In looking at my Times reader last evening I saw that Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary had died at age 72. I'm not sure why her passing would have had any more impact than some of the others we've had lately. I have one or two of the albums, everybody did, they were more commercial than most of the singers and bands I followed. They'd played at the University of Washington during the year President Kennedy was killed, a friend did a really nice photo essay on their performance for our year book as well as photos of Kennedy's commencement address and they're all mixed together in my head somehow. She'd been one of the few main stream “popular” singers who stood out in their early condemnation of the Vietnam war and was voicing support for the then rapidly developing Civil Rights movement and, well, she was kinda cute.

Many chapters close as you get older, interesting to see the doors slam shut. Maybe it focuses your attention, your own journey to dust. Then again it reminds you you're still around. Celebrate. Keep the faith, don't get yourself down. And so you do. Celebrate. Why not? Good times, bad times, you know you've ducked your share. Good times are better if you keep your head on straight. I'm thinking. Doing a little drinking. Raise a glass to Mary, maybe. What the hell?

Thursday (really this time). Overcast, the lungs doing whatever the lungs do on this inhaler stuff, breakfast finished at the usual place, a commitment to meet some of the usual crew in San Francisco this evening for a couple of Guinness and dinner. This extending of the parking meters until eight in the evening makes an evening in San Francisco all the more complicated (or simple, maybe) in that I pretty much have to take a cab home when I return to Oakland. My bus doesn't run after something like seven-thirty and it's hard to find a place to park in downtown Oakland at an affordable place that doesn't open itself to vandalism. Well, it's more complicated than that, but you get the drift. Still, ten bucks for a cab. Life will still endure.

Again it's eleven. The morning absolutions are done, the rest of the day is ahead. In the old days, when finally turning in was done early in the morning, we'd be getting up about now. Similar situation. I've got an entire city out there surrounded by other somewhat interesting cities (and towns and villages and malls) so what's the fuss? What's the problem? This is America. Life is only a problem if you can't afford lunch. I can afford lunch (and the occasional cab fare). What's the deal?

You've managed to run out of your pain meds this morning and are sitting there with energetically aching sinuses and upper palate for starters.

That's my own fault. These things occur. More and more often, with age and sloth, as it happens, but we can't let them get in the way. Right? So what's with this afternoon ahead?

Later still. As mentioned I skipped the blood pressure med altogether this morning, wondering how long it would take to make a difference, as it's one of these time release capsules that take a while to wind down. How much time I don't know. The reading just now, after walking down and back to lunch at another local sandwich-coffee shop, was ninety-seven over sixty-four. Turns your walk into something close to a shuffle, let me tell you, makes your outlook, well, bleak. Better living through chemistry? I wish.

Now in the space of a paragraph it's another hour later after lying down to listen to the radio: eighty-three over sixty-three, deedle-dee-dee, just after one in the afternoon.

Doesn't sound like we're driving up the coast.

I think we're skipping out on this trip to San Francisco this evening and seeing where this blood pressure business might be going after I've been off the meds for a few more days. That and a run down to the store for a pint of Haagen-Dazs. One must bring out the big guns when the weather turns cold and the bombs begin to fall.