On the Sunny Side-yeah well....

I had started a post here talking about the swine flu death of a three year old girl in India, the wee cousin of a friend of mine who went there to spend time with her mother and other family members, only to have to sit with cousins as their daughter died off in a ventilator that did her no good at all.  The disease was too strong.

At first I felt utterly wretched and utterly blocked.  Where could I go with a thing like that but farther into a babbling darkness and pointless maundering about the shattered faith of the family and cruelty of life?  Nowhere, that's where.

So, I've decided not to write anymore about it except to ask that Fate deals them a better hand for having paid such a heavy price. 

Otherwise, shit, it's a new year, and the weather has been lovely.  Why not think no more of death?

Pitchers and catchers report in just under a month, February 12 for the Giants.

Uh, yeah.  Uhhhh, Apophis is not supposed to hit Earth in 2036 after all, so my 79th year won't be remarkable for some monster tsunami sweeping away half of Ireland, or something equally cataclysmic.  That's a good thing, right?

Hmmmm...thinking of death again there.

The manager at Mel's Drive In on Geary near Stanyan told me to have a blessed night last night as I completed paying for our dinner.  Being an old style Anglican Protestant, i.e. Episcopalian raised in Berkeley in the Sixties by a 2nd generation Anglo-Irish American and an Irish American from the Depression Era Rocky Mountains, that remark just kind of put me off.  We just didn't take well to that kind of evangelistic sounding Christianity.  Nice of her to say so, I guess, but it was said with the same level of conviction that one might have for saying "Excuse me." to someone who bumped into you, as though you had bumped into them.  That is, no conviction at all.  I wonder if a fundamental "Christian" runs that place and has decreed that his floor managers follow a script dictated by his or her pastor.  She acted as though she were delivering a line she didn't believe in.  Perhaps one look convinced her that I was a lost cause.  I wonder if my son playing with his flick knife at the table caused her some concern . . . .

Well, no reason for her to worry.  We cleared out and didn't steal anything on the way.  We faded back into the cold San Francisco Night on our way back to Jordan Street.

Where in God's name did Eric Burdon get the idea that there was such a thing as a "warm San Francisco night?" 

Well, I'm giving up.  I have a head cold and feel about as lively and creative as gum on the sidewalk.  Maybe in a couple of days.