Round Number Birthday Under Ground

 

The above ground entrance to the Salt Cellar, a classic "old Scottsdale" standby we have long wanted to visit. Reservations absolutely necessary

Over the course of the last month, the odometer of my years rolled over to a zero-ending year. My Fifties are over and have Sixties have begun.

Birthdays are typically a time of melancholy reflection for me. I think part of it is the time of year I was born. The first week of October is typically the last embers of summer--the last days that can be considered hot. This was true in the Midwest and Colorado, where I grew up, but strangely as well in Arizona. It is the cusp when warm nights give way to chilly ones, and I move indoors during my morning prayers, even turning on the heater. It is part of my character to feel as if I was born into a world of things that are passing away right as I arrive---things being whisked away just as my eyes notice them.  I have felt this way from childhood.

During the years I traveled alone as a nomad, when my birthday arrived, I felt a need to distract myself by doing something out of the ordinary, to avoid brooding about people and things from the past. I particularly remember my 48th birthday, visiting Sequoia National Park as a remarkable day.  I have noticed the joy I get in recollecting what I did on previous birthdays, going back to childhood. As such I strive to do this. It creates a narrative upon which I can hang other events in my life, and help me recall the passage of time.

This year I felt a greater burden in this regard because of it was a round-zero age. I don't remember much what my 10th birtday, but can reconstruct what I probably did that day (I do remember birthdays 3, 4, 5, 6, ad 7, but not 10).

On my 20th birthday, I walked over to the mall with my mother and we had lunch and she bought me a pair of shoes. On birthday 30, my then-girlfriend Laura arranged a surprise party of my friends in Fort Collins event though we lived in Austin. She blind folded me as she drove me to the old Austin airport. She was sure the machine that dispensed parking tickets would give it away, but I was totally suprised. My friends Cara and Torger hosted in the event in the host they used ot own, across the street from the old library. My Colorado friends where there, the ones from one I have been estranged. I didn't know about the party. I suggested we stop and say hello as we were driving by, and got taken by surprise when we walked in the door. That was 30 years ago. 

Twenty years ago I was driving across the country after leaving Laura, whom I had married. I was on my way to Oregon, following the Oregon Trail. I woke up in Wyoming at a campround with a nascent tooth abcess and and detoured down to Fort Collins to see my mother and father, and also some of my friends. We were all excited about John Kerry in the election. When I got to Oregon, I watched Kerry lose in the Melody Ballroom in east Portland. It foreshadowed some tough times ahead, as my old self died.

Ten years ago, Jessica and I were in Stockholm. We went to the ABBA museum and had a wonderful luxurious dinner.

This year there was nothing I particularly wanted to do, but I didn't want the day to pass without doing something to mark the day in my memory. So I went over the swimming pool of our complex and took a dip and then sat in the cabana, reading a book about Joe Kennedy, enjoying the lingering heat of an Arizona autumn. We watched Trump and Elon Musk at a rally in the same place where he had recently been shot by a would-be assassin. 

Then we went out to dinner at a well-known seafood place in south Scottsdale, the Salt Cellar, that is located completely underground. Afrer entering one goes down a winding ramp that reminded me of Casa Bonita in Denver.  The Salt Cellar is a well-known "birthday" location, we learned. The waiter asked us "whose birthday is it?" without us even telling him. 

Sixty was good, the most relaxed round number since 20. But my thoughts have evolved. Across the street from the restaurant is a cemetery. I wondered about the coincidence, and if I'll make it to another round number. If I don't, I don't. I've had a good run. 

Trump in Person

 

The gentleman who wrote the original post is a journalist has inspired a rather profane entry in the urban dictionary, largely thanks to the cartoonist and podcaster Scott Adams. Of course his statement here is hyperbole, but one recognizes that it is uttered with contempt. As for me, telling people "I love being White" is one of my favorite things to tell people, whenever the subject of race comes up. I always say it cheerfully, just as I would say, "I'm proud of my German-American background. I'm proud of my Trump ancestors who were pioneers, two of who were the first white couple married in the Iowa Territory. 

