The Burrow

It's been a long week and a long month and I'm ready for a reset.   I'll be back on Monday.

I was wearing a sweater or a sweatshirt or a long sleeve flannel shirt until I wasn't. I was planting and enjoying the breeze until I wasn't. There wasn't a lot of warning.  It just happened.  The weather forecast tells me to expect temperatures in the 90's this weekend.   Half the people I know are snowed under, with no end in sight.  The other half have been enduring rains and clouds.  Only we here in Southern Arizona seem to be moving right on into summer, without giving Spring a chance to say hello. Taos Bubbe and I laughed last night - it seems we've waited too long to walk outside.  When she wondered how we got here I realized I wasn't hallucinating.  I've gone from jeans to sundresses without the usual pause for t-shirts and shorts.   It goes down to the 50's at night.  We can still sleep with the window open for fresh air that won't boil us in bed.  The mornings are perfect until the sun begins its real work.  Ther...

 It's seven minutes to the top of the hour. The clock will tick and tock and we'll have to make a decision. Somehow.   We've been vacillating all day.  Blather vs physical prowess.  The certainty of cringe vs the expectation of excellence.  Allowing that man into my living room.   We're recording both. We're watching MS NOW as the Supreme Court justices faux smile at the parade of faces passing before them.   So far, we haven't changed the channel and now FFOTUS is shaking hands and walking to the podium.  There aren't very many Democrats in attendance.   He's finally buttoning his coat... TBG was just appalled and even though it didn't resonate that way for me I'm delighted to have another thing to dislike about him.   The commentators have been talking over all the procedural stuff so we switched to NBC, whose feed was a good bit ahead.   Did you know this is the Golden Age of America?  Me, neith...

Kristi Noem found a pilot dumb enough to fly into a massive, windy snowstorm and land without warning at a New Hampshire airport that had closed due to bad weather. Inside that plane were detainees,, all those dangerous shopkeepers and grandmothers and infants in respiratory distress hiding in plain sight among murderers and rapists.   Whoever they are, they sat on that plane for 12 hours, or 15 hours or some amount of hours but the point is that it was reckless and ill-conceived and typical.   I am just so tired of being embarrassed by that man and his cast of clowns, but I'm planning to watch the State of the Union.  I don't remember which Substack suggested  that we pay attention to the clapping.  Who claps and for how long - that was monitored by Nazi's and Communists, with dire consequences for those who stopped first.   It can also show us in real time those whose moral compass is directed toward the podium, regardless of the blather po...

The Doula and The Kibbitzer are in Tucson for their annual visit, and this year the sun is actually shining on them. We've been friends for more than 50 years. That's a lot of memories and stories to tell and retell, but there's one that always comes up first - the 2019 Oscar nominated Live Action Short Films at The Loft.  I wrote a post about it, and I think the title - Why?  - says it all. The Loft  is Tucson's art house, showing films the chains ignore. I decided long ago that lunatics have never heard of it so I don't have to worry about intersecting with guns (cf Aurora and The Dark Knight ). We three have seen lots of wonderful films there and I've seen some duds on my own.  But until Friday night, we've never seen one without a single likeable character.   Not one, unless you count the Auschwitz survivor, and he's onscreen for two short scenes.   That alone tells you something about the film in general, though there are lots of particulars ...

Once again, Rillito Nursery provided the fun.  This time it was box after box after box of 2" ceramic pots and another box of 4" pots.  After a quick stop at Dollar Tree for paper plates and Harbor Freight for two 20 packs of tiny brushes, I was off to Grandma's Garden.   I've had a 12 pack of acrylic paints in my car for a week or two.  I don't remember buying them but I'm glad I had them.  This is why.                 Some of the pots were quite detailed.    But mostly it was about the smiles. The seed which started in her red SOLO cup is now big enough to be transplanted into a 4" pot. One of these scholars wondered if I had a bird house to paint.... and it just so happed that I did.  He was happy to share the chore of painting,  but he took it home for himself.

  Reprised from 2021. Only her age has been changed to protect the integrity. This is how she looked when she met my father. This is how she looked when she lived in Tucson. I never knew the first woman.  I enjoyed meeting the second woman, the one whose memory was failing but who always knew that I loved her.   Some things never changed. There was always a straw in her Diet Sprite. Her purse was always over her shoulder (see blue strap, above). She was cold, but never wore a hat -  "I don't look good in hats!" There were some things she never forgot. Good grammar was imperative and bad grammar demanded correction. Yellow was her favorite color and chocolate was her favorite food.  Wrinkled shirts and sagging hems were unacceptable; she made her opinions known even when she was no longer in charge of choosing the outfits herself. . Today would have been her 103rd birthday. I'd have brought her a prune danish for breakfast,...

