It is. He has always struck me as a good man, but I suppose even good men can get carried away with their own power and importance. But not even the prosecutor claims he did any of it for personal gain. Terribly sad.
Cat, Edwin once said he'd been in Carly's store ( http://www.midnightfarm.net/homepage.php ) on the Vineyard, and she was there futzing around with stuff, and on the store's speaker system, Sweet Baby James was playing. . . .
Sometimes I wish that even half of his memories/experience had somehow been captured.
I know exactly what you mean, puddle. One of my biggest regrets is that I have no record of all my Mom's stories about the earlier generations and her childhood. I remember a few of them, but many/most were lost with her.
listener, to answer your question on the last thread.... I got plastic de-icers, well, they look like plastic anyway. They're about 1" thick and about 6" long & 3" wide. They're a solid surface textured a little like rock. Easy to clean and I put a medium-size stone on top to keep them from floating. I plug them in with outdoor extension cords.
This morning it's in the high to mid-20's and I can see a skin of ice on the baths. Guess I'll have to go out and get the de-icers set up today for sure. I have a fancy birdbath in the warm months, but in the freezy months I use two new oil change pans. Deeper, hold more water & can handle the large assortment of critters I get - both winged and four-legged.
And I'll bet that's lots more than you ever wanted to know. :-P
Are you kidding? I'm the Mom of a wildlife biologist, remember! :-)
Send me a link to the deicers if you know of one.
We use a flat, rubber, U-shaped model (looks kind of like someone flattened a black neck pillow!), that plugs in, yet rests on the bottom of the birdbath. Works great.
But we did manage to connect with the Gift Shop at Beth Israel and arrange to have a teddy bear sent up to his room, as soon as he's out of the ICU. Funny thing is that Teddy costs about $15 but the minimum to have it delivered to his room is $40. So the clerk suggested we send something more to get our money's worth! Ha! So I said to send a bouquet of balloons if his room can handle them, but if that ward will allow is the teddy bear I'm good with that and the $40 charge. (Some of the wards don't permit flowers, so I wasn't sure about balloons, as they also take up space.) Our tradition is the bear! We sent him one when he had an emergency appendectomy, and he loved it. Plus he has a heap of grandkids and lives in the same double-house with most of them. :-)
On the road again... (Now I'm thinking of Miss Roadpop!) ♥
I'm pretty much saved from guilt by having a river that pretty much never freezes over (just the first winter I lived here, lol! when I had to take a hatchet with me to get water).
Just got an early Christmas gift of something like $300! Checked the car, and my bill from yesterday was sitting on the passenger seat (usually, I need to go in). Inspection sticker, oil change, and $20 to inspect brakes. And a note: that they're okay, and they didn't change them!!
I think Sis and I may have finally succeeded in persuading Dad to start him memoirs, at least of his years in the Navy if not also of his growing up. We'll see how it goes.
Oh! This day is just so FULL of gifts! Just went out to gather water before dark, and the sky and the river, even the very air all, all this deep pink/gold. In the west sky and in the east sky and all around, and laying on the rippling surface of the river. Blessed.
I'm glad, Cat. I've tried SO many times to get it on film, and just can't. At least not with my existing camera. And it's soooooo brief, and you can't plan for it. You just have this ten minutes to catch it when it happens!
Bill, both you and Stuart from the writing group thought it unlikely that the twenty-four-year-old Kathleen would recognize the forty-four-year-old Kathleen as herself. I don't see it myself. I haven't changed so much in twenty years that someone who knew me when I was twenty-six, assuming she/he remembered me at all, would fail to recognize me. Of course, recognizing an older or younger version of neself is a different kettle of fish, I grant that. Still, I don't think it's a problem. But, since two people raised the issue, I figured I'd better try to address it. See what you think.
If anyone else is interested in the context of this excerpt, just ask.
----
She caught sight of me and stopped abruptly, beginning an angry exclamation. Then, she gave an astonished, scared little cry, turning towards the mirror and back to me, eyes wide. Could I see that or feel it?
“You could almost be me,” she said wonderingly, “me much older and sadder. But, that’s not possible. In Science Fiction, sure, but not in real life.” Her voice trailed off.
Wordlessly, I unbuttoned my left cuff rolling the sleeve up to my elbow, and showed her my forearm.
She drew her breath in sharply. “The place where Mr. Meow bit me when I was seven.”
“Had to go to the emergency room,” I confirmed, rolling my sleeve back down. “Got stitches.”
