Go figure....

Since I can see what people are looking at on my blog, I sometimes notice something odd--like a really old post getting attention.

 The following post is from September 2011 and people have been looking at it today. Go figure.

 

fall fell

Was it just me but did we lose 35 degrees or so overnight between Wednesday and Thursday?

I'm writing this with a tee shirt, a long sleeve shirt and a West Virginia University sweatshirt on. It is chilly. Relatively from a few days ago.

I grew up in Anawalt, West Virginia in the southern most county of the state--the free state of McDowell. One of the things I've come to realize having lived in New England and Alexandria, Virginia is that southern West Virginia has arguably the best weather in the US.

Anawalt is further south than Richmond and Lexington. And the elevation is about 2700 feet above sea level. The highest spot in WV is Spruce Knob which is 4200 feet a.s.l.

Because Anawalt was so far south and so high up, surrounded by mountains about 1000 feet higher, the climate was remarkable. We had four months of Spring and four months of Autumn with about 2 months of Winter and Summer. Spring and Autumn were cool at night and warm in the daytime. Summer was sunny but not that hot. A town 30 miles away called Bluefield (nicknamed "Nature's Air-Conditioned City") gave away lemonade any time the temperature got to 90. In the 18 years of my early life, I don't remember more than a few days that free lemonade flowed.

It rained a lot and snowed a lot. But the snow seldom stayed around for more than a few days. Even in winter, the temperature would creep up into the 50's a lot, so the snow would melt.

I actually think McDowell County could be a really ideal retirement place--amazing weather, mountains, friendly people. But then there is this: of all the counties in the contiguous 48 states, McDowell County has the earliest death rate AND the oldest average age.

Ponder that for a moment. People die sooner there than anywhere in the US and yet the average age is the highest. Huh...no young people at all. When I grew up there 50 years or so ago, the county had 12 high schools--6 white and 6 black (McDowell County has about a 50/50 racial divide, the highest outside the deep South, though in the whole state there are only about 5 % black population....go figure that!) Now, to my knowledge, there are only 3 high schools.

The population of McDowell County, when I was growing up there, was about 60,000. Now, bear in mind that the county is about the size of Rd. Island, so we're talking a really rural place. Now, if I'm not mistaken, the population is around 30,000 or less. Go figure. Well, deep coal mining lost out to cutting the tops off of mountains. All the young people left.

Don't tell me there isn't something called Irony: the place in the country with the greatest weather ever is poverty stricken, practically deserted, full of old people who die early and so isolated that even if you wanted to retire there there is almost no easy way to get there.

Ponder that.

What a shame....

One more Easter over....

They were all here--both our children, their spouses, our three living granddaughters and our slumbering one in Mimi's belly--John and Suzanne, his niece, Jack and Sherry and their son, Robbie, and Jay (one of Josh's oldest friends) later.

Easter full of life, as it should be.

Our dog snapped at Robbie, as he has twice before (who knows what's that about? the dog gods?) so Bela was on a leash all day and upstairs in our bedroom with either me or Bern while Jay was here.

Resurrection is sometimes a complicated times--especially when you have a dog who is the worst ever but who you love like a Rock.

Food coming out our ears. I do the 'befores' except Bern breads and fries asparagus--usually canned but this year fresh and much better than what was already very good. I did pate and cheese and crackers and olives and shrimp and deviled eggs.

Then there was two hams--fresh and 'country'--vadellia onion  pie, green salad and dandelion risotta (from Sherry and Jack--green salad is lime jello with walnuts and cottage cheese in case you don't know) salad 'salad'. Coconut Cake and Robbie's Chocolate Silk pie for desert. Amazing

And good friends and beloved people and food and laughter and joy (after Bela was on leash!)

Good Friday was John's birthday. I found all these great cards and we gave him the National Geographic "Story of Jesus".

John is one of only a few folks I remember from college.

Suzanne, John's niece, went to Bennington College, where both Tim and Mimi went, more than a decade before.

I'm just rambling now, I know.

John took Tim to the train late Easter afternoon. Josh and Cathy and the girls left in the early morning on Monday for Baltimore. Mimi drove back to Brooklyn just after noon today and will pick Tim up from work in the Empire State Building and they'll go home. (How cool to have a son-in-law who works in the Empire State Building!)

And now, sated with left overs, about to go to bed, I'm writing this.

He is Risen! He IS indeed!

And I feel that way too after so much time with the people I love most in the world and Holy Week with the folks at St. James in Higganum.

Alleluia! I say.

Another Easter has come and Gone.

Alleluia! in lots of ways.

Happy Good Friday!

Josh and Cathy and the girls got here just as I was leaving for Maundy Thursday services. (My spell check didn't recognize 'Maundy'--who's running these things?)

