Of JFK conspiracies, "strange guests" and Dark Wine~~~~

Hello Darklings,

Sometimes I have fun, quiet fun when mentally tugging at someone’s braids or shirt tails---I do mean mentally. But sometimes it can reveal things that one wishes they should not have explored.

Saturday evening Doyle, Sis and I were relaxing after having an early dinner, we had seen on the news Friday night about all the damage done by the horrible windstorm that occurred on Thursday night, of which we had our own adventures with it. And then we watched a special about ‘where were you when JFK died”.

I remembered that Day that JFK died so clearly, that it would take a special post just about that. So on Saturday evening we talked about the conspiracy theories, and in some way I do believe that Oswald was a part of it although I don’t think he pulled the actual trigger, I think that he helped get a rifle for another person to use, someone who would have been considered perfectly normal to be at the book depository building.

But Oswald ran when he realized he had been framed, made the fall guy, I think Jack Ruby was also involved to kill Oswald, and if Ruby didn’t succeed, there would have been another person or Oswald would have been found dead in his cell without ever revealing his part in it.

There were at least two shots that hit JFK and one was from the front because the back of his head was blown out, an autopsy photo that showed that was never revealed, the Nixon film and the Zapbrudder film clearly show two shots, and an audio recording recorded a total of 4 shots, there had to be at least 3 shooters.

But putting it upon one man?? No, it was far bigger than that. Much bigger.

But what legacy would JFK have left? What could he have done after his 2nd term? History would have been far different, we would not have been in Vietnam for one, and the others? Who knows?

Saturday evening Doyle, Sis and I were still kicking the conspiracy theories around, Doyle has books and books about it, Murder and true crime are his favorite subject having been a police officer for many years. We even have discussions about Victorian Murders like Jack the Ripper.

Doyle has so many books on this subject that he had to put them in storage, but I’m going to be kind to him, behind the garage but off to one side of the green house is a large space, so I’m going to have an extension added to the garage which will hold Doyle’s books. My contractor will look into the permits but since it will be on the side of my property next to Sis’s house there won’t be any problems from any neighbor complaining. We will make it so the books will be protected and make it into sort of an office for Doyle for his research.

But while we were talking the telephone rang, our “ghostly artist” friends were driving around the area taking pictures of the damage the winds had done for the last two days and wanted to know if it would be alright to drop by, Doyle and Sis didn’t have a problem but Svengoolie was going to show “Evil of Frankenstein” with Peter Cushing so Doyle set the recorder. I said “Come on over”, then thought what could we serve them?

I mean its not polite to not offer something, Sis and I looked through the pantry, there were some dessert cookies and we had in the freezer the Petridge Farm single serving pastries, we could offer apple, peach, raspberry, and strawberry, and earlier that day we purchased and had in the refrigerator a chocolate cream pie that we were thinking of having for dessert while watching the movie, and there was various teas, coffee, sparkling waters, and wines.

We were set, I was already burning vanilla scented candles in the fireplace instead of a regular fire because of concern regarding the winds, and I placed cinnamon spice candles as well, and lit those. Doyle went to the CD player and put in 5 cds playing old time Jazz music by the Royal Society Jazz orchestra, and set it to soft volume, what some people don’t know is that we can have the music come through the speaker of our old 1930’s radio, it’s a floor model, the radio and record changer works and plays the regular a.m. stations and the old 78 records, but with a flip of a switch it goes to a concealed CD player and it sounds like its playing a lot of old 78’s. We can get up to and over 5 hours of playing time. It helps give the illusion of being in another time.

I wanted to set up an atmosphere of cozy comfort, using scent and sound followed by good food.

Our guests did not come empty handed and brought 2 bottles of Apothic Dark wine, this was a limited pressing from 2012, I had bought a couple of bottles the other day but had not tried it yet so this was going to be a treat.

Our guest’s ooo’d and ahhh’d over the house and its comforts. I asked them the reason for their excursions and our lady artist said she had been inspired by how wild the winds were whipping that night, that she even went out into it to get the feel of it. She said it made her face and body tingle, in some cases with a sense of freezing pain, she and her “husband” drove into it going to the beach that is not far from us and then to several parks to see how the trees were reacting to the wind.  I mentally thought what a dangerous thing for them to do, and how foolish, but artists types sometimes are only into the moment and to capture it.

