I’m still working out the formats here, obviously. I do not love the captions as text because they really obscure the images, although frankly this week that is not a huge loss. It’s not great in mobile either and, given that we all read websites on our phones these days (except me. I read them on my iPad, haha! Looks terrible there too.) is a problem. Anyway, click through the photos if you can.

Photo a day! It’s an artistic praxis, arguably, and there is no doubt but that I have pulled myself out of the deeps of depression before this way. That’s a good thing, because digging through the archives of this blog has made me realize that hey! I’m depressed again! What a surprise!

One thing about getting older is everything becomes familiar. This depression will pass like the others before it. It’s going to have to pass without much chemical help though (small shoutout to caffeine, here) because I am now old enough to fear dementia with a white hot terror and I don’t trust antidepressants not to take me there. I have nothing to back this up except the evidence of my own brain, which has been on them on and off for over 20 years and which absolutely does not remember things the way it used to. Now wait, you say, could that be the result of your ongoing fondness for red wine and occasional espresso martinis? Why yes, yes it could. But many more serious drunks than I have passed into old age without forgetting everything they said they would do last Tuesday. Or at least I think they did. I forget. Anyway, I can’t quit drinking now while civilization or at least the US part of it is crumbling around me. It’s asking too much. And Costco’s very tasty red blend is 7.99 for a giant bottle.

So, this past week – I am starting to feel a little like Mary Chesnut these days; I’ll just complain about my vanishing lifestyle while the country falls into civil war, shall I? My lifestyle is indubitably crumbling, y’all, I fell out of the middle class again. And this time, I harbor no illusions that it’s entirely my fault. I think the tattered remnants of the rest of the middle class will be joining me down here with the terrified poor very soon indeed. Welcome to the food bank! – anyway, this past week. On Sunday I managed to take poor Harvey for a walk; it was a full moon and a very, very high tide indeed over by the sawmill trail in Warrenton. On Monday I dropped my car off for routine maintenance (holy shit, no wonder I’m poor) and on the way saw a different angle of the Megler bridge. On Tuesday I took this photo which I remember very little about; see above, re, memory. It’s clearly over by Tapiola park. On Wednesday I was over by the Port at lunchtime and captured this postcard scene. They used to have these hilariously terrible fake eagles over there to scare off the seagulls but I see they are gone. Ars brevis and all that. Thursday, I managed an early morning walk and was rewarded with the elk and the sunrise. Friday, I went to a committee meeting that meets in a bar, my favorite committee and about my favorite local bar, Inferno. The view, my gods, the view. And on Saturday, which was yesterday, we were returned to our regularly scheduled winter weather of pouring rain and howling wind, very nice. I got to stay home all day with Mr. Binks, who is disgruntled and Harvey, also disgruntled, and start a giant organizing project with the result that my living room looks even more like a bomb went off than usual.

I feel like I should say something about politics but honestly, at this point, I don’t know what to say. The Olympics started and apparently our horrific eyeliner wearing VP was vigorously booed. This booing was immediately edited out of all the recordings anyone could find. The “President” – that orange creature out of nightmare – quite literally, for many – posted an insanely racist image and screed on social media. He left it up, defended it and then took it down, carelessly blamed an unnamed staffer and that was, you know, that. The Washington Post is crumbling and the billionaire destroying it left all the newly fired staff stationed in the rest of the world without plane tickets back to the states (they are conceivably the lucky ones.) The Battle of Minneapolis rages on, but the media is not covering it anymore: they’re bored. The Epstein files came out with thousands of pages detailing horrific crimes for which nobody but the survivors will ever be punished. And the federal courts say it’s completely fine to build more concentration camps. There’s a theme here and the theme is walk carefully in this valley full of sharks and do not necessarily believe what you see.