Last night Tuesday, September 29th, 2020 at 9:30 pm EST we watched the first televised presidential debate on CNN between Donald J. Trump (Republican incumbent) and Joe Biden (Democrat nominee). It proved to be an unqualified error to call last evening’s production a debate. It began innocently enough as a display of party lines; but it quickly descended into a school yard scrap with a background of unintelligible shouting between the candidates and the moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News. Normally the Trump exhibition of slights and rudeness – and his relentless conviction to maintaining dominion over everyone within his sphere – would be quite entertaining in a perverse sort of way.  But with the presidency of the United States of America at stake in full bloom before the entire nation it was necessarily disheartening to watch Trump twist and writhe in his pool of vindictive ammunition.

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Scoring is not restricted to a Law School Admission Test. Nor is it confined to the lascivious proceedings of an adventurous adolescent. Indeed between either pole – the lofty or the risible – there is little that does not somehow involve a score. Every child is acquainted with “marks” in public school – whether in the classroom or on the playing field. While university entrance exams may be avoided, what matters are your high school grades (barring an unrelated athletic scholarship).

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Not long before he died my father reportedly said, “I might as well be dead; I’m just a nuisance“. Granted he was 94 years of age, in a veterans’ retirement home, virtually bed-bound and threatened by renal failure. Apart from the philosophic issue surrounding the utility of what he said, my father was normally inclined to be kind and generous to others.  I viewed that mournful expression of his illustrative of the underlying feature of charity. A more curious recollection concerning my father is that he had the courtesy to die on April 8th – which is my sister’s birthday and therefore easy to recall – but which more importantly from my vantage is its alignment with my retirement from the practice of law.

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It’s such a warm and breezy late summer day, yet so manifestly autumnal with the flying orange and yellow leaves dropping from the trees! My mounting complaints of old age noticeably hindered me this morning when attempting to get going before another chime of the grandfather clock. With the assistance of Tylenol Arthritis and THC – plus a green apple en route –  I succeeded to mount the bicycle and to roll along the well-worn fine gravel path of the erstwhile railway right-of-way which trims the Mississippi River and borders vast open fields.

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It isn’t often I feel even remotely qualified to weigh in upon the subject of gastronomy. There are endless magazines, television shows and scientific reports which seem adequately to address every possible element of what constitutes not only the practice or art of cooking but also of choosing or eating good food. Though I have a limited but satisfying repertoire of recipes, it would constitute a misrepresentation to say I am a cook.  First and foremost I don’t actually read recipes.  Second, I am a robust chopper – meaning, I chop with as little effort as possible to secure bite-size pieces. Third, when it comes to eating, by far and away my favourite meal of the day is breakfast.

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Considering how much we pay for cars it occurs to me that feigning they’re not there, pretending they blend in with the wallpaper, is just short of outlandish!  Years ago I chatted with a fellow who drove his Rolls Royce across the continent from east to west.  Along the way he would stop at drive-in restaurants and pretend to be the chauffeur – just to avoid having to shelter himself from others who felt entitled to register their disapproval or jealousy of the worldly display. Unquestionably anyone whom I have known who bought a new car – whatever it was – was proud of it even consumed by it. The modern contraption is a mechanical and technical wonder! I have yet to surmount the pinnacle of current manufacturing achievement.  The further projected ascent to the electric hybrids is presently beyond my imagination.

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“Just so” is the obsessive’s vernacular for fussing. Its less than scientific quality means it is a term commonly uttered by old maids or other similarly marginalized fuss-pots not normally aligned with business but who by accident of nature appear to possess an acute awareness of the necessity of everything. The expression is magical. It says absolutely nothing. Yet it sustains an undeniable element of propriety.

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For as long as I can recall I have attached import to the phases of the moon and their affect upon the seasons. It is an obsession likely rooted in my paternal grandfather’s zeal for time pieces. When he died he owned about forty watches, three of which (including an enormous antique sterling silver pocket watch) were bequeathed to me from his estate.

“The equinox will arrive on September 22, 2020, at 13:31 UTC. That’s when the sun will be exactly above Earth’s equator, moving from north to south. … Around the time of an equinox, Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres are receiving the sun’s rays equally.“

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There’s a malaise affecting us all.  If it hasn’t infected us it most certainly and almost universally has bored us to death. Yet with the same energy which accompanies my refusal to save for my funeral I am similarly compelled to anticipate the result of the upcoming US presidential election. Admittedly it is a small confession though historically political battles  – even those not involving daytime’s current comedian – have afforded impetus for at least regimental survival.

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I am with Albert Camus, not the cheeriest of sorts, who noted that “to have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.” And it is the potential magnificence of idle retirement that appeals to me.

Considering the dizzying gusto with which some address retirement I am unconvinced of any threat of idleness to the evolving “experiment“. Traditionally the perils of retirement relate to lack of purpose or meaning, fear of irrelevance or plain boredom. Perhaps the change of demographics to encompass an aging – but a seemingly perpetually productive and athletic population – has afforded a new preoccupation in retirement; namely, the meaning of life. It is a far less immediate contortion. It is patently galactic and therefore nourishes an exoticism such as distinguishes travel.

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