Random Thoughts - The Friday Edition

Celebrating his 90th birthday by jumping out of , as Brian Williams put it, a perfectly good helicopter, President George H W Bush continues to amaze me.  TBG and I watched an HBO documentary love fest about him, and found ourselves shaking our heads in wonder.  His life reads like an American history lesson, upper class division. 

After an hour, it was easier to understand his "vision thing" remark.  For him, it's so obvious that it need not be described.  He was put on this earth to do good, to do what was right, and to have a great time along the way.

The man can't walk, but he certainly can fly.

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The quarterly Cornell magazine, Ezra, was filled with astonishing information. 

It is possible, using dendro radiocarbon wiggle matching, to date two thousand year old wood samples with a precision of plus or minus ten years.

Have you seen Humans of New York's two eye doctors sitting on a bench, telling us

The eye doesn’t see. The brain sees. The eye just transmits. So what we see isn’t only determined by what comes through the eyes. What we see is affected by our memories, our feelings, and by what we’ve seen before.

A MacArthur genius fellow at Weill Cornell Medical College has created a computerized eyeglass prosthetic, connecting directly to the ganglion cells, sending information and bypassing the damaged photoreceptor cells entirely.   She's developed a transmitter, just like the doctors described.
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Watched the opening game of the World Cup ... for a while... until the flopping and the refereeing got to be too much for me. 

I'm sympathizing with the protesters who were arrested outside the stadium; some of the billions used on that building could have gone to improving life for Brazillians.  It's weird, wondering whether ten year olds selling their bodies on the street for drugs in a favela is any worse than fifteen year olds shooting up a high school in suburban Oregon.
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Messers 10 and 8 are turning 11 and 9 this month.  Gifts have morphed from trips to Toys R Us to more grown up pursuits.  Mr. 11 will be receiving iTunes gift cards, per his request.  I can't make myself give him money in a card; I have to tell myself that I did something special to bring him together with this gift, even if that something special was going through a pile in Little Cuter's bedroom and finding this in amongst the Christmas receipts and old photographs.

Mr. nearly 9 selected his gift early this year.  Accompanying me on a garden supply run to Ace Hardware, he became entranced with a watering wand.  He tends his garden assiduously.... and, this looked a lot like a sword.... feeding both sides of his little boy-ness.

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We have a bird nest in the vinca. 

 

I've been startled by what I now surmise to be a parent bird darting out from the thicket of leaves in the biggest container in the courtyard.  I thought it was enjoying the shade, as I jumped back (yes, I can now jump back without falling down!) in alarm. 

 

Yes, alarm.  I wasn't expecting the planter to explode in my face.

 

This morning, though, I was braver, or calmer, or simply more curious.  I looked back after the fluttering creature landed on the crepe myrtle and saw little white speckled eggs. 

 

I'm going to be a grandma in so many many ways.