This has been quite a different Easter. There are a number of things we didn’t do that we have done on past Easters. It’s from the state of our world of pestilence and time. Time always brings change.

i did not walk to the top of our hill this morning. The drear plaguing the Southwest corner almost parallel to that other plague meant there would be no orb burning through the mist to the east. There was no egg hunt. We are too old for that, but in the late afternoon, Sarah gave me a mini-Three Musketeers bar, which in some ways was more appreciated. Maureen did not go to yoga. And today, she skipped the virtual version with her yoga master on Zoom. Last night, we had  our virtual dinner with our friends, and i did not grill steaks outside. Our wine was good enough i did not care if it was pretentious or not.

We did watch and listen to Andrea Bocelli and his beautiful Easter tribute on You Tube. i was moved and almost cried. i won’t  provide the link here as many other friends have made it accessible on Facebook and you can find it on You Tube.

Yet in some ways, this Easter wasn’t that different. i have included an old post from four years ago about this day. It seems to be other than the exceptions i noted above, the memories abound on this special day.

Regardless of your religious leanings, you should get a feeling of reverence and hope today.

i hope you did.

i have written of Easter before. Several times. It is a hallowed, sacred day.

In the span of my life, it has been much celebrated in many ways.

Today, it has been quiet.

No sunrise service. i did walk to the top of my hill around that time of the morning and watched the white heat orb burning through the mist of the marine layer hanging over Mount Miguel. i had my moment, prayer i guess you could call it. Thankful, sober prayer.

i came down to another Maureen egg special with toast, fruit, and Tennessee Pride country sausage. We sat at our usual places at my great aunt’s oak table, looking out the window at the green lawn as the sun burned through. We read the newspaper with several cups of coffee.

i remembered previous Easters. A not too big Easter egg hunt at home upon awakening and scurrying down the stairs. Those egg hunts remain dim memories except i know i never fared well at the community ones. Perhaps i was too impatient. Sunrise service outside of MacFadden Auditorium in the cool but sunny mornings. Dressing up in our finest, newly purchased spring ensembles to spend most of the day at church. Big, big ham dinner (that’s the midday meal where i come from) in the dining room reserved for only the big family celebrations. For some reasons, the dinner rolls stick out in my mind.

i don’t remember Easter at sea except for my last ship. The chaplain made it a big deal, or at least as big a deal as he could with sailors who preferred to sleep in on the one day of the week they could do so. i do remember a number of Easters at sea when we raised the church pennant above the U.S. Ensign on Easter. It was the only pennant or flag we ever flew above the ensign.

Most of all, i remember Easter Egg hunts with my two daughters. The ones with Blythe were sadly few in the first years of her life. It was such a beautiful sight to see her dressed up in a pinafore dress with her beautiful blonde hair and carrying a real basket. She would laugh excitedly every time she spied another real colored egg hidden somewhere by her clever mother.

The hunts with Sarah were outside at first, usually confined to the courtyard. She behaved just like her sister when finding an egg. i guess that is pretty much a universal response for children on Easter egg hunts. The hunts here in the Southwest corner quickly moved indoors. Sarah’s mother delighted in her own cleverness in hiding the foil covered chocolate eggs. The Easter Bunny, or as he signed his nickname “E.B.,” began to leave a note each year, usually extolling Sarah’s behavior and telling her of how the others who left her notes on big days, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, shared his fondness for her.

Maureen is off to yoga. i have cleaned the grill. We had steak last night with a superb California Red wine from Shebang “without too much pretension” as the label describes it. I like pretty much any wine without too much pretension. Unlike my old grill, i am taking good care of this relatively new “egg” knockoff.

We are going to friends for dinner tonight.

That’s it.

i sit in my office with many tasks and other writing projects piled around me. The sun slinking low to the south is now in its glory. The mist and the clouds have burned off. The bougainvillea outside my office window is the healthiest it has been in years after the rain of previous months and somehow reminds me it’s Easter.

Sitting in my desk chair, i meditate, something i have found greatly calming, refreshing, and empowering in just the last six months or so. Again i had my moment we might call prayer. i think of my two daughters, son-in-law, and grandson. i know Sam had yet another successful Easter egg hunt in Austin. i suspect Sarah either participated with Blythe and her family or with one or other of the children she tends. i am happy for them.

The Easter Bunny didn’t leave any eggs for us here in the Southwest corner. He didn’t leave a note either. i checked.

He did leave something better.

Hope.

i am breaking a number of my vows here.

But the below link to an opinion piece struck me hard in an area where i devoted a good chunk of my life.

And i don’t care which side of the aisle you are on, what else is important to you. i may agree or disagree with you because, in my opinion, all blocs of the political spectrum have lost common sense. If somehow beyond my imagination at this time, the Republicans were to put someone else on the presidential ballot beside the present one, then i would have a difficult decision about how to cast my vote. i see positive and negative on the positions of both parties.

But this NBC piece pretty well sums up my opinion of our current “Commander In Chief.” He is is disgrace in this role. Jeff McClausen perfectly describes the situation.

Now i’m not trying to convince anyone as to how they should vote based on Trump’s behavior with the military. But if you are voting for someone who understands an effective relationship between the military and the country as  prescribed for our founding fathers, you have lost your mind if you vote for this president, who is clueless about the crucial relationship between our military and the civilian government of our great country.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-navy-secretary-debacle-about-more-modly-s-mistakes-ncna1180806

This is just an idea to share.

