Ramblings

I haven't been posting enough lately; my job is getting in the way; for one thing, it sent me to Dallas for a week. (For that matter, my job is getting in the way of a lot of things, including getting enough sleep.) Blogging takes more effort than I realized - it takes thought and research. Also, rehearsals have started again - the Oakland Symphony Chorus is putting on a pair of Christmas concerts and we're desperately memorizing, which takes time away from the blogging too (not that I'm complaining about that!).

I'm still bemused by the fact that Dick Cheney can, in practically the same breath, insist that "a dunk in water" is a "no-brainer" (that is, waterboarding is acceptable if it saves lives) and still say, "We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in." This just staggers me. Is he actually not listening to what he's saying? Or does he believe that everything he says is true because he says it? - a level of folie de grandeur that would be amazing even in him.

Easterners believe that California has no seasons, but they're wrong; we have more subtle seasons. We're currently enjoying a lovely California autumn: the liquidambars and Chinese pistaches are turning color, the days are warm and windy, the nights are crisp, not too cold, with occasional foggy mornings. (Eat your heart out, Massachusetts!) The sun comes in the south-facing windows of our dining room in the mornings, the way the house was built to do on chilly mornings after the equinox. In 1917 when our house was built, they understood about orienting the house to the climate; we can also open windows and get cross-drafts. Of course, the liquidambars and Chinese pistaches are also dumping leaves on every flat surface, as is every other tree in the neighborhood; but that's part of the ambience, and raking them up is good exercise. For my husband.

Unfortunately, 400 miles south, the bad side of the California autumn is only 5% controlled, and authorities think someone deliberately set the Esperanza fire, an incomprehensible act which is right up there with Dick Cheney's remarks on torture. I've occasionally made the crack that California has two seasons, wet and on fire; the trouble is, I'm not kidding. They're offering half a million dollar reward for the perps, and I hope they have to pay it out.

And thank you, Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, for speaking truth to power. If you haven't been following his remarks on the Bush administration, you're missing some very straight talk.