A lovely day

When I got to St. James in Higganum today, some people came in with umbrellas. "What are those for?" I asked.

Big rain coming, they told me. Saw it on radar, they said. Be here when church is over, I was told.

So, I went out and rolled up my car windows, that were all the way down.

I had to leave St. James during the closing hymn and drive like a crazy person, still in my alb, to Emmanuel, Killingworth. When I got there, still sunny as all get out, I left my windows up since, surely, the rain was near.

Both times, no rain.

I did hit rain--a little--driving home, but passed some places that looked like it had rained hard.

Bern told me, when I got home, there had been a 10 minute downpour.

But the rest of the day was brilliant and cooler--no air conditioning on--and no humidity to speak of.

I read an Icelandic mystery today--very stark and dark. And watched the birds in the back yard.

Lots of birds this year. At one point this afternoon their were 9 birds on the ground in our back yard, plus a bunny and a groundhog--and this is a suburb, not the country!

A lovely day, just right, perfect.

Hope yours was too.

In spite of that....

In spite of our President at the G 20 cozying up to Putin and Saudi Arabia and hinting at a bromance at the demilitarized zone with the supreme leader of the slave state of North Korea, today was a good day.

Our next door neighbors, Mark and Naomi, gave a party for two of their girls--one who graduated from nursing school and the other from high school (on her way to the University of Alabama...a long way from New England!) at Ives Farm on Cheshire Street about 6 miles away.

Cheshire is a suburb of New Haven, Waterbury, Southington, Middletown and a couple of other larger towns.  But Cheshire is also a farm town. There are dozens of farms around. Cheshire claims to be the 'garden center of CT'. I doubt that, but there are lots of farms.

Johanna and Zoe grew from children to young women under our eyes. Great kids and two more to go--a boy 15 and a girl 12, our granddaughters' Morgan and Emma's age.

Bern and I had a long talk with Naomi's parents, who live outside Boston. Interestingly enough, her father and I went to Harvard Divinity School the same year. He later graduated from the now defunct Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge and became a librarian at the Harvard Divinity School library. Lots of shared memories though we never met there. Cambridge from 1969 until 1971 was a place of protest and craziness most of the time. But we knew and loved the same teachers.

A very pleasant afternoon in spite of He Who Will Not Be Named in this blog being an, excuse my language, an absolute asshole half-way around the world.

Wish he'd stay there....

2nd debate

OK, just me talkng.

Kamala Harris ruled! Even though she missed a chance to talk about climate change, she took on Biden and Mayor Pete and had the greatest line of the night when lots of people were talking: "We don't want to have a food fight when people want to know how we'll put food on their table."

Sen. Barret was ok, except he seemed a tad lost.

Bernie held up as did Congressman Swallwell, Sen, Gillibrand and Gov. Inslee. But barely.

Andrew Yang said next to nothing. Former Congressman Delany said nothing that mattered and guru to the stars, Marianna Williamson looked like she was in another dimension and sounded like it too.

Joe suffered. Mayor Pete, Gillibrand, Bernie treaded water and Kamala leaped like a dolphin. Though I'll give Mayor Pete this: when asked about why South Bend's police force didn't have more Black officers, he said, "Because I failed." Not many politicians will be that humble and self-critical. I really like him for that.

Unlike the night before, this shifted the field.

Kamala raised the third most money that night than any.

She's on the rise.

Just me talkin'....

I jinxed the spider

My writing about my favorite spider wasn't a boon to the spider.

I went out of the deck this morning and the spider was gone, just a wisp of web left.

Bern said the spider had been there when she was out earlier. But gone by the time I got there.

I hope he/she is alright. I will miss my favorite spider.

Greener pastures is my desire.

Farewell, friend. (Though I doubt you thought of me in those terms.)

First debate

In my opinion, nobody really won.

The set up was so awkward I couldn't see how anyone could have won. Too many people, too little time, too short answers.

But for me, just me I'll have you understand, Warren, Castro and Booker came out most positive.

Beto and di Blasio were terrible. Most of the others just didn't matter. Tim Ryan, for example, looked like he was caught in an alternative universe. And the woman from Hawaii. though she had that moment with Ryan where she straightened him out, has too much recent baggage about G/L/B/T/Q people to survive.

Looking forward to tonight in 15 minutes or so.

It could really matter.

"Any one but He Who Will Not be Named" is my mantra.

Time will tell who that 'any one' might be.

my favorite spider

I like spiders (Black Widows and other poisonous ones, not as much. But I do like spiders.

I love the complexity of their webs and how they eat annoying insects like flies and their eight-leg-ness. (They remind me of the Ogden Nash poem about the caterpillar 'wondering how to run'. I have enough problems on two legs, what would I do with eight?)

My favorite spider this year has built the most endangered web in spider history.

It connects to three things: a deck chair, our grill and the deck trashcan--that can be moved at any time. The only stable place the web is connected is to the side of our house.

Bern thinks the spider chose the place because there are flies around the trashcan since we dump stuff from the grill in there.

Every time I open the trashcan, the spider races around like a crazy spider.

But I admire the spider's bravery so much that I didn't remove the trash bag this week to be picked up. It wasn't nearly full anyway. But I''m already dreading next Tuesday when I'll have to open the trashcan's lid completely to get the bag out.

I do admire the audacity and minor craziness of this spider.

Audacity and minor craziness are things I'd admire just as I admire this favorite spider of mine.

human kindness

It goes a long way--human kindness does.

Yesterday on my day of travel hell, I was in Grand Central trying to figure out how to buy a Metro ticket from a machine.

A young man must have seen my confusion and came over and said, "I have unlimited, I'll get you through the turnstile." He swiped his card and I was in the subway.

I get a little teary, even today, remembering that.

In the megalopolis that is New York City, a young man saw an elderly, confused man and was kind.

In these days of division and polarization and lack of kindness, that act meant the world to me.

Each of us needs to find time and opportunity to be simply kind to other human beings. No matter what.

Try it out. Bring kindness into this torn and fractured world.

It will matter, really.....