They left this morning to visit a friend of Cathy's in Boston and show the girls Beantown. (Spell check doesn't like 'Beantown' either--must be West Coast atheists doing the checking....)

They'll be back tomorrow and stay until Monday.

Mimi arrived this morning and Tim will be here in the morning.

The tribe is gathering.

Just one of the reasons 'Good Friday' is so good.

The other reasons are theological and not nearly as much fun as family....

OK, we've now moved to 'too much'...

Just when you thought the political debate couldn't get any crasser or more demeaning--well, you were wrong!

A Ted Cruz Super PAC ran an ad in Utah (where Mormans live) of Donald Trump's wife naked in some magazine spread saying something like "meet your new first lady...or you could vote for Ted Cruz."

It was Donald's (I think) third and current wife (and why hasn't that come up among Evangelicals?).

So Trump tweeted (if elected he will run the country through Twitter!) that he might "spill the beans" on Ted's wife. Whatever the hell that means.

OK, adult people know to stop before trashing another person's spouse. They just do.

I'm through writing about these adolescents until they start 'dising each others' mothers.

That's sure to come, given the way all this is going.

I give the nomination to which one--Ted or Donnie--uses the MF word first....It's just what their supporters deserve.

What does my PC want?

There are lots of things I still don't like about my new computer.

For example, WORD is a nightmare. I don't know how I used to write documents but it was a lot simpler. Just like this--spell check isn't available unless I ask for it by typing 'check spelling' in a box. And I need spell check a lot!

But the thing that drives me craziest is that no matter what settings I set, my computer goes to sleep in about two minutes. Then it shows me a picture and asks what I think of it "I'm not a fan" and "I want more" are the only two options.

I've never 'wanted more' of any picture of inanimate objects (no matter how artistic!) or anything with a human being in it. I want nature, nature, nature, nature....Get it PC?

No.

Today photos of tools, a man climbing an ice wall and a room full of people showed up.

I've had this computer 6 months or more and all I've ever been a 'fan' of is pictures of nature, nature, nature, nature....What's so hard about that?

"We'll show you more like this", my PC tells me when I pick a nature/nature/nature photo as a fan. Then a day or two later, there's a photo of a violin--a perfectly lovely violin--but I want nature, nature, nature, nature you a-hole PC!!!

What's so hard about that?

Give me a view of a bay with funny islands or a forest or a seascape or the night sky and I'm a 'fan'.

No more artistic violins or tools.

Is that so hard?

Stupid PC....

Reality in an ultrasound

Mimi emailed Bern and me ultrasounds of little Ellie, growing inside her.

Little hand, little foot, two profiles: I was shocked into the reality that our baby girl is having a baby girl in July!

I'd been in, not 'denial', but something like 'disbelief'. Mimi was here a week or so ago and didn't look pregnant to me. Of course she wears Brooklyn style and her tops were a little too flowing to show off anything.

But there was Ellie's profile and foot and hand for all the world (or at least Bern and me) to see.

Tim and Mimi will be great parents, as terrified as they must be right now.

So Ellie has stepped into my reality. And I thank God for her and welcome her.

(I can't quite tell who she looks like from the ultrasounds, but her profile is perfect.)

Just perfect.

Joy and wonder.

Mystery solved...at least one....

Big mystery last week.

Several mornings there were pages in my printer tray I didn't print. They were, it turned out, pages from Dr. Stombakis, the surgeon who removed my prostate.

Medical records. I couldn't figure out how they were being sent to me through my printer.

After three random assortment of pages arrived, I noticed they weren't on the kind of paper in my printer. They were on thicker paper.

I was dumbfounded.

Was my printer also a FAX machine and the doctor's office was faxing me my records? But a fax machine prints stuff sent to it on the paper in the machine. No one can send paper through a wire!

I was flummoxed. Totally.

I'd begin to think I was imagining the whole thing when a few more pages on that thicker paper would show up in my tray.

Maybe I was losing my mind--though I always thought you had to have one to lose it....

Then, just a day or two ago, I came into my little office and there were papers all over the floor--more medical records on that good paper.

I looked on top of the bookshelf where my printer occupies the middle shelf and saw a folder about to fall off. It was the folder Dr. Stombakis gave me when I started seeing a urologist closer to home (Meriden vs. Greenwich). One or two pages had been falling out at a time and miraculously landing on my printer's tray!

Mystery solved! That one at any rate.

Another mystery emerged when I started reading the pages. I didn't understand most of it since it was in the medical secret language it takes years of Med School to master. No mystery there.

The mystery was when I noticed the date of my surgery.

It's been 11 years!

I told someone a few weeks ago that I had prostate cancer "five or six years ago".

Half right!

I know I am lost in linear time--but I didn't know it was that bad.

Eleven years becomes 'five or 6' in my mind--how weird. (Take the 'in my mind' in that sentence with a grain of salt....)

You have to 'have one' to lose it....