LIFE BEGINS AT EIGHTY

My ever young cousin celebrated his eightieth birthday on Sunday.  I'm going against his wishes by spreading the news.  It isn't a small accomplishment to round the bend of fragile mortality into the warm calm waters of your senior years.

 Carl Douglas Thomas talks to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ingram, fellow

producers of local daffodils at one time.

Mr. Gene Goin and Mr. Lowery Hudgins helped him celebrate and enjoyed the day.

Daughter Cindy Wright manned the food stands.

Daughter Carla helped make the day special.

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It was also flag day and flags were waving!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY C.D.

You're a very special guy!

THE LOST

Husband is an accomplished enigma of rational behavior.  Usually appearing an average 74-year-old shuffle along, he contains anecdotes that can only be described as absurd enough to stop a clock.

A very predictable Husband looks handsome and un-mysterious on  a Spring day

This morning while I sipped my first coffee, he challenged me:  "You'll never guess what I found in the basement this morning."  My mind went immediately to dead mice, errant snakes, and a category of huge, venomous spider.  "Three balls the cats batted through the old plumbing holes."

"Oh," I voiced unimpressed.

"Guess what else I found," he teased.

"What?" I answer mystified.

And here it comes, the tense still  moment before the perfectly unexpected answer, "My lower dentures!" without blinking an eye.  Bingo, I didn't see, hear, or smell that coming, I thought.

But with Husband, looks are deceiving!

It seems the dentures went missing several years ago and to Husband's chagrin, he had to purchase new ones.

In the past, I have located his glasses hanging from a tree limb, his perpetual runaway cell phone on the ground by a neighbor's lawn chair, and the cat litter he placed in the refrigerator because it looked like a milk carton.  But this was new heights even for him. Now he has a backup set of lowers if he chooses to use them.  Another deep mystery has been solved, except how the dentures got there in the first place.  That we may never know, but speculation is endless.

SUNUP

   NATURE

O Nature!  I do not aspire

To be the highest in thy choir, -

To be a meteor in thy sky,

Or comet that may range on high,

Only a zephyr that may blow

Among the reeds by the river low,

Give me thy most privy place

Where to run my airy race.

In some withdrawn, unpublic mead

Let me sigh upon a reed,

Or in the woods, with leafy din,

Whisper the still evening in.

Some still work give me to do, -

only - be it near to you!

For I'd rather be the child

And pupil, in the forest wild,

Than be the king of men elsewhere,

And most sovereign slave of care,

To have one moment of thy dawn,

Than share the city's year forlorn.

Henry David Thoreau
And this morning on Queen's Creek

OTHER EYES

I never know, the way I go is right,

I need to have some other eyes

See with me, agree with me, 

Meet in a glance of mutual delight

Nellie Strigle and Carl Douglas, her nephew, play in a wagon

Nellie (16) holds her niece (me)

A single working girl at Langley Air Base in Hampton, Va

Just married to first husband Al Berger

 

Their first daughter, Linda Nell

Second Husband, but first boyfriend, Bill Braxton

Our sweet beautiful Nellie has Alzheimer's and will not be coming home from skilled care. Her love, Bill is crushed.  He e-mailed me that he loves and misses her so much.  His health has taken a dive and he requires a stint and age 99.  Nellie will be 90 in the spring if things go well.  She has had a long life filled with everything, some of it tragic.  Even so she could express warm love and friendship to everyone she met.  She knew this was coming and tried urgently to keep in touch with her nieces and nephews.  She deserves the best Heaven has to offer.  I know how much she loves her children, grandchildren and both Al and Bill.  They should never ever doubt that!  She has other eyes.

ON THE SURFACE

magpietales.blogspot.com

Husband and I become the apple

Bond of Union, 1956, by M. C. Escher

"What is apple skin made of?," my seven-year-old daughter asked as we motored cross-country in our venerable Volkswagon bus complete with pop-up tent camper.  It's just another part of the apple," I supplied reassuringly knowing she was nursing a fever from a cold.

