The Burrow

I like funerals. I like the raw emotion and the simple gestures.  I like the well told stories and the shared, rueful, laughter.  I like the occasional token - an angel coin from a young mother's service, the green satin ribbons we took from Grandpaw's casket - as well as the memories.  I like the remembrance of a life well-lived, if cut short before we were ready to say goodbye. Funerals are a story telling time - how he met his wife, what he wore as he crossed the Edmund Pettis bridge - and that, too makes me smile.  They're old stories, or stories to be told only after I'm gone, and they always shine a light on a particular piece of the human spirit.  Joy or kindness, erudition or compassion, the teller wants us to know that about the deceased, and will stand, choking back tears, until the story is told. Pericles and Antony and Abraham Lincoln were joined by Sheila Lewis O'Brien this afternoon.  She spoke of her Uncle Robert with such love, such delight,...

Actually, My Young Friend was the physical presence in the store.  I was available for consultations by telephone while she took my list and my Costco Visa card and walked the aisles.  It was fun to imagine the store in my head as I organized the list for her.  I went down the outside aisle, rejecting the clothes and furniture and, I'm sure, Christmas decor on the right, and the tools and practical supplies on the left.  I sent her straight to the drink section, where we got to work.  I wanted sparkling water, but in bottles not in cans.  I knew that the bottle had green writing on it, but it's not Perrier.  It's Italian, but the Kirkland brand.   Oh wait!!! I see it!!!!! Success is measured differently during a pandemic.  We were ecstatic.   From there, things went smoothly.  The mini heads of romaine, one of which is just enough for the two of us as an appetizer (or, lately for TBG, as dessert), were un...

Six years ago last night, your mommy had a backache and wondered why.  She scoffed when I told her that she was in labor; you weren't due for a week or so and your mommy is a woman who plans ahead.  She assumed that you would, too. By 7 in the morning, 6 years ago today, I was washing the bedding soaked from when her water broke, as Daddy drove you all to the hospital.  Of course, you were unaware of all this commotion, floating along in your pool of amniotic fluid.  While you were deciding when to join the world, I vacuumed and read and had just stretched out for a nice afternoon nap when I was summoned to the hospital. Maga and Papa were there and Mommy wanted to be sure that I didn't miss any of the fun.  So the three of us sat in a lovely, sunny, almost comfortable waiting room, watching heavily pregnant women walking the hallways, trying to coax their recalcitrant passengers to get off the bus.   That was fun, but seeing your Daddy's big grin as h...

In-person classes will probably look much the same on the university level.  Fewer inhabitants, perhaps, in the lecture halls, but otherwise, they're probably good to go. Virtual classes, e-learning, the on-line option - call it what you will, it's not school.  But, it may be all we have... and that's worrying me. Not a little..... a lot. I've taken a few summer courses from Cornell over the years; those on-campus have been mind expanding works of wonder.  This summer's virtual offerings have been quite the opposite.  They were free; I got what I paid for. If the Ivy League can't figure it out for the summer, I fear for the students paying full freight for the semester. Cornell uses Canvas, a central hub where syllabus and questons and tech help and discussion groups can be found.  It was not very intuitive for me, but, like my aversion to Canon cameras, that might be a personal foible.  What was not personal was the utter lack of interest shown in the disc...

Returning kids to school has many components.  The CDC can't decide whether it's better for students to spend hours a day in sanitized bubbles, trying to learn to spell while not infecting themselves or others, or to stay at home without access to the internet, meals, or an actual living, breathing, trained adult to help them. The fact that the need for schools and teachers is being conflated with the need for child care for working parents makes me too angry to type.  Los Angeles is setting up spaces to warehouse these children, sitting them socially distanced in cafeterias and gymnasiums and auditoriums and music rooms, superivsed by aides.  FlapJilly's district send a hundred gazillion attachments  covering everything from the bus to the playground in the emails Little Cuter's receiving. This is not going well. In my little corner of the world, GRIN   is trying to bridge the digital divide (if someone could figure out what's needed we'd be glad to ...

It would help if something happened. I've spent some time helping to bridge the digital divide, trying to figure out on-line gardening, and fertilizing my roses and containers during the lovely rainstorm this morning. I read a little, exercised a little, ate a little and cooked even less.  For excitement, I ordered two Brain Quest workbooks for FlapJilly. I watched a lot of talking heads, and noticed that Chasten and Peter Buttigieg sit in the exact same chair when they are being interviewed, whether for Joy Reid or Time Magazine.  I finished a baby blanket while listening to the yammering... it all sounds like yammering to me right now. It was a stellar day in Covid Land;  everyone I love is safe and healthy.  Sending protective vibes your way, denizens.  I'm going to spend the weekend imagining that Little Cuter and I live in Portland, and that we've spent the last few nights in bicycle helmets and swim goggles and yellow t-shirts, standing as a buffer...

