Two hundred days later, over 200,000 deaths, new spikes of COVID with some countries locking down again, on the verge of a national crisis due to wildly nonsensical B.S. about our election, it really does feel that 2020 is the year that all the wheels came off the cart.

For the bumblebees that are feasting on a burst of yellow flowers throughout our neighborhood, life is good. The lizards that were tiny babies a couple of months ago are scurrying about acting as though they are absolutely unconcerned about who did well or not in last night’s un-presidential debate. While the air carries away the toxins and smoke that are flooding into it, no air molecules are being paid off for salacious acts; there is no hydrogen being accused of Epstein’ing oxygen, no calls to lock up pollution or threats to imprison the worst offenders who toss that stuff into our atmosphere. The birds gave up paying taxes long ago, so they just fly about laughing at their poop-targets that wrestle with arcane forms so they can stress out at the beginning of spring instead of focusing on fornication as birds do.

So I’m making an October 1st resolution that I’m going to start pollinating flowers with my proboscis (wink, wink!). I’ll be crawling up vertical walls to sun myself, which is believed to help in fighting off COVID due to the abundant vitamin D that is somehow still able to reach organisms here on the surface of the earth. But why should I restrict myself to being a terrestrial being when part of my resolution could be to join the mockingbirds in shitting on those below? While up in the soiled air, I’ll soar into the freedom only known to the birds who seemingly defy gravity and sing delightful tax protest songs such as I’ve been listening to my whole life. And should a quick-moving foot, some pesticide, or windshield snuff out my life, feed me to the ants and let what remains rot on the side of the road with the pigeons as I become one with the land I came from.

So, where do I go from here? I’ve already clocked over 1,320 miles walking through my plague-infested neighborhood. I still shop like it’s a minute before midnight, and I’m Cinderella. Our president is threatening that he’ll organize the Big Bad Wolf to huff and puff at our front doors should we not pledge loyalty to our Holy Leader (the leader in German is Führer!). QAnon should have never even been typed out on this blog – EVER, so I’ll just let that go. Oh, I almost forgot: California never had the chance to fall into the ocean due to an earthquake as it just burned to a crisp, and its ashes blew into the Pacific.

This leaves me with giving in to the insanity, realizing I was never strong enough to fight the gaslighting, or I could continue living like a hermit and walking into an uncertain future. Of course, I’m well aware that no future is ever certain, but the idea of a hopeful one was something to look forward to. A future where people were at least pretending to want something better instead of preying on ignorance with psychopathic dreams of some dystopian zombie apocalypse driven by a bunch of armed militia with tightly coifed beards – yeah, I’m referring to the Proud Boys.

Then again, this is all up to my perspective. Maybe all I need do is strip down and run outside with my junk, swinging in the breeze as I try to pollinate the first flower I find. Seriously, what issues do you think that the bumblebee above is concerned about? The answer can only be: I’m an idiot.

Just a short note to Caroline and me that during the late day on the last walk around the block, we stepped out and heard the first cicadas of the year. Half a block from there, we heard crickets for the first time in half a year. While the mercury rising over 100 degrees is a great signifier that summer has arrived in the desert, it is the sound of these insects that signals that the year’s hottest days are on their way. Soon, we’ll see billowing clouds on the horizon, meaning the monsoons are around the corner. There’s a particular kind of romantic notion as the blistering heat of the day and metallic orchestra of insects blend with the approaching winds and the distant roar of rolling thunder that is usually carrying the scent of wet earth and creosote our way. This is not the calm of winter, the golden palette of fall, or the vibrant greenery of spring, nor is it the calm recreational days of summer joining friends at the pool or BBQ. The monsoon is the violence of dust storms; it is the chance for deadly flash floods to sweep the inattentive away, electricity outages can arrive at the most inopportune times, and howling winds that fell trees and send palm fronds jettisoning across streets. Our summer deluges are aggressive reminders that we live in an inhospitable environment where those who are hardy enough will step out into the maelstrom to celebrate the return of the ferocity called monsoon.

The excitement returns with those clicking tymbals of the buzzing cicadas, putting smiles on our faces. Soon, the first raindrops of the summer storms will arrive, and we’ll be standing outside to meet them with our faces. With the temperature up near 110, the humidity will rise quickly to nearly 100%, and if we are lucky, the wind whipping through the falling water will dramatically cool the air until the rain passes and steam starts to rise off the searing hot streets. Those who claim to hate Arizona’s brutal summers have never learned what makes them so special. Then in just about 90 days, summer will be over once again, and those who survived it can count themselves among the fortunate that they were still alive for yet another opportunity to experience the extraordinary.

