Sat, 18 Feb 2017, 12:18 PM (-06:00)
It was lunchtime. I didn’t feel like going far for something to eat, because it was cold. So I walked to Whole Foods for the salad bar.
I was sitting at a tall table, eating my meal, working on French language drills on my phone and enjoying the music.
I glanced in the direction of the cash registers between a bite of greens and translating a French phrase. There was no one in line. The music was particularly good. And from my vantage point, I could see the two cashiers, staggered, one slightly beyond the other, both with hip caps, smiling faces and groovy shirts that had the same kind of tealish, greenish blue.
As the two of them waited for the next customer, to bide their time, they were nodding their smiling faces to the music, unintentionally in sync with each other. And until that very moment, I didn’t realize that I was smiling, and I was loving the music, and I was bobbing my head exactly in sync with them.
Mon, 13 Feb 2017, 02:35 AM (-06:00)
It’s a fine thing, that Oak tree sapling poking up out of the pot from the acorn we poked into the dirt in the pot under the mulch in the fall. A fine thing, that spring-green finery, ever optimistic under blue skies and under chicken wire to keep the squirrels at bay.
And it’s a fine thing, those wild onions blooming in the back, their white blossoms upon their green stalks. A fine thing, that they come back this time every year, ever optimistic under blue skies even though you don’t want them growing in your butterfly garden where the later flowers belong.
And it was a fine thing, you and me at the park in the afternoon. A fine thing sitting there under blue skies in the unusual heat of the day. Sitting there the four of us at the picnic table, the dogs sniffing the air, the creek burbling at the bottom of the canyon, and the two of us with smiles on our faces listening in silence.
“Do you get bored with that?” I asked.
“No!” You laughed.
A fine thing.
Sun, 5 Feb 2017, 01:46 PM (-06:00)
From the cover of Der Spiegel from Germany.
From the cover of the New Yorker from the East Coast.
And from a protest sign in Poughkeepsie.
Sat, 21 Jan 2017, 07:49 PM (-06:00)
The sky was blue. The sun was high in the sky. And these were the smiles of my brother’s daughters.
Mon, 16 Jan 2017, 09:16 PM (-06:00)
RIP E.Cernan. Oh, that we might have returned before you left.
Mon, 16 Jan 2017, 11:00 AM (-06:00)
We made New Year’s cards this year that had a cover with the image of the sun sitting on the horizon. We left if up to the viewer to derive a meaning — something like Ben Franklin’s observation about George Washington’s chair.
If I know the fair and industrious Trudy well, her preferred interpretation might differ from mine. Which is fine; that was after all the design’s purpose. But I’ll leave you with a less unambiguous version of mine:
source: Gustavo Viselner
hat tip: The [inestimable] Weekly Sift
Sun, 15 Jan 2017, 10:20 PM (-06:00)
The radar shows pink and purple to the west — the stuff of severe thunderstorms and tornados. The rain hasn’t arrived, yet. There’s no thunder or lightning. The storms are approaching only slowly and are still far away.
Still, the wind is picking up, and the wind chimes hanging from the eves are ringing. And if you walk into the back corner of the yard, back far enough from the eve-hanging chimes, back by the compost pile, you can hear the harmony of the new wind chimes that we hung beside Guinness when we laid him in the ground. They don’t ring loudly, so we don’t usually hear them from the house, but their gentle music is a joy to hear.
I wonder what Guinness thinks of this. The wind. The ringing of those gentle chimes. He wasn’t much for windy days. And bells would always set him to barking. But somehow those chimes seem sufficiently soothing that perhaps tonite the storms won’t bother him as they pass over his grave.
Perhaps. Or then maybe perhaps not. He really didn’t like the thunder, and here it comes now.
Sun, 15 Jan 2017, 05:08 PM (-06:00)
They stood there looking at the blackboard, craning their necks, staring at the equations and the calculations and the trajectories. The white men in their white shirts and skinny early 60s ties and the colored computer Katherine Goble Johnson.
They puzzled over math they didn’t know — elliptical to parabolic trajectories. And then her eyes went wide.
“Euler’s method,” she whispered and ran off to get a book.
“Euler’s method? That’s ancient!” one of the others said.
And… well you’ll just have to see the movie (or read the book).
Sun, 8 Jan 2017, 07:05 PM (-06:00)
My brother: Four helicopters flew over our house again — the usual.
Me: Black?
Him: Olive.
Me: Black olives!
Him: Pizza.
Me: Deep dish?
Him: Grilled cheese actually. With tomato soup.
Me: Ha! That’s what we had for lunch. No olives.
…pause…
Me: Our furnace is on the blink. Blower kaput. Lucky we got good insulation on this house.
Him: Non!
Me: Oui!
Him: How cold there? 7 degrees here.
Me: Low of 20 at night. Only 40s tonite, though.
…pause…
Me: The blower is covered by the warranty.
Him: Oh good.
Me: Three year old unit.
Him: Nice. Will repair guys come tomorrow?
Me: Maybe. Depends on availability of a Lennox part.
Him: What color?
Me: Olive.
Him: Black?
Tue, 3 Jan 2017, 02:04 AM (-06:00)
1.
A purple hoodie. He was wearing a purple hoodie and running along the sidewalk. Two of his friends were nearby, one ahead of him looking back, the other running alongside. It was a sunny day at the end of the year. The holidays were just around the corner. And it was the beginning of the weekend.
And he was running down the sidewalk in a purple hoodie.
2.
Out by the curb late at night. Orion is overhead. It’s the holidays. No cars are on the road. Down the street five or six houses, there is a riot of kids out in the front yard. They’re laughing and playing basketball. There’s no school tomorrow, because … it’s the holidays.
And they are running around in the dark of night playing basketball.
3.
The holidays end tonite. Tomorrow it starts up again. And a decidedly lower-case new year.
I don’t know what to think or write or say when I sit here, these days. These nights. I’m stunned beyond my usual cynical self.
So I will sit in the sun on the weekends if it’s warm. And maybe even when it’s not. Looking down the street for the boy in the hoodie. Or listening for the racket of kids playing basketball.
Because their frames of mind are a better place to be.