Perhaps the worst part of shelter in in place is the lack of novelty.  I love my house.  I love my views.  I love my pool and my shelves of books and my kindle and my television and my closet of crochet projects and I wish I could see anything but all of them right now. The same old same old is getting me down.  Perhaps that's why I was so pleased on Monday to discover three new ways of looking at three different subjects.  My brain was surprised.  I could feel it expanding to include the new perspectives; my smile reflected the joy inside. Two of my moments came during Nicolle Wallace's MSNBC afternoon hour of what the f** has Donald Trump done now?  Usually, she amplifies my feelings.  On Monday, I turned two corners. First, Richard Stengel, former editor of Time , was talking about Portland and the unmarked camo wearing police detaining protesters.  " The President has it backwards.  The States provide policing.  The Federa...

Umwelt -  the world as it is experienced by a particular organism.   I'm considering the umwelt of the lizards dashing across the courtyard.  The ground covered with mini stones must be like rock hopping on the mountain for me.   I'm considering the umwelt of the Maya, somewhat larger in scale but an organism nonetheless.   We can imagine it, pretending that we understand what motivated the hands chiseling out statuary and steps. But without the Maya themselves, it's only play acting.   The Mayan umwelt no longer exists.  There is a hole in the cultural universe of humankind.  Ever since I learned the word a few weeks ago, I've been having thoughts like these.  It's probably not the healthiest thing for my brain to be concocting these images of what has been lost. I realized that and tried to move on, with some (see the lizard above) success.   But I'm also wondering about the umwelt of our individual responses t...

Doing good feeds my soul.  Right now, I'm running on fumes.  Grandma needs her Prince kiddos hugs for fuel.   This is the time of year when I'd contact Albertsons and remind my friend, the grocery manager, that I want all the baked goods in the land.  I'd pull out my list of What to Deliver Where and In What Order, and retype it so that the additions I made last year are available in a big, bold font, readable as I cruise through Tucson, dropping off goodies and checking in with old friends at all ths chools in the District. I won't be doing that this year.  No way I'm going into building after building, exposing myself to others and surfaces and particles floating in the air and landing on me. I don't think I could keep my (now very long) hair out of my face without swiping at it with hands that might be infested with the virus. I know that contracting it from surfaces is unlikely.  But the likelihood increases with the number of cont...

I am not drawn to Holocaust stories.  I saw Schindler's List, alone, in Marin, and couldn't talk for hours afterwards.  When I took Big Cuter to see it, hea asked to leave when the little boy was shot, and the red blood fell onto the snow.  As we, shakily, walked out, an older wman in an aisle seat met my eye and nodded a knowing smile. It was important that he see it.  It was really too hard to watch. * G'ma made me join her on the couch one night.  We sat together, watching films taken by the liberators of the concentration camps.  The black and white images of corpses stacked like firewood are still stored in my brain; I don't let myself go any further into that box.  * My Cousin Noomi fled the backyard when our cat wandered through the family reunion.  G'ma told us not to worry; Noomi was remembering what she had had to eat in The Camps and it made her sad. The reality of what I'd seen on the television was sitting in a lawn chair unde...

I have so many plans.  I haven't had any plans for so very long and now I have so many plans. I am taking an on-line course from Cornell's summer program .  The lectures and videos could consume half the day, if I let them.  The reading could take up the rest.  But I've read the text several times before, and the videos are History channel and the animated Mythic Warriors  - interesting in their own right but not worthy of more of my time today. I have plans. I found a book on my Kindle; its origin is a mystery to me.  It could be an Amazon Prime New Reads freebie, or a book I had on hold from the library.  It doesn't matter.  I started it after checking in with my course (no comments in the Discussions so I moved on) and finished it before TBG and I swam this afternoon. The characters were in the water with me. It's November Road by Lou Berney.  A fixer with a heart, a woman on the lam, and the murder of JFK kept me in my chair, with...

At TBG's urging, I bought Too Much and Never Enough - How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man  last week, and downloaded it to the Kindle when it was released yeaterday.  I read it today.  It's all you think it is, and more, with a dash of vitriol that's understandable and vaguely unsettling. There's not a happy camper in the bunch. The subtitle tells the story.  Her grandfather, her grandmother, her uncles and her aunts.... every one of them and their spouses have their secrets laid bare.  The money held them together the way G'ma used to describe certain relatives on Daddooooo's side: sure, they'll give it to you.... but there are always strings attached. Humiliation, belittlement, denigration - Mary Trump describes a Dickensian childhood surrounded by those who thought they were better than she, than the rubes, than everyone except Donald and Fred.  For Fred, she has no excuses.  For Donald, she uses her PhD in psychology to provide a c...

