It's been shipped....

I just got an email telling me my new smart phone (imagine me with a smart phone) has been shipped!

Perfect timing since some of the most media savvy people I know will be here for Thanksgiving and can load it up for me.

I got it through Consumer Cellular--a company for AARP folks that Bern and I have been on since we were AARP folks. If you're over 60 and you are on any other network, consider switching. We both have the service for under $25 a month each and if we switch to the family plan it will be even less.

Plus, the phone I bought from them was $300 less than it would have been from the company that makes it. Go figure that.

Being old has some advantages. AARP is a joy.

Hello, Moto!

Coming soon to this home....

I love those commercials for Motorola phones, so that's what I got.

Like I said, "Hello, Moto!"

Bela's reply

I posted a few weeks ago that Bela, our Hungarian Sheepdog, got a letter from a politician's dog asking him to make sure we voted for his 'dad'.

I forgot to post Bela's reply, so here it is.

10/24/17

Dear Sizzels,

Funny thing about your letter: you never mentioned your ‘man’s’ political party. I pretty much figured it out from the no tax/no spend stuff and given what’s up in Washington I’m sure lots of New England Republicans don’t brag about being one.

 My “Man”—I never call him “Dad”—too anthropomorphic for me—is what we call back home ‘a yellow dog Democrat’. That means if Mother Teresa were the Republican and a yellow dog (like you and me, though I’m black…but a dog like us) was the Democrat, my man would vote for the yellow dog.

So, he and my Woman won’t be voting for your ‘Dad’.

But it was interesting, I must say, to get a letter from another dog.

My first one ever. Well, my first letter ever, just so you know.

My vet sends me post cards to tell me I have to come to her office and suffer with shots and blood tests and such, but never a letter addressed to me before.

So, thanks for that.

And go Democrats!!!

Be well and don’t itch.

Bela Bradley

p.s. I licked this since I can't hold a pen....

 

so tired

The last two days I've gone to Greenwich, which is only about 60 miles away but only accessible from I 95 and the Merritt Parkway, neither of which is a leisurely drive! In fact, going south from CT is a nightmare.

I was in Greenwich for the Convention of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut. I used to be a real fan of Convention. I would sit near a microphone and make people crazy with my comments on resolutions. When I retired I realized I really didn't care that much any more. I go to convention to see people I don't see much--which is a joy, though watching them grow older is not!

Friday, my friend Charles drove me. Today I drove myself.

On Friday there was a resolution that was amended 5 times and the last time was to remove all the language that had been inserted the first four times so we voted on what we were first given after nearly an hour of quibbling.

Then today there was a similar expenditure of time and passion on a resolution that was really just to clean up some language in the Diocesan Canons (church talk for 'laws') that resulted in voting on what was given us to begin with.

The last resolution was about 'inclusive language in Prayer Book revision' and I left before debate started because I wanted to be ahead of 300 people leaving the hotel AND I could predict about everything--pro and con--that would be said. I assume it passed, but not without heated debate and hurt feelings.

The devotional times were wonderful and the Bishop's address was like a Ted talk with three huge screens that showed stuff all through convention. I told him afterwards that "the Bishop's address" was usually a bathroom break for me, but his was the best I've heard in 40 years or so.

Voting in the elections had to be done on-line and since I have no device I can carry that accesses the web, I had to go in the hall and vote on a tablet provided by the diocese. Humiliating.

I checked out the best low price smart phones since I've been home.

Hello, Moto!

Perhaps soon....

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a few hours from being only a week away. Our small clan will gather at our house--Bern and me, Mimi and Tim and Eleanor, Josh and Cathy and Morgan/Emma/Tegan, along with John our friend since the early 70's and Hanne, who is in her 90's and our friend for 30 years.

Those rare times when Bern, our children, their spouses, our granddaughters and I are together are magic to me--because they are blessings and magic as well.

I happened across a poem I wrote about Mimi and rain and home over 9 years ago. I thought I'd share it here as a pre-Thanksgiving gift.


RAINY DAY

It rained all day in Connecticut
and New York City too, my daughter told me
on the phone tonight.

What else she told me was this:
on her way from the subway to her office,
on, of all streets, 17th Street,
she saw a blur of yellow on a windowsill
at sidewalk level.

She turned back and found a parakeet
with her head under her wing,
more yellow than green,
and found a box in the trash of 17th Street
and took the bird--after a struggle--
to work with her...stopping on the way,
somewhere, I can't imagine where,
to buy a cage and some food and,
though she didn't mention it,
a water bottle, I'm sure.

She spent lots of the day on the internet--
and found Rainy was a girl
because of the color of her beak,
and put a message on Craig's List (whatever that is)
that brought her a dozen calls about missing
parakeets.

None of them, after descriptions were given,
turned out to be Rainy.
So my daughter, most likely, now has a parakeet.

I'm wondering how a dozen people in a piece
of Manhattan, could allow
their parakeets to escape on a rainy day
in April.

And even more, I'm left wondering
if a dozen people who lost birds
were looking on Craig's List to find them...
how many birds were truly lost
this rainy day?

I think of them--wet feathered, frightened,
shivering on windowsills, trash cans
and the just budding trees of the East Side,
heads under their wings,
longing for home.