They both talked of how they saw things being blown all over the place, it was like watching a one act play or a form of performance art as they were describing it, I rather liked it, in a strange bizarre way. They had video’d it and then the following day drove all over to photograph everything that they saw was damage, even the venerable old Eucalyptus tree that fell over at Lake Merritt, she posed all over the tree and its roots while her husband took pictures, she gathered some of the leaves and bark which she intends to include into her next painting---she is still working on her other series, but this windstorm inspired her for a possible new series, “That’s why” she said “It is so important to take pictures, so I can be inspired further”. It seems that this series will not be ethereal but more physically violent.

We told her what we experienced in our own area and Lucretia I even told her about you finding someone’s pajama’s on your Basil plant, I can only imagine your reaction to finding that unusual bit item, we laughed about it and our guest could see the humor in that, she said she’d like to do that as a counter point.

But I decided to tweak her a bit and said “why not a whole series of something like this but use the four elements. You could localize it we had a horrible Firestorm in ’89 or ’91 it was horrible killing 25 people” I began to describe to her the fire and the deaths to her, I told her how she could look it up on the internet, but then I began to see something in her eyes, she was excited by this to the point of like having a high. She didn’t relax until her husband spoke to her in a more matter of fact way in which would be the best way to promote the series and make it so that people would want to invest in such a series of paintings or installations.

When he talked in a more mundane and business type way she became her ethereal self again, I was at first having a bit of fun with her but then I was glad when her husband stepped in, there was something in the back of her mind, in her subconscious that I felt was not good to explore in our home environment. And I was mentally glad that Coralline did not stay over this weekend, for her to meet someone like that I felt would not be good for my young niece whom I felt would not be ready for someone so “Out There”.

Then our talk shifted to food and wine and we offered the cookies and Sis mentioned the pastries but our guests said that the wine would go better with the cookies and the chocolate cream pie but that we should taste the wine first.

We were very pleasantly surprised by this dark wine by Apotlic, it’s a limited edition of a blended wine of Petit Sirah, Teroldego and Cabernet Sauvignon, with a taste of dark fruits like blueberry and blackberry and then underlying it a hint of coffee and dark chocolate, it was an excellent combination that I found it silky smooth and rich to my tongue. Sis felt it should be a wine to serve with dessert, but Doyle thought it would be good to follow after eating a meat dish, like steak or something like that.

I felt that it was a good Autumn wine for relaxing in front of a fire after a busy day, something to indulge in to meditate and relax with. I would give it 4 out of 5 stars myself.

We finished our wine and desserts with coffee, by this time it was nearly midnight and our guests had to leave and thanked us for allowing them to drop by.

After they were gone we looked at each other, Sis told me that she felt that something very dark had been revealed accidentally that evening, Doyle said that it appeared that the husband was aware of his “wife’s” form of pleasure of other people’s tragedies, but we all agreed that it was not like people drawn to a dramatic situation that ordinarily doesn’t occur in one’s life but something that goes to the edge of the abyss and only the husband’s careful monitoring of her prevents her from falling in. Perhaps that is why she is always in white or off-white to keep her calm.

I could only agree, I had noticed that both Belladonna and Wiener Dog did not want to go near her and instead hopped into Doyle's chair and hid down next to him, I was concerned that since the dogs were both wearing sweaters they would become too warm but that didn't seem to bother them and would only come out after our guests left, I knew Belladonna to be very sociable and Wiener always greeted everyone who came by, but the minute our guests arrived they instead went into Doyle's chair, and we didn't try to coax them out.
Sunday morning we all felt like we had awaken from a strange dream from the night before, but the dishes in the sink proved that we did have visitors. Sis and I decided to go to church since we were up early, Doyle was going to take the Dogs for a walk. We managed to catch an early service, and later had coffee and pastry at a Starbucks, I was enjoying the reality of the crowd, and then remarked that we should stop by the newly re-opened Merritt Bakery for an afternoon tea dessert for us for today.  Something told me we should do mundane regular things today to escape the strangeness of the other night.

We took the long route and drove by the fallen Monarch of a Tree, we felt a sadness there, as children we’d gone to Lake Merritt on warm Sundays to picnic and feed the ducks I remembered playing around the tree, and we felt that we had lost an old friend. So many changes, some by alleged progress, some by an Act of God.

I called Doyle to see how he was doing and he and Brian were having breakfast with the dogs in tow at a friends' house, he and Brian had been walking together and a friend of his invited him to stop by for eggs and Canadian Bacon and strong coffee.  They were fine.  I told him we were shopping and would be hope later.
Sis had brought the shopping list and we did our grocery shopping and by a happy situation found quite a few bottles of the Dark Apotlic wine so we loaded up to lay in to the cellar for future. It is a good Dark Wine for those Dark Autumn and Winter Nights, but hopefully not a night like in a Hammer Horror film.

Later Darklings

One never knows what is out there in the dark, in the night.