For two weeks we sat outside, watching the sunset with Big Cuter and Queen T, his sweetie, comfortably ensconced in chairs on the back patio.  There were some clouds.  There were bats.  There were giant flying beetles which attacked my son, and only my son. The sunsets were grey and pink and bright yellow.  The clouds were high, when they were there at all.  For the last few days of their visit, the kids saw storm clouds moving in from the south, bringing humidity but no thunder or lightning. Then, they left. And all hell broke loose. The winds on Saturday night were astoundingly fierce.  The front windows, facing east, were bowing.  I stood outside under the overhand in the backyard and felt absolutely nothing.  Not a breeze, not a whiff of impending rain, not a leaf blown into my face.  It was peaceful and calm, sheltered under the corners of the house, while the trees in the open space beyond were whippped to a fenzy. There was n...

You are at the beach today.  You are two years old.  You don't realize that the world is weird. I would like to be you. You are your Dada's Mini-Me, from the backwards ball cap to the swagger, stopping off along the way at the tractors and the love. Because, just like your Dada, you are all about the love.  I yuh you  was your first sentence, the first time you joined the conversation, the first time you could say in words what your body had been telling us all since the day you were born.  You are so happy to be where you are, and you can't wait to share that joy. Even before you toddled, you managed to maneuver yourself into a hug... on the nearest available lap.... or dog.  You never stayed very long, being a perpetual motion machine, but the quality of the time spent more than outweighed its brevity. And your smile - incoming and on the way out, your enthusiasm often overtaking reason and gravity and No, floor, No! comes right after Oh, NO! ...

It started at just before Thanksgiving, when I paid the last set of bills due before the holidaze began.  I created a file to hold my receipts and wish lists, but found that most everything I did was online, and printing out paperwork was redundant and wasteful. When packages arrived, I opened and recycled the envelopes and boxes, stacked the gifts in appropriate piles, and put the invoices in the manila envelope designed to hold such things. Guests arrived. Gifts arrived.  Thank you notes were required, so a pile was started in one corner of the desk, designed to hold such things. Then the library turned into a bedroom and the desk was where I tossed things I didn't want to lose.... all atop one pile on one side, rising precariously out of the wire mesh in/out box, which was designed to hold such things, only not as many of them as were added. It went on like this after the guests left in early January.  I took my time taking down the decorations, and TBG didn't...

7 - 2. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh in the majority.  Thomas agreeing that the President does not enjoy unlimited immunity from prosecution.  I can wait to see his tax returns.  I think Congress ought to be reined in if they are just looking for trouble.  The details were always less important than the fact that he was bitching about it at all. The arguments were spurious and the Justices saw through them.  This delights me.  I've been worried about our institutions and their ability to withstand Trumpism.  For today, at least, my anxiety has lessened. ***** Okay, that's the part I'd say in public.  For you, though, there's this: Gorsuch and Kavanaugh in the majority.  Oh, this makes me smile so hard my cheeks are aching. Can you imagine the noise from the Orange Menace when he heard?  Can you imagine how pissed off he must be?  All of a sudden the reality sinks in - he can't always get what he wants.  Even the peopl...

VP Pence: "The president said today, we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough. That’s the reason why next week, the C.D.C. is going to be issuing a new set of tools." Any wonder the man paid someone to take his SAT's? Any wonder he can't pay attention to the PDB? Any wonder that he thinks Frederick Douglass is still alive? Any wonder that he alone alerted the world to the meaning of Juneteenth? Any wonder that setting off fireworks on Mt. Rushmore seemed like a good idea? Any wonder that he wants a full, un-distanced, unmasked house at his nominating convention?  Every once in a while I get too fed up with his nonsense.  This is right up there with the Sharpie on the hurricane map - our President is an idiot. There, I've said it.   Lash out at me. Chastise me.  Tell me I need to look for the good............  there is none.

