The Life in My Years

In Washington Square Park the street bound are unfurling from their makeshift bedding, rubbing beards, stretching and shielding the morning sun from their eyes. Dogs are fetching balls on the green and in the shadow of St. Peter and Paul Church the Chinese matrons in colorful garb are practicing their Tai Chi.

At venerable Original Joe’s the morning crew is busy wiping down the outside tables getting ready for the Saturday crowds. Same at The Little Red Window. Same at Tony’s Pizza. Same at Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store.

At Victoria Pastry the sun baked outdoor tables are all taken.

Liguria Bakery started selling their focaccia at 7:30. Ninety minutes later the sign on the door says, Sold Out. You don’t go to Liguria at 8 on Saturday morning expecting to bring the family a slab of rosemary-garlic focaccia unless you’re into receiving verbal flagellation, “What do you mean, they’re broke? You useless fuck. You couldn’t get your ass out of bed earlier to get in line at 7:00?”

Already approaching 70 degrees (21 C. in the civilized world) life here in San Francisco’s North Beach is good. Very good.

On the other side of the world?

Not so much.

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Shortly after getting out of bed on this beautiful Saturday morning, I made my first and biggest mistake of the day – I turned on the television. That’s when I found out that Donald Trump and his merry band of bozos, along with, or more likely at the behest of, Benjamin Netanyahu were in the midst of unleashing hell on Iran. There was Donnie, looking ridiculous in a white USA ball cap telling the Iranian people that he was their savior and, oh, by the way, you might want to stay indoors because, you know

bombs. Lots of bombs. Lots and lots and lots of bombs.

Was I surprised? Of course not. This is the usual Trump M.O. Between the times that normal Americans celebrate the end of the work week at happy hour in their favorite drinking establishment, and then peruse the Saturday brunch menu the next morning, Trump is bombing something or someone; or tearing down one third of the White House; or pardoning a notorious criminal that greased his already greasy little bruised palm; or he’s naming something after himself; or he’s extorting someone or some business; or doing one of the many other things that define him as the world’s worst person.

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So, what to do? Lunacy has become normalcy in America, so you just carry on. Walk the dog, then grab my camera and head for San Francisco. Of course, just carrying on is what the regime’s twin Darth Vaders (I’ve cast Donnie as Jabba the Hut), Stephen Miller and Russ Vought, want Americans to do; accept chaos as order, shut the fuck up or pay the consequences.

Fuck it. I’m just going to carry on today.

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In the line at Caffe Trieste, two tourists in front of me just bailed out. One had fingered his credit card and the barista said, “no cards.”

Cash has always been king at Caffe Trieste, a place that attracts tourists but is certainly not a tourist trap. This is a local institution with a devoted community. I’m not a regular, but I get plenty of friendly nods. It doesn’t hurt that I’m wearing my sweat stained and sun faded San Francisco Giants cap.

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Opened in 1956 by Giovanni “Papa Gianni” Giotta as the first espresso coffee house on the left coast, Caffe Trieste became a hangout for the beat generation. Regulars included Lawrence Ferlinghetti (a lifelong regular), Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Brautigan, Bob Kaufman, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, Kenneth Rexroth, and Neeli Cherkovski.

Tourists come to Caffe Trieste because they want to sit and have coffee where Francis Ford Coppola wrote most of the script for The Godfather’.

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There’s reporting that a girl’s primary school was struck by a missile in Minab, southern Iran. 150 dead, 100 wounded, including many students. Well, I guess we can take hearts and minds off the list of things to do.

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I’m sitting on a bench seat with my back to the eastern facing window, the morning sun warmly caressing my back. The Americano I’m sipping is superb. No sugar – no milk. I like the taste of my coffee.

At the next table over, two old boys are setting up a date to meet for cribbage at the Stella Caffe over on Columbus tomorrow morning. Cribbage! I didn’t even know people still play cribbage. I don’t even know what cribbage looks like.

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Tehran retaliates, firing missiles at Israel and U.S. bases in the region, reports the New York Times.

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Two tables over a woman sitting on the bench is admiring the chemise that a young man standing in the coffee line is wearing. Alongside him another man is wearing a shirt adorned with scenes grabbed from Filmore West concerts. It features Miles Davis on the front. San Francisco at its finest – and that’s meant in the best of ways.

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Polling shows that before Trump decided to start this war only 21% of Americans would be in support. Does that matter? Has anybody but Donald Trump ever mattered to Donald Trump? (Two days later when asked about negative polling over his new war, Trump would respond “I think that the polling is very good, but I don’t care about polling.“)

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A man in faded jeans and a stone washed denim shirt cradles his little dog that could use a wash himself – maybe not stone washed but that pup could use a good scrubbing. A woman walks in with a gigantic black dog in tow. Nobody says a word and the Health Department boys can go bugger off.

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This morning, as the bombs and missiles were in flight, Donnie, looking preposterous in his ball cap said the strike was to “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.”

(Two days later Little Marco Rubio would claim that there was an imminent threat. According to Little Marco, the U.S. knew that Israel was going to launch a strike and believed that attack would prompt Iran to target U.S. assets in the region. Or as Chas Danner writing for New York Magazine put it, “So it’s a preventative war to stop an imminent threat of retaliation to an imminent war.” Little Marco would also claim that ballistic missile development was a justification. Imminent nuclear weapons was nowhere in Little Marco’s claims).

