It didn’t start out that way. Our first plan was to go to the Bonneville Salt Flats where the Southern California Timing Association would be running high-speed trials and then go north to Glacier National Park and Montana’s Bitterroot Valley for the fall color. Then Bonneville got rained out so it was just Glacier the Bitterroot Valley and then they got smoked out by the West’s increasingly nasty wildfires. Michele suggested we just go to one of our favorite places, the Escalante Canyon area, and stay at the Boulder Mountain Lodge.
Then we decided to add Salt Lake City since all either one of us have done is drive through Salt Lake on our way to someplace else and it is a big city. The fastest way to drive through Nevada to Salt Lake is on Highway 80 which is also the least interesting drive but it is interesting enough so that’s the plan.
Lithops is a genus of succulent plants in the ice plant family, Aizoaceae. Members of the genus are native to southern Africa. The name is derived from the Ancient Greek words λίθος ‘stone’ and ὄψ ‘face’, referring to the stone-like appearance of the plants.Wikipedia
A while back, I’m not sure how far back but during Covid, Michele bought a Lithops from Anthropologie. They are really fun plants but I didn’t think it is hot enough or dry enough here for them to thrive, but they did. And now they are blooming. Life can be grand.
The free people of independent Ukraine! And that says it all. Just four words, but how much is behind them today. the opening lines of s speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky marking Independence Day.
August 24th is Ukraine Independence Day. Exactly six months before the 2022 celebration, on February 24th, Russia attacked Ukraine, so this August 24th also marked the six-month anniversary of that attack. Probably not by coincidence. On this anniversary, it is hard to not comingle the two anniversaries. Actually, that Ukraine still exists is astonishing. All the Intelligence experts predicted, way back on February 24th, that Ukraine would be swallowed up by Russia in a matter of days. Not only did Putin’s attack fail to obliterate Ukraine and weaken NATO as he promised, but both NATO and Ukraine have become stronger.
To mark both occasions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a speech that I think is terrific. It is short and I highly recommend it. In the speech, he points out: “During these six months, we changed history, changed the world and changed ourselves…And the whole world learned who Ukrainians are. What Ukraine is. No one will say about it anymore: it is somewhere over there, near Russia…We started to respect ourselves.”
Andrei Codrescu, a Romanian poet I only know of through hearing him on NPR, said that Eastern Europeans have a morbid sense of humor because they are powerless, caught between two great forces, The West and Russia. That certainly seems true in the case of Ukraine. The photograph of the commemorative stamp set, above, is an example: the original stamp commemorated Roman Hrybov, the Ukrainian soldier on Snake Island who said “Russian warship, go fuck yourself”, the new set shows Hrybov without the ship (because the Ukrainians sunk it with two homemade R-360 Neptune anti-ship missiles).
Every August 24th, Ukraine has a Russianesque Military Parade, this year, the parade was a stationary “parade” made up of wrecked and captured Russian equipment which Zelensky pointed out in his speech “The occupier believed that in a few days he would be on parade in our capital’s downtown. Today, you can see this “parade” on Khreshchatyk. The proof that enemy equipment can appear in the center of Kyiv only in such form. Burnt, wrecked, and destroyed.”
While Ukraine is growing stronger, it is taking a terrible beating in this war as shown in this photo essay in the New York Times. But, I think Ukraine will win for lots of reasons. More than anything else, war hardens opinion, war eliminates nuance, war builds resolve. I remember seeing a recording of Zelensky visiting the Donbas front just after he had been elected. Nine soldiers had just been killed in the ongoing low-grade conflict and newly elected President Zelensky was clearly rattled, saying that the Donbas was not worth any more lives. Now he is a war president and willing to have that many people killed every day to take back the Donbas. But War President Zelensky also wants Crimea back and he seems to be willing to pay for it in additional human life.
I think that Ukraine will win because they have to. If Russia losses they go home, if Ukraine losses they cease to exist. That is a big motivator.
