Description – San Francisco author Joseph Sutton, who has been keeping an ongoing journal since 1970, tells the reader what was going on in the country and in his own life in 2022. In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, there were mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, and the January 6th Committee Hearings took place. Sutton airs his thoughts on those events and writes about coming down with COVID-19, having temporary hearing loss in one ear, and having four teeth removed, among other things.
Sunday, January 2, 2022 – My son Ray, his wife Ashley, and their son Joe (almost two) came down with COVID-19 two days after Christmas. It seems that Little Joe picked it up at daycare. He seems to be all right, but Ray and Ashley are having a tough time with severe flu-like symptoms.
Joan and I took a home swab test that came out negative two days ago and we took another swab test yesterday at Kaiser Hospital. We’ll find out Kaiser’s results in a day or two.
The San Francisco 49ers won the second to last game of the regular season today without quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. The reason Jimmy G. didn’t play, the reason he looked so poor against the Tennessee Titans a week ago, was that he tore a ligament in his throwing-hand thumb during the first half of the game. Trey Lance, the Niners’ rookie quarterback, looked terrible in the first half today against the Houston Texans, but matured quickly in the second half. The Niners beat Houston 23-7.
I’m almost ready to put Journal 2010: Self-Publishing, Politics, and Baseball on Amazon. It was the year I self-published the first novel I ever wrote, A Class of Leaders. It’s about the politics of the time and the Giants’ first World Series championship in San Francisco. It’s about a writer’s life and the second year of Obama’s administration where the Republicans wouldn’t do anything that President Obama proposed. Luckily, he had a majority in the Senate and House to pass the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as the ACA or Obamacare.
The Republicans are undemocratic in my opinion. All they care about is holding onto power and giving the wealthy tax breaks. They’re against abortion. They want to suppress the vote of Black and Hispanic people. They are the party of irrationality, racism, guns, anti-abortion, and greed; they believe climate change is a hoax and they are anti-vaxxers. The pandemic is raging and they still don’t want to get a vaccine and wear a mask. When are the American people going to wake up to the fact that they are being lied to by many Republican politicians and by Fox News?
I’m going on a rant because it’s what I see happening to our country. Why are some people so cruel and irrational? Why do they want to lie to the public about a deadly virus, about climate change, about racism? They refuse to listen to reason. “I’m an American,” they say. “I don’t like to be told that I can’t buy an automatic weapon. I don’t want to be told to take a vaccine. Climate change isn’t happening. Women should never have an abortion under any circumstances. That’s what Christ wanted. Yes, sir, I’m a Christian American and proud of it. We’re the strongest country in the world and no one tells us Americans what we can or can’t do.”
Saturday, January 8, 2022 – Today the sun shone bright, which was a welcome change. For the past month, it’s either been raining or overcast.
Tomorrow is a big day in San Francisco. The 49ers are playing the Los Angeles Rams. If they win, they’ll get into the playoffs. If they lose, their season is over. It’s up in the air if Jimmy Garoppolo will play or not. If he plays with that damaged thumb and wins the game for the 49ers, he’ll go down as one of the greatest heroes in 49ers history. [Note: Garoppolo led the 49ers to an overtime win over the L.A. Rams 27-24 after being down 17-0 early on in the game. It was truly a great comeback and great victory.]
The second big event tomorrow is that Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors, who’s been out of basketball for over two years with a torn Achilles tendon and a torn ACL in his knee, is going to make his debut against the Cleveland Cavaliers. “This is it, Klay, you’ve waited this long and now it’s time to show the world that you’re back to being your old-self again. Good luck. You deserve it, with the fortitude and perseverance you’ve shown to get back to playing form.” [Note: Thompson scored 17 points in 20 minutes of playing time to help the Golden State Warriors win 96-82 over the Cavaliers.]
The Republicans are following in Donald Trump’s footsteps, the man who refused to concede to Joe Biden when he lost the popular vote by seven million votes in the 2020 election. Even though Biden won the election fair and square, as proven by the many court challenges that failed, Trump keeps saying he won—overwhelmingly, no less. Such brazen impudence. Donald Trump is the biggest liar and cheater to ever hold the office of President of the United States. He somehow has convinced millions of Americans he won the election. It’s called The Big Lie. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”
Friday, January 14, 2022 – The sun has been out every day this week. Rain came in December and early January, but there’s been a drop since. Rain, rain, please come hard, come fast, drench us, we need you.
Which makes me think of climate change. It’s happening at a rapid rate. Glaciers are melting, oceans are rising, droughts have happened and will keep happening, along with stronger wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and mass migrations. We’re headed for even greater disasters if we don’t do something about the changing climate.
The big thing in politics this week has been the Voting Rights Bill. The Republicans want to make it hard on voters of color, the Democrats want to make it easier for everyone to vote. All of this because Trump didn’t concede when he lost the election to Joe Biden. More than a full year has passed and he still refuses acknowledge that Biden won.
Trump and the Republicans see the country losing its white majority to people of color and they’re afraid of losing the white power they’ve held since our country was formed almost 250 years ago. That’s why the Republicans are trying to suppress the votes of Black and Brown people. Change is inevitable. I predict that 50 years from now, assuming we’re still a democracy, most of our country’s representatives will be people of color.
Saturday, January 22, 2022 – The 49ers pulled off a miracle tonight. They didn’t score an offensive touchdown against the Green Bay Packers in a playoff game played on the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field against the highly favored Packers (at the end of the game the temperature was 5 degrees). They kicked two field goals and scored a touchdown on a blocked punt. The 49ers’ offense sputtered throughout the game. The defense stood extremely tall. It was a miracle that they pulled out a victory on a last second field goal by Robbie Gould to win 13-10. I still can’t believe they won. How did they do it? Grit. Guts. Determination. Never give up. Because of those ingredients, they won their second playoff game. The first was against the Dallas Cowboys in Dallas last week. We’ll find out tomorrow who they’ll meet for the National Football League title when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers face the Los Angeles Rams in Tampa. At least the 49ers will play in warm weather to see who will go to the Super Bowl this year. This team is so different from the other teams that Jimmy Garoppolo has led. The poor guy is a fighter with a bad thumb and bad shoulder, and he somehow pulled out a win for the Niners. The man never gives up. Jimmy G. has to be the most underrated quarterback in pro football.
Sunday, February 6, 2022 – The 49ers lost to the L.A. Rams 20-17. Jimmy G. didn’t have his best game. He did his best with the injuries that plagued him near the end of the season. The Rams deserved to win. Cooper Kupp, the Rams’ wide receiver, was sensational. He can break clear against any defense. He was the difference. George Kittle and Deebo Samuel gave their all for the 49ers. They had a chance to win, but because Jimmy G. didn’t play his best, they lost. Next week the Super Bowl will be played between the Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals. All I’ll be rooting for is an exciting game. Joe Burrow, in his second year with the Bengals, has a great future ahead of him. They, like the 49ers, weren’t expected to win a playoff game. They pulled out a miracle against the Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes last week. May the best team win this year’s Super Bowl. [Note: The Rams defeated the Bengals 23-20.]
It hasn’t rained in a month. We might be headed for another year of drought.
With the pandemic going on, every day I wake up at the same time. I eat at the same time, get to my desk at the same time, eat a late lunch at the same time, go for a walk at the same time, watch TV at the same time, get to bed around the same time. It’s the same routine almost every day. No guests have been in our house except Ray, Ashley, and little Joe. Joan and I don’t go out to a movie or restaurant anymore. I’m losing touch with our neighbors and friends. I don’t even want to go anywhere because of COVID. Even if you’re vaccinated, boosted, and wear a mask, it’s a dangerous world if you’re around people. If I go to the market, I see people wearing masks, which is a good sign that most people are taking the pandemic seriously.
It’s 60 degrees outside. The sky is blue. It’s time for me to go for a walk.
Thursday, March 3, 2022 – It’s so sorrowful to watch what Russia is doing to Ukraine. What is Vladimir Putin’s reason for attacking Ukraine? Does he want a buffer between the western NATO countries and Russia? Does he want to destroy city upon city in Ukraine so that the NATO countries and the U.S. will have to rebuild that country at great expense? So much damage is being done for no reason at all. Ukraine wasn’t looking for trouble, but Putin, the present-day bully in the world is saying, “Whatever I say goes. That’s it. I don’t want to hear anyone contradicting me because I have the power and I’m going to use it.” The Ukrainians are a proud people, they’re standing up to the Russian army after one full week of war. What if Russia does conquer Ukraine, will there be a puppet regime installed by Putin? If that’s the case, Ukrainian patriots will persist in causing trouble.
Yes, Ukraine is on everyone’s mind. Joe Biden, a couple of nights ago, addressed the nation in his State of the Union speech. He said NATO will enforce the strictest sanctions against Russia. Russia is now a pariah to the rest of the world. Putin has been feeding the Russian population with lies as a dictator always does. But the world has the Internet now and lies can be found out almost immediately.
Friday, March 4, 2022 – From what I’ve researched, there are from 50,000-80,000 thoughts that go through a person’s mind in one day. I wonder how many thoughts my two-year-old grandson Joe has going through his mind? He won’t remember what has gone on in his life until he’s maybe three or four. That’s when memory came to the fore for me. Memory. I have no idea what went on in my mind from birth to the age of three or four.
I see the progression that’s going on with my grandson. He’s right on time in his development. At the age of two he is now understanding what people say to him. Pretty soon he’ll be talking. It’s unbelievable how a human being develops. There’s growth every day in the early years. Everyone alive today has gone through the same development.