It was Jessica who got tickets to the Tucker Carlson Live event that was held at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale on Thursday evening. Going to public events with crowds is usually not something I seek out. But if anything, Jesssica is more enthusiastic about voting for Trump this year than I am. She loathes Harris.

It was fun to attend, although it was in the evening, and anything past 9 PM is usually well past my bedtime.

It was the first time we had visited this. part of the metro area, where many of major arenas are located. Until recently, the local pro hockey team played here (and practiced on the facility near us on Bell Road), but the only sporting events we have attended are spring training baseball games.  

After parking in the large adjacent ot, and paying via QR code,  we walked towards the buildings, which include not only the arena, but a casino, and a large outdoor plaza with multiple floors of restaurants and loud music. It reminded me of downtown San Diego--the kind of contemporary "entertainment" districts that cluster around sports complexes. It's a slice of the modern American urban landscape that usually appeals to me not at all, but in this case I felt a joy at experiencing it under these circumstances.

Since this was a paid event for charity (Hurricane relief in Appalachia) we had assigned seats and there was no line to get inside, as there would be in a normal Trump rally, which is free and is general admission. 

Our seats were on the arena floor, about fifteen rows in, on narrow chairs. packed together. Somehow I managed to avoid being severely uncomfortable while sitting in place for seven hours.  

The lights and sound were what one would expect for an arena show---overwhelming, but I enjoyed it very much once it started.  When the show stared, Trump himself was still in Nevada, at a normal Trump rally in Henderson outside of Las Vegas.  The Glendale appearance would be his third event of the day.

After a little live music and a g-rated Trump friend Vegas comedian,  the first speaker was Nicole Shanahan, who had been RFK Jr's running mate before he dropped out and endorsed Trump. I didn't know at the time it was first time speaking in support of Trump in public. She broke down in tears several times apologizing for having once been a Democrat. The crowd loved and went wild for her. Everyone knows that a Trump rally is a great place to feel love. She concluded her speech by filling out her own California mail-in ballot, voting Republican for the first time,  and bypassing her own name, which is still on the ballot (because California, like other "blue" states", wouldn't take it off after she and RFK dropped out, hoping to sabotage Trump). 

RFK jr. soon followed, and of course he got a massive reception of love and applause from the packed arena. Watching him I couldn't help wonder what my late mother, who passed away seven years ago today, and who adored his uncle and his father, would think about this. Her JFK autograph, signed directly to "Maureen", who her prize possession, which she misplaced shortly before she died, but which my sister recently found, wedged into the pages of a book.

I think she would find all this confusing. I don't she ever hated Trump. She's not the type. But she knew she was supposed to hate him, and would gone along with my sisters in expressing it. But it was never an issue between her and me. She would tell me she understood my point of view somewhat. Back then it was dangerous to express any support for him at all. Now none of us give a fuck about what anyone thinks. 

Sometimes I think it is a mercy that my parents passed away when they did. My father spent his final days in the hospital in Fort Collins, leading up to the 2016 Iowa Caucus, telling the cancer ward nurses that he was not related to the "awful" guy running for president. To my late father, Trump's manifest "meanness" was disqualifying. In his mind, Trump represented everything he had spent his life fighting against---hatred, bigotry, bullying, etc. 

As it happens, we are related to President Trump. We have a common ancestor from the same little town in the Rhine-Palatinate in German. My sisters actually knew this, I think, but concealed it. Someone else researched it out of curiosity and discovered it.  I forgive them.

Trump himself came on stage at the climax of the event, after Tucker Carlson, who is very entertaining, speaking about how he left mainstream news. Of course the crowd went wild. Trump did not give a normal "MAGA" address to the crowd like at his rallies, but instead did a sit-down interview in lounge chairs with Tucker. It was during this moments that he said the lines about Liz Cheney that the media would pounce on. It was clear at the time that he referred to her being in a war zone, not that he wanted her to be executed.

But I will tell you there are many on our side who think many on the Left have committed high reason and deserve to be executed. We all know the Leftists would kill us if they could. We know what is at stake.