sunset sunrise

 

Lauren Bacall died seven years ago today. Her birth name was Betty Joan Perske but it wasn't (IDK, maybe still isn't) unusual for aspiring film personalities to take more glamorous professional names. What I wonder is whether Humphrey Bogart called her Lauren or Betty Joan when they were making love. Same with Marilyn Monroe, did Joe DiMaggio call her Norma Jean or Marilyn?

It was a shock to American manhood, including me, when MM died. I remember my moment of finding out. On campus, 26 years old, a student at the University of Michigan at the Time, I was stunned that someone like her could take their own life. Sixty years into life, maybe I get it better now, though honestly I still don't understand, life looked so right for her. But then I've never experienced that depression. Yes, I was furiously disappointed and depressed all night, that evening we arrived a moment too late, just as Ralph Bennett was locking the showroom door and he shook his head and would not let us in to see the new 1949 Chevrolets on display, but not clinically depressed. I will say, that I was twelve almost thirteen at the time, and that single instance of inhospitality to a child cost him a car-buying customer for a lifetime!

Just got off the phone with son Joe, who is still home recuperating from his case of covid. As Joe is fully vaccinated, his case has been mild, but he caught it in the office from the anti-vaxxer sitting at the adjacent desk.

Breakfast: TJ's chicken liver pâté on toasted German rye bread, black coffee. The deLuxe life.

Besides MM's overdose apparent suicide, the other thing I don't understand is why and how health and scientific issues, climate change and fighting the pandemic, got to be bitterly divisive political issues. I mean, in Nashville, parents coming to raging fury and threats of violence in a school board discussion of requiring facemasks in classrooms, AYKM? It isn't "What's the world coming to?", it's "How can we shift From loving to hate each other To working together for the common good?", and the answer is "We don't want to". As from that children's argument thing, We'd rather be mad. It ongoingly surprises me and I don't understand it.

T+