Hit by lightning.  Again.  I feel like the frail off-screen distant relative of some major TV character.  You know the one.  Every weekly episode has a new throw-away one-liner.  "You remember Elaine -  Maude's uncle's wife's cousin?  She just had her gall bladder removed."  "She just got hit by a car." "An albatross knocked her over on its yearly ( Read more... )

We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle; easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we would still live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan....
--- Irving Townsend ---"The Once Again Prince"
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My mother was a backyard birder.  It never occurred to me until recently to wonder how she learned the birds; she was strictly a city kid until marrying my dad (who was also a city kid, for what it's worth).  Post-WWII they purchased  two acres in rural PA, built their own house and proceeded to live the country life without ever looking back.  At ( Read more... )

There's a handful of words that I run across every few years or so.  Each time I see them, I have to look them up.  In between encounters, all I ever remember is "there's a word for that," but I never remember  what the frickin' word is.

So.  Aglet.  It's one of those words.  I ran across it again on Facebook this morning, where someone posted a ( Read more... )

The weather gods appear to have decreed that insufficient frozen water has been dispensed in these parts.  We're looking at six to eight inches of wet snow starting in the early hours tomorrow.  The Prof is aghast as only California Boy can be.  I don't much mind though.  There's relief in the grey quiet of snowfall; it successfully says sit down ( Read more... )

I remain at a loss to describe the current state of affairs.  "Lockdown" has been thrown around by the pundits, but it isn't truly lockdown.  The term makes me think of prisoners post-riot, all locked into their snug little cells and banging tin cups on the bars.  And yet, if I had a tin cup and bars, I'd probably be banging on them too.  If ( Read more... )

There's a foot of snow outside.  The last remnant of Christmas, a Christmas tree half blinking in uncoordinated colors, waits to find if it is to be rehomed or sent to that great holiday midden in the sky.  One cat sleeps six inches from the space heater, another on the top flet of a six-foot cat tree, while the senior citizen sleeps under the ( Read more... )