Tuesday, March 8, 2022 – My brother David, one month shy of 90, died today. Here is my remembrance of my brother, who was eight years older than me.
Dave was a playful man. He once asked me, when I was a kid, to tickle his feet. I found out he was tickle-free. He always answered his home phone with, “Hell-o,” emphasizing the first syllable. He loved the poetic lyrics and music of the 1940s and ’50s.
Dave was a very generous man, never hesitating to loan people money if they needed it. He was always in a good mood except for the last year of his life.
Dave was a businessman. He was a partner with our dad in the linen store on 7th and Hill Streets in downtown Los Angeles for many years. After Dad died, he turned to delivering kosher meats to small and large markets. His brother-in-law, Seymour Schulman, introduced him to that business.
Dave was a great recycler of paper, cans, and bottles, collecting all those things from his neighbors. He and his wife Bertha conserved electricity, too, by having solar panels installed on their roof.
I remember one day Dave and Bob, teenagers at the time, duking it out in the alleyway of our house on Fairfax Avenue. I ran to my bedroom because I was afraid to watch my two brothers fight.
I would always call Dave and Bertha when I arrived in L.A. by car. I’d sit in their TV room, Dave in his favorite chair as the news on TV was on, and we’d talk about the politics of the day. We three were always in complete agreement, whether it was good or bad as to what was going on in the country.
I heard that Dave, in the middle of the night last night, fell out of bed. Bertha called 911. They came and seated him in his favorite chair, but he fell out of the chair. Bertha had to call 911 again. They wanted to revive him, but she said, let him be, and that’s when he died, early this morning.
The last couple of years, I’d call Dave every few months to see how he was doing. I knew he didn’t have long to live. From what I heard, he actually wanted to die.
Dave loved going to the beach when he and Bertha first got married. He loved bodysurfing at Will Rogers State Beach.
Dave had several loyal friends: Bill Rarity, Bob Chung, and the Orshansky brothers, Joe and Don. They all went to Bancroft Junior High and Hollywood High together.
Dave loved our mother very much. He was her handyman. He actually longed for her many times while I was in his presence over the last ten years.
Dave and Bertha had two sons, Ray and Richard, who he was very proud of. He’s the blood grandfather of a girl and boy (Rich’s kids), and the step-grandfather of a boy through his son Ray’s first marriage.
Whenever I ate dinner with Dave and Bertha, we’d go to either an Arabic or Thai restaurant in the Valley where he would always pay the bill. He was good friends of a Thai couple who ran a restaurant. He loaned them money to help them in their business.
I hope my brother didn’t suffer much last night. I hear he died peacefully. He was a good, gentle soul. He never meant harm to anyone. He always had an upbeat attitude. He suffered the last four or five years of his life after neck surgery.
Tuesday, March 29, 2022 – Putin says Ukraine is guilty of committing genocide and is a fascist country. Just like any lying bully, he turns the tables around and blames the victims. He’s the Donald Trump of Russia, or Trump is the Putin of the U.S.? The whole world is watching this display of his megalomania. It’s Putin’s idea to bring back the lost territory of the old USSR.
I’m finished with Journal 2000. Working on that yearly journal has taken me longer than the previous six yearly journals. Why? Because I keep going over it. When a writer goes over a manuscript, it’s hard not to revise. I’m tired of revising, which means it’s time to get it out of my system and start working on another yearly journal.
I weighed 215 this morning. Not good. Not good at all. I have to watch what I eat. I just overdid it yesterday, with food and wine. I can’t do that anymore. Oh, I know I’ve said that before, having to watch what I eat and drink, but this time I really have to watch it. I’m not getting any younger. I can feel my age of almost 82 years. It’ll be a good thing for my arthritic knees to lose weight.
The Academy Awards was ruined by Will Smith Sunday night. When he heard Chris Rock tell a joke about his wife, he walked straight up to Rock and slapped him in the face for the whole world to see. What a sad incident that was. And then ten minutes later Smith won the Best Actor award. The whole country is talking about it. The guy couldn’t take a joke about his wife and so now he’s trash in my eyes and the eyes of millions of others.
Oh, how stupid so many of us are in the world. The country is giving low approval ratings to Joe Biden, that’s how stupid we are. President Biden is doing all the right things about the pandemic and he’s focusing on renewable energy sources, yet he’s receiving low approval ratings. The guy is trying. There’s a war in Ukraine he has to attend to, there’s the pandemic, reducing the use of oil, fixing the infrastructure of the country, and having to deal with a seditious Trump and Republican Party.
Wednesday, March 30, 2022 – As I was out for a walk yesterday, I happened to see a woman with her two small dogs on a leash smoking pot. It was the second time in a week that I’ve seen her with her dogs while puffing away on grass. She was about 30 yards ahead of me. Here’s what I was thinking: Why do people need more than one or two tokes of grass? I surely don’t need more than that to get high. Am I sure it was pot she was smoking? Yes, absolutely sure, because I could smell its unique aroma.
Lately I’ve had to get up and go to the bathroom twice during the night. For a while it was once a night. Now it’s twice. That’s all right. I get back to sleep pretty quickly after returning to bed.
I sleep alone. Joan and I have been sleeping in separate bedrooms since I had my first hip surgery in January 2002. I don’t mind sleeping alone, unlike when she first moved out of our room and into her own bedroom. Our doctor, Dr. Bugatto, once asked me, “Was it because you snored that she moved to another room?” “No,” I said, “it’s because she didn’t like to sleep with fresh air coming into the room. It was always cold for her.” Ever since she moved, though, our lovemaking dropped sharply.
Last night I watched Twelve O’Clock High on Turner Classic Movies. It was made in 1949 starring Gregory Peck. Great movie. It showed how nerve-wracking it was to fly bombing missions over Germany during the Second World War. Great acting. Great script. Intense. It surely kept my interest. I remember seeing the movie at the Filmarte Theater on Vine Street in Hollywood when I was nine years old in 1949. I remember Gregory Peck sitting in the cockpit with his co-pilot, leading his squadron on a bombing mission, and saying about the German fighter planes being above them at twelve o’clock high.
Tuesday, April 5, 2022 – I’m thinking of Charles Lewman, my good friend in Southern California who I talk on the phone with on Mondays at 5 p.m. It’s something we’ve been doing for the past eight or nine years. We talk about everything on Mondays, from sports to politics to the troubles going on in the world to Trump, Putin, Biden to the pandemic to the meaning of life. Charles said yesterday he didn’t know his purpose in life. I had to remind him what he’s always saying to me—that peace, joy, happiness, and harmony are what he’s always striving for in life.
I’m thinking of the first football game of the 1957 season my senior year at Fairfax High, when we beat Belmont High 19-6. I played very well that day. I threw a long touchdown pass to Eddie Lingo (I believe it covered 70 yards), and on another play when I was about to be tackled after gaining considerable yardage, I heard Lenny Pearlstein’s voice from behind me yell, “Joe!” Lenny was telling me I could lateral the ball to him. I lateraled and he finished off the play by scoring a touchdown. I’d say the whole play went for about 45 yards. It was Lenny and I using our brains. It was the first game of the season and we were on our way.
But then disaster struck. I missed the next two games. The first was against Dorsey High because I was in bed a whole week with the Asian flu (the pandemic of 1957). We lost that game 14-6. I missed the next game against Los Angeles High for not recovering completely from the flu. I roamed the sidelines in street clothes watching L.A. High run roughshod over us 37-13. The following week we played Marshall High and I could still feel being weak from the flu. We tied Marshall 7-7.
The third game I missed that season was our last scheduled game against Hamilton High. They beat us 14-6. The week before that, against Hollywood High, we barely won 12-6. I got hurt when I called my own play and was tackled smack dab in my right thigh that turned out to be a severe contusion. That was the end of the season for me. If it wasn’t for that thigh injury, I could’ve easily led our team against winless Hamilton High and we would have won the league championship and gone on to the city playoffs.
Tuesday, April 19, 2022 – This morning I went for a walk with my friend Lou Berman on a beautiful spring day where the sun started to come through as we were walking along a bluff in Half Moon Bay. Two miles later, we sat on a bench overlooking the blue Pacific, white clouds drifting in the sky, and horseback riders below us moving in single file along the shoreline.
Lou talked about his life, mainly because I kept asking him questions. He told me of the time as a young boy growing up in the outskirts of Minneapolis where he learned how to shoot a rifle. He told me of his days on a kibbutz in Israel and how valuable he was to the kibbutz because he could shoot a rifle better than anyone there. At night he protected the kibbutz by shooting at Arabs as they tried to enter the grounds. He told me of his days working with Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s. He told me how smart Ray Kroc was and the perfectionist he was. Lou’s region of responsibility was the Pacific—Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines. He talked of the scary situations he encountered with the dictators and kings of that region. He had to be aware every second he was around those rulers. He said Ray Kroc must have thought of McDonald’s every second of every day, even in his sleep. Kroc made it easy and simple to buy an inexpensive hamburger and make a big profit out of it. It was all Kroc’s idea to please the customer, to receive an order and serve it quickly, and to have clean bathrooms. Efficiency is what Kroc wanted from the staffs of McDonald’s. Clean surroundings. Quick service. Get your money’s worth.
“Lou,” I said, “you should write a book about your life at McDonald’s.”
“No, Joe, I know too much that would get me in trouble.”
Lou loves the life he leads, going for a long walks four or five times a week, mainly in the Half Moon Bay area. He’s already well-off, from his wife Barbara studying and working the stock market and from his longtime retirement package from McDonald’s. He’s completely satisfied at the age of 82.