We tried it out. Maureen claims it was her idea. i claim it was mine. But it really doesn’t matter. Tonight, we pulled it off, with the help of our friends, Pete and Nancy Toennies, their daughter Kim, her fiance Jamie, and especially Sarah who performed magic tricks in the setup and kept the old Jewell folks safely physically distant during the pickups.

In these trying times, we are trying to support our favorite local eateries. This led to a take out from one of the coolest dining experiences in the world, the Wine Vault & Bistro for Maureen’s in shelter  birthday dinner two weeks ago. That precipitated (this is where the argument begins) one of us suggesting we could do a virtual dining experience with friends while sequestered.

We set it up: Facetime to airplay on the computer. Picking up the orders from our magic place.

And for two hours plus, we dined with our friends virtually. No, it wasn’t like being there, but it was damn close.

We shared the asparagus soup, “bisque is made with asparagus, zucchini, onion, garlic and a small amount of potato), the unbelievable “rustic quiche with spinach,” the incredible beef osso buco with saffron couscous and pine nut gremolata, a dessert of  their dark chocolate mousse with raspberries. All with a bottle of their suggested wines.

We turned the TV on airtime, connected via Facetime, and it was pretty close to the real thing. We had a great evening.

And i am hoping we take Maureen’s original idea (according to her) and expand it to others.

More importantly, if you are feeling a bit lonely, a bit blue, you might want to try it with some of your friends.

We will be happy to figure it out if you would like to do it with us.

And i hope you are safe and sane.

Really i’m not. Feelin’ Blue that is.

Oh, horse pucky…and i cleaned that up. By Easter Sunday, we will have hunkered down for 28 days. Four weeks. i think i would be okay with all of this if someone would quit telling me how bad it is and how great they are managing the crisis and give me some realistic expectation when it’s going to be over. If it were my choice to remain sequestered, i’d be okay, but these folks just keep talking about how bad it is.

i’m a little sad that folks are focused on blaming someone else for this pestilence, coming up with conspiracy theories, finding fault with the other political party, having it over hyped and under hyped and not knowing what is really going to happen and how it will affect our lives.

“Feelin’ Blue.”

And being a bit blue ain’t all that bad. i mean in some ways i’ve been a little blue since the first girl broke my heart, and being blue created Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters and Lighting Hopkins and Willie Dixon and Sonny Boy Williamson. So in some ways, i’m okay with that.

But the Southwest corner has not only become vacant buildings and vacant lots and vacant beaches but has done so in a time of drear. i mean drear. The famous weather has forsaken us and wet skies of gray have become the norm for two months with the projection this dismal condition will continue for at least another two weeks.

So in the late afternoon, i have taken to retreating to my garage workshop and turn some LP records into digital form, usually with a Lagunitas “Little Sumpin” pale ale (Thanks, Alan Hicks). Yesterday, i picked out “Creedence Clearwater Revival,” their first album.

i was taken back to Boston, late autumn 1969. Andrew Nemethy and i, shipmates on the USS Hawkins (DD  873) drove from our new homeport of Norfolk (we regrettably had a homeport change from Newport, Rhode Island in July). We drove up in Andrew’s Fiat Spyder. Kathy McMahon (now Klosterman) had begun her graduate work at Boston University (i think it was BU) en route to her doctorate and special needs advocate of high order at the University of Miami, Ohio. She was rooming with a couple of her fellow graduates of Salve Regina, the women’s college in Newport, Rhode Island. We were taking a break before headed to different worlds. i had my orders to head to the Western Pacific in hand. i would be leaving in a few months. Andrew was trying to decide what was next.

We had a wonderful weekend. Tales abound.

But as i sat in my garage workshop, the last cut on side one began to play, i remembered going out on the street on mid-morning Sunday, perhaps to load up for the trip back to Norfolk. Don’t remember.

i do remember someone had their stereo speakers in the open window of another apartment on the street. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Willy and the Poor Boys” had just been released and whoever the stereo owner was had it blasting, echoing down the empty street of  three and four-story apartments. i stopped and listened for about four cuts before returning to the apartment.

The last cut is “Feelin’ Blue,” but it had just the opposite effect on me the other day.

My kind of music.

i hope it makes you feel a little better in this time of pestilence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqHLLgVUFrI

My brother and Marty Snyderman have already commented on my earlier post about hard hit baseballs. Perhaps Rico wasn’t all that fast at that point in his career.

But it did bring up another hard hit ball i did not see in person. In the early 1950’s, i listened to Dick Shively  and then Larry Munson announce the Nashville Vols baseball games. When someone hit a home run, Shively would began slowly with his natural voice, saying repeatedly, “It’s going; it’s going, it’s going,” with each reiteration getting higher pitched and louder until he and the ball reached their zeniths as the ball went over the fence, and Shively concluding with a scream, “IT’S GONE!!!” Munson, as i recall copied this home run narration of Shively’s.

In the one Sulfur Dell game against the Little Rock Travelers, the Vols were ahead in the eighth inning, 3-2. The Travelers player-manager, Les Peden, came to bat with a runner on. Peden hits a long line drive to left center, just left of the huge scoreboard projecting out from the fence. It was exciting already and Munson went wild, screaming his usual “It’s going, going, and hitting his highest note, “IT’S GONE!!!”

But the ball hit squarely against a telephone pole behind the fence and bounced back over the fence almost to the infield. With his voice breaking at his highest pitch and volume, Munson hoarsely in a falsetto screech screamed, “AND IT’S COMING BACK IN.”

Of course, it still counted and the Travelers won the game, but i will never forget that call.