Got it

Got our first shots today - AstraZeneca - at the nearby Hyatt - swankest and lushest place in Sanur. Super efficient. Must have been 100 staff guiding us along. Sanur has been designated a Green Zone and all in it are mandated to receive vaccine - not that they'd notice if one didn't - I think. Pecking order for receiving shots - health workers and then next those who work with tourists and foreigners (where the money comes from to keep the economy going), old locals, old foreigners - all free from the government. Had a yummy bento at Ryoshi's, went home, slept. It's early. Tired. NIghty night.

Report from Home

Aside from the vital work I'm doing -

Construction moving along for the new room. Gosh do they work fast and with such concentration. Helps me concentrate on the stuff I'm doing - their focus rubs off on me. And nice taking breaks to get up, walk around, and see what all that banging is about. Went to the beach with Katrinka. Get there about once a week now. Makes me appreciate it. A nice hour and a half break.

Looks like vaccine next week. Our visa agent is getting us an updated surat domicile - domicile letter showing we live here. Everyone in Sanur is mandated to get a free vaccine within three weeks starting this week. We're now one of three Green Zones that are getting special treatment - leaving others to languish. At the shot in the arm centers, the locals go first, then the lowly foreigners. I'll tell you - discrimination hurts.

Every Day It's a Gettin Closer

 I don't want to get the vaccine before others but there's an order here and our time is getting close and I'm excited by it a little. We've been around so many people here and it's usually pretty open air and fans on and all but it will be a relief when we get our vaccinations. We'd rather have what's available in the US but Sinovac with it's lower effectiveness still gives good protection against serious illness and heaven forfend death. The heirarchy here has been health workers, locals over sixty and those who work with tourists or even might serve them, then older foreigners with KITAP permanent residence visas then us with KITAS, temporary residence visas. But then a new catagory has come into play which is anyone living in one of the newly designated Green Zones of Ubud, Nusa Dua, and Sanur where we live. Neighbors Tom and Yvonne are going to line up for theirs tomorrow and report back. Appaarantly there will be 100 doses a day in Sanur first come first serve for those with the right documents. I think I need to get one of them from our visa agent or landlord. We'll see. 

Thank You Uncle Sam

 For the deposit received in my inbox today. 

Good News.

 Denpasar Mayor Wants To Vaccinate Expats For Free In Sanur For Green Zone Preparation - in the Bali Sun 

The photos in that article don't look like Sanur to me. We do

Like putting an ice cube in an oven

Read about how plants trapped long ago way at the bottom of Greenland's ice cover, tell a scary tale to climate scientists. However of course we are cool because who cares about that science stuff anyway?

Poem

There's a poem posted today in Cuke What's New Blog that maybe should have gone her in nonZense. It's about a poem. Good day.

A Yogic Message for Today

 https://www.facebook.com/22Minutes/videos/10153223873393339

Caka

It's the first day of the Caka New Year in Bali. Nyepi ended this morning at six am and was wonderful. We had a few candles going to guide us in the darkness and delicious cold food for diner Katrinka had prepared the day before. Unlike prior years, wifi wasn't shut off because of Covid. I don't know why it was because of Covid. We didn't fast, meditate all day - had dates with our computers and got ready for the demolition to come. It's so neat just going out and listening to the almost silence - some birds singing, occasional dog barking but not much because there are no cars or motorbikes or people moving through the streets. No sound of traffic at all - or of footsteps or people talking. No planes though that's pretty much always true for the last year. We didn't expect to see stars because of the heavy and continuing rainy season and it did rain fairly heavily in the early evening. But lo and behold at about ten, the clouds parted and a brilliant night sky filled with stars and milky way and the Southern Cross. A wonderful sight in the quiet. Tomorrow Kardino and crew arrive at eight in the morning to get to work on the new guest room. I called him just now and said Katrinka won't have all of her stuff ready to go till later but he said there was plenty to do outside. By afternoon late, our bedroom will be empty. Some goes to the neighbor's carport next door but there will be plenty tucked away here. Things will get crowded. Katrinka goes to Alice's. I stay here. Bet she comes back a lot and then my studio will be our bedroom and place to get aways upstairs. I might have to be making podcasts in a closet - but there are no closets. Will the Center Hold? Love it. 

Sunday is Nyepi

It's two in the morning. Up late getting a podcast ready. Didn't want to wait till tomorrow to do so because tomorrow is Nyepi, a day of the year when Bali hits the off button. Can't go out. No lights. No flights. Usually no interrnet, no wifi, but Katrinka says they're leaving it on this year because of Covid. Don't know why that matters. Anyway, I didn't want to trust it would be on so got the podcast posted just now. There's a link to the podcast page on cuke just up above here. It's been a rainy rainy season and we supposed it will be cloudy, but if not, this is the best day of the year to see stars above Bali.

