Robin Williams--may the souls of all the departed rest in peace

So funny.

So wondrous.

So unpredictable.

So needed right now.

Maybe I can be logical in a day or two.

I feel like a part of my youth and my life is gone....

Our hawk

We have a hawk--well, obviously we don't 'have' a hawk, hawk's cant be had. But for the last month or so a yellow tailed hawk and his/her family have been around. We know because we hear them.

If you've ever watched "The Colbert Report" with Stephen Colbert, there is a sequence where an bald eagle comes flying through and makes a scary sound. Bald eagle's don't make that sound. Hawk's do.

I know this because I listen to National Public Radio's 'Bird Note Moments' and they told me this.

So, I know what a hawk sounds like--a really creepy, scary shriek. Which we've heard for the last month or so on a regular basis. We think the hawk's had chicks in a tree in the vacant lot behind our back yard. Lots of shrieks from the trees around our yard and the tree out there. So, we've had hawk patrol for a while.

I haven't seen a squirrel or chipmunk for over a week in our yard. Maybe they just moved on, but something tells me hawks like squirrels and chipmunks for snacks.

There was a bunny that came into our yard from time to time. I hope the hawks didn't get the bunny. I'm not sure why I like a bunny more than squirrels and chipmunks but I know I do.

I imagine that sense the area seems rather clear of fuzzy things, the hawks will find a new home base soon. It must be like that for them. I've seen one of them soaring over the graveyard of St. Peter's Church last week. Lots of squirrels there. Maybe they're moving a little to the north.

If they leave, I'll miss their shrieks. It's good drama, hearing hawks shriek.....

Just something to ponder...

I was cleaning the kitchen after dinner (I cooked fresh green beans and potatoes, grilled red and yellow and orange peppers, baby cucumbers in balsamic vinegar and sliced tomatoes--a vegetarian meal--except for the massive amount of bacon that was in the beans!) when a song came on the radio, sung by a beautiful soprano voice without accompaniment, except for a bridge to the last verse on a mandolin.

Here are the words to that song--you probably know them already:

I peeked in to say goodnight
And then I heard my child in prayer:
"And for me some scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for my hair."

All the stores were closed and shuttered
All the streets were dark and bare
And in our town no scarlet ribbons
Not one ribbon for her hair.

Through the night, my heart was aching.
Just before the dawn was breaking,
I peeked in and on her bed,
In gay profusion lying there,
Lovely ribbons, scarlet ribbons,
Scarlet ribbons for her hair.

If I live to be a hundred
I will never know from where,
came those lovely scarlet ribbons,
Scarlet ribbons for her hair.

When the mandolin came in for the bridge to the last verse, I burst into tears, so full of joy and wonder I doubted I could breathe.

***

This is about what happens when we age. The popular opinion is that we get more conservative as we age--draw in on ourselves, as it were.

That's not my opinion. I believe as we age we get more like we are already.

It's true for me: I get more liberal and open every day. And more weepy. I've always tended toward tears, but the older I get, the more I find myself weeping at the least provocation. More often tears of joy and wonder, but listening to a radio report on what's happening in Gaza the other day, tears started running down my cheeks at the awfulness of it all.

As you age (and you do every single day!) pay attention and ponder whether you're changing or just becoming more and more who you have always been. My money is on the latter....

Conversation with myself in the basement

I was down in the basement getting my clothes from the dryer when I noticed about half my shirts were 'inside out'. As I was turning them 'right side out' I realized that's what I've always called turning inside out shirts the right way--turning them 'right side out'.

Often as small children new to dressing themselves, Josh and Mimi would put on a tee-shirt 'inside out'. I'd see it and smile and say, "you need to turn your shirt 'right side out'."

But down there in our low ceiling-ed, mostly dirt floor basement with many rooms (I think I've told you before that our house was built in 1850 by a Congregationalist minister named, of all things, Bradley--there are many rooms and I've pondered whether or not he was part of the underground rail-road, though it seems runaway slaves would have stopped before Connecticut) anyway, taking clothes out of the dryer is mindless work and I suddenly realized that what you should probably say to a child or adult (I do it from time to time!) who puts a shirt on inside-out is this: "turn your shirt outside out."

Since the wrong way is 'inside out' the right way should be 'outside out', not 'right side out'.

Dumb as I now realize that is, in the moment I thought it was a brilliant insight so, when I carried my clothes upstairs I went to tell Bern, watching tennis on TV, about my 'brilliant insight'.

After I told her my pondering about what to say to someone with a tee-shirt inside out that I'd been talking to myself about in the basement, she looked at me the way she would have looked at me had I said: "I found a wombat in the basement."

Like that.

After a long silence when she must have realized what the silence was saying to me, she said, "that's interesting." Being told some profound insight you've had is 'interesting' is on the same level of reaction that you would have if someone said they found a wombat in the basement.