“But not enough to be interesting,” she said discontentedly. She laughed and I found myself smiling.
“Not like Jimmy Constantine,” I agreed.
“Showoff,” she said and again I couldn’t help smiling. “Fourteen stitches for this, eighteen stitches for that.”
“Well,” I said reasonably, the poor child had nothing else; no talents of any kind, no looks. He had to have something.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s a very grownup sort of point of view.” She stopped and looked searchingly at me again. “So,” she said, her voice not quite steady, “You are me from the future?”
The momentary fun of talking and giggling with this eerie girl abruptly dissolved. “I don’t know,” I told her, “I don’t think so, not exactly.”
She frowned, shifting her weight slightly. “What do you mean?”
It was useless, wasn’t it? The experiment had failed, hadn’t it? Still, I couldn’t just get up and walk out without trying to give her some kind of explanation. Besides, I wasn’t physically capable of getting up and walking out at that moment anyway. Might as well be polite.
Yes, that will work very well, I think. And that last few lines nicely set the stage for Cat's realization that things weren't working out as she expected them to. (For those who haven't read it, the first-person narrator of this story is named Katherine, better known as Cat.)
Part of the point in my case is that I had a beard at 44. I hadn't even thought about one at 24. But I can also tell a relevant anecdote. When I was in my 40s I was introduced to someone from my home town. The moment I heard his name I said, "David!" We had known each other very well all through grade school and high school, but neither of us began to recognize the other until we heard the names.
There was a gas explosion in a coal mine on New Zealand's South Island today. Apparently two people have come out, but rescue crews don't know when it will be safe to look for the remaining twenty-eight people inside. Sounds like the explosion was caused by a build up of methane.
The other item that caught my attention in tonight's news is that Oakland's new mayor was elected via instant runoff voting. Here's the video report from The News Hour:
With knowing the story at all, my "insight". . . . When I first moved to this place, I kept hearing of a woman who was my *exact twin*. . . . But no one seemed to know her name. At about the ten year mark, I saw her. In the parking lot at the grocery store. I had absolutely NO trubble knowing she was the one. And I could see why peeps thought we were similar, if not exact, as had been being claimed. I wonder if she'd been being told the same thing? I didn't go over to her: it was more fun to just let it go at that. Plus evidently she'd run off without paying for a tank of gas, that I got accused of not paying for. . . .
The problem, of course, is now I'm wondering about poor little Jimmy Constantine. What happened to him when he grew up? One can see how nine hundred page novels and twelve book series come about.
I can't help but regard preferential voting as old news. I first encountered it in the 1960s, in voting for Cal State Long Beach student government. And I voted for only one slate because I regarded the other two as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I've never understood why people seem unable to grasp that such a response is likely to be common.
And as I science fiction fan, I have for years cast preferential ballots for the Hugo awards and the site of the upcoming Hugo. As I believe I have mentioned here, Chicago lost the 2008 Worldcon to Denver by 13 votes -- less than 1% of those cast. That was a three-way race. But when I asked the people who counted the votes who the voters with Columbus as #1 had picked #2, I was told that most hadn't bothered.
But those were both three-way races. Which, of course, is pretty much what you would see in a partisan political contest. Things may be different in a nonpartisan race with 10 candidates, though.
I'm sheltered, if that's the right word for being out of the pop culture mainstream. I could have told you that Carly Simon was a female singer, but would have had to go to Wikipedia to find out more. Just as I had to go to Wikipedia to remind myself who Stan Lee was when his name came up elsewhere.
Howard Dean primus inter nos est!
ReplyDeleteSeems I killed the previous thread...
It really is a shame what Rep. Rangel has brought upon himself.
ReplyDeleteWell, be sure to go back and read my last comment on the previous thread because it's truly joyful! :-D
ReplyDeleteYeah, I left you a note @ Carly, too.
ReplyDeletelistener, that's wonderful news!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kudos, everyone.
Alan, you're amazing. Never heard of Carly Simon? My goodness. And I thought I was, err, sheltered.
I hadn't thought of it, but you may well be right about Carly originally being a diminutive of Charlotte. Much nicer than Lotty.
listener, glad to hear your new coat matches your car. One ought always to be coordinated. 8)
It is. He has always struck me as a good man, but I suppose even good men can get carried away with their own power and importance. But not even the prosecutor claims he did any of it for personal gain. Terribly sad.
