John Swinburn

During our time in Houston last week and weekend, I had several wonderful conversations with my niece, many of which led me to ideas that would make great stories. Naturally, my memory of said conversations is only of the “this would make a great story” moments, not the actual stories themselves. My failure to remember perfectly good story lines upsets me, not so much because I’ve lost a story concept, but because I seem to be losing my mind memory.

The solution, I’ve decided, is to have a video camera permanently installed in my forehead. But, because I’m generally a practical guy, I’ll have to figure out a few things first. Number one, because the device will have to run on batteries (who wants one’s movements to be limited by the length of a power cord?), I’ll have to figure out how to easily change them out. And, because a large video camera protruding from one’s forehead would startle and upset some people, I’ll have to install a very small camera, something in miniature that’s easily hidden by make-up or hair carefully positioned to cover the thing. The on-off button must be hidden, too, as must the button to record, zoom in and out, etc. The installation of this permanent device will require considerable time and talent, not to mention money, two of the three of which are sorely lacking and the third (that is, the first) is an unknown quantity. I suppose I need to consider how I will transfer files from the device to my computer for playback and permanent storage, as well.

You’d think the practicalities I’ve already addressed would be all I’ll need to consider, wouldn’t you? Well, there are legal issues to factor into the undertaking, as well. Some states require two-party consent to record audio and, I assume, video. Others require only one party to know of the recording. Yet others may not require any of the parties being recorded to know it. So, I’ll have to install a computer with a real-time link to state statutes so that, as they change, the device will be updated accordingly. Naturally, because it would be impractical to physically update the device with the legalities of recording based on knowing whether I’m in one state or the other, the computer must include a global positioning satellite (GPS) link so there’s no question which state I’m in (and to ensure the correct links to state statutes).

The device must have some method of notifying me whether recordings are being made and whether I must notify others. I envision the projection of a holographic image that only I can see, informing me of the laws governing recordings, based on my location as calculated by the GPS. If I’m in a one-party state, the hologram might read, in green text, “One-party state. You’re good to go.” If I’m in a two-party state, the hologram could read, in red text, “Two-party state. Inform others of  recording.” If that latter message flashed before my eyes, another message could follow—something like this that I could read aloud: “You’re not going to believe this, but I have a video camera implanted in my forehead and I’m going to record our interactions, okay?” My guess is that the other party or parties would assume a mental meltdown had caused those words to spill from my mouth and would readily agree. Or, if not, I’d just insist. “All I need to do is to inform you. As far as I know, there’s no requirement for consent, only for notification. So be forewarned: anything you say can and will be used to enlarge and enhance my video archives.”

It occurs to me that the cost, both financial and mental, of a permanently installed video recording device might bankrupt me, monetarily and emotionally. A less expensive and, perhaps, less intrusive way of tracking story ideas would be to write notes in the little spiral notebook I carry with me almost everywhere I go. Why I do not write these ideas down is beyond me. I do, on occasion, but more often than not I’m too much “in the moment” to interrupt the conversation by jotting notes that, in many cases, would have to be extensive.

There MUST be a solution that’s not so intrusive and costly. Aha! I have it! I simply need to hire a very small, almost invisible secretary, someone unemployed for so long that even the meager salary I could offer would seem a windfall. I would need to find someone small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. He or she would be held accountable for keeping track of where we are and for monitoring state recording statutes. And, because I’ve never bought tiny little steno pads for someone so small as to fit inside my pocket, the responsibility for purchasing those products would fall to him or her. I would, of course, pay for the cost of those work-related tools. Now that I think of it, though, writing notes that would then have to be typed seems silly. I’d need to get him a tiny little computer with a tiny little keyboard. The issue with batteries would be much like the issue with batteries for implantable video cameras. I’d have to feed this person, wouldn’t I? What does a tiny person eat? And what about eating in restaurants—would I need to bring along tiny plates and utensils? I mean, one can’t assume restaurants keep a stock of such things for people of all sizes, right? Ach. There’s so much to think about, not the least of which is the concern about why this very small person has remained unemployed for so long. Could it be that he is simply not good at being a secretary? Or was he caught embezzling from a former employer? Does his prison record have anything to do with his difficulty in finding work? There are too many variables here. I think I’ve talked myself out of hiring him. I’m sorry, fellow, to have wasted so much of your time in interviews. Good luck in your job search!

