Shots from the Lip

I felt it coming on yeserday......I applied the Japanese roller-ball medicine;  I have a patch on my back - what can I say - it sucks....... I have a back-log of pictures - many taken with my cute, little Kodak that easily transfers pictures from the camera to my computer.....my ideal would be to get those pictures transferred to my Fire tablet.  Alas, I cannot quite figure out how to do it.......one of these days....... I'm reading Hemmingway right now for my literature class.  Two short stories (Francis Macomber and Snows of Kilamanjero) and The Old Man and the Sea.  I read the latter before - decades ago....and in my mind I visualize Spencer Tracy as the old man.  Tracy was the old man in the movie.....I remember that........ After 12% of Spoon River Anthology, the 1915 mythical rural village and it inhabitants poetically described.  For $.49 I got my money's worth!!    I am also continuing with Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here - a descrip...

 Cat Ballou came out mid-1965.  I remember seeing it way back when.  This morning it was the movie of the week for our History of Comedy class.  There were 7 of us at the Emeritus Bldg on 2d Street, Santa Monica, for the hybrid class......~50 taking the class on Zoom.  Given the option of going to a live lecture hall with a smaller group of attendees and staying at home and doing the class by computer, I'll go to the live class whenever feasible. What was nice was leaving home earlier, this morning and walking directly to Ocean Avenue and the park setting on the palisade overlooking the beach and ocean.......there is a definite tranquility sitting and looking out before class..........I started life overlooking the Atlantic.  Now, in my so-called twilight years, I am overlooking the Pacific..............

Five Sundays a year I am off to DTLA for a day at the opera.  Los Angeles Opera was incepted in 1986.  I flew down from San Francisco for Tristan Und Isolde, conducted by Placido Domingo.  Now, 39 years later - and for the second straight season - I am a season ticket holder for presentations by an opera company that is broke. So broke that they started the year with great musical theatre - West Side Story.  Only everything started late because they had to do a sound check - microphones and speakers.....amplification of the human voice.  That ain't opera for a show that composer Leonard Bernstein categorically stated was not an opera. The place was full - unlike 'normal' times........I understand, they do have to raise money - but not from me if they eliminate the wonders of pure voice without any assistance....... 

 I was going to start this one a few days ago......never got to it..... Then I was super busy - only here it is a couple of days later and I have absolutely no idea what I was super busy about. And then I woke up yesterday as the world was circling around.  Praise be the pills I have from a year ago when I wound up in St Johns Hospital with a whole lot more wrong than the world going in circles. Anyway, we already know from experience that my immune system is suspect and that goes along with my screwed up gastro system, not to mention the low pulse rate that seems to be dropping - a bit - again........ But wait - getting older means much more bad news as longevity presents a problem the body never anticipated - living past the time that things wear out.  And that means my 'recognizing' that my eyesight ain't what it once was plus not being satisfied with a 6 January appointment with UCLA for my eyes meant following Katherine to a St John's eye practice where, on Rosh Ha...

 I am not sure when.......but I think it must have been in 1968 or 1969 that I got my Asahi Pentax 35mm single-lens reflex camera.  I used that camera for 40 years, replacing it with a Leica X, my first Leica.   I 'dabbled' at photography as a hobby that I could career-change dream about.  I actually was paid for some stuff I did but I realized that I could never earn enough through photography to support a family.  The second bathroom of the first house I ever owned was converted to a darkroom - the second darkroom I ever had.  I developed black and white film and enlarged prints from negatives.  I loved it.  And then child # 2 came along......bye bye darkroom. And yet.....that camera was in my Guangzhou office on the last day I was in Guangzhou.  It was loaded with film - the only film camera I had left.  Is it still in Guangzhou?  Along with assorted photographic equipment?  Along with an antique Rollei-flex?  ...

Come Saturday morning I'm biking the beach by myself Then doing coffee at Sam's In time for breakfast at home Starting the day with a poem at least a poem of sorts .....an excuse to delay the walk to Ralph's Ah well, procrastination ends......!? .....and that's enough for  to write on Saturday morning at 10:08a, - time to go to Ralphs for sashimi grade tuna