Finally, I woke up and realized I had to pay my taxes

 

Scott drove me to my accountant's office. He found a faster way to go, down York Road.

He went in, with mask on, while I waited in car. He was out in a jiffy.

Just had a picnic lunch on Scott's bench. A humongous salad with dressing - mayo, Heinz Ketchup and Mr Mustard. Very spicy.

Noticed on the way there that T and T restaurant is gone.

Many a good meal I had there.

Tim and Terry.

Foto from Internet.

Ran into Ian, who was walking his dog Sydney. She has settled well into their household. Next thing I see as I'm walking home from picnic lunch is Ian driving the white SUV.

I had a really wild idea just now.

Will keep it a secret and after I read part of a book will get to work on it.

Well, at least the Gary Charles Salon in Roxborough PA is still in biz. 

I used to drive Rosemary there. 

Was reading SAPIENS outside on Scott's bench, wrapped in a warm sweater.

Was FREEZING.

Daniel and son Max visited - thrilling - My great potato soup - My story "Hospice Ward" is made better by Lawlor & Murphy - I made someone happy today

 

Here is Bubby and grandson Max on the back porch. We played some word games like WHICH WOULD YOU RATHER BE OR DO and TELL ME A RIDDLE.

I wear gloves because when I go in the house I WON'T HAVE TO WASH MY HANDS FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME.

Max loves drinking from his thermos, which has a special name. You sip on it while the thermos is upright.

.....

Several years ago, my friend Yin Liu and I met at a nearby Asian restaurant. Her husband Patrick Otis Cox was somewhere else. 

In these days, there are random shootings of Asian Americans who are clustered in big cities. What is wrong with the United States. Hari Srinivasin interviewed MARGARET CHO on the News Hour tonight. 

She is a comedian and performer. View Cho's website here. 

Her husband, whose painting is on my living room wall, had died suddenly of a congenital heart disease.

I studied Kremp Florist offerings and decided on an arthurium for her, which arrived today.

She loved it. It's a house plant.

I have plenty of dried flowers in my living room. 

My hydrangeas are in bottles.

...

Got the idea of Hospice Ward since my friend Helene Ryesky died. And, yes, I would call her a near genius. 

Rem Murphy has mentioned that some of my works sound like Anton Chekhov, the doctor who became a playwright and fiction writer.

When we watch the PBS Evening News Hour, we always look at what is in the background. Well, here with Chekhov we see his rather expensive chair.

He definitely looks like a modern man. I've mentioned before my favorite story of his is Lady with a Lap Dog.

Hell, no, that's Kalie the little white dog from across the street. 

Kalie loves to bark.

Drank this earlier through a Flex Straw.

Must remember to put it on my shopping list.

We are very worried about my darling Freda Rose.

She lives at Paul's Run in Northeast Philadelphia. Will call her husband Bernie tomorrow to see how she is doing. 

She went to the hospital for something wrong with her lip.

PRAYER FOR FREDA ROSE

Never was there a better friend

We were like twins, 60 years apart

Take this, you'd say when I was about to leave

Your spacious home on North Settlement Court

You, once a poor farm girl, who lost your

beloved brother to ALS, your daughter to

an unspeakable death

You taught me the word Bashert

the coming together of the rhythms

of the universe

If it is your time to depart this teeming universe

Go peacefully, my darling Freda Rose,

knowing that Love will guide the way. 

Fare thee well, HAR, wherever you are

 

Manatawny Manor above in Pottstown PA

Dear Friends,

Helene died in her sleep this morning about 1:30. I believe that she went peacefully, and that her last thoughts were happy.

Information on services will follow as soon as I know.

With love

Jerry

There was a lovely Hebrew statement with her nephew Jerry's email.

Baruch Dayan Emet

I DID NOT WANNA GET OUTA BED THIS MORNING BUT

then I remembered since today is Thursday Scott shops for us. Made out my list, while the washing machine was bumping in the cold downstairs.

He actually shops on Friday. 

And yes it is sposed to be cold with snow flurries.

Lemme see if my oatmeal is cool.

No, it's too far away, over on the TIMES CHRONICAL on the floor.

My story about the loss of Barnes and Noble was published under the title ODE TO BOOKSTORE.

Great! How did they know that word?

A CD by Brahms is gently playing in the kitchen.

Me cannot do without music, sweet music.

SWEET HELENE

HELLO AGAIN MARVIN AND SELMA - Cousin Linda uploaded the pic onto FB

 WHY DID THIS COME OUT SO TINY?

Uncle Marvin and Aunt Selma at their house on Silsby Road.

How we loved visiting!

I will jiggle it after posting in hopes it comes out larger.

CLICK THE PHOTO and it will come out bigger. 

...

James Levine, famous conductor at the MET and many other opera houses, is dead at 77. Just read it in  the NY Times.

Sadly, he was found GUILTY of harassing and molesting younger men. One of the guys he began with when he was a teenager. 

Would YOU put up with this?

I don't want Levine's photo on my blog.

...

Am getting ready to take my income tax material to my accountant. Gonna put it in a cardboard box.

Won't go today.

...

About 90 minutes ago, I found myself asleep upstairs in my bed.

ENDURANCE by Scott Kelly was on my lap.

Disoriented, I began reading it and then remembered today is Garbage Day.