And here I am, tired, sun-drenched, writing about my day with Lou, and still feeling a little buzz from the joint we smoked.
Saturday, April 23, 2022 – I haven’t been in the writing mood since I finished Journal 2000. I’ve been catching up on a few of my health problems, such as an infected tooth. I might need a bridge of four fake teeth in the lower front of my mouth. I saw Dr. Liu at Kaiser the day before yesterday. She took a biopsy of a lesion on top of my head. I have to put a bandage on the lesion for a whole week. Now my eyes are not seeing well. I have to make an appointment with a Kaiser optometrist. Other than that, my arthritic right shoulder is bothering the hell out of me and my right knee is weak and always semi-swollen.
Last night I watched foreign correspondent Richard Engel on MSNBC explain what’s going on in Ukraine. It’s so sad to Ukraine’s population decimated by Vladimir Putin. He’s killing people just so he can be a dictator over another country. Lies and more lies are being spouted by him and the Russian propaganda machine. Putin says he’s fighting Nazis, when he’s the one who’s the Nazi. He’s mentioned the word nuclear a few times already. He might do it if he’s really losing to Ukraine. He’s brutal. He’s the one who Trump tries to emulate. Tell a lie long enough and people will start believing it. Putin is using the Ukrainians as Nazis in his propaganda and Trump is still telling The Big Lie that he won the 2020 election. What is it with people who want complete control and power over their own governments? They are sociopaths, megalomaniacs. They cause great trouble. They cause wars, they cause the dissemination of mis- and dis-information. All for control and power. Just like the Republicans in this country, they will do anything to gain power. They will lie and cheat and scheme and cause so much trouble, just to gain power. Power, Putin, Trump, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, the Republicans. They are traitors to democracy. Anything to keep power, where the end justifies the means. POWER. We humans will always be power-hungry, we will always seek power over another individual, group, or nation. Will we humans ever mature? If the human race survives, it’ll be centuries before that happens.
Thousands of people have died in Ukraine. Women, children, and older people are being bombed out of their homes and shot to death in the street. So sad.
Life. How can I depict it? By just being myself. By reporting my life with my wife, my son, his wife, and my grandson Joe. By the way, we just learned this week that Ray’s wife Ashley is pregnant. It’s a rough time to have children, what with the pandemic still going on, the war in Ukraine, and rising prices. Ray and Ashley are looking for a house, too. Every house they’ve looked at in San Francisco is asking at least $1.2 million—and that’s before bidding takes place. It’s not a good time to buy a house in San Francisco, but now they have to buy one with another child on the way. Joan and I are going to help them out with a down payment. Ashley’s parents are also going to help.
In a short time from now I’ll be taking a Muni streetcar to Market and Gough streets to pick up three books of In the Time of My Life at Green Arcade Bookstore. My book has not sold well in the stores that I left it in just before COVID hit two years ago. What a waste of thousands of dollars on my part. Right now, I’m giving the book away to anyone who’ll take it.
Wednesday, April 27, 2022 – The Giants are back home after an eleven-game road trip that took them to Cleveland, New York, Washington, and Milwaukee. They came home with an 8 and 3 record. Then yesterday against the Oakland A’s, they won their fifth game in a row. They’ll be playing tonight around the same time as the Warriors. I’ll be switching channels to keep up on both games.
Nuclear is being mentioned a lot by Putin. He’s trying to blackmail the world with this nuclear talk. He’d be out of his mind to use even the smallest nuclear weapon. When a person starts a war, like he did, he thinks he knows where it’s going to go, but so far, it’s gone in the wrong direction for him. It’s mushroomed into a mess, not only for Russia and Ukraine, but for those countries that have to absorb millions of refugees, like Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Putin is off his rocker for starting that war. It was all for his pride. All for him showing his power. All for nothing. What a total waste war is. Now the U.S. has to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons.
Three of my lower front teeth are infected deep into the bone. They will have to be taken out. That means a total of four (one is already out) lower front teeth will be missing. I have an appointment with a periodontist this coming Friday to see what he has to say.
I haven’t started transcribing the year 1990 from my written journal. I don’t know why I’m hesitating. I told Charles Lewman in our weekly phone conversation that I wanted, as a writer, to convey the human experience, to get down to the nitty-gritty of the human experience. The only way I know how to do that is in my journal writing. I have delved back into the past as I have with seven journal years so far, and I also write about the present in this ongoing journal of mine. I’ll be transcribing the past and writing about the present. That’ll be my purpose in life till the day I die.
I hope to go for a walk today. I hope I don’t get too tired and have to stop every hundred yards to get my breath back. That’s what’s happened on my last two walks in the neighborhood.
Friday, May 6, 2022 – Vladimir Putin is living up to the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century British historian Lord Acton’s quotation, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” What that quotation means to me is that the more power a person has the more corrupted his morals are. The same goes for the North Korean dictator, Turkish dictator, Syrian dictator, and all the other dictators of the world. Dictators are Dicks, is what it all boils down to.
What else is going on? The COVID pandemic. Fifteen million people around the world have died from it. Homelessness is another problem around the country. What does a city, state, or country do with the homeless problem? I don’t know. Gas costs are the highest ever. At Costco the other day, I paid $5.39 a gallon. I can remember paying 25 cents a gallon as a teenager in L.A. in the late-1950s.
Now, more than ever, I can feel my body deteriorating. I don’t have the energy I had even a few months ago. My arthritic right shoulder and both of my knees are not getting any better. If I had my way, I’d sit in a chair and read and write all day long. But I know better than that. I have to force myself to go for a walk. And here’s hoping, after I finish writing today’s entry that I WILL go for a walk, not a brisk walk like I used to do, but a walk I can feel comfortable with, which usually turns out to be a pretty slow walk.
Saturday, May 7, 2022 – Yesterday was Willie Mays’ 91st birthday. Today the Giants broke a five-game losing streak by defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 13-7. Today was also Buster Posey Day at Oracle Park.
The Warriors trounced the Memphis Grizzlies in the third game of the Western Conference semi-finals.
Tuesday, May 17, 2022 – I just finished reading a memoir called Glenn’s Sister by Carolyn Plath. Carolyn was the wife of my friend Rob Plath. She passed away of cancer much too early in life.
Rob wanted me to write a review of Carolyn’s book. And so here it goes.
Glenn’s Sister by Carolyn Plath is a memoir that reads like a novel. “What’s going to happen next?” I kept asking myself as I turned from one page to another. This book was written by a woman with a great imagination and a talent for detail and description. It was kept a secret by her family not to tell Carolyn or her brother Glenn that he came from another father. Poor Carolyn, before she turned 30, death surrounded her in her hometown of Tulsa. Her mother died early in life, the same with her father, and her brother Glenn, who, before he died in his early 30s, had diabetes, an amputated leg caused by a motorcycle accident, and he became blind. Who was the one who cared for the disabled Glenn? Carolyn, before she even married and had a child. She herself died too early in life of cancer.
Glenn’s Sister takes place in 1970s and ’80s Tulsa, where music, drugs, and drinking were prevalent among the youth, the same as today, but probably more so back then. Her family consisted of a loving mother, a distant and strict father (who disliked his adopted son), and brother Glenn, three years Carolyn’s senior. Glenn always suspected he was adopted. The truth was finally revealed after he passed away.
I can’t say enough about Carolyn Plath as a writer. She brings the ’70s and ’80s to life with such detailed writing and storytelling skills. Reading her memoir, I sometimes wondered, “How could she remember such detail? How could she be so brutally honest about her family?” Carolyn surely had a strong and sensitive writing voice. Too bad we won’t be able to read more of the great writer that she was.
Friday, May 20, 2022 – Monday, I met with Samm McGregor and her neighbors on 43rd Avenue. We’ve been meeting in Samm’s garage every Monday since the pandemic began two years ago. I’m the only one in the group who doesn’t live on that block. The group consists of Samm, Judy and Ken Grady, Bobbie Dittes, and the Lamey sisters, Jean and Lenore. People ask me what we talk about and my answer is “We talk about EVERYTHING.” We meet from 3-5 p.m. The conversation never stops. We talk about their crazy neighbors on 43rd Avenue, we talk about Trump and the Republicans, we talk about the weather, religion, politics, elections, food, teaching, grandkids, relatives, the construction going on in the Sunset District, exercise, health, and the list goes on and on. It’s good for the soul to be part of a group. That’s why I meet with this small group on a weekly basis.
I also meet with Marcy Ballard’s group. We meet for lunch every other Tuesday at Harding Park’s Cypress Grill. I order the same thing every time: Cobb salad. It’s the least fattening meal on the menu. It’s a damn good Cobb too, maybe the best in town, with bits of bacon, a hard-boiled egg, small tomatoes, bits of blue cheese, half an avocado, Ranch dressing, and crunchy Romaine lettuce. I’ve been eating with Marcy’s group since the pandemic began. At first we brought our own chairs and sandwiches and sat on the lawn overlooking Lake Merced, six-feet apart, of course, and talked about the world in general, just like Samm’s group on Mondays. But now we eat either on the patio, if it’s a warm day, or inside the restaurant with a beautiful view of the green golf course, the lake, open sky, and clouds.
I sometimes think of my dad Raymond Sutton. I didn’t respect him much when I was growing up. Why? He drank liquor on the sly. But now I have the utmost respect for him because he supported our family of eight out of his small linen store on 7th and Hill Streets in downtown Los Angeles. My dad and his family left their home country of Syria in 1920 to settle in the United States. He and his brothers started out as peddlers when they arrived in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He and his brothers eventually owned their own linen stores. My dad and his brother Michel even manufactured linen handkerchiefs in the Philippines in the 1930s.