Ukraine’s army is way better than Russia’s. They have younger, more innovative leaders: Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyiare, is 49, and the Russian Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, is 67. That is a big difference in a war which is a 24-hour-a-day seven days week job. Not only are Ukraine’s soldiers more motivated and better led, but they are also better trained and they are becoming better equipped.
Being better equipped also ties back to the first point. I keep reading, usually by the same pundits that predicted Ukraine wouldn’t last ten days, that, by winter, the West will grow weary of supporting Ukraine. I think those pundits have it backward. Those countries now sending equipment to the Ukrainian Army have a vested interest in Ukraine winning, a vested interest that increases as the war goes on. Biden doesn’t want to lose to the Russians on a national and personal basis and the longer this war goes on with the Ukrainians showing they can fight Russia, the more important to the West is a Ukraine win. Weapons that were deemed too provocative in March are now being sent to Ukraine on an almost routine basis. I expect that, within a year, we will have equipped Ukraine with the Patriot Air Defense System or maybe, even the more advanced MEADS system.
When this war is over, and someday it will be over, Ukraine will be closer to Europe not only militarily but also it will be closer to Europe culturally and financially. It is already happening. As destructive as this war has been and will be, I think Ukraine will win and be better off after it.
It feels like the end of summer even though it is mid-August and I think that is because the Amaryllis belladonnas – pink ladies – are blooming ahead of time (they used to bloom in mid-September). Still, it has been a lovely summer here on the east side of the Santa Cruz Mountains with clear skies and the temp hovering about 80°F, plus or minus – today, the 15-day projection for max temperature is 84° 77°, 77°, 77°, 78°, 75°, 74°, 75°, 77°, and 77° – glorious except that it is dry, too dry.
A couple of days ago, we were having a cocktail at the end of the day, sitting on our deck, watching the quail and doves, and a couple of chickadees. They were eating some seed I’d thrown on the ground when something startled them and they all took off at once with a thrashing of wings. As my eyes followed the flock of mixed birds heading up and to my right, something streaked down and to the left. Fast! I bearly caught the flash of striped feathers as it banked hard right, rolling on its side like a fighter plane flying down Star Wars Canyon.
Then, stillness. The silence broken only by a chattering that sounded somewhat like a squirrel.
A couple of minutes later a harrier hawk casually flew over to us, landed on the back of a chair, and started complaining – we think complaining about Precious Mae but it is hard to tell with us not speaking hawk – and then he/she/or it flew up to the edge of the roof to complain some more. Michele caught it on her phone.
Last week was the twentieth anniversary of my heart valve operation. I wouldn’t have died on August 5th, 2002 when I had the operation, or the day after, or even, the month after August 5th, but it is doubtful that I would have lived for another year without the benefit of modern medicine. It is enough to make one a modern medicine believer.
While I was whiling away my day in the hospital, Seton Medical Center in Daily City, Michele, was having lunch – or dinner, I have no idea – at the local Outback, and she noticed a new-to-us Chinese restaurant tucked away at the back of the parking lot. And that’s how she found Koi Palace, a huge – 450-seat huge – traditional Cantonese seafood restaurant. Koi Palace became one of our go-to restaurants but it sort of faded in our consciousness as newer Chinese restaurants, opened, most of them much closer. Then, the Koi Palace people opened another restaurant, Dragon Beaux which has great Dim Sum in a much newer style and we fell in love again.
During the quarantine, I think on our way home from Olympic Valley, we got some takeout from Palette Tea House in San Mateo and it was terrific. Somehow, I got the impression that this was a Chinese chain like the Din Tai Fung chain which has super Dim Sum restaurants in both the LA area and at Valley Fair in San Jose. It turns out, though, that the Palette Tea House was part of the burgeoning Koi Palace chain.
It seemed like it would be natural for a celebratory dinner. And it was. Actually, it may have been the best Chinese meal I’ve ever had. I was astonished and thrilled in the same way as my first meal at Cecilia Chiang’s Mandarin in Ghirardelli Square in the late 1960s or Alice Water’s Chez Panisse in 1972. It was such a great way to celebrate that we went back with Peter and Ophelia.