Walked around the house gathering things to throw out. Papers, plastic items, and put em in my unpleasantly fragrant TALL TRASH BAGS.

Not that cold out today. Went out in my PJs but a nice top I bought many yrs ago at the Sweater Mill in Hatboro. Black, Indian-style, with lots of tiny beads and elaborate stitching.

...

Received a LETTER today from the NY Times.

Whatever did they want?

Did they wanna hire me to write for them?

For a special price, they wanted me to get THE SUNDAY PAPER.

I get one newspaper and one paper only.

THE TIMES CHRONICLE.

It will arrive later this afternoon.

The fellow comes around in a black SUV and tosses the paper on my sidewalk.

A few other people in the neighborhood also get it.

TEEN RAISES FUNDS TO BUILD A LIBRARY IN TANZANIA 

This is amazing but I dunno if it's a good or bad idea.

The president is a Covid denier.

SO LONG FOR NOW. 

Wrestling champ named Booker T. 

What a well developed body!

FOOD LEADER MARK BITTMAN TELLS THE TERRIBLE TRUTH - BUT MAINTAINS OPTIMISM

 I’m Ezra Klein. And this is “The Ezra Klein Show.” [THEME MUSIC PLAYING]

I’ve read Mark Bittman forever. I read him at The New York Times when he wrote “The Minimalist” cooking column, which I loved. 

I don’t think I can tell you how many recipes I made from that. I bought his cookbooks. I had “How to Cook Everything,” that big red one. And then when I went vegetarian, I had “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.” 

I did not have the baking one because I don’t bake. I read his food policy writing. He’s like my cranky food uncle. He’s been there at every step in my food journey. I’ve learned how to cook from him. And I’ve learned, I think, more importantly, a lot about how to think about food from him. 

So when he sent me his new book, “Animal, Vegetable, Junk,” I was excited. But I also was totally unprepared for what the book really is. It is this sweeping history and reinterpretation of humanity’s relationship with food, going back to our hunter-gatherer days, tracing the development of agriculture, the way that changed our social mores and the way that changed our laws, then the industrialization of agriculture, the pressure of both technological advance and the profit motive, the way capitalism and philosophy converge to create a food system that — and there’s really no other way to put this — is poisoning us and poisoning the earth and inflicting cruelty to other creatures on a scale that breaks your mind if you try to contemplate it. 

And that is not to say that system does nothing good. It feeds billions of people with a variety that we never could have imagined at another point in human history. But it’s doing those other things, the poisoning things, too. And we actually have to take that seriously. Bittman’s indictment here is sweeping. And I’m not sure you’ll hear that in this conversation I’m bought in on every piece of it. 

WOW. Just finished listening to the conversation. Ate a salad and a third bowl of potato rice green bean onion soup - delicious!

Delicious, tho, is not a part of Bittman's language.

Photo please.

Costco chickens are very inexpensive. But the chickens suffer for it. They are tortured to stay fat.

Okay gotta go upstairs and ride bike while reading a paperback.

As a kid Bittman read the SETTLEMENT COOKBOOK, as did we.

OUTSIDE now, the birds are all talking to each other. Yes, it's spring and young birds fancy turns to tweeting to their potential partners.

Wood peckers in the sycamore maple tree, chicadees filling the bird house, they will be bringing in bldg materials for their homes, no need to go to Home Depot or Strathman Lumber if you are still there.

Can you hear my washing machine filling up?

FARE THEE WELL FOR GOOD, DEAREST HELENE

 

I am celebrating your imminent demise by eating a scrambled egg omelet with everything in it - mushrooms, asparagus, onions and two eggs from Happy Hens, knowing that the force that separates you from this world of wonders is playing tug of war with you.

You are so reluctant to go. Who can blame you?

Of course I served the omelet for the two of us, you and me, in that splendid Copenhagen Blue Bowl, the most beautiful I own. 

Here, I will pop another piece of Dove chocolate into my mouth.

Earlier, I was upstairs in my Reading Room, watching the world through the lace curtains my mother made me, and you're right, she never got to an assisted living facility, thank the Lord.

The violet or indigo I watched through the curtains was magnificent. Of course it wouldn't stay as all things on this earth are impermanent.

Except you! Do you know ALL the things you taught me? You marked up your walls on Bauman Drive with my Sarah and Dan's heights.

Little kids they was then. Not now.

Not now, as I remember eating the everything omelet which, like a quilt, is covering you over and never shall I see THEE again, my darling Queen Helene!

WRTI-FM HOST DIES OF COVID - VERY VERY SAD

 

WRTI Mourns the Loss of Beloved Classical Host Bliss Michelson

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Bliss Michelson, a classical host for WRTI since 2014, an interviewer for The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts, and an accomplished double bass player. Bliss died in New Jersey on Sunday, March 14th from complications of COVID-19. He was 71 years old.

....

Earlier I had been watching a film on YouTube which was very good and when I stopped watching, I realized I was LOW

Ate cottage cheese and Cling Peaches, which are fresh.

Then made Ralston Purina mixed with Cream of Wheat with peanut butter and baked apples and am now okay.

Still eating the enormous portion. 

....

I do feel terrible about Bliss Michelson. Thought his surname was Nickelson.

In his memory they are playing pieces featuring the double bass.

From The Strad.com