I mostly remember Dad in the store on 7th Street where I’d go down every so often in the summer and during the holiday season to help out. I learned not to like the retail business when I went there in the summer. Business was too sporadic. When there was a lull in business, Dad wouldn’t let me sit and read the newspaper. I/we always had to be doing something. That was his philosophy. You don’t sit and read. There is always something to do. Straighten out the stock. Vacuum the carpet. Clean the windows. Keep busy. Customers don’t like to walk into an empty store and see someone sitting who is about to spring on them to buy things. Keep busy, so they can feel free to walk into the small store and ask for help. That’s what I learned from my dad, Raymond Sutton, a great man in my opinion, a man who supported a large family, a man who was an honest businessman, a man who was always thinking how to improve things in the store. He wasn’t bossy at all to me or my brothers. He hinted his thoughts to us instead of forcing them on us. I’m sure he would have liked to have had all his sons go into business with him. Two of my brothers did, Maurice and Dave. Bob, Charles, Albert, and I didn’t join him.
I surmise that the only time my father was happy was when he was working with a customer. He could sell a customer more than they thought they wanted through his excellent salesmanship. That was my dad, Raymond Sutton, a great man.
Wednesday, May 25, 2022 – I’ve been feeling tired lately. Very tired. If I do one chore in the house, like taking out the garbage, compost, and recyclables, I tire from doing that. That’s my exercise for one day. When I do that, though, I usually sweep out front and tend to the front yard. I really feel tired after working out with my water aerobics class on Mondays and Thursdays. I feel tired walking in the neighborhood on those days that I don’t go to the YMCA.
So, what does all this tiredness mean? Does it mean I’m getting old? Does it mean I need to lose weight? I’m going to make an appointment with Dr. Bugatto and ask what’s causing this tiredness. [The cause was my heart. In December 2024, I had double bypass open-heart surgery.]
What’s been in the news lately are two things that our country has been debating for decades: abortion and guns. I’ve mentioned those two things in previous journal entries over the years. The very religious are completely against abortion, but then they are for unrestricted gun laws, especially when it comes to automatic assault weapons.
Abortion and guns are on everyone’s mind lately. The far-right is so strict when it comes to a woman having an abortion. Here’s what I think they’re trying to say by being adamant against abortion. They don’t want people to have sex unless they’re going to have a baby. This is Medieval thinking. They forget that they were once teenagers. And what do teenagers think of? SEX. Teens are bound to have sex and sometimes girls become pregnant. The same with adult women. And if they don’t want to have a baby, even if they’re raped or incest is involved, the present conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States thinks they should still have the baby. Such backward, sexist thinking. They don’t think a young girl or a woman should have a say whether to have a baby or not. What many states and the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court are saying is, “Women can’t think for themselves.”
And guns. Yesterday a boy of 18 shot and killed 19 third- and fourth-graders, two teachers, and his grandmother in Uvalde, Texas. He had an assault weapon that he bought at the gun store as soon as he turned 18, which is legal in Texas. He even wore a bullet-proof vest, just like the young man who killed 10 older Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, ten days earlier in a mass shooting.
What is going on in this country? President Biden addressed the nation last night, and I paraphrase what he said, “Other countries have crazy people, they see violence on their TV sets, but nowhere else in the world do mass shootings take place with such frequency as they do in the United States.”
Why is this happening? I’ll tell you why. The U.S. Senate, made up of 50 Republicans, refuses to change the gun laws so as to make it harder to buy firearms. They don’t believe in strict background checks. There have been more guns sold in this country than there are people in this country of 330 million. The Republican party is being bought off by the National Rifle Association. The Republicans care more for gaining power than for peace and tranquility in this country. They say they’re the pro-life party, while at the same time they refuse to do anything about making it harder to buy automatic weapons that are only meant to kill people. Hypocrites is what they are. Mass shootings keep happening and they send their “thoughts and prayers” to the parents or families who have to live with the thought that their child, parent, or grandparent was shot dead in cold blood.
I hear the boy who shot 19 children and two teachers in Texas was bullied as a kid. Because of that, he struck out at helpless 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds for the way he was treated.
The Republicans say they are pro-life to protect the fetus from abortion, but they are anti-life by not having more restrictive gun laws.
Friday, May 27, 2022 – The mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is on my mind and the country’s mind. It’s those Republicans who are holding back progress on sensible gun control. Most of the mass shooters, going back to Columbine, Colorado, have been either 17 or 18 years old. The last two shooters, in Buffalo and Uvalde, bought their war weapons as soon as they turned 18. Yes, war weapons! What country, in its right mind, would allow an assault weapon to be bought at a local gun store? Only in America, with its ingrained gun culture. There are more guns and rifles in the U.S. than people. Why? To protect against “the other.” Who is “the other”? Black people, Hispanic people, Muslims, Jews.
I hate guns; I hate being around them. I’d never own a gun. I don’t know if I could trust myself if I ever got angry and knew there was a gun in my house.
I’m getting riled up just writing about guns. It’s so sad that this country has an obsession with them. That second amendment is to blame. Our Founders made a big mistake writing it. When another country, New Zealand for instance, has a mass shooting with an assault weapon, they make it a crime to own an assault weapon. We can’t do that in this country because the Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights. “A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
That’s the whole Second Amendment in a sentence that really doesn’t make sense. It could mean a state militia, for example Nebraska’s, to protect Nebraskans from a federal government that abuses its power shall not be infringed. But then it says “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” which opens it up for individuals to own guns. I think it was meant for a “well-regulated militia,” meaning a state-run militia, but the Supreme Court’s interpretation of it opened the floodgates for a proliferation of guns by saying anyone 18 or older could own a gun.
Saturday, June 4, 2022 – Yesterday I took BART to Oakland to be with my friend George Krevsky. We had planned a day of sitting in his office and philosophizing about different things. We also planned to take a few tokes of weed before we sat down to talk. We did that and the talk started. We talked about friends, what’s going on in the world, poker, exercise, how we met our wives, guns, sports, and so on and so forth.
It was a great day. There was rarely a lull in the three and a half hours we talked. We mainly sat outside in his patio, overlooking San Francisco Bay. George is 82, and in a couple of months I’ll be 82. We talked about the Warriors loss to the Boston Celtics in the first game of the NBA Finals. We talked about the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s. George, a huge A’s fan refuses to go to their games because the team’s owner refuses to do a makeover of the ballpark that needs a complete overhaul. “He doesn’t give a damn about the fans,” George said of the owner, “only his fortune.” A’s attendance is way down this year because they traded away their best players and didn’t spruce up a decaying ballpark, hence crowds of 1000-3000 are common. The stadium is always empty. The owner, John Fisher, wants to move the team to Las Vegas. He wants to skedaddle instead of putting his billions into a new and accessible ball park. In other words, what they should do is tear down the old ballpark and build a new one on the same spot where it’s already accessible by BART or car.
George and I, after a few drags of weed, spent our time sitting and talking. I take that back. George, without realizing it, got out of his patio chair 20-30 times, on the average of every minute or two. I thought that was commendable of him, in that getting up and moving around was sort of an exercise on his part. Coming home on BART, I used my leg muscles to keep myself from holding onto my seat. That, to me, was an exercise, using all the muscles in my legs, strengthening those muscles as the train both started up and came to a stop.
That’s what I learned—not to sit too long, but to get up and move and stretch as much as I can. That’s what I have to do while I’m sitting and working at my computer or watching the news or an athletic event on TV. Stand, move, stretch. Gotta do it!
My mind takes me back to my track days at Fairfax High. I ran a 10-flat 100-yard dash in my day. Not bad. It surely wasn’t the best time for a high school sprinter like me in Los Angeles in 1958. Two other runners ran much faster than that. Both placed first and second in the city’s 100-yard dash finals. I raced against them in the semi-final heat. They were Willie Davis, who went on to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers for many years, and James Bates (I don’t know what happened to him). Both ran in the 9.5 to 9.6 range in high school. I ran a 10-flat in the Western League Track Finals. But in the L.A. city semi-final heat held at East Los Angeles Junior College, I didn’t place. The 220-yard dash, which I’ve written a story about (“Hutton vs. Halaby”) is in my novel Morning Pages. The wind was extremely strong that day. Essex Hutton and I were even the whole way. He wouldn’t give in. I wouldn’t give in. Finally, five yards before the finish line I said to myself, “You can have it, Essex,” and eased up. It was the first and last time in my sports life that I gave in. Essex took a third, which qualified him to run in the 220-yard final the following week. My best time in the 220 was 22-flat. My best times came at University High in the Western League Track Finals, 10-flat and 22-flat. I had wings that day. I remember Bob Tobias offering me a Hershey bar as we were warming up that day. He said, “Chocolate will give you energy.” Boy, was he right.
Monday, June 13, 2022 – So much is happening. The January 6th Hearings, the war in Ukraine, inflation is rampant, mainly due to the gas prices that are above $5 around the country and $6 in the Bay Area. There are mass shootings, the Warriors/Celtics NBA championship series is tied two games apiece, and COVID-19 still persists.
