“I am committed to making amends by addressing, through counseling, the underlying issues that led to my abhorrent behavior,” announces a close neighbor of UD‘s here in Bethesda, Md. Having attacked college students holding Black Lives Matter signs on the Crescent Trail (Les UDs walk it all the time), this guy would, you know, prefer not to go to jail; so he’s going to pay some psychiatrists to attest to his attacking-innocent-people-while-cycling problem… A behavior rooted in the abuse he suffered from Mad Mom, Drunk Dad, Perverted Priest, etc.

I mean, not to make light of it; everyone’s got legitimate problems. But consider the fact that rich people with good lawyers routinely avoid jail for … forget abhorrent, illegal behavior… by seizing onto a psychosis or two for which, certes, they will be receiving counseling if you will just leave them the fuck alone.

If you ask UD, crazed assholes willing to assault strangers on a bike path should indeed spend a little time in jail. We will see if this one – even though a rich ‘thesdan – gets there.

Suddenly a jet engine thundered; and I looked up in a starry sky to see low overhead the bright-lit intricate underbelly of a massive military aircraft. It passed at an enormous rate of speed.

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Things gather themselves into something more than unsettling. Cities are aflame – corridors of my city, Washington, are aflame, and a protest is scheduled tomorrow in Bethesda. Layers of surreality: the pandemic; the riots; the storming president.

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When I, the other day, heard for the first time the phrase immunity passport, I thought, That’s what I’ve always had, and I still hold one now. The world does its chaotique, effrayant, thing, and UD sits way back here, amid the shady woods, fragrant flow’rs and crystal floods, taste, my soul, this charming seat, love and glory’s calm retreat, and now there’s a helicopter out there — I just stepped outside to watch it from the other deck — and it’s circling.

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In front of me, as I stood on the decks, gleamed what I’ve come to call The Overdetermined Garden. Our new garden. We ordered up a bee, bird, and butterfly attractor, and boy has it been at it, all abuzz the live-long day… But it means too much to me; my work in it (and beyond it, in our established garden and woods and woody paths) has become too big a part of my buddha-noons, too much an act of belligerence against what is happening to the Isle of the Immune.

Of course no one who lives eight miles from Washington DC really thinks she’s immune. But there’s knowing and there’s realizing.

… from beneath a bush in her new garden.

Soundtrack: Deafening early morning birdsong.

… (Soltan was UD‘s father-in-law) includes a sketch in the style of Soltan in a collection of the student’s work.

… La Kid, of her covoid existence.

All day long, amazing moments in UD‘s woods.

Early this morning, raking some paths, I watched the red fox with the enormous tail glide by behind the honeysuckle bushes.

This afternoon, I discovered bear corn under some old logs. Here it is.

This evening, back at the top of the property to finish clearing paths, I watched a pileated woodpecker go at one of our dead upright trees. It took its time, letting me stand ten feet away gawking while its powerful beak easily tossed off large chunks of bark. The moment was much like this, except this woodpecker works on deepening a hole, while my woodpecker (what a big bird!) moved from one area of sheared trunk to another, gulping bugs as it went.

Oh, and then I found a large deer antler – not an unusual event around here. I tossed it to the dog, who added her teeth marks to the many already on it.

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Update: Who knew the woodpecker’s tree was called a “snag”? The New York Times pats UD on the back for keeping lots of dead trees around.

… UD‘s back deck. The deck features the newly-stained brown that both UDs, on seeing it completed, decided looked like diarrhea. They had already made preparations to have it redone when the virus postponed things.

In the time she’s been living with it, UD has gradually become fond of it… What wonderfully adaptive beings are human beings…

On a high branch in one of the very big trees in the distance, UD watched, yesterday afternoon, with her green and black binoculars, a Cooper’s Hawk. It perched there a long time. Good call. The name of the ground game chez UD is rabbit/squirrel/vole.

SPA WITH INFRARED SAUNA AND STEAM SHOWER, GLASS ENCLOSED WINE CELLAR, BUILT IN LOWER LEVEL BAR, INDOOR GOLF SIMULATOR ROOM AND INDOOR SPORT COURT WITH SYNTHETIC ICE

UD is not the first to notice something strange and soothing about the simple singsong flow of the Swedish accent.

She has lately, under plague conditions, also noticed that long sessions of Swedish (a language totally unknown to her) piped into her ear on clear quiet self-isolated evenings while she lies abed generate calm, and even occasional flashes of Bergmanian life wisdom…

The film she streams the most, however, isn’t one of his — it’s The Emigrants, which not only features infinite accent (the movie is interminable), but also, when you open your eyes and take a look at a scene, offers either Liv Ullmann’s childlike passive Swedish peasant eyes, or Max Von Sydow’s horse-heavy plough hopelessly working its way around boulders. Pure Ambien.

… UD sets out appropriately distanced Adirondacks.

… in UD‘s Garrett Park.

UD‘s hometown newspaper provides updates on events and issues of interest.

[At the last Town Council meeting, a proposal was introduced] to construct a tunnel from the bottom of the hill by Beach Drive to Stillwater Avenue in Garrett Park Estates. This would eliminate all through traffic from the existing Strathmore Avenue, thereby making it easier and safer for pedestrians to cross.

The mayor then turned the presentation over to town manager Andrea Fox, who had done some research for the mayor. The average tunnel costs in advanced countries range from $200 to $500 [million] per mile (although the Second Avenue subway line in Manhattan has been much higher at $1.5 billion). Under the TFSN program, the federal government will cover 90 percent. Thus, if the tunnel works out to $500 million, the government portion would be $450 million, and the Garrett Park portion $50 million. The town would have to impose a one-time tax (perhaps spread over several years to lower the annual burden) of approximately $170,000 per household.

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Join celebrated Garrett Park mixed media artist Horst Van Vliet at a reception and opening for his new Penn Place exhibition, Camp Jejune. Seizing the momentum of his devastating West Olney Arts Council show, Hammer and Popsicle, Van Vliet lashes out at the forces of banality in modern society with works of violent originality. “I wish to show with my art the staggering futility of our pathetic attempts to find meaning in the drudgery of human existence,” Val Vliet says. “Each of my paintings has a voice. Each of them cries out, ‘We are not people. We are plastic. It is we who belong in the recycling bin.'” Displayed works will include “Still Life with Glass Shards,” “Hair and Mud Collage No. 35″…

As the three UD‘s hunker down, UD notes that the humble spud, in the form of oniony garlicky lemony hash browns, has emerged as queen of the kitchen. A glance at the potatoes coronavirus Google News page (CORONA SURVIVOR CREDITS GOD AND POTATO SOUP. FARMERS RUSH TO SUPPLY SPUDS DURING CORONAVIRUS.) confirms the new centrality of the plant.

Which is only one of the fascinating things I’ve learned from a family member’s just-published report on the Rapoports. (UD‘s father, Herbert Rapp, was born Rapoport.) Harz, Motel, and six of their sons came to the States from Cherkassy Ukraine in the early years of the twentieth century and settled in Philadelphia. My grandfather, Joseph, was one of the sons.

Another sibling, who stayed in the old country, is presumed to have died at Babi Yar.

Although Joseph and his children look like a typical American Jewish success story (doctors and entrepreneurs galore), a closer look reveals a strikingly high degree of physical and mental infirmity in my father, his two sisters, and quite a few of the children the three of them produced. “Dad’s family,” concluded my sister Barbara, after scanning the report, “was a genetic nightmare.”