Well, that was a blind alley, wasn’t it? I think I might just pursue something that’s been right under my nose all along. All of us are under constant surveillance everywhere we go. No matter where we go, there’s a video camera keeping an eye on us. Grocery stores, department stores, even on freeways. Cameras constantly watch us. It’s 1984 on steroids, folks. And our electronic devices monitor where we are and who we’re with. How many times have you been in a restaurant when someone takes a photo of their meal and, an hour later, you notice on Facebook that you are in the background of the person’s poorly-framed food shot? That’s what I mean! Everywhere we go we’re being recorded. Maybe not all video, but we’re being watched.  Inasmuch as someone already is recording us, the trick is simply to hack into the Universal Network (some people still call it the World Wide Web or internet, but it’s become the Universal Network where all data are collected, logged, and available for the right price). The Universal Network is as solid and stable and as impenetrable as the records in the Equifax credit database, so an early teen with a Kindle Fire should be able to get it and retrieve anything I need.

Even after all I’ve written, I don’t remember the stories that triggered my “I need to remember that so I can write about it” moments. But what I’ve written may be worth another look some day to see if there’s sufficient seed and adequate soil for a story to grow from the manure I’ve spread by tapping the keyboard with my fingers. More coffee. That’s what I need, more coffee!

Facebook is too public for me. Though I’d like to express myself to friends and family, Facebook is, to me, the equivalent of posting a full-page ad in the newspaper. I’m more inclined to send individual letters to people I know. On the other hand, Facebook has a broader reach than my messages. If my friends and family were regular readers of this blog, I could count on it as a relatively private way of communicating with them. But it’s been years since they have regularly read my blog. Proof positive that what I write bores even my wife and my brothers and sisters. That’s more than a little painful to know, but I understand that, as a writer, the words I put down with my fingers are more for me than for anyone else. I have to believe that or I will spiral into depression. And so I believe it. This blog is not for anyone else but me. Only for me.

My wife and I got back to Hot Springs Village yesterday after a whirlwind trip to Houston and Corpus Christi. The Corpus Christi leg of the trip was to attend a book launch, an anthology of writers with a connection with Corpus Christi. I grew up there, from the time I was four or five until the time I left for college at eighteen. So the framework of who I am formed during my Corpus Christi years. But I don’t remember a lot from those years. Yet I know I am who I am because of them.   The trip to Corpus was not stress-free. My brother, who’s seventy-seven years old, underwent surgery for an abdominal aortic aneurysm about the same time. It was nerve-shattering stuff. We spend an evening in Corpus, celebrating my one and only publication of fiction work, then headed back to Houston. We spent time in cardiac ICU for days. When my brother was put in his own room, we headed home (a day later). But I’m returning as soon as he is released from the hospital so I can help look after him until he regains his strength.

In the meantime, I have obligations to fulfill for my church newsletter and the history project that’s aiming to document the first fifty years of Hot Springs Village. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem as important as it once did. Frankly, at this moment, I don’t care about HSV and its history. But I committed, so I’ll do what I can.

Though my brother is doing well and there’s nothing to suggest that anything will change in that regard, I want to cry. I want to upload the emotion that’s been building up in me for days. And I can only imagine my niece’s stress. But she seems so utterly calm. Maybe she didn’t get the same gene I got. I suspect not. My brother tends to be relaxed and able to deal with adversity far better than I. But I am a crybaby. I am not someone you’d want around you in an emergency. I am useless. I function, but not with hope. I assume the worst, I guess. I don’t think I’m always that way, but lately, I feel that. I feel like I ought to find a box and a bottle of gas and just fade, fade, fade away. I know. That’s selfish. I won’t do it. But there are days when I feel utterly defeated and useless. Crap. I guess today is one of them.