In the last 72 hours, the tensions of hundreds of years of social inequality and racial injustice finally boiled over, pulling people in from across the country to demonstrate. They are called thugs and rioters by our government and media, while people demonstrating in Libya, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Russia, Egypt, and Tunisia have been referred to as freedom fighters protesting oppressive regimes. Angry Americans reeling from a sudden rise in unemployment (41 million people were laid off or fired over the last eight weeks), along with the continuing blatant murders of black people by white officers, was the spark. Years of harassment, oppression, lack of opportunity, imprisonment, and radical marginalization have created this situation in Minneapolis, New York City, Louisville, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Seattle, Detroit, Des Moines, Phoenix, Oakland, Portland, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Dallas cars are burning, windows are being smashed, and the National Guard is starting to respond.

I’m watching between 10 and 12 live streams from across the country at any given moment, and things are continuing to devolve as afternoon gives way to evening. We have a president who is antagonizing his own citizens with tweets claiming, “The shooting will start when the looting starts,” and talking of unleashing the dogs on protestors, which is a direct reference to the dogs being unleashed on black Americans back during the civil rights movement. This is not a localized issue, but the news media, by and large, are showing their local areas only without mentioning that this appears to happen simultaneously in many other cities across the country. Maybe they fear that the greater the coverage the more people will join the mayhem so they can be part of a movement, but this also diminishes how the profound breadth of the current events.

Throughout history, pandemics leave great change in their wake and this one appears to be no different. Over the past years, I’ve often written about our shortcomings and how this will lead us to a moment where we’ll have to rethink how we do things. Instead of the selfish and fortunate few trying to change things for the better, it has been left to the mob, and when change happens at the hands of the mob, chaos is the most likely transition to some kind of new ordering of things. For those in control, they can probably be happy with this situation as there is no national leadership channeling the anger into something productive, they are just sitting back and hoping the crowd will run out of fuel. If this leads to martial law, the problems with self-isolation that were brewing will certainly start to boil over as a certain contingency of Americans will seethe in new hatred for those demonstrators who are threatening the very freedom that some believe is tenuous. Maybe we should ask ourselves if we are stoking the fires of civil unrest that start to push some into contemplating civil war.

I’m here, but I’ve been busy working in the past. Getting caught up with long-neglected projects is everyone’s dream for a staycation, right? Living in an apartment, there’s little to nothing we need or want to do, but our hobbies need constant care. So what exactly is it that I’m doing? I’m back in April 2013, dealing with five days out of nearly 30 that we spent in Europe. Somehow, those five days never made it into the blog. I was going through stuff and saw that I left notes that these were works in progress. Three of them are now done, starting with April 21st when we were in Eisenach and Weimar, Germany. The photo above is Caroline standing in the room where Martin Luther translated the bible into German back in 1521. From the Wartburg and Bach House, we headed up the road to Weimar, home to Goethe, Schiller, Nietzsche for the end of his life, and Gropius, who gave us the Bauhaus.

Over to Dresden on April 22nd for a visit to the Frauenkirche, the Zwinger, and a couple of other stops for this brief moment in town. From this rebuilt city, we went on to Bautzen on our drive east. This wasn’t an intended stop, but we had left on a spontaneous getaway the day before with no other intention than to drive northeast. We stopped in Bautzen because the view from the road dragged us in for a brief stop there and then onward to Görlitz. This blog entry took me nearly 10 hours to write and finish prepping photos. I can tell you that writing from memories that are seven years old is no easy feat. Oh yeah, we spent a good part of the afternoon this day sitting next to a river in Poland with Germany on the other side while Caroline did some work for her company back in America.

Then, on the next day, April 23rd, we were in Prague, Czech Republic, running through Europe’s 13th biggest city. I can tell you that at least three days are needed to do justice to this historical location. Also, at this point, I’m already starting to burn out on finishing these blog posts with over 100 photos between them, not counting that I still have another 100 photos for the last two days, plus the required text. I’d like a break. But that last break seven years ago is why these were never finished and so I’ll continue after this intermission of just saying blah blah. One more thing: when I started writing these posts, I wondered what I might have to say as there were no notes to work from, but it turned out that between Caroline and me, there were a ton of memories to draw from. So many memories, as a matter of fact, that the three finished posts feature 8,591 words about the 30 Years War, Martin Luther, Bach, the Habsburgs, Wes Anderson, Black Ass Beer, and Chimney Cake.

Now it’s time to turn my attention back to writing about Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and although I thought I’d post this earlier, I was making good enough time writing that I waited until I was finished so I could include the link to the complete post. Just click this link above or any of the others, and you’ll magically travel back in time with us to some memories of John and Caroline.

I only have Strasbourg, France, left to write about, and everything I can ever say about this month-long trip to Europe will have been said. I’m guessing that most people who read this post will be clicking on it well after I finish the last day, which will be within 24 hours if I can drag more memories out of my weary brain.