Chaos Coming

Thanks to a generous gift from a future guest to our home in Sanur, we're having a guest room built. We did have a tiny guest room with two small windows up high for some light and air, but I commandeered it for a recording studio which I use daily. The guest room will be built above Katrinka and my bedroom, a wall of which must be shored up to bear the weight. So all is coming out of there before work begins. That work will entail making a new ceiling. Kardino (see photo), the contractor, will sleep here - either outside on the bale which is like a stage with a roof, or in the part of the bedroom that won't be worked on which is really a small adjoining room that was part of the original two story house. His son and grandson and anyone else will commute. We like Kardino, have known him for seven years. He's from Java. All the skilled building trade people I know are from Java. The bedroom is an add-on. so is half of the kitchen. It's not easy to tell that if you're not into construction or something related. So Katrinka is going to stay with a friend for a month or so and I'll stay here. Or that's the plan. Kardino says six weeks for the whole job but that usually means a fraction of the time it will take in the US or here. Hope it's a fraction approaching a whole number. I'm looking forward to it. It will all be like music for me. My only regret is there won't be any heavy equipment.

Toy Store Finale

Sometimes in the summer when I was in high school, mother would ask why don't I get a job like many of my friends did. I told her, "Because I don't have to." But this was seven months after I'd graduated from high school and I guess I wanted some money of my own. Right before Xmas, the department store started laying off temporary workers. You could see who was going next because their time card had a note on it. Then it was my turn. It had been fun. A woman, late teens like me, who I worked with, had been sort of snarky. She and I were together at the time clock and she laughed when she saw my severance note. She went, "Ha ha! You've been fired!"  I wasn't concerned. Work wasn't over yet. She taunted me some more. Time to leave her time card had a note and she broke down sobbing and cried on my shoulder. I told her she'd get another job soon. Don't worry. 

More on the Toy Store Job

I was getting a few dollars an our working for that downtown toy store in December, 1964. During lunch break I'd walk a block or so to the Fort Worth Club, a private men's club that allowed widows of members to remain members for a minimal monthly charge. It was a posh place. Sid Richardson used to live there when he was maybe the richest man in America. One floor was men only - no wives. I'd play a little pool - they even had a real billiard table and a snooker table - and sign for a lunch that might have cost as much as a few hours pay I was getting. One day I got to talking to a man there sitting at the bar. You had to be 21 to drink in Texas then but they didn't card me. I begged off to go order lunch. We introduced ourselves. When he heard my last name he said, "Are you related to the Kelroy Chadwick?" 

I said, "Yes. He was my father." 

"Finest man I ever met," he said. "Let me buy you lunch."

A Memory of Anti-militarization and Direct Action

At nineteen I became conscious of social injustice and so forth. During the Christmas holidays, I spent time at home in Fort Worth and got a job for a couple of weeks in the toy section of a department store downtown. I got really good at sizing up a shopping cart full of toys and figuring out the right size box to pack them in and packing them in snugly. I had to write out an itemized list with prices for each sale. The manager pulled me aside one days and asked if I'd please cease describing toy guns and tanks  as "Implement to kill people," and such and toy soldiers as "cannon fodder" or whatever came to mind. Having that channel of expression cut off, I took to hiding notes in toys such as, "Help! I'm a prisoner in a toy factory!" It was rewarding work.

A Contemporary Beat Poetry Submission

 Beet the drum to chase away the glum

And eat some beats
the red veggie treat is neat
And will not hurt the bum
So off you go to the beet of the drum 
Red beat stained skies before you  
Spelling beet damned and full speed ahead!
🤪

Submitted by esteemed poet Gregory Johnson

A Beat Poem

Submission to a magazine for contemporary Beat Poetry

I think that I shall never see

A vegie purple as a beat

Boiled or fried or marinated

They are very good to eat

Although they can be a pain

When they leave a stubborn stain

Beats are treats and beats are swell

And do not care if I can't spell

A Tragedy

Bhikkhu Moneyya looked down on his hand and saw a tiny cicak jump onto it from the table. It was like one inch long. Cicak (pronounced chichak) are little gecko or related to gecko. They are all over the houses here and they behave themselves and eat tiny critters so they're welcome by all - but some foreigners who aren't used to them. They're outside too. We were outside listening to music at Oomba on the beach in Sanur when that little one jumped onto the back of Moneyya's hand. People were going oooo and ahhh. For once Dogette Bandi wasn't the cutest creature. Moneyya showed it around. A guest at a nearby table stuck his hand out and Moneyya put his above and tilted it over. The cicak fell to the floor right in front of Bandi who instantly ate it.  

Another High School Memory

I dropped by my girlfriend's house after school and said, "Let's have a date."

"You know we can't do that. We're in final exams."

"But you can't even share one date with me?" I said opening up my hands to reveal a big fat yummy date on a little tiny trey.

So she changed her mind.

High School Memory

I had a girlfriend in the 12th grade I liked a lot. She was low on nonsense and drama, fun and independent. We were compatible and in like. not love, and clearly would go separate ways soon. One day we were sitting close together doing something and I said something quite seriously and looked at her lovingly. She heard, "I need you," and pulled back and said she didn't want anyone to need her. I looked at her and said, "But I just hit your knee with my knee and pointed out that I kneed you." Then she hit me over the head with a cushion and said, "There - I just cushioned you!"