Sources from the White House (what’s left of it) said that the original plan was for Israel to strike first and hope that Iran would retaliate against U.S. bases in the region so that the U.S. would have an excuse to strike. Just like Trump to use American service members as bait.

Oh, and I guess the talks broke down. That would be the talks over reviving Obama’s agreement that Trump tore up and then tried to resuscitate through the “efforts” of two real estate guys, Jared Kushner, and Steven Witkoff. Nothing like using family and business associates as the hiring hall. Does anybody think that Donnie and Bibi wanted the talks to succeed?

So the burning “why” is a multiple choice question. Or as one of my college professors put it, multiple guess.

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Dean Martin is crooning ‘Volare’ from a juke box that might have been old when old Dino himself was sucking on a cigarette and sipping a martini. And if this stuff keeps going the way it’s going I might could use a little martini myself. Or a lotta little martinis.

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You’ve heard of the seven year itch?

Bibi Netanyahu has had a 34 year itch.

“Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb.” ~ Bibi Netanyahu, 1992

“The best estimates at this time place Iran between three and five years away from possessing the prerequisites required . . . for . . . production of nuclear weapons.” ~ Bibi Netanyahu 1995.

“Iran . . . only one or two years away,” from developing a nuclear weapon. ~ Bibi Netanyahu 2009.

In 2012, while holding a cartoon image of a bomb, Bibi Netanyahu warned that Iran was only a few months from developing a nuclear weapon.

“If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time . . . it could be less than a year.” ~ Bibi Netanyahu. 2025

Just months ago the Trump regime assured the world that recent U.S. air strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The regime was so certain of that obliteration that an intelligence officer who had the temerity to hint at, ‘not so fast,’ was cashiered.

obliterated, obliterating
to remove or destroy all traces of; do away with; destroy completely.

to blot out or render undecipherable (writing, marks, etc.); efface.

Synonyms:
expunge Source: Dictionary.com

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At the table right next to mine, a Frenchman and a half Frenchman are having a debate over why Napoleon always held one hand in his jacket. Theories abound; a deformity, an itch, an aristocratic gesture. A little later the half Frenchman is trying to explain baseball to the whole Frenchman. Good luck with that. I guess it’s easier than trying to explain why, after the first four years of Trump, America said, “thank you very much, we’ll have another.”

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n April of 1982, the popularity of Argentine dictator Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri was taking on the same trajectory as the Titanic on that fateful April morning 70 years before. Galtieri figured that the perfect elixir for his problem was to start a convenient little war. So he invaded the Falkland Islands. It didn’t turn out well.

Galtieri wasn’t the only one who tried to use war as a tool of distraction. He’s just part of a notorious gang of tin pots that includes; Tsar Nicholas II, Saddam Hussein, Benito Mussolini, Muammar Gaddafi, Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, and Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan.

Just checking but, wasn’t it just a few days ago that NPR reported that the Department of Justice withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor? You know, the same Trump who used to cavort nonchalantly about the dressing rooms at the Miss Teen U.S.A. pageants.

Bibi and Donnie. Two old criminal chums. Both hate Muslims. And each has a problem. Bibi has been trying, unsuccessfully, to scratch a 33 year old itch called Iran. He’s also go legal problems, but thanks to his genocidal adventure in Gaza, he’s been able to stave off a stint in the joint.

Donnie’s problem is buried somewhere in the Epstein files and he’d like like to keep it that way. Buried that is. Making Donnie’s problem worse is the fact that his FBI director and his attorney general are morons who don’t do crime very well, and the Epstein cover up is going badly.

So what are two old war criminals to do?

Join the tin pot club war mongers club.

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After my second Americano I’m leaving for Chinatown. During my entire stay in Caffe Trieste I heard not word one about Donnie’s and Bibi’s fine adventure. I’m a little surprised by that.

Back in the before days, an unjustified war would be topic number one in a progressive cafe in liberal San Francisco. Have we actually been cowed? Are we just too exhausted? Maybe it’s the idea that the regulars here don’t want the presence, or even the mention, of Donald Trump to ruin their Saturday morning sanctuary. They’ll bother themselves with Donnie in due time.

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It’s ten o’clock on Saturday night. I’m sitting outside in the darkest spot I can find in the backyard. It’s chilly but a heavy fleece lined coat keeps me warm. I skipped dinner – again. I do that a lot these days. Trump Derangement Syndrome? Sure, because anyone who isn’t having trouble maintaining their composure in the midst of MAGA is well

bat shit crazy.

Out here in the dark I’m trying to find some peace in classical music but I turn it off as quickly as I’ve turned it on. I’d rather hear the animals rustling in the dark field just beyond our wire fence. Somewhere two owls hoot at each other. I spot one on the peak of the neighbor’s roof. I stare up at a web of wispy white clouds lit up by the moon, as if serenity is tangled somewhere in that celestial lattice. As I’m taking a picture of the sky I hear a whoosh, whoosh and see the big owl fly right over my head and make for a giant evergreen in another neighbor’s yard.

It’s going on eleven years now. Contentment has been hard to come by. You find it wherever you can. Maybe it’s in a cappuccino and the company of old friends. Or high up in the wispy clouds on a chilly night.

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Banner photo: Clouds on a February night.