(Who of us doesn't know the feeling of 'being lost',
damp wings across our face,
longing for home?)

And I'm left wondering
most of all,
if I did anything right in my life
to have a daughter who'd
spend her day trying to find 'home'

and then providing one
for a wet bird she named Rainy,
in honor of
this wet April Monday?
JGB 4/28/08

(Eventually Rainy came to live with us along with Maggie, the bird Mimi brought so Rainy would have a friend. We had them both until Rainy and then Maggie, a year later, died. We loved them greatly. They were a blessing and a gift.

Just like all the members of our small clan are. Blessings and gifts--what we celebrate on Thanksgiving....)

  

Why players kneel at NFL Games

I can't believe all the indignity and anger a peaceful protest has engendered.

Well, yes I can, I came of age in the '60's and had people shout and threaten me during peaceful protest.

Peaceful is good. Very good. What do you prefer, some White Nationalist driving his car into a crowd in Charlottesville?

Why can rich people with lobbyist try to influence opinion of lawmakers be given a pass while rich people who play in the NFL not try to influence popular opinion by peaceful protest?

I wrote a blog almost 3 years ago about the issue the NFL players are addressing, peacefully.
 
I noticed not many people read it. I have more readers now--so here it is again.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Rainy days

If all the rain we had overnight and all day today had been snow, Connecticut would be Buffalo east.

Seriously, it has been raining for 24 hours solid here--sometimes hard and harsh, sometimes light--but always raining.

I talked to an Indian woman today in a store who lived near Birmingham, England for 16 years. She was talking about the rain and how it could continue for two weeks in Birmingham. Head's up, Seattle, you have nothing to brag about when it comes to rain.

The truth is, I'm trying to write about the weather, but the weather is only a symbol for what's on my heart. I can't stop thinking about how police can kill black men without fear or retribution.

And it's like that thing from the Second World War:


First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

That's a version of what a German theologian, killed by the Nazi's said.

I feel like that when I think about how the number of incidents against unarmed black men has escalated recently.

I need to speak out, not only here, on this blog, but some other way. I need to stand in the street and hold my hands up and say, "I can't breathe" before they come for me.

I know it is a horrible metaphor, comparing American police to the Nazis, and I apologize for that. But the war on Black men has become so undeniable that white people must speak out, somehow.

I mourn for my love of this country and its values. That love is fading. It feels like the 1950's to me right now...and I lived through that to what I thought was a better place. We can elect a Black President but can't keep black folks safe.

And it rains outside. On and on and on....

Misty

I've never been the kind of person to hide my emotions. But as I age, my tears and my anger seem closer to the surface.

I just watched a video from Iowa City.

There is a new children's hospital next to the campus of the University of Iowa. The top floor of the hospital looks down on every inch of the Iowa football stadium.

Months ago, even before the hospital was open, a nurse realized hospitalized children and their parents could watch the home games from that top, open floor.

She sent her idea for a wave from the crowd at sometime during the game to the children on the top floor to a U of Iowa website. It caught on.

Between the first and second quarters all 68,000 fans and both teams wave to the kids.

The video was of a 6 year old boy who had a heart transplant 44 days before and has been in hospital for 295 days. Hooked up to all sorts of things, his parents took him to the 12th floor. His reaction, even wearing a mask to block out germs, was so priceless I wept.

I went down to tell Bern about it and had to stop twice before I got it all out.

It was so wonderful and grace-filled and amazing.

The boy's kidneys shut down during his heart  problems and he is on a 17 hour a day pediatric dialysis treatment. His mother has slept at home 2 nights only since he's been in the hospital.

So much suffering and yet so much courage and so much love.

Hard not to weep typing this....

And why not, beloved, tears can be of joy and healing.

I guess I do it too...

I get so out of sorts with the folks in the White House (He Who Not Be Named chief among them) who lean on what Kelly Ann Conway called 'alternative facts' to make their points.

Facts are facts. "Alternative facts" are what we know as 'lies'.

Well, I probably need to get off my high horse! I am guilty of an 'alternative fact' all my own.

A few days ago, I wrote a blog called "Putting it on the line" in which I confessed how left wing I truly am.

In my tirade I said the Barry Goldwater suggested privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority (fact) that delivered the electricity to where I lived (alternative fact).

My friend Mike Miano commented to say I was wrong. We got our electricity from the Appalachian Electric Power company, created from coal our neighbors dug from the ground under not so ideal conditions.

Here's the only difference between me and our President--I've been telling that 'alternative fact' (i.e. lie) for years, thinking it was true.

Once Mike, who grew up 7 or 8 miles from where I did, was a year ahead of me in high school and one of my roommates in an off campus apartment with the most lusted after address imaginable (69 Richwood Avenue) is absolutely right. I told a lie for years and convinced myself it was the truth because it suited my purposes and made a good tale....

Thanks to Mike, I'll be examining and pondering everything I say as "the truth" with a new eye toward what else have I made up to meet my needs.

That could be a soul cleansing exercise and not a tad humbling.

I'll let you know how that goes (uncovering the lies I tell as alternative truths) and why. Or you could try it on yourselves and see how it goes.

I wish Mike would talk to our President....