ReplyDeleteCat, Edwin once said he'd been in Carly's store ( http://www.midnightfarm.net/homepage.php ) on the Vineyard, and she was there futzing around with stuff, and on the store's speaker system, Sweet Baby James was playing. . . .
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wish that even half of his memories/experience had somehow been captured.
I know exactly what you mean, puddle. One of my biggest regrets is that I have no record of all my Mom's stories about the earlier generations and her childhood. I remember a few of them, but many/most were lost with her.
ReplyDeletelistener, to answer your question on the last thread.... I got plastic de-icers, well, they look like plastic anyway. They're about 1" thick and about 6" long & 3" wide. They're a solid surface textured a little like rock. Easy to clean and I put a medium-size stone on top to keep them from floating. I plug them in with outdoor extension cords.
ReplyDeleteThis morning it's in the high to mid-20's and I can see a skin of ice on the baths. Guess I'll have to go out and get the de-icers set up today for sure. I have a fancy birdbath in the warm months, but in the freezy months I use two new oil change pans. Deeper, hold more water & can handle the large assortment of critters I get - both winged and four-legged.
And I'll bet that's lots more than you ever wanted to know. :-P
Oh, and even more info overload. I put one pan up off the ground on a shelf and one on the ground for ground feeders.
ReplyDeleteAre you kidding? I'm the Mom of a wildlife biologist, remember! :-)
ReplyDeleteSend me a link to the deicers if you know of one.
We use a flat, rubber, U-shaped model (looks kind of like someone flattened a black neck pillow!), that plugs in, yet rests on the bottom of the birdbath. Works great.
Waving hallo from Panera Bread in Concord, NH, while sipping an iced chai. Mmmm.
ReplyDeleteNo new update today about Hubby's brother.
ReplyDeleteBut we did manage to connect with the Gift Shop at Beth Israel and arrange to have a teddy bear sent up to his room, as soon as he's out of the ICU. Funny thing is that Teddy costs about $15 but the minimum to have it delivered to his room is $40. So the clerk suggested we send something more to get our money's worth! Ha! So I said to send a bouquet of balloons if his room can handle them, but if that ward will allow is the teddy bear I'm good with that and the $40 charge. (Some of the wards don't permit flowers, so I wasn't sure about balloons, as they also take up space.) Our tradition is the bear! We sent him one when he had an emergency appendectomy, and he loved it. Plus he has a heap of grandkids and lives in the same double-house with most of them. :-)
On the road again...
(Now I'm thinking of Miss Roadpop!) ♥
I'm pretty much saved from guilt by having a river that pretty much never freezes over (just the first winter I lived here, lol! when I had to take a hatchet with me to get water).
ReplyDeleteJust got an early Christmas gift of something like $300! Checked the car, and my bill from yesterday was sitting on the passenger seat (usually, I need to go in). Inspection sticker, oil change, and $20 to inspect brakes. And a note: that they're okay, and they didn't change them!!
ReplyDeleteYes, I know what you mean. One feels faint contempt for compulsive diarists, and yet they do a great thing in recording their lives.
ReplyDeleteI think Sis and I may have finally succeeded in persuading Dad to start him memoirs, at least of his years in the Navy if not also of his growing up. We'll see how it goes.
ReplyDeleteOh! This day is just so FULL of gifts! Just went out to gather water before dark, and the sky and the river, even the very air all, all this deep pink/gold. In the west sky and in the east sky and all around, and laying on the rippling surface of the river. Blessed.
ReplyDeleteYou make me see it. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad, Cat. I've tried SO many times to get it on film, and just can't. At least not with my existing camera. And it's soooooo brief, and you can't plan for it. You just have this ten minutes to catch it when it happens!
ReplyDeleteBut you have words. I know they can be the devil to work with, but they aren't time sensitive like a photo would be.
ReplyDeleteTroo dat, lol!
ReplyDeleteBill, both you and Stuart from the writing group thought it unlikely that the twenty-four-year-old Kathleen would recognize the forty-four-year-old Kathleen as herself. I don't see it myself. I haven't changed so much in twenty years that someone who knew me when I was twenty-six, assuming she/he remembered me at all, would fail to recognize me. Of course, recognizing an older or younger version of neself is a different kettle of fish, I grant that. Still, I don't think it's a problem. But, since two people raised the issue, I figured I'd better try to address it. See what you think.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone else is interested in the context of this excerpt, just ask.
