I was kind of sad—mostly because of the people I came to know over three years—to discover that my semi beloved retreat is no longer. Wandering around that building the first time just trying to find my room I remember being amused that it was almost labyrithian and there was a literal labyrinth outside if you went for a quiet stroll. Couches on every floor; mini stations to make some coffee or keep something refrigerated. No shushing, but if you passed in the hallway miniscule acknowledgment of the peace. Downstairs, clusters of seating so a group could form and unpack thoughts. Laugh and trade jokes, or in one memorable case, begin an informal lecture which lasted waaay too long (I had to leave because I could not make my face behave. Not that it needed to, but you know. Be polite.) A great buffet with several places in and out to have meals and continue conversations.

I mean, technically they're still holding it but with half the number of people and at a completely different venue which sorry to say seems potentially a bad choice. Less than an ideal anyway. I know that area it's 10 miles from me, and being on the other side of the hills from the ocean, it has a tendency to have wild swings in temperature. Also, a quick bit of research reveals that outside of meeting hours they keep the place locked down so you basically can be outside walking around or inside but with no place to sit. Somebody even mentioned that it was cold inside. Orders of magnitude different than the other place.

I had a minuscule back-and-forth with the same admin lady who is our go-between, setting up room assignments, collecting money, and what not. I had gotten on the waitlist for both a single room and a double one and she contacted me and said that a double was available, but in the meantime, I had done that research and realized what I said above about the venue was probably going to be a dealbreaker. She responded. Oh no, no no no it's lovely and I said nah. So that's the end of that. I did contact our tiny little Bay Area WhatsApp retreat group and asked if anybody was going. I got one negative from a sweet Iranian lady that I got to know, had tea with and so forth since we live in the neighborhood here.

But now I'm not sure the whole thing makes me sad. I think I don't give it that power.

***

Yesterday in the kitchen, I was fluffing the pot of rice I had just cooked with believe it or not a bunch of insanely intense turkey jelly from Thanksgiving cut half-and-half with water. I threw in some leftover mushrooms. I'm off in my head. In comes son number two, I guess make himself some dinner, and we stumble into a recitation of his current difficulty at work with a woman that he characterizes as his Frenemy. He respects her, but she's above him and has developed a recent tendency to prowl the store in search of trouble. At the end of the day, she basically wrote him up for vaping in the upstairs office while he was completing some task on the computer—essentially a slap on the wrist, but it goes on his record. She caught him on camera. After 11 years, as one of the crew customers ask for by name, he could prolly get a job at any number of other businesses in the area in a heartbeat, but he doesn't want to. Neither does he want to somehow be manipulated into becoming a grouch. His private response is I'm a grown ass man and I know where the cameras are. That's my boy.

***
Today I ran across a short piece on the fabulous theater production of Good with David Tennant. I have access to that as a streaming product. Since I have Doctor Who in my DNA from hanging out with kids in the 80s, I was attracted enough to actually watch it and not just put it in a list.

So I get to goddamn weigh in. I think the lone female actor in the cast is almost mythological; how can she switch on a heartbeat among five different characters? Yet, no surprise halfway through a series of laudatory comments, a guy says fell asleep. not for me. Now this fries my waffle in a number of ways: Do you have an active dislike of any of the cast members of which there are essentially three? Why are you watching it in the first place? How far actually did you get into it? 10 minutes 15 minutes? (It's a good hour and 30 with no intermission.) Are you prone to watching something while you are either hungry or already sleepy ? Give us an example of something that did NOT put you to sleep. I'm also curious how you can fall asleep during very early scenes in which a character is in full meltdown (boy does that require some discipline not to trash her voice).

I wonder if you see where this is going. The only possible answer is you were simply being provocative because of the subject matter: "good goes bad". Actually not even bad. Good becomes Evil.

Also, I see now that it is very possible that your response to this objectively insane and painful bit of WWII history is to check out, but if that's what happened, man up and own it. There's no shame in protecting yourself.

There is cowardice though in implying lack of substance in the material.

I didn’t say any of this to him, though. I don’t give him that power.