Note to self: The stainless steel pan you use to  brown the chicken on the cook top will be hot. Do not use your bent finger to give it a nudge after you use the potholder to finish it off in the oven.  I will be back tomorrow when I can type without pain.

I'm typing this on the third Monday in February.  Waste Management came for the recycling and the trash, but there was no mail in the mailbox. Oh, right.  It's Presidents Day. ***** Seeing it there I'm wondering if it's Presidents Day or Presidents' Day or President's Day.  But that led me to thinking about our current President and so I stopped.   ***** I thought about Presidents and how few of them were good people.... it seems.... who knows what we don't know we don't know.... but given what we know, most of them have been scoundrels, in one way or another.   Great things have been accomplished by dishonorable men.  That is a truth they don't emphasize social studies .... if such a class even exists anymore.   ***** My grandkids have Presidents' Recess but the Prince scholars were in school today.   Don't tell the current Administration,  but they get the last Thursday and Friday of February for  La Fiesta de los V...

It's just low hanging fruit these days.  With no real power to wield and no real leadership to wield what's left, the Democratic Party is flailing.  Stating this is probably not a revelation to you.  Just turn on the talking heads and listen to the same sentiment.  The worst President in history is being contested by a misguided bunch of I really want to keep my job   and to hell with doing my job  leaders. The Democrats are lauding their victories in the polls.  There is no arguing that the voters are moving away from the right with surprising alacrity and vehemence.  Apparently, masked government agents murdering American citizens with impunity has grabbed the attention of that portion of the voting public which was mildly engaged before the videos surfaced.   That is good news, and we should welcome them to the fight.  But let's look at where they are going.  WTOP News,  writing about the special election in New Jersey,...

 

This happened on Valentines weekend, 2012.    I remember it as if it were today.  Shockingly, G'ma was willing to forgo her post-prandial nap and accompany me to Target.  I hustled her into the car before she could change her mind.  We admired the clouds and she told me I was driving too fast and not stopping for the yellow lights and following too closely and she was my mother again, except for the clacking dentures.  Be careful what you wish for,  I guess. There was an electric cart in the unloading area next to the handicapped parking space and it was calling her name.  She's still got left and right implanted in her memory bank, so directionality wasn't an issue.  She took a turn or two too closely, but the t-shirts didn't seem to mind the little bit of sway she put into their hangars.  Humans managed to get out of her way, and her enjoyment of the scene washed away frowns before they could be formed.  We chose Valentines Day ca...

  I first published this in 2011; only Lincoln's age has changed.  It remains one of my favorite rants. I remember when THIS was the most aggravating thing our government did. Sigh. ***** Mary Ball Washington gave birth to a boy child on February 22, 1732. Unlike many of the stories surrounding this man (think cherry trees and coins across the Potomac and standing up in an open boat as it crossed the Delaware) this is an indisputable fact. Mary was not in labor on the third Monday of February.  She produced her child on a specific day - the 22nd day of February.  His birthday didn't move around with the vagaries of the federal holiday calendar. Nancy Hanks Lincoln met her second son, Abraham, 217 years ago today.  Like Mrs. Washington before her, she was not in labor on an indeterminate day sometime in the middle of the month.  It occurred on a certain day, a day formerly commemorated by school children and mail carriers alike. Alas and alack, these fine ge...

I've always respected the work but I never gave much thought to the physical effort involved in being a teacher.  But having spent eight hours over the last two days reading and gardening with the Prince scholars, I am a physical wreck. Two cups of robust English Breakfast tea provided the fuel; I didn't yawn all day.  But when the pre-K teacher asked her student to go back to the classroom and tell Mr. S that nap time was over, then smiled at me and said, sotto voce, So I don't have to get up off the floor, I completely understood her situation.  I was pretty comfortable on the tiny chair beside her; the walk to my next class was a distant 10 feet away. So, denizens, forgive me if my only original thought is why do female skiers have silly first names? Okay, a Google search revealed only the two I already knew, but I think the question's still valid.   Breezy?  Who names their kid Breezy?  Apparently, the Johnsons. Picabo Street's parents called her B...

