Yesterday was our hottest day yet -- about 90º F or 32º C. It was too hot to do much. I know many of you in North America are experiencing temperatures hotter than that, but here in England most people (including us) don't have air conditioning. So when it's 90º F, we're feeling it all day. It's draining. My only escape is taking a shower, which I happily did last evening once things began to cool off.
I kept reading "All the President's Men," which I am still enjoying a lot. The parallels between Nixon's time and now are so stark. Like the current president of the USA, Nixon was considered a somewhat coarse individual, and he was full of resentment against a power structure he felt had long mistreated him. He and his administration spent a lot of time sowing seeds of doubt about the media. They depicted reporters as representatives of a coastal elite who didn't understand "real Americans." It's exactly the messaging we hear from Trump now.
And despite all the evidence about the dirty tricks being employed by the Nixon White House against its adversaries, voters overwhelmingly re-elected Nixon in 1972. Again, parallels with Trump and our last election -- Nixon ran against a weak Democratic candidate and voters went with what they knew. Somehow it makes me feel better about Trump's re-election. We've done this before and survived, though admittedly not without a huge governmental crisis.
Anyway, I read about Watergate until I couldn't anymore, and then in the evening I watched the movie version again. It was very interesting to see how the movie condensed all of the detail in the book into a coherent script that was by and large very accurate. As far as I can tell, the only scene in the movie that's not in the book is the one in which Woodward and Bernstein knock on the door of a woman who supposedly works at the Committee to Reelect the President, and she welcomes them in (unlike all the other people they've approached), only for them to find that she doesn't work at CRP at all but at the Garfinkel's department store. I don't know whether the script writers made that up, or it really happened and "Woodstein" left it out of the book.
Oh, and Deep Throat's famous advice to "follow the money" is never uttered in the book, either. Not in those words, anyway.
I made a tomato sandwich for lunch with an heirloom tomato I bought at our local produce market. It was good but not as good as I thought it might be. I love a tomato sandwich in summer but tomatoes in England are just not like tomatoes in Florida. Dave would say it doesn't get hot enough here (except yesterday!), and maybe he's right.
Through all of this, I was hearing the sounds of packing tape being ripped upstairs, as the Russians prepare for their move. It filled my heart with joy.
(Re. the graffiti above: Funny, because I have the exact opposite reaction.)
Although it's cooler this morning, I'm seeing that we're not going to have any rain for the next few weeks, which includes our week away in Pevensey Bay. I feel like we're going to have to figure out some way to get the plants watered during that time. If only we had reasonable neighbors I could ask!
Our hottest day so far is supposed to be today, at around 33C in the afternoon where I live, and up to 37C in the hottest parts of Germany. As long as it cools off below 20 over night, I am fine, but when the nights aren't much cooler than the days and I can't seem to get fresh air into my flat (no air conditioning here, either) and don't sleep well, that's when the heat gets to me.
ReplyDeleteWe recently watched a documentary about NIxon. What a complicated, tense man he was.
ReplyDeleteCooler here today, thank goodness.
Your smaller plants pop onto a towel in your shower cubical, give it a good soak, should last for the week, bigger plants get a few plastic bottles, one for each big pot, cut the bottom off and pop into the soil water the plant and fill the bottle, you can remove the lid or make hole in them to decide the flow of water.
ReplyDeleteWe’re planning a 2- or 3-week trip in September and, for that reason, haven’t purchased any plants for the new place. One less thing to worry about, although we do need a cat sitter. But your house is a different matter. If I were your neighbor, I’d gladly visit the plants. The comparisons between Nixon and the Orange Menace are astounding, although Nixon looks good in comparison.
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ReplyDeleteGive your plants a good soaking just before you go to Pevensey and they will surely be okay. This blogpost was somewhat disappointing as you did not refer to the American bombing of Iran. Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, describes the attack as "brave" and "historic". What a proud morning for Americans everywhere but didn't King McDonald say that he would give Iran two weeks?
ReplyDeleteYour reflections weave history, politics, and daily life so vividly. It's striking how the echoes of the past feel so present, and I hope the coming cooler days (and maybe some good tomatoes) bring you some well-earned relief.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you could grow your own tomatoes? You would only need a couple of plants and they will taste way better than the horrible supermarket stuff.
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