After another long silence and a gaze from her that seemed to indicate she was going over the nursing homes she knew in her head, she said: "I don't think there is a term for what's 'the right side' of a shirt. There's only a term for what isn't the 'right side'...'inside out'...."

Incredibly chastened, I went to go fold my underwear (or 'roll' it, since that's what I do to boxer shorts...though you probably would have been fine not knowing that fact...) and considered what she'd said. I pondered her words for a while and decided she was quite wrong. There's 'in-sync' to balance 'out of sync' and 'plumb' to balance 'not plumb' and 'in tune' to balance 'out of tune'....I thought of a couple of dozen and was about to go tell her how horribly wrong she was to think there was no value in the distinction between 'inside out' and 'outside out' when I decided I truly didn't have a dog in that fight and let it go. What would be the point, anyway....

'by date' horror

So, I had some store-made crab cakes and a can of crab meat and I thought I'd add some more crab meat to the filling of the store-made cakes. I opened the can and gave Luke, the cat, the water out of the can. He began to drink it like it were the water of life...and I checked the used by date of the crab.

It was 6/13/09--which, having 4 degrees like I do, I knew meant June 13, 2009--which is 4 years and two months ago.

First you might wonder how anyone could have something that old in their can goods cabinet. And I couldn't tell you. Maybe because we use crab meat, when we use it, from the chilled section. And we probably could have used that crab meat a dozen times, but we got fresh instead.

So, why did we buy it in the first place? I have no idea. I would say Bern bought it and she would probably say that I bought it and we'd be back to the conversation about who needs to go to 'the home' first and I don't want to go there.

I tasted it after Bern smelled it and ruled it 'probably ok' and I thought the texture was wrong and I'm the one who won't eat chicken three days after it was cooked anyway. Bern believes in a much longer 'shelf life' than I do. I'm constantly asking Bern if she thinks this or that in the refrigerator is still good. She always says yes and half the time I throw it out anyway.

And I certainly wasn't going to eat crab, of all things, four years out of date.

If Luke dies tonight, I'll know I was right. But I don't want him to die, so I hope I'm wrong and my crab cakes would have more tasty than they were and I would have been happier about dinner than I was.

But who knows....4 years and 2 months is too long a stretch for me and I don't think I'm being unreasonable about that....

Our yards

I know I've mentioned it before, but the truth is this: one of the reasons I believe in God is Bern's yards.

We've lived here since 1989, so she's had a quarter of a century to get them right--and they are so right!

From April on, something is always happening in the front yard and back yard. Just this afternoon I noticed yellow, purple, blue, white and orange in the back yard that weren't there a couple of weeks ago. I don't know any of the names of the flowers, but they keep coming all Spring and Summer and into the Fall.

In the front yard, she really specializes in exotic grasses that grow to washer/drier size and are in many hues of green. Nevermind the several species of ferns and ground cover.

I've loved her since 1964 and been married to her since 1970, but I'm still amazed and honored for what she brings into my life--among which is what she has transformed our back and front yards into.

Amazing. What a blessing....

How stupid can white people be?

A guy named Bo Brooks, which I wish I could like because there were lots of Brooks' where I grew up and not a few 'Bo's', is a Republican Congressperson from Alabama and he told Laura Ingreham on Fox News ('Lord help us') that the only people it is safe to discriminate against are "white people".

He blamed the Democrats for fomenting 'race warfare' and 'hating white people'.

To her credit, even Laura Ingreham called Bo's remarks "a little over the top".

Lord Jesus, how stupid can White People be?

Being white in this country IS a problem--a problem for everyone who isn't.

White People run everything. Or, let me correct that, White Men run everything. Oh, women have made some progress but they still make 68 cents for every dollar a man makes in most states, doing the same jobs. But people of color--give me a break Bo...Black and Brown people in this country clean our toilets, cut our lawns, fill our pools, pick up our trash, don't get to go to college and over-populate our prisons. Raising the 'race question' is something that needs to be done.

(I have this unsubstantiated theory that the reason we have bent over backwards to send out electric bills and lots of other stuff in Spanish--unlike our refusal to make allowances for European immigrants--is that we want to keep the Brown underclass as an underclass to do our dirty work. And by 'our', I mean White People.

If there needs to be a war on anyone in this country, it needs to be on White People (Men). I just pray enough of the women (a majority, by the way) get together with the Hispanic, African American and Asian folks to turn our government around and truly, just like Bo fears, throw the White Men out and take over.

That's what I hope. They'd do a much better job of running things than White Men are doing...hell, my two 7 year old and 4 1/2 year old Asian/American granddaughters could do a better job of running things than Bo Brooks and his white male peers in the House of Representatives.

I assure you they would because they are loving and inclusive and really worry about (sometimes to my distress) about 'being FAIR'. That's more than Bo and his Bros do, believe me.