But I should be happy. Finally, today, I sold my sister’s old truck. I got far less than I should have, but it’s no longer a financial burden. Yet even knowing it’s gone causes tears to well up in my eyes. I should never have sold it to begin with. I should have kept it as a family heirloom. That’s no longer an option. Never was, really.

A day or two or three from now, I’ll make the nine-hour drive to Houston again to pick my brother up from the hospital and take him to his daughter’s house. I’ll spend whatever time I need to spend looking out after him and then drive home. I hope he recovers fast, both because I want to go home and because I want him to recover and go home where he belongs. Ach! I am so damn willing to wake up from a dream!

It’s been years since I spent more than just moments listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer. But I dedicated a bit of time to listening to them a couple of evenings ago. What prompted me was a recent NPR piece dedicated to Fanfare for the Common Man by Aaron Copland. I love that music. During the broadcast, EL&P’s version was mentioned, so I listened the other evening. And I listened to Copland’s version(s), including one by the London Symphony Orchestra, directed by Copland. I love them all. But back to EL&P. I wasn’t utterly enamored to the group back in the day, but tonight I developed a new appreciation for their creativity and energy. Knife-Edge is incredible! It held me in rapt attention. And then I listened to Abaddon’s Bolero. Amazing! And Brain Salad Surgery!  And Karn Evil 9 1st Impression, Pt. 2. Holy mother!  These things took me back to a time I’d truly forgotten. A time when I was a loud, reckless kid. There’s good and bad to that, of course.

I listened to various versions in which Copland was involved in one way or another. I loved them all. But I fell deeply in love with one by the Minnesota Orchestra, with Eiji Oue. That music not only can, but absolutely does, bring tears to one’s eyes.

From there, I went to Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 21, Elvira Madigan. I didn’t realize how much I remembered of classical music. Well, it’s not that much. But I remember that it moves me. It’s easy to understand, having listened to EL&P alongside much more traditional versions of the same music and then following it with classical pieces from renowned composers, how music today traces its roots to a long, proud tradition of emotional “noise” that connects us to our souls.

I awoke an hour or so ago to my wife’s voice telling me there was a scorpion in the sink. I arose, walked into the bathroom, and looked into the sink. Yes, there was a very large, very lively scorpion there. Scorpions are no strangers to us. I place sticky insect traps in our garage at least once a week and they tend to fill by the next week with a number of scorpions. Yesterday, I counted how many scorpions met their demise by getting stuck to the flat strips of insect attractant: nine of the beasts had died (or were on their way there) since I last put out the traps. But large, unruly scorpions in the house are uncommon sights. And this one in the sink was very, very large. Perhaps it came up the drain? I don’t know. Regardless of how it got here, I don’t like scorpions in the house. So I murdered the thing, using a piece of flatware, a table knife. The creature did not expire peacefully. Even as I severed its body, its pincers tried to grip the air, fiercely sweeping back and forth. Its “tail,” curling and uncurling in rapid succession, attempted to kill its killer. Finally, the monster stuck to the knife and I carried it out to the garage, depositing its corpse onto the sticky trap, where it will stay until next Wednesday, trash day.

Waking to a call to kill a scorpion tends to get one’s adrenaline going, so I have been unable to even consider going back to bed. Instead, I went online to amuse myself. In so doing, I caused my heart rate to spike and the veins in my neck to bulge. I am a scorpion killer AND I am stupid. What possessed me to read the news? Why would I willingly expose myself to reports of the egotistical and idiotic ramblings of a malignant reptile occupying a position that once was revered? I am stupid, as I believe I said before. Unlike the post-digested rat feces in the White House, though, I know it. Let me lower my heart rate for a moment, please.

There. That’s better. This, too, shall pass. There will be a time when the aquifers beneath the Arizona deserts will be flush with water. There will be  a time when the carbon monoxide filling our atmosphere will have dissipated, replaced by fresh and natural vapors that will restore the planet’s atmosphere to its normal balance and will deflect the Sun’s most dangerous rays back into space. All of the animals roaming the Earth will be part of the natural order