I’ve had a sore throat for the past three or four days. It won’t go away. It hurts when I swallow. I took a COVID home test just a couple of hours ago and it was negative. I’ve been feeling weak lately. No energy. Maybe it has to do with my weight. I’m presently eating only two meals a day to lose weight. I’ve lost three pounds in my first week of this experiment. I now weigh 208. It dawned on me that my energy level was down because I weighed too much. I’ve made it a point to eat breakfast, skip lunch, and eat dinner around 6 p.m. Three pounds is not much to lose in a week, but every pound lost is a good sign.
The January 6th Hearings held its second session this morning. All the witnesses, on film and in person, were those who worked for the former president. All of them said that Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen was a fraud. Trump even made money on The Big Lie. He said he was going to use the money from his backers to stop the election going to Joe Biden. Zoe Lofgren, one of ten House representatives on the January 6th panel, said it was not only a lie that Trump was counting on to overturn the election, but he received money from his supporters that he is using for his own benefit. He never had the welfare of the country in mind, it was his own welfare he was thinking of. The man has no morals and no shame.
And what’s even worse is that a hell of a lot of Republican senators and House members are going along with him and The Big Lie. They know that Trump is not in his right mind and they still go along with him just so the Republicans can stay in power. Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, the leaders of the Republicans in the Senate and House, respectively, now go along with the former President. Those two castigated Trump for instigating an Insurrection on January 6, but then reversed course and were soon kissing his ass. They knew Trump was responsible for the Insurrection on January 6? Why would they change their minds and support that worm of a man? Power is the only thing I can think of as to why they became turncoats to the American people. Power. Thwart democracy is their modus operandi. Make it harder for people to vote. Tell lies. Vote for guns and against abortion. Pretend you’re religious. Appeal to the lowest of the low of the electorate. Yes, that’s what will give them power—racism, anti-abortion, pro-guns, make it harder for people of color to vote because if we can’t win their vote with our policies, we can at least suppress their voting rights. The Republicans are just as much to blame as Trump for dividing this country.
Friday, June 17, 2022 – Today is Joan’s 82nd birthday. I’m going to buy her a bouquet of roses.
Our little grandson Joe, we just found out, has contracted COVID for the second time. My son Ray called and told us the news. They had to postpone a trip to Missoula, Montana, that they were going on today to attend a wedding of Ray’s friend. Ray, when I talked to him, doesn’t know if he’s contracted COVID from Joe. He said he and Ashley are going to take a home test as soon as they get home. I wish with all my heart that they don’t have COVID. Joe got it at day care where there has been an outbreak of the virus. Poor Joe, he had trouble breathing this morning. They took him to the Emergency Hospital just before they were about to depart for the airport. Maybe it’s best, in a way, that that happened, because they found out two days ago that their bid on a house in Oakland went through. They are now homeowners.
The Golden State Warriors won the NBA Championship last night. Steph Curry was voted the MVP of the series. He deserved it, leading his team to four wins and two losses against the Boston Celtics. I was nervous throughout the whole game, even when the Warriors had a 12-point lead with two minutes left to play. They won by 13 points. It was the sixth time they were in the NBA Finals in eight years, winning four and losing two. No doubt about it, they are a dynasty. Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green will go down in history as the three most valuable players in Warriors history.
I just took an hour break to vacuum the packaging of a statue that Sol and Jang sent Joan for her birthday. It’s a Greek maiden, about four-feet tall. The statue is light, made of some material that resembles clay. Joan said she’s going to put it in her garden.
That’s all the news that’s fit to print on this day, June 17, the 82nd birthday of my wonderful wife Joan.
Saturday, June 18, 2022 – I don’t know exactly how long I’ve been doing this—six months, a year—but I’ve been preparing for the future by clearing out things from my clothes closet and office closet. The future is that I don’t have many years left to live. I’ll be 82 in a couple of months. In other words, I’m going to die someday. I want to get rid of things so my family won’t have to go through them and see what’s important or not important.
My health is not the best nowadays. Today I noticed that something is wrong with my hearing. I don’t know whether it’s caused by three of my lower front teeth that were infected a couple of months ago. I have an appointment with my dentist, Dr. Anisha Kahai, in five days. She has to coordinate with my periodontist, Dr. Conte, who is going to remove the teeth. Dr. Kahai needs to make a bridge for four teeth (one tooth is already missing). I have to make sure to tell her about my hearing.
I might have overdone it today, sweeping outside and vacuuming the interior of my car and washing the exterior. I’m feeling weak now. The reason why I say I overdid it is, I hadn’t done a darn bit of walking or exercising in over a week because of a bad sore throat. And then I used up my energy outside today.
I finished reading an Ann Patchett book of essays called These Precious Days. She’s a very good writer is all I can say, as are most writers I read. She, like every writer in the world, has her own style. Just like the book I randomly picked off my bookshelf and read a few hours ago by E.B. White. It was a book of his essays called The Second Tree from the Corner. E.B. and Patchett don’t beat around the bush, they write to be understood.
I finished a William Saroyan book recently, My Name is Saroyan. A lot of it was early Saroyan and some of his stories didn’t make any sense to me. He didn’t seem to care, though, because he was writing swiftly, putting words on paper, not all of it to be understood by the reader, but just to put words on paper. I do almost the same thing writing swiftly in my journal and seeing what comes out of me. Here’s a quote I found while transcribing from my 1990 journal about Saroyan, author unknown: “He [Saroyan] began with no firm ideas as to what the stories would be about—no plots or character in mind—but this didn’t matter because his basic working method of choosing a starting point more or less at random and taking it from there—at speed—was already well established.”
There will be a parade on Market Street Monday at noon for the NBA champion Golden State Warriors. It will be their first parade in San Francisco out of four. The other three were held in Oakland when they played at Oracle Arena. They started this dynasty eight or nine years ago and they’re still going strong with The Big Three: Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green.
Draymond gets on my nerves like he does with opposing players. Sometimes he’s not using his head when he’s always arguing with referees and then gets technical fouls called on him. His strength lies in his defense, his intimidating opposing players, and his dirty play. He’s not a good shooter at all. I have a love-hate relationship with that man. He has a big mouth that doesn’t stop, he’s a dirty ballplayer (every chance he gets he’ll hit an opponent in the balls or fall on them on purpose), but then he’s very good on defense.
Friday, June 24, 2022 – In the past two days, the six conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court have gone crazy and changed things for the worst in the country. They have now ruled that abortion is up to each individual state to figure out, breaking a 50-year precedent of legal abortion in all 50 states. The second backward vote they passed was to allow people to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. The third backward vote is that religious school students can now get public funds for their education, which is a total breakdown of the separation of Church and State.
Abortion. A woman who is raped, or even if incest is involved, in a state that bans abortion now HAS to give birth to the baby. If she gets help from others to leave a state to have an abortion, both her and those who help her are now considered criminals. The abortion issue has now made women second-class citizens again. We humans are supposed to be intelligent creatures, but there is such backward thinking going on nowadays that it tears my heart out to see what is going on, not only with abortion, but with guns and breaking down the wall of Church and State.
There are shootings every day from what I read in the newspaper. Guns, guns, guns. And the conservatives on the Supreme Court refuse to see this trend of more people buying and using guns, especially military-style weapons. The Republicans think it’s a mental problem that causes people to shoot innocent victims. Yes, I agree, it is a mental problem, but they refuse to see that the proliferation of guns is making it unsafe for everyone in the country.
What can we do with all this backward thinking going on? VOTE, VOTE, VOTE for rational, logical, common-sense people who will someday bring us back to normalcy. Is that possible? Yes, it is. As Martin Luther King once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Tuesday, June 28, 2022 – The January 6th Committee Hearings are going on. Former assistant to Trump’s Chief of Staff, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified today. It was compelling testimony. She dug Trump deeper into a hole of guilt for instigating the Insurrection on the Capitol Building. In the face of witness intimidation, she showed more courage, bravery, and devotion to our country than that shameless former president. We need more people like Cassidy Hutchinson who learned that Trump was actually conspiring to whip up a coup to hold onto the presidency.
It’s insane what the Supreme Court has recently ruled. Why do they want to return to the past so badly, a past I experienced before Roe v. Wade came into being in 1973.
The only prophylactic boys and girls had to prevent girls from becoming pregnant when I was a teen and in my twenties was to use condoms, which sometimes broke or leaked and led to a girl becoming pregnant. That happened to me three times in my twenties. Once in New York with Erin when I came back from my first European trip in 1965. I never found out if she had a baby or not. It happened to me twice at the University of Oregon when one girl told me her period was late. We waited and waited and finally, thank goodness, she had her period. Mona was her name. And then there was Rusty, a girl from Medford who visited me a couple of times. I never found out if she had a baby or not. I’ll never know if Erin or Rusty were pregnant or if they were lying to me. What matters is that it was traumatic for both women and men when abortion was illegal in America.
My cousin Joe Michael Sutton, who took his girlfriend to Tijuana to get an abortion—she almost died from bleeding too much. A friend of mine, Alan Khedari, drove his newly-wedded wife to Tijuana for an abortion, and she died on the operating table. And now the six conservatives on the Supreme Court want to go back to those days of yore and make women live through that horror again.
I have a friend, a born-again Christian, Nate Wirt, who wasn’t always religious. We met in junior high when we were 12. Nate turned to religion after divorcing his third wife. He’s now married to his sixth wife. Even though he paid for three girlfriends to have an abortion in the mid- to late-Sixties, he is now totally against abortion. We disagree vehemently on religion and politics, but somehow we’re still friends because we leave those two subjects out of our conversations.
