They Had a Bargain

 

I wound up on a call yesterday with a lovely gentleman I’d met in Addis Ababa some eight years ago.  We were talking business, but as the call ended I reminded him of the time when we’d seen Mulatu Astatke together in the lobby of the Addis Sheraton.  He spared me the embarrassing memory of walking up to the more portly of two men standing there and extending my hand only to have him laugh and point out the obvious, that the shorter man with the large smile was actually Mssr. Astatke.  All the more cringeworthy as I and family had actually seem the great Abyssinian laureate the night before.  Still, it was a good excuse to play Ethio-jazz all day long and again this morning. 

Back among the cursed.  My little one will be reading Euripides and later Aristophanes in her Greek philosophy class.  Re-reading I had to be reminded that it was Aeschylus first and then Sophocles to follow, but Euripides wasn’t far behind, these two dying within a short time of one another.  “The Phoenician Women” is the first work the Penguin edition: “The Bacchae and Other Plays.” Sibling rivalry, Polyneices and Eteocles just can’t work it out.  They had a bargain.   The latter reneged on it.  The prior isn’t having it.  At first, we can’t but sympathize with Polyneices demanding his brother swap the crown, like he said he would.  But here, thoughts turn to China, or any place where power is absolute, where is there ever an example of anyone with the throne turning it over to another family member, baring the neck.  Hapless Huizong is an interesting exception, but then the fates didn’t treat his family any better than they did that of Oedipus.

 

Sunny day.  The first really hot day we’ve had in a while.  I was over dressed in a hoodie and turtleneck when we went Lowes.  I got some bird seed and a dozen new packets of pumpkin seeds for the crazy, wild pumpkin patch I’m seeding down in the field and met my wife over in the outdoor section where we secured some fertilizer which, appropriately smelled like shit, long after I’d lifted the bags on to the dolly the provide.  Later we got a few groceries and settled in for a lunch over at iPho which my wife was very keen to slurp a bowl of noodles down at beforehand but then, sampling what might as well have been a bowl of soggy linguini she had second thoughts.  The summer rolls, the beef brisket were okay. 

 

Later, as it would prove too-later, my older one piped up and said, “I guess we could go canoeing” which I was thrilled to do.  We loaded the big beast up on top of the Toyota with bungee cords and rope and headed off down to the landing just upstream from New Paltz and set out suggesting we’d meet the Mrs. in two-and-a-half hours.  Three-and-a-quarter hours later we landed at the predetermined spot. Those last few miles of oxbows really do take a lot longer than you expect.  The sun disappeared but then miraculously returned, in full glory, sailing past three-hundred-year-old farmhouses and ubiquitous silver maples that droop and occasionally fall into the river, all along the way.  My older one had thrown a random Beatles mix on after growing bored with her “1975” mix.  And we went from “Meet the Beatles” to the “White Album” with impunity and we sang and we paddled and we even ‘pictured ourselves in a boat on a river . . .’

Before we could reconnect with the girl-with-kaleidoscope eyes, it became clear, that we would be very late, for our pizza dinner rendezvous back home, with my mom, and stepdad.

Sunday, 05/02/21