We were asked to send our schedule to the coordinator.  We provide the availability, she would assign us to the classrooms.  All we had to do was bring ourselves and the book(s) we chose to read aloud to the appropriate classroom at the appropriate time. My schedule arrived, then arrived again with the classroom numbers included, then didn't arrive which I didn't know until I showed up 4 hours earlier than expected in a 3rd grade classroom and that teacher printed out the revised version. I'm not complaining.  The new schedule allowed me a break for breakfast bagel sandwich at a nearby cafe. Fully fortified, I gardened and read and realized, once again, that not everyone has had the same upbringing as I did. For the first graders, I read Pickle Things , a sure fire winner with its rhymes about  pickle things you never see.  The third graders were treated to the d'Aulaire's  verbiage and illustrations of Greek Myths, the fifth graders dove into an illustrate...

The FBI is ringing doorbells, asking for any video surveillance of the street and permission to search your yard.   There are news crews trying to find something to report. The sheriff admits that releasing the house back to the family before the FBI arrived with its forensic magic might not have been a great idea. There are tearful pleas for information and contact, heartbreaking in their honesty.   Friends and relatives and relatives of friends have reached out to be sure I'm okay.  TBG was anxious about my Saturday foray to Grandma's Garden; being alone, even behind a gate I'd be sure to lock behind me, just didn't seem safe to him. Ransom.  Kidnapping.   It's a hell of a world, denizens.  

Paladin  was on H&I, until it wasn't.  Now it's on in the afternoon, on something called INSP. I laughed as my brain went to INSP Gadget , one of The Cuters' favorite tv shows.  TBG brought me back to reality; it seems to be shorthand for inspiration. I couldn't tell you the numbers to press to bring it up.  I couldn't tell you how to get NBC or PBS or anything but 576, Turner Classic Movies.  For the rest, I talk into the remote. Finding Netflix or Apple+ requires my husband's presence.  Apparently, they are apps and have their own special section of the guide.... I think.  Left to my own devices, I'd rarely turn the thing on.  I really don't care. But there is YouTubeTV and other services that promise to give me freedom and free services, or at least less expensive services than I have right now... if only I could figure out if I have a Smart TV or if it's connected to Bluetooth or any of the myriad factors I need to consider. TBG loves all ...

I've forgotten where we are going to war this week?   Are we finished with Venezuela and those nasty little boats in the ocean?   Greenland seems safe for the moment, FFOTUS having walked away from some meeting or other with a shiny object in his tiny hand. That old staple, Iran, has been back in the news, but the absurdity of an American President with his own private police force cracking down on the Iranian government for going after protesters in the street has been too much for me to bear.   I've been focused on local issues (Savannah Guthrie's mom; the RTA ; what to replant and replace in Grandma's Garden).  I thought that the national issues could do without me for a while.   Yesterday, I read several reports of Congressional leaders talking about the phone calls they've been getting.  There are lots of them and they are not happy and our representatives seem to be taking notice.   Suddenly, I'm feeling quite guilty....

She's been a regular in Grandma's Garden since she was in kindergarten. She's taken on more and more tasks as the years have gone by; now she's the one offering assistance.  Watching her teach her classmates - supervising the creation of just the right number of holes of just the right depth in just the right size pot - makes my heart sing. She was the only one interested in filling the big black container with soil, refusing offers to use the hose or join a friend.  She chose one of the three varieties of carrots from our storage bin, and I left her with the packet and instructions - 3 seeds in each evenly spaced hole around the edge and one in the middle - and went on to other things.   Soon she was by my side, a few round seeds in her palm, the left overs.  We went back to admire her work.  We used the trowels to cover her treasures with a fine dusting of soil, moved the container to the corner, next to the other carrot container, and watered...

If you live in the Tucson metropolitan area you have no doubt seen the sighs urging you to VOTE YES ON 418/419.  The signs tell you that you can fix our roads without raising taxes.   That's not really true.  I know this because I am the person who reads every page of every Sample Ballot and Publicity Pamphlet that comes my way, in this case all 132 pages (the English version; the 280 pages include the whole thing in Spanish, too..... don't get me started on English as our common language). It is true that our taxes won't go up.  They will also not go down.  The same half cent sales tax (a totally regressive measure) instituted when the first RTA plan was passed in 2006 (the year we moved here) will remain in place if the voters vote yes on 419, the funding package. We were thrilled that there was a regional plan back in 2006.  Single lane roads with unimproved shoulders suddenly became 4 paved lanes with cut outs for left turns and buses.  Some e...

This is the Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio) from YouTube.   10 million plus views in 4 days. MS Now says it's not a masterpiece, but it is enough. I think it's our new anthem for protests everywhere. Listen with the sound on.