June 20, 2021

Film of rain, but not enough, so a chunk of my morning went to watering. 

Hung the encaustic painting I bought from the River District. I saw it while we were doing the play. It looked to me like Vishnu’s Sea of Milk. 

Mail was stolen from my mailbox yesterday. I don’t know what they got away with, but what they didn’t want was torn up and strewn under the ilex. I called the police and the sweet young voice on the other end asked me to fill out a form online, because, you know, they are SO understaffed they can’t possibly address such a thing directly. The sweet voices are meant to deflect you from noting their passive-aggressive need to punish us for suggesting defunding. Little fear. At the last City budget meeting, the misbehavior of the Asheville police force during last summer’s demonstrations was punished by a 2% reduction in funds, and that taken from animal control.

Beethoven’s Pastoral streaming from somewhere. Big item on the Internet today scolding–somebody, scholars, maybe-- for not asserting Beethoven was actually black. “Raging controversy,” it’s called, though there’s actually no controversy at all. I remember the trouble I got in asserting that Cleopatra, though technically African, was not black but Macedonian Greek, ten generations before her having obsessed about the purity of the line. I can champion any good cause up until the point it requires lying. Anyway, one forgets between hearings how perfect the Pastoral is. Oh, the last entry I read says Hayden was also black and that’s why Beethoven came to be his student. Real songbirds blending through the window with the music.