Tuesday, July 5, 2022 – Two weeks ago I became deaf in one ear. I immediately called Kaiser and got an appointment. I drove down to the South San Francisco Kaiser where a doctor checked me, gave me a prescription, and made an appointment for me to have an audio test and to see an ear doctor at San Francisco Kaiser the next day.
My audio test was very poor in my left ear. I then saw the ear doctor, Dr. Tang, and he explained that he was going to give me a shot of prednisone (an anti-inflammatory) in my ear. He gave me a shot that made me almost spring out of my seat. The pain lasted only a second. I went home, read up on the literature Dr. Tang gave me, and all I could do was to take prednisone pills for the next two weeks and see if I my hearing would come back.
As it turned out, within the first week, thank goodness, my hearing came back. The prednisone pills affected me in good ways and bad.
The good: I could hear again, the arthritis in my right shoulder and right knee vanished, and I had more energy. The bad: I had a hard time sleeping at night and my voice became semi-hoarse (the doctor says it will diminish within a month after I finish the pills).
Prednisone is a very strong drug that did the trick. After tonight I’m finished taking it. I asked Dr. Tang today if my arthritis will come back and he said it probably will.
All in all, I had to take only one shot in my left ear instead of three. The audiologist told me I could now hear better in my left ear than my right. Great news. The wonder of modern medicine and drugs. And medicine is only going to get better.
In one day, yesterday, I gained five pounds. I think if I eat right today and tomorrow, those five pounds will melt away. The reason for the weight gain in one day was that I overdid it eating the wrong foods and drinking too much wine on July 4th at my friend Samm’s garage. Samm made crunchy hot dogs, I brought wine and pretzels, Judy and Ken Grady brought potato chips and a large fruit dish, sisters Jean and Lenore Lamey brought a very tasty chocolate cake. I overindulged in everything and even, as I was driving home, I scarfed down a large amount of pretzels that Samm gave me to take home. I had a hard time sleeping last night because of my stomach and because it was so humid. I slept with only a sheet over me, or I should say, I laid awake with my eyes closed most of the night.
When one is strict about a diet, like I am, which is eating only two meals a day, breakfast and an early dinner, one breaks down every so often. I surely broke down yesterday and ate everything in sight—plus more. I paid for it by not sleeping well and gaining five pounds. But if I get back on track, I think those five pounds will dwindle down to the 205 I weighed before I overindulged.
Wednesday, July 6, 2022 – “Why? Why are you pointing your rifle at me? I don’t even know you.”
“Because people think I’m a nobody. They don’t respect me. The only people who respect me are my brothers online. They have AR-15s like I do and we intend to use them.”
“Why do you want to use your AR-15? It’s dangerous. You’ll be killing innocent people.”
“It doesn’t matter to me who I kill. I’ll be famous. People will know about me and respect me for what I’ve done.”
“You need help, my friend. Please, let me find you psychiatric help.”
“Over my dead body. You’re trying to change me. Get out of here before I open fire on you. You’re the one who’s to blame for my existence. If it weren’t for you, you would respect me and others who believe like I do. People are always picking on us, bullying us, making fun of us. Why do you think we have these automatic rifles? We’re defending ourselves. We want to be treated as human beings. We don’t want to be bullied anymore. Start moving.”
“I’m here to stop your violent tendencies. There are people who can help you, who can prevent you from killing and causing so much trouble in the community and the country. Please, let me get you help.”
“No, no. Now get the hell out of here. I’m almost ready to end your life. Move. Get going.”
I’m trying to find out what goes on in a mass shooter’s mind. What makes one rage against humanity? Is it that they were bullied early in life and are still being bullied? Is something wrong with the chemical composition in their brains? Is it to gain fame? I’m racking my brain for an answer. I think I’ve come up with something, like being bullied, getting no respect, feeling shame, joining a fraternity of others who believe AR-15s are the way to get respect.
Mass shooters must feel a lot of pain. They have a compulsion to inflict harm. They must feel rage, mistrust, alienation. They feel shame, meaninglessness, cynicism. Deep psychological wounds are buried in them.
Friday, July 8, 2022 – The other day, while I was in the kitchen, I felt an urge for popcorn. I reached high for the popper, when all-of-a-sudden I was falling backward in slow motion and landed on my ass. Why did this happen?
Previous to going into the kitchen to reach for the popper, I drank the equivalent of maybe three shots of bourbon. It must have been the bourbon that made me lose my balance. In falling backward and not hitting my head on anything, I strained a few muscles in my right shoulder, right groin, and right knee. I was sore all night in bed. I didn’t tell Joan what had happened. It was due to the bourbon and I didn’t want her knowing about it. So yesterday I rested all day and today I feel much better. What bothered me was that I lost my balance so easily. I have to work on my balance in my water aerobics class.
From now on I have to cut back on drinking bourbon. Gotta cut down. Gotta watch my step in the kitchen and elsewhere in the house. Joan and I have to watch our step in and out of the house. No falling backward and hitting our heads on the floor. No falling in the bathroom or shower. No falling over small carpets. We have to be careful is what we have to do.
Ray and Ashley bought a house in Oakland. They’ll have to pay $6000-$7000 a month for the next 30 years of their lives. Joan and I paid $2000 a month for our house that we bought in 1994. We finished paying it off about 10 years ago. Ray and Ashley like the neighborhood they’ll be living in. They’ll have to replace the roof, otherwise no big changes are needed. Too bad they don’t have two bathrooms. Maybe they’ll build a second bathroom someday. But the important feature, according to Ray and Ashley, is a nice, quiet, mixed-race neighborhood where there’s a good pubic grammar school nearby for Joe. I wish my son and his wife all the best in the world. They deserve it.
And then there’s Al Wall, who I thought I saw shopping at Trader Joe’s yesterday. I looked at a photo today of us 32 years ago, and yes, it was Al who I saw. I regret not approaching him. Al was a coach on our Little League team, the Mets. A coincidental thing about this is that I was transcribing onto my computer from my 1990 written journal the night before I saw Al. In that journal I had written about our baseball team. Al’s son Conrad was our catcher. The poor kid didn’t get a hit all season, and he took it to heart and cried almost every time he struck out, which was about 95% of the time. Al must have gone through agony and torture watching his son break down. It must have been similar to the agony and pain I felt when I saw my own son Ray, 9-years-old at the time, break down and cry several times that season for striking out or making an error. The thing is, Conrad was a terrific defensive catcher, which made him a valuable asset to our team. Al—almost all grey, a large head, slow moving—couldn’t have recognized me because I was wearing a mask to prevent COVID. I regret not following my instinct and going up to him. But if I ever see him again at Trader Joe’s, I’ll surely go up to him and introduce myself.
Sunday, July 10, 2022 – I have to get rid of a lot of my self-published books that are boxed in the basement. I was thinking of taking a load of them to donate to The Friends of the San Francisco Library. Also, next week, I can bring a box of my latest book, In the Time of My Life, to Shirley Herndon’s memorial at the Pomeroy Center next Sunday and give it away to anyone who wants it. Shirley and I were in the same water aerobics class. She wanted my grandson Joe to meet her grandchildren because Joe is of mixed-race as are Shirley’s grandchildren.
My friend Nate just returned my call from earlier today. He believes, like the Supreme Court, that state legislatures should vote on whether that state should have abortions or not. Forget state legislatures—I think each state should have a ballot measure for their voters to vote on.
Monday, July 11, 2022 – Today is Nate Wirt’s birthday. We talked last night for about ten minutes. We’re a month apart in age. We became friends in the seventh grade. In the eighth grade I joined Nate’s sports club, the Eagles. The Eagles played all three major sports in the YMCA league for two years before we went on to Fairfax High. Nate, a fierce competitor in his day, didn’t fare well in football at Fairfax. He got on the bad side of Coach Valentine before we even played our first game of the season. We were scrimmaging against San Fernando High on their field when Coach Valentine tore into Nate for not tackling a San Fernando running back correctly, and that was the end of Nate’s football career, although he stayed on the team till the end of the season.
I’m down to 205 today. Last month I weighed 211. It’s a slow process, losing weight. But eating two meals a day seems to be working, although I pick every so often between meals.
Donald Trump has been dividing this country since he became president in 2017. The man is the most treasonous person in American history. He really belongs in jail for what he’s put this country through for the past six years. He’s always dividing, always lying, always cheating, always out for himself. Oh, how I hope he gets his comeuppance someday.
Wednesday, July 13, 2022 – The January 6th Committee held their seventh hearing today. Next week I believe they’ll point the finger at Donald Trump as the instigator of the Insurrection. That’s when they’ll conclude the first part of their hearings. They’ll tell us that it was Trump’s idea and that he did nothing to stop the three-hour ransacking of the Capitol. He did NOTHING to stop six deaths and 140 Capitol Police from being injured. How treasonous is that? The man is still stumping around the country to say that the election was stolen from him. That man and his sycophants belong in jail for the remainder of their lives for doing what they did, and they’re still doing it, goddammit. I know Trump has millions of followers. I’m sure the Department of Justice realizes that, but Trump and his enablers, if they aren’t responsible for their actions, if they aren’t held accountable, if the DOJ lets them off the hook, then our country is in deep trouble. As the hearings are taking place, there are elected Republicans in Washington D.C. and in the states around the country who are ignoring the proceedings, as are the broadcasters who work for Fox News, people like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham who kowtow to the Australian who owns Fox News and its affiliates, Rupert Murdoch.
