Actually, it is not Godot that I am waiting for. It is the Northstar Towing guy, Denny O’Boyle, who called early to announce his imminent arrival to collect Big Mama’s little green car.

My task was not space out his arrival and have him to collect the rental car instead. That would be awkward, and I suspect the Hertz people would be fairly cross with me.

Monday was a holiday for some, but identical to the other ones here visiting Big Mama and Raven, with one exception: the skies cleared for the day, and bathed the Bay in warm rich light. I had forgotten how the Big Lake affects the sky in the Lower Peninsula. The normal color of everything is gray.

Driving over to see Raven yesterday I noticed a new Sears on the drive over to Harbor Springs yesterday, and wondered at how much smaller it was than the usual big box store. I did not know why until an alert pal pointed out that the House of Sears, AKA K-Mart, was in deep kimchi.

He monitors the economy through a website by some very smart and irreverent analysts called ZeroHedge. This morning they claimed: “Sears just pre-announced what can only be described as catastrophic Q4 results [that] should not be a surprise to anyone: after all we have been warning ever since the “record” Thanksgiving holiday that when you literally dump merchandize at stunning losses, losses will, stunningly, follow.”

He is a comprehensive analysts, and also noted that gold and silver prices are down this morning, a reaction to new Chinese government controls on gold trading. Apparently the wealthy Chinese are preparing to spirit their money out of the country. They may know something that we don’t. Europe is quiet, but not because anything profound in the financial system has been fixed.

It’s just a lull until we all sober up next week sometime. Or decide not to.

I was thinking, as I wheeled the rental Dodge into the parking lot at The Bluffs,that I really should have been more serious about stoking up on dry food, alcohol, tobacco and ammunition. I remember General Powell using the Sears catalog- and it’s disappearance- as an exemplar of profound change.

Now I guess we say good-bye to an icon of American commerce. There has been a lot of that going around, like the pesky stomach flu that is laying people low around here. I hope I don’t contract it immediately before the long drive starts again tomorrow.

What could be coming along with this relatively benign version of the flu is something deadly. I followed the strand through the New York Times with my morning eggs, and it made me queasy:

“The experiment (Funded by the National Institutes of Health at the Erasmus Institute) in Rotterdam transformed the (H1N1) virus into the supergerm of virologists’ nightmares, enabling it to spread from one animal to another through the air….This research should not have been done,” said Richard H. Ebright, a chemistry professor and bioweapons expert at Rutgers University who has long opposed such research. He warned that germs that could be used as bioweapons had already been unintentionally released hundreds of times from labs in the United States and predicted that the same thing would happen with the new virus.

“It will inevitably escape, and within a decade,” he said.”

The flu has a 50% kill rate in humans, but was hard to contract. It is not, now.

Swell, I thought, as I walked into the facility and back to Apple Blossom Lane and the television lounge.

It was a bad Raven day. He was in the recliner, eyes slitted, no Christmas blanket on his lap. I walked down to his room to look for it but there was nothing. It might have gone to the laundry, or it might have disappeared.

When I rejoined him he was unresponsive and did not acknowledge my presence. I sat down and watched for a while, but I did not stay long, and spent more time watching movies with Mom.

We were with the Raj in two films- a wildly improbable yarn about a British Gentleman who has his face branded to take on a disguise as a low-caste tribesman and have all sorts of adventures in the Sudan, and then a star turn with Sabu, the first South Asian film star.

Mom was onboard with the whole concept, which demonstrated that nothing much has changed in the last seventy years. In the Technicolor marvel of The Drum, the Khan of a province on India’s Northwest frontier, is murdered, his killer, the evil Prince Ghul, plots an uprising against British rule.

But the brave young Prince Azim , played by then-13 year old Sabu, comes to the aid of the British in complete disregard for his own best interest and those of his people.
Raymond Massey was the evil Vizier in blackface, not unusual in a 1939 film, and his over-the-top performance was hilarious. The story demonstrated that nothing has changed whatsoever.

They were surrounding the gallant Brits when my phone went off, and Penny, a voice from The Bluffs informed me that Raven had fallen again, apparently before my visit.
No wonder he was in a grim mood. I made a note to check on his blanket, since the visit today will be the last for a while.

The cascade of travel and stress on all fronts is almost- not quite- overwhelming. If I can get through lunch and dinner and another visit to Raven this afternoon, I will do breakfast with Mom tomorrow and start south.

I suppose I should look at the weather, though all I want to click my ruby slippers three times and be back in my own bed.

Not that I would wear pumps to bed, mind you, but I think you know what I mean.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com