My landscapers are coming tomorrow.  They've been coming every month for three years.  It's always the same  guys.  They've told me their names a dozen times.  The answers don't seem to stick. I knew the name of my favorite waitress at Ghini's; her male counterpart remains a mystery even after ten years of tuna fish sandwiches.   First Watch and Margie go together like the roast beef and havarti on toasted bread without cheese crust she brings me without my having to ask.  Why her name has stuck in my feeble brain when the delightful hostess at Grumpy's, our around the corner, neighborhood dive, has never made it into my permanent memory bank? TBG is worse than I am.  When we lived in Chicago we had an ongoing laugh over his  Beth Who???, in response to any comment about our friend Beth,   a woman we saw on a fairly regular basis.  He uses mnemonics to help. Although George Washington and Martha reminds me of the couple he ref...

Little Cuter and SIR got their answer on Saturday night.   They celebrated the 4th of July with fireworks on the street.  The kids in their immediate neighborhood are about the same age; the grown-ups share the same desire for loud and sparkly explosions.  Three families organized a social distanced display, each on their own driveway, watching the colors and cheering the booms from their front yards . There was no down time involved, no driving and parking and waiting patiently in lawn chairs for the fun to begin.  Now, Dada!!  was enough.  SIR constructed a platform and kept inquisitive toddlers far away as he demonstrated his dominance.  The man does know how to put on a show. Then the neighborhood quieted down, and the family went into the backyard for s'mores and fairy lanterns.  They lit them and watched them waft into the air, disintegrating as the flames ate their light coverings. Little Cuter explained that wishes could be made;...

TBG and I are doing all that we can to insure that Mark Kelly replaces Martha McSally in the US Senate in January.  We planned to host an Afternoon With The Candidate in our home in April.  Sadly, that (and many other things) didn't happen.   And then, the campaign had the idea to host an on-line Astro-Hour.  Mark and his astronaut brother, Scott, Rusty Schweikert, and Karen Nyberg (whose husband just rode up to the ISS) talked about one another, about space, and about how wonderful Mark is. Then they took questions.  Eight of them were written in and read by the moderator.  And then there was FlapJilly.   The Finance Director wondered if I knew any children who might want to ask a question of an astronaut.  A kid asked a question on the first of these calls, and it was a big hit.  Did I know someone he could ask? Did I know someone?   I hung up, called Little Cuter and FlapJilly, explained the situation, and rec...

reworked, revised, revisited...yes, you've read parts of this before The sky is pure blue,  "painted that way  as G'ma said every time she looked up.  The occasional fluffy white cloud drifts by, and I'm hearing G'ma remark on that, too.  The flag in front of the house is swaying, the pole wedged between the base and the capital of one of the front columns, secured with thin, silver, crafting wire.    It's an elegant solution to TBG's reluctance to put holes in his house;  I feel like Daddooooo every time I wrap another ring around the post. Daddooooo was big on ingenious remedies to intractable problems.  He was also big on flags and the 4th of July.  We always went to the beach.  We always stopped at Custom Bakers on the way home, where the owners always let us go back and stick our fingers in the vats of frosting. We always went to the Boardwalk in Long Beach, arriving as the sun was setting.  Skeeball and mechanical fortune tell...

It started when the stay at home orders were just being introduced.  All of a sudden, I was in a Vulnerable Cohort. I don't want to be in a Vulnerable Cohort.  I don't feel old enough to be in a Vulnerable Cohort.  When did this happen?  How is it that most of the people in my life are also in this Vulnerable Cohort? When the guidelines came out, having to scroll down and down and down to find 1952 while registering for something on-line seemed more ominous than amusing.  Noticing that I was in the Over 65 category smacked me in the face with reality - I am more likely to die than I was 30 years ago. Surprising?  Probably shouldn't be, but it is. I watch Expedition Unknown  on the Discovery Channel.  Josh Gates, the host, is a 21st century Indiana Jones.  He swims into underground caves, climbs ancient ruins, descends (by rope) into venues that normal people would avoid even thinking about.  He travels by pushcart and motor b...

.....whether you're having fun or not.   This was the Google doodle today, the last day of June, Pandemic 01.   This Pride Month we honor Black trans women and LGBTQ+ people of color There is so much about this that was unheard of, let alone unthinkable, when I was FlapJilly's age.  There is so much more (though, obviously, still not enough) freedom to be than there was in 1958;  Marlo Thomas's iconic Free to Be You and Me  was published in 1972,   the year TBG graduated Cornell. Amster's boys, who you met in pre-school, are now Messers 15 and 17, high school kids who text to see if I need any help.  I asked Amster how this could have happened; Idk  I seriously do not.   FlapJilly's going to ask the astronauts a question on tomorrow's Zoom AstroHour fund raiser for Mark Kelly.  When I met Mark Kelly my granddaughter wasn't even a glimmer in her parents' eyes.  Now, instead of a in hospital room surrounded by arme...