Today I took out the garbage and recycling as I usually do on Wednesdays. It’s a tiring job for me. After I get all that belongs into the garbage bin, recycling bin, and compost bin, I roll the bins out to the curb. I usually sweep the sidewalk, the driveway, the gutter and that’s that. But today, I dug up several dead plants and swept what needed sweeping. Then I came inside and just rested in my office chair. I fell asleep for a while. I needed to go for a walk after the rest, which I did. On the walk I had to stop a few times to rest. I don’t like this feeling of being dog-tired like I feel today. Ever since I went off prednisone, I don’t have energy. Oh, to regain some energy. How can I get it back? My sleep is all right. My energy should be there, except it isn’t. What can the matter be?
I’m about ready to finish this entry and go into the kitchen to have some of Joan’s wonderful chicken soup that she’s prepared. I will fill my bowl with soup, take a non-alcoholic beer out of the fridge, turn on the TV, and watch the news on CNN and MSNBC, two cable news networks that come much closer to the truth than Fox News. Then around 10:30 I’ll get ready for bed, and that will be the end of my day.
Sunday, July 31, 2022 – Last weekend, Ray and I drove down to L.A. to be at my brother Dave’s memorial. All 22 of us boarded a boat in Marina del Rey and deposited Dave’s ashes in the ocean off the coast of Will Rogers State Beach, where he used to go with his wife Bertha and two sons, Ray and Richard, to body surf in the Pacific. Dave loved the beach. After the boat docked, we all drove to a fancy restaurant in Marina del Rey. It was a joyful occasion on the boat and at the restaurant for all of us to get together and celebrate my brother’s life.
Thursday, August 18, 2022 – Why haven’t I written in a long time? There are so many things happening in my life and around the world that I don’t know where to start. Of course, Donald Trump is in the news EVERY DAY. The man is fighting a tidal wave of law suits, espionage, treason, you name it, he’s fighting and losing every battle, and the Republican sheep are still backing him. Yes, many people in the upcoming primaries are still saying the 2020 election was rigged and that Trump won in a landslide. What chutzpah they have, trying to lie Donald Trump back into the presidency. Everyone knows the election was on the up and up, but the Trumpists refuse to admit it, they refuse to get it into their thick skulls that he lost the election, that he ignited an Insurrection, that he’s lied thousands of times, and that he brought division and hatred back to America. The man is the ruination of this country and the democratic process. And still there are Republican members of Congress and Republican state officials who back him. They are as much to blame as Trump is. They’ve gone along with a liar and cheat when they knew he didn’t win the election.
Not one Republican in the Senate or House voted for the Inflation Reduction Act that just passed both houses, plus all the other bills that the Biden administration has passed with only a slight majority in the House and a 50-50 split in the Senate, with vice-president Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote. So much needs to be done in this country. But the Republicans refuse to think of the country’s welfare; all they want is to hold onto their seats in Congress.
Last weekend I went up to Reno with Rob Plath, Gene Grossman, Manny Weiss, and Jerry Lipkin. We five drove in a rented SUV that could seat us all comfortably. There were two others at Steve Dessy’s house who lived in Reno and we played poker for three days. I played for only two days. I’m not a gambler. It was very hot in Reno. We all went out to breakfast three mornings and ate dinner out two nights. Steve and his wife Linda fed us dinner one night. We all had a good time, except I didn’t do well playing poker. My heart just wasn’t into playing for three days. I lost something like $50-$60.
Saturday, August 27, 2022 – I have COVID-19. The first day was pure hell. I ached all over. It was like having an extremely bad case of the flu. Thank goodness I’d been vaccinated and boosted. It saved me from having to go to the hospital. I don’t see how people who haven’t been vaccinated and boosted can take a chance with COVID still going around.
I’m feeling very tired after waking up two days ago and feeling awful. I had no life in me on Thursday. Joan helped me take a home test and it showed right away that I had COVID. I had a never-ending running nose, a bad sore throat, a very hoarse voice, and an incessant cough. I’m taking Paxlovid pills that are supposed to help people over 65 from getting further complications.
Monday, August 29, 2022 – I’m getting stronger after coming down with COVID four days ago. I’m feeling much better. Very little cough, no sore throat, no runny nose, no aches or pains, no headache, no congested chest. Yes, I feel much better.
The sun, after early morning fog, just came out for the third day in a row. I sat in the backyard the last two days and read the paper in the sun or just took in the sun. I was thinking of taking a short walk today, but right now I’m a little tired from doing a few things around the house. It’s Monday and I’m expecting a call from Charles Lewman. Charles and his wife live in Dana Point. They haven’t gotten COVID, even though they haven’t been vaccinated or boosted like most people have. If they do come down with COVID it might be life threatening for them. I wish them luck.
In a couple of days, I’m going to take the COVID home test to see if it’s negative, which means I can get out and do things in the city that I haven’t been able to do since last Thursday. It’s good that you have to quarantine when one has COVID. It helps to rest so you can gain back your strength.
The Giants are in dire straits. They keep losing and are three games under .500. There’s still hope to get into the playoffs, but it seems like everyone has given up on them, even themselves. There will be massive changes to the team next year. Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, Evan Longoria, Joc Pederson, and especially some men in the bullpen are about ready for the chopping block. Age and injuries have caught up with them. Also general manager Farhan Zaidi and manager Gabe Kapler might lose their jobs.
Today, like I do every morning, I stepped on the scale and I weighed 200 pounds. That’s the least I’ve weighed in many a year.
Tuesday, August 30, 2022 – The mind wanders from here to there and everywhere. Where is my mind this very minute? Close to a minute ago, I was looking through my 1958 Fairfax High School yearbook. I saw pictures of a lot of people who were my classmates, who I played sports with, along with the coaches and teachers that I had. But there was one person missing in the yearbook. Of all the times I’ve looked through it, it was the first time I looked for her and she wasn’t there. Her name was Miss Olson. She was my English teacher my senior year. It was Miss Olson who complimented me by having me read to the class a couple of essays I wrote. I’ve mentioned those two essays in several of my journal writings. One essay was whether I wanted to be an unhappy Socrates or a happy fool (I chose Socrates), the other was what I would do on my last day on Earth. What I want to get across is that Miss Olson was a tremendous influence in my life, as was Miss Weiskopf, my science teacher. Both complimented me on what I wrote.
Tomorrow, August 31, I’m going to take a COVID home test. I’ve been quarantining for the past five or six days. Tomorrow, after I test myself, it will tell me if the Paxlovid and the quarantine have helped in curing me of the coronavirus. Joan and I have been pretty good about staying apart from one another and wearing masks in the house. She, at first, thought she was going to get COVID from me. She hasn’t. Her attitude is much more positive now. Tomorrow we’ll find out if either of us has it or not. The odds are that we don’t have it. Joan hasn’t felt any symptoms and my symptoms have disappeared. Great, wonderful, fantastic!
Yesterday Charles Lewman and I talked on the phone. Charles and I went to junior high and high school together. He was the pitcher for the B9 baseball team. It was Charles who pitched to me in the annual A9-B9 baseball game in front of the whole student body on a June day in 1955. I was hyped for the game, and the first pitch I saw from Charles was right over the plate. I swung and hit the ball that sailed over the left field fence. It was rare that a ball would be hit over the fence in an A9-B9 game, a rare feat indeed. Although the ball was close to the foul line, the umpire called it a home run. After I touched home plate, one of the teachers standing along the foul line approached the umpire and told him the ball went foul. The umpire immediately changed his mind. I returned to the plate to try to repeat my great feat, but struck out. I’ve written a story about that in my novel Morning Pages and called it “Back, Back, Back.” The teacher who went up to the umpire was Sheldon Munach, who I detest to this very day for doing what he did. The umpire was Gordon Schiff, a student at Fairfax High.
Charles and I played on the Fairfax football team. Both of us had a good game against University High my senior year, Charles’ junior year. Both of us scored a touchdown in that game. We were running an offense that University High had never seen. I was the quarterback, and right behind me, in a line, were two running backs, and to the left or right of the first man behind me, was another running back. I could hand off to one and fake a handoff to another. University High was dumbfounded with our trickery. No school had ever seen the formation that Coach Frank Shaffer had devised for us. We had our best game against University High, a team that turned out to be the champions of our league. We ran all over them with me faking and handing off or handing off and faking.
Anyway, Charles and I hooked up about eight or nine years ago when he and his wife Karen were living on Nob Hill in San Francisco. They now reside in Southern California.
As I was watching a Giants baseball game on TV eight or nine years ago, the phone rang. It was Charles. He said he had heard I lived in San Francisco and had an urge to call me after 50 years of being out of each other’s lives. We became close friends and went on many walks along Crissy Field to the Golden Gate Bridge and back (a four-mile walk altogether). Before embarking on our walks, we took a couple of tokes of pot.
Speaking of pot, I have my greatest times with my friends as we take a couple of tokes before starting out on our walks. I walk with Lou Berman, another football teammate of mine at Fairfax High, and George Krevsky, who I met when I moved from Portland to San Francisco in 1977. I met George in a Men’s Group that seven of us were a part of. Stan Lipkin, a friend of mine from Fairfax High who lived in San Francisco at the time, introduced me to the group. Stan is now living in Thailand with his Thai wife Tui. They live on Stan’s Social Security checks.
The mind wanders from one thought to another. That’s why I love writing in my journal—you never know what will pop into it.
Friday, September 23, 2022 – My right knee is swollen and weak. I’m stuck with a bad knee for the remainder of my life. “That’s life,” as Frank Sinatra sang. But my life is not over because of a bad knee. I can still walk. How can I walk on this weak knee that makes me limp at times? The answer is, I have to walk. I don’t care about the pain or limp as long as I can stand on my two feet and walk. Walking keeps my heart pounding and my blood flowing. Walking awakens all my senses. Sure, I get tired while walking. I have to stop for a breather more often than I did last year. This will go on until I can’t walk anymore.
