April 15, 2020

Angie Parrotta has died. She was on anybody’s top 10 list of prettiest girls at Ellet. And without the lofty air some of the other pretty girls had. She even once went out with me.

I note that the light bulb in the elephant lamp on my desk has been burning non-stop, twenty four hours a day since I moved in.

Minor gardening day, planting California poppy, morning glory, yellow 4 o’clocks.

Posted this on Facebook: Some reflections on the current administration: at any other time, in any other place the volcano of indecencies now occupying the the White House would not be in the White House, but in prison. He goes on national TV and declares his intention to subvert the Constitution, and yet survives. He commits in one day 5 abominations that would have unseated any other president in American history the first time through. Yet. . . he survives, on TV the next night, in a time of plague, jawing about how wonderful he is, and if something has gone wrong, it is not his fault. And yet he survives. He is constitutionally incapable of telling the truth or believing in the full reality of anyone but himself. . . and yet he survives. The future is going to look at us and see bad judgment worse (because the issue was clearer, the evil rhetoric absolutely unashamed) than that which saw Hitler to power. No one with a brain or a conscience can vote Republican ever after this. The second thing is, I am a playwright, and pride myself on being able to write a play about anything. Nope. Uh uh. Not this. Why? Because you have to make Trump ten times brighter and more human than he really is to have a remotely believable character. The truth of him is too vile and sickening to work in fiction. Nobody would believe it. His affect is comical but his effect is tragic. Flat, two-dimensional, nothing but a pair of fat baby hands reaching out and saying "gimmee gimmee." He would be laughed off any stage. That his stage is not a stage but the world is the most horrifying thing in my lifetime-- and I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc. And I haven't even seen this evening's abominations. . . .

With the dogwoods in full glory, looking out any window is looking through an ivory lattice.