remains of the pro basketball season. Our Sacramento Kings, who had a remote chance of making the NBA playoffs, lost their first game. Not a good omen.
###
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Gail Moore
08/17/2020Great story Martin, what a July. I think in the future there will be a lot of stories written about 2020.
Our city is back in lockdown and we are back to a bubble.
Take care my friend. Look forward to your August story.
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Martin Green
08/17/2020Hi Gail---thanks for your comment. Yes, this is quite a yr & with our election coming up we'll see how it ends. I'm not optimistic. Read about NZ having to shut down again & hope it's temporary. I don't know how businesses that shut down, re-open & then shut down again can survive. If you want to communicate w/me directly at any time my e-mail is [email protected]. Stay safe also. Martin
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Kevin Hughes
08/16/2020Aloha Martin,
First, I am so very sorry about the pain in your hip! Second, congrats on 55 years with Beverly! And I sure agree with you about getting on an airplane to fly anywhere. LOL I don't watch the NEWS at all. I never owned a TV until Kathy bought our Smart TV three weeks ago. I tried to watch a few shows on it...and my opinion of TV hasn't changed-- it just isn't for me.
News, well, no matter which Party, or side of the fence you are on, I think the News has brought people to a point where they can't be rational at all. The folks who make the news by attacking children putting up flyers, or pound people for wearing a mask, or not wearing a mask...I think must watch a lot of News. It makes you angry, cynical, and your Humanity slips away.
So no News is good news. LOL
As always, I enjoyed your perspective. Smiles, Kevin
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