I know I’m going to die someday, and that day is getting closer for me at the age of 82. As each day passes, my arthritic shoulder hurts; my arthritic knee is swollen and sore; my lower back muscles are always tight; my surgically repaired hips make me aware of my limitations. My body shouts at me when I’m out of breath walking up a hill. I’m getting old is what my body is telling me.
How will I react as my body deteriorates? My brothers Dave, Bob, and Maurice welcomed death, in a way. Their bodies quit on them. Will that happen to me? My dad’s body quit on him (he was bedridden for almost two years before he passed away). My mom, she passed away of a heart attack in her sleep. She didn’t suffer like my father and brothers did. My brother Charles, the oldest of all my brothers, died at the age of 63 of a massive heart attack while chasing after a thief. A woman cried for help after her purse was snatched from her. Charles answered the call and died trying to be a Good Samaritan. Death came too early in his life. He, like my mom, didn’t suffer for long.
Death. Everyone dies in their own inimitable way. I’m thinking of death because I know my body is slowly deteriorating. And that’s OK. Go on, body, make it nice and easy for me as I slowly deteriorate, for as Dean Martin sang in one of his songs, “Just take it nice and easy.”
Don Ellis comes to mind. He’s the one who discovered me when he accepted my novel Morning Pages. He saved me from being a nothing writer into a something writer. He paid me $1000 each for publishing two of my books in 1999. If it wasn’t for him, I’d probably be a struggling and unpublished writer to this day. I don’t know what would have happened to my writing career if he didn’t accept Morning Pages and The Immortal Mouth and Other Stories. What a lucky man I am! Don paid me for my writing. How many writers can say that? A lot, for sure, except I look at it like I would an iceberg where 1/10th of the paid writers are at the top of the iceberg sticking out of the water, but as you go below the water level, there are 9/10th of the writers who’ve never made a penny out of their writing.
Wednesday, October 5, 2022 – I put my latest yearly journal, Journal 1990: Coaching My Son’s Little League Team, on Amazon and on my website two weeks ago. I’m now working on Journal 1993.
Aaron Judge hit his 62nd home run yesterday for the New York Yankees. He now holds the American League record that stood for 62 years by Roger Maris with 61 homers. Maris broke Babe Ruth’s 60 home run record after 34 years.
Baseball’s regular season ended today. The Giants won against the Padres, giving them a record of 81-81 for the season. As their record indicates, they were just a mediocre team that didn’t get into the playoffs.
The San Francisco 49ers won a BIG game two nights ago against the Los Angeles Rams 24-9. Deebo Samuel was the star of the game, catching a short pass from Jimmy Garoppolo and breaking three tackles on his way to a 53-yard touchdown. Jimmy G., compared to the week before against the Denver Broncos, played a flawless game. The guy is a winner, even though his arm isn’t that strong and he’s not a threat to run with the ball.
Joan and I saw our grandson Joe in Oakland for the second Sunday in a row this past weekend. The kid is growing, learning, talking, understanding. He’s a curious little fellow of 2½ years old.
Why am I working on my yearly journals? So someone someday will read them and know the story of what a dedicated writer, married man, grandfather, sports fan, and lover of democracy was all about. My son Ray is probably the only one who might be interested in my journals. I’ll tell him about them when the time is ripe for me to do so.
Tuesday, October 18, 2022 – The midterm elections are almost upon us. Every election is important, but this one is extra special. This election will tell us whether our democracy will survive, because there are people on the ballot who don’t believe that Joe Biden should be our president. They are called election deniers, brought to their attention by one man who was once president. That man has a great following of blind lemmings. It’s so important that this election will say something about the anti-democratic forces in this country, whether they gain power or not. If they gain power, the future of our democracy will be extinguished. God help us if that happens.
It seems that half the population wants to reverse the course of democracy by stating that some people are not equal to others. That’s the crux of the matter. The Trumpists believe only in power, not democracy. They believe that anyone of color is a threat to this country. They’re afraid of the white race losing its power. Black, Brown, Asian, and now Jews are known as enemies of the white race in this country.
Please, America, don’t let democracy fade into autocracy or fascism. Please don’t let it happen. Please be aware of the irrational thinking that’s going on—the thinking of not allowing abortions, of promoting guns, of suppressing votes, of gerrymandering districts, of using sexism and racism and anti-Semitism to gain power. Please, America, wake up to the fact that one man has chosen to use hate to gain his power back. White Power is not even mentioned in his words, it’s hidden in the words Make America Great Again (MAGA). We have to save our democracy. What will future generations think of us throwing it away so one race of people can rule over the other races. Shame on you, America. Shame on you!
Tuesday, November 8, 2022 – Today is midterm election day in America. A lot of people still refuse to believe that Joe Biden is our president, which is insanity. They’ve been bamboozled by one man into believing he won the 2020 election by a landslide, when, in fact, he lost the popular vote and the Electoral College vote by large margins. In other words, that man is saying my vote didn’t count. It’s one of the biggest lies perpetrated on the people of our country in many a year.
Saturday, November 19, 2022 – In the midterm elections last week, the country came through and voted mainly against the Trumpists. But the Republicans still won the House of Representatives 222-213. The Democrats have 50 seats in the Senate and I’m hoping Rafael Warnock wins the Georgia senate runoff against former football player Herschel Walker. Warnock is so much more intelligent and refined than Walker. Here’s hoping he wins the runoff on December 6. I’ve given twice to the Warnock campaign. I’ll probably receive requests for more money. Nancy Pelosi said she’s giving up her Democratic leadership in the House in January to Hakeem Jeffries, congressman from Brooklyn, who I truly like because he’s articulate and speaks common sense.
Gas prices are above the $5 mark. Food and goods are more expensive than a year ago. A lot of people are losing their jobs in the tech sector. Joe Biden is doing his best to hold inflation down. Interest rates are up, especially for new homeowners.
Sunday, December 18, 2022 – Argentina beat France in the World Cup today. Argentina’s star player, Lionel Messi, scored one goal and assisted on another. And then there was France’s star player Kylian Mbappé who at 23 has such pure, natural talent. He scored two goals. The game went into overtime for 45 minutes and the score was still tied 2-2. A shootout was necessary. Argentina won the shootout in a game that the announcers and sportscasters said was the greatest World Cup game ever played.
And then the 49ers, earlier in the week, defeated the Seattle Seahawks to clinch the West Division championship behind the great quarterbacking of Brock Purdy, the talk of the NFL. He’s come through for the Niners in all three games he’s been in (he replaced Jimmy Garoppolo who broke his left foot). The kid is a real pro, although he was the last man chosen in the NFL draft at #262. The last man chosen is always given the name of “Mr. Irrelevant.”
The Giants signed Carlos Correa, formerly of the Houston Astros who played last year with the Minnesota Twins. He signed for 13 years for a grand total of $350 million. One of the largest contracts in any sport. He’s a shortstop and it seems like it gives the Giants some credibility in Major League Baseball. They went out on the limb and signed a 28-year-old for 13 years, which means his contract will be over when he’s 41. The Giants say they’ll be a complete team if and when they find a center fielder and maybe a relief pitcher or two. Here’s hoping they get what they want so they’ll be able to contend against the Dodgers and Padres in the National League West Division next year.
Gas is in the $4 range today. Putin’s War rages in Ukraine. Israel elected Netanyahu again, the schmuck. Senator Krysten Sinema has changed her party affiliation from Democrat to Independent. I never had any respect for that woman, who, it seems, cares more about her looks and wardrobe than her principles. Downtown San Francisco is the emptiest downtown in the whole country because all the tech workers started working from home after COVID hit 2½ years ago. The latest statistics show that 60-70% of the offices in downtown are empty, which means the transit system, retail stores, and restaurants are empty. What’s going to happen with downtown San Francisco? That’s the big question that no one has yet to answer. I haven’t been downtown in three years.
Monday, December 19, 2022 – The House Select Committee submitted their report on the Insurrection of the Capitol. Donald Trump and several others, like his lawyers and maybe some Congress people, were responsible for inciting the Insurrection and should be held accountable. It’s taken almost two years to complete the report when everyone in his right mind knew on that January 6th day in 2021 that Donald Trump, President of the United States, incited a rebellion against his own government. There’s only one word for what he did: TREASON. I say put that man in jail before he stirs up more trouble. If he isn’t jailed, he will bring down our democracy in ways we don’t even know yet.
Monday, December 26, 2022 – Carlos Correa did not sign the 13-year $350 million contract with the Giants. The Giants had to call it off because of Correa’s bad back and gimpy ankle.
As for the 49ers. A couple of nights ago I wrote a short poem after watching them defeat the Washington Commanders 37-20.
Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house
My wife was Zooming with her family
While I was watching the 49ers and Brock Purdy.
Purdy, “Mr. Irrelevant,” a rookie, has played four games at quarterback for the 49ers and has led the team to victory in all four. It will be a Cinderella story if he takes the 49ers to the Super Bowl. [Note: The 49ers, led by Purdy, won two playoff games and got to the NFC Championship Game to play the Philadelphia Eagles. Purdy, early in the first quarter, sustained a severe elbow injury in his throwing arm and the 49ers lost to the Eagles 31-7. The Eagles went on to play in the Super Bowl and lost a thriller to the Kansas City Chiefs 38-35.]
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