SmokeSound

Just like in the Bigger Leagues: No balls and five strikes. Add caption "I suppose he had something in mind." "Lift it!  Lift your foot one inch!" "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go!" Faster than a speeding ball In the Hearts of His Countrymen There are body-parts that wear out, and mind-games that go, but Jerry's spirit is indominable.

It is the season!  And Mari just told me about a boy in Chicago, or somewhere, whose computer had been stolen, and of the angel who arranged to replace it. The photo to the right is not from what I am about to tell you, but it is close enough, to remind me of the time I was called an angel:  the only time, ever, I was called an angel.   I have told it before, but this is the holiday season, and angel sightings are worth repeating. Driving to the Nokomis Beach Coffee Cafe on winter morning, at a T-intersection on the southeast corner of East Lakeside Drive, I watched a young driver slide across the drive ahead of me, and up atop the snow pile made by the snow plow.  It was a beautiful job:  the car rested on its belly on the frozen heap, with no tires able to gain traction.   I stopped my big pickup just past the car, on the wrong side of the snow-covered street, and backed up close.  I had a tow cable.   I ...

"If I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times:  don't exaggerate!" That isn't what this post is about, except that is has to do with the way we use language, or how language reveals how we think.  What has been intriguing me lately is the growing habit of saying everything twice, or repeating the same idea with different words.  For example:  "When the barrage comes, it comes in bunches."  I rather imagine.  A barrage of one is such a lonely thing, by itself. Here is a list of recent examples: "for each respective team" "both teams have only one timeout, each" "there is this sort of, like. . ." "retweet it out" "but lying about the same, exact. . ." "then elevate up" "He's very good at parceing these arguments apart" "and lied, over and over and over again" And then there are just curiosities: "A man who, everything he touches, turns to g...

 "It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon." Lake Wobegon is gone, now, a casualty of what someone said was a host's hand on her back.  I went to the Sweetwater Wetlands, just a mile or two from here, because it is a cool, quiet, sunny morning after just enough rain to measure and brag about.  "Maybe there will be birds!", I thought. I think I thought wrong.  There were far more birders than birds.  A couple of ornery-thologists had staked themselves out under a cottonwood tree, far enough apart to provide triangulation, and informed each other and me that there was a Baltimore Oriole up there.  I tried to see something, but my neck muscles are not made for steady vertical sightings.  I took a side path. "It is a quiet morning," I said to someone arriving just as I was leaving.  "Yes, it is," he agreed, "but you should have been here yesterday.  There was a whole busload of screaming school kids."

Laura Chen Hubbard, with visitor Do I detect pride? Blase Hostess  "One visitor after another." Reading and Memorizing Rehearsing the Favorites On the slope of Mt. Tabor Life going downhill City Construction:  one month later Goose Hollow:  Favorite Haunt:  Halibut sandwiches Every Other Generation Older Sister Elliot Something About Puffins The Puffin Panda Connection Seeking Solitude These boots are made for walkin'. "How many make a nuclear family?" A family tradition; something like a family crest. When Elliot became two years old. . . . "Oh, my god, a light!: Laura, Mari, Elliot, Daniel, Elliza

At Year's End, 2017 Our newest granddaughter Laura Chen Hubbard: Mother Eliza, Father Danie l I am surprised to have become eighty-six years old.   It is no great record, except in my case:   I have never been this old before, and it surprises me. Just a few days ago, on December 7—Pearl Harbor Day—I remembered my first thought upon hearing that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.   I was ten years and two days old, walking from Kenny and Aleda’s house to our own, after we had been to Sunday School.   My mother called to me that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and I thought:   “I am going to die in a war.” I didn’t.   Not yet.   Today, in fact, I think I shall die of a broken rib.   Either I stumbled backward over a tree root and fell on my back, or God was trying to create Eve again, and I am no Adam.   What surprises me even more than that I am still a part of life, is what life has become, what human life has ...

 You want to know what pleasure is? I will tell you what pleasure is! Pleasure is discovering that I am  eighty-six years old, and that Mari asked if I would like to have lunch at Sushi on Oracle! It started with miso soup and a beer or two, skipped on along through a tempura appetizer, and settled pleasantly into a platters of sashimi and sushi. Mari asked the server  if she would take a picture or two since it was my birthday, and that is how a dessert plate became the finale. I do not know yet whether I shall ever enjoy lunch more, but it is my plan to aspire.

 The moon did its part--doing what it usually does, just being there as we rotate--but with the suggestion that it was a wee bit closer than usual. The clouds did their part, too, just being there; a few more than usual. It wasn't high drama, I am glad to say. I rather like depending on something normal, these days; these last days in the first year of Being Grate Again.  

Should the truth be told--and that is more and more a matter of debate--it was not our intent to "use the bird decorations" this year.  That is to say, it seemed time to change themes, but the decorations we had in mind seem to have gone for a walk in our garage.   So we have gone to the birds again!  This little darling, at left, with the absurd tail, and the glassy-eyed cardinal near the top of the tree, illustrate what a lot of people do when they pin the little fakers to their plastic trees, but Mari has been fussing about not finding the decorations she really wants.  I even tried, gently and tactfully, as I am famous for, to let the whole stinkin' matter of the runaway decorations rest but, as you might guess, that fell on smoking ears. She has her revenge--Mari does.  Check out ol' robin redbreast, or whatever he is. We do not take disappointment lightly, here in our house. I am surprised she did not pluck the feathers, kinda Sa...