Chicago's Summer (?) Starts

I was curious about what was happening in my hometown, Chicago, so I took a look at today's Chicago Tribune.

"Chicago gets ready for beach season...When Chicago's 26 beaches officially open Friday for the summer season, visitors may notice some improvements and some distractions...Changes this year include faster reports of lake water safety and a new dog washing station."

From the Trib's weather pages:  "Time 5:00 a.m., temperature 60 degrees, humidity 86 percent, overcast, light rain showers, and temperatures in the 60s forecast."

For sure, there was a lot more news than that, but that's as far as I got, reassured that the city's weather was still playing its usual guessing games--Sunshine and sweat?  Jackets?  Beach????

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Book: "We'll Always Have Casablanca"

I just finished reading a good book about a great movie:  We'll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood's Most Beloved Movie, by Noah Isenberg (W.W. Norton & Company, 2017).

All the great lines from the movie are there, along with some fascinating bits like this one:  Of some 150 professional people—cast and crew—15 were American-born.  Many of the rest were refugees from Nazi Germany, and some of those acted in roles of Nazis they hated.

Now I want to go see the movie again.

The Sacramento Public Library has several copies of the book.

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Patience, Forsooth, Yea Verily

"Impeach Trump" results on Google--about 19,500,000 (May 10, 2017)

In a summer years ago, I and several family members vacationed in the Pacific Northwest.  Early in August, we pulled our trailer into a campground in the wooded mountains east of Tacoma.

The area was remote, and this was a time before the internet.  I don't know if television reception was available there, but faint radio signals could be heard. In the park office that night, an employee and I listened to a scratchy broadcast of President Richard M. Nixon resigning from the highest office in the land.

The date was August 8, 1974.  My trip diary for that date recorded, "Nixon resigned today."

Behind that terse entry were my feelings of frustration and wonderment: Why did it take so long?

More than two years earlier, in June 1972, burglars had broken into the offices of the Democratic National Party at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.  They got caught, and during 1973 and into 1974 it became clear in the media that the Republican Nixon was behind the burglary and other acts of political spying and sabotage.  On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee passed the first of three articles of impeachment, charging obstruction of justice.  Two years had gone by before the nation could get rid of a president who claimed he was not a crook.

That's the way it is.  Many people, and I'm one of them, would like to be done with the current occupant of the White House.  But it'll take time.  The wheels of justice slog along slowly and, we hope, fairly.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to relive those painful moments of yesteryear, the internet is loaded with information about Watergate and Nixon.  I used this site:
http://watergate.info/

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How I Succumbed to Stage 4 Spring Fever

A serious case of spring fever gripped me this morning, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I bailed out of the house and went down to the river.

To take a picture of a goose, out there a little way.

And to study a bent tree.
















All is well now.

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This Blog Is Not That Blog

Once upon a time I wrote a blog called "Notes of a Generic Old Man."  That blog is not this blog, and this blog is not that blog, or something like that.

That blog dealt with a variety of topics.  Over time my posts consisted of a motley miscellany, a potpourri of sorts, a meager profusion of topics.

I grew weary of that approach and wrote a few blogs on specific topics.

I grew weary of that approach and went back to the generic old man blog.

This blog is that blog.

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