"No, I mean what is it made of, that skin?". Hoping to escape the quantum field of play, beyond our mutual abilities to comprehend or explain, I offered, "It's like our skin, it has cells and they cooperate to protect the apple inside as our skin protects us."

Husband remained with eyes glued to the road, mercilessly determined to have his family experience sea-to-shining-sea quality time in the summer of 1977.

As I feared, my child pursued her quest for the one answer to quiet her curiosity, the one still eluding me.  Then came the tears:  first mine, then hers.

We had forged much deeper into the mystery of apple skin and human skin than the problem required, I reflected.  As I turned to face the backseat of our bumpy, noisy conveyance to deliver my final launch of subatomic particles, of fields and spheres, of string theory and black holes (even though they hadn't been conceived yet), my angel was asleep.  Good job I congratulated myself.  Husband remarked confidently, "We'll be in Yellowstone by evening."

VERIZON ET AL, PART II

Happy Husband lolls in the pool in less stressful times.

Husband received an unpleasant surprise in the mail after all his contorted convolutions with Verizon, the telephone company,  not Verizon, the wireless company.  I heard mighty cursing from our little dingy dark den full of cats, and wanting to spare the cats further corruption let them outdoors.  It appears that when he sought to change his telephone setup to lower his bill, he incurred charges, $297.00 worth of charges.  The temperature soared in our little den, which is electrically heated so whoopee a bit.  Then the telephone conversations commenced.  The script from a former blog can be cut and pasted here because it was the same.  They still don't know who we are or why we'd be complaining about a large bill.  Thank you, Sam, you own my sanity and I'd be defenseless without you because I'm an introvert and waiting to be smushed by the mighty foot of corporate-clandestine savagery.

After much wrangling, Husband agreed to pay a small fee to return to his old setup with all parties.  Has he learned his lesson yet?   I hope so.  Jumping on something because your friend, or a relative of your friend, says so is dangerous.  We can only hope that those folks aren't around when the decision of whether to disconnect my life support is made. For that I rely on daughters #1, #2, and #3.

Back to normal, we await the arrival of Granddaughter's cell phone, which must not be activated until we phone daughter #2,  Aunt Diane, who will then change the number to match granddaughter's old number.  Oh Dear Lord, how did it all come to this?  That number in the Bible, which is supposed to identify us as individuals before the end of time...was it a cell phone number?  And why does FedEx not recognize our address as deliverable?  Corporations are people too, my friend.  That is extreme baloney, or perhaps Supreme (Court) baloney.  I hate to get political on my family history blog, but there you have it.  We studied in school that monopolies were bad things, and American workers were good things.  What changed?  Around here we have Walmart and Food Lion supplying majority needs.  Only 50 years ago, my parents owned a grocery store and made a living.

If we seriously ask ourselves these questions we will be labeled as job-killing, baby-killing, and unAmerican.  I could live with the America of my youth, like most people; but when America becomes as concrete-block stratified as it is today, some folks are going to be talked into supporting bad stuff.  We all fit that.  Still, big business is one thing, public ownership of this country is another and we all share an ownership of our nation by the very act of paying taxes.  To say that the helpless and unemployable in this country have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps is inane.  There has to be public charity or aid. That and public education are the most hated policies by the seriously rich.  The seriously rich also want wars and who better to fight them than the uneducated children of the modern vulgate.

This rant was brought to you by Verizon, the telephone company.

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

What does it mean
To be beautiful?
What spoils the view
Ugly selfishness
Lusty wantonness
To name a few

What does it  mean
To be beautiful?
I really wish I knew
 Purple mountains' majesty
Over a fruited plain
Or two?

What does it take

To be beautiful?

Colors so strong of hue

Spirit, Heart and Mind

sing out,

“We are Red, White and Blue!”

A response to  http://magpietales.blogspot.com/

HAPPY VETERANS DAY