----
She caught sight of me and stopped abruptly, beginning an angry exclamation. Then, she gave an astonished, scared little cry, turning towards the mirror and back to me, eyes wide. Could I see that or feel it?
“You could almost be me,” she said wonderingly, “me much older and sadder. But, that’s not possible. In Science Fiction, sure, but not in real life.” Her voice trailed off.
Wordlessly, I unbuttoned my left cuff rolling the sleeve up to my elbow, and showed her my forearm.
She drew her breath in sharply. “The place where Mr. Meow bit me when I was seven.”
“Had to go to the emergency room,” I confirmed, rolling my sleeve back down. “Got stitches.”
“But not enough to be interesting,” she said discontentedly. She laughed and I found myself smiling.
“Not like Jimmy Constantine,” I agreed.
“Showoff,” she said and again I couldn’t help smiling. “Fourteen stitches for this, eighteen stitches for that.”
“Well,” I said reasonably, the poor child had nothing else; no talents of any kind, no looks. He had to have something.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s a very grownup sort of point of view.” She stopped and looked searchingly at me again. “So,” she said, her voice not quite steady, “You are me from the future?”
The momentary fun of talking and giggling with this eerie girl abruptly dissolved. “I don’t know,” I told her, “I don’t think so, not exactly.”
She frowned, shifting her weight slightly. “What do you mean?”
It was useless, wasn’t it? The experiment had failed, hadn’t it? Still, I couldn’t just get up and walk out without trying to give her some kind of explanation. Besides, I wasn’t physically capable of getting up and walking out at that moment anyway. Might as well be polite.
Cat~
ReplyDeleteYes, that will work very well, I think. And that last few lines nicely set the stage for Cat's realization that things weren't working out as she expected them to. (For those who haven't read it, the first-person narrator of this story is named Katherine, better known as Cat.)
Part of the point in my case is that I had a beard at 44. I hadn't even thought about one at 24. But I can also tell a relevant anecdote. When I was in my 40s I was introduced to someone from my home town. The moment I heard his name I said, "David!" We had known each other very well all through grade school and high school, but neither of us began to recognize the other until we heard the names.
There was a gas explosion in a coal mine on New Zealand's South Island today. Apparently two people have come out, but rescue crews don't know when it will be safe to look for the remaining twenty-eight people inside. Sounds like the explosion was caused by a build up of methane.
ReplyDeleteThe other item that caught my attention in tonight's news is that Oakland's new mayor was elected via instant runoff voting. Here's the video report from The News Hour:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/module.html?s=news01s458dqfe0
I love it when that happens. Wait...that has never happened, to me!
ReplyDeleteWith knowing the story at all, my "insight". . . . When I first moved to this place, I kept hearing of a woman who was my *exact twin*. . . . But no one seemed to know her name. At about the ten year mark, I saw her. In the parking lot at the grocery store. I had absolutely NO trubble knowing she was the one. And I could see why peeps thought we were similar, if not exact, as had been being claimed. I wonder if she'd been being told the same thing? I didn't go over to her: it was more fun to just let it go at that. Plus evidently she'd run off without paying for a tank of gas, that I got accused of not paying for. . . .
ReplyDeleteAh, thanks Bill.
ReplyDeleteThe problem, of course, is now I'm wondering about poor little Jimmy Constantine. What happened to him when he grew up? One can see how nine hundred page novels and twelve book series come about.
That's: "withOUT" knowing. . .
ReplyDeleteIn the immortal words of puddle, troo dat.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but regard preferential voting as old news. I first encountered it in the 1960s, in voting for Cal State Long Beach student government. And I voted for only one slate because I regarded the other two as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I've never understood why people seem unable to grasp that such a response is likely to be common.
ReplyDeleteAnd as I science fiction fan, I have for years cast preferential ballots for the Hugo awards and the site of the upcoming Hugo. As I believe I have mentioned here, Chicago lost the 2008 Worldcon to Denver by 13 votes -- less than 1% of those cast. That was a three-way race. But when I asked the people who counted the votes who the voters with Columbus as #1 had picked #2, I was told that most hadn't bothered.
But those were both three-way races. Which, of course, is pretty much what you would see in a partisan political contest. Things may be different in a nonpartisan race with 10 candidates, though.
I'm sheltered, if that's the right word for being out of the pop culture mainstream. I could have told you that Carly Simon was a female singer, but would have had to go to Wikipedia to find out more. Just as I had to go to Wikipedia to remind myself who Stan Lee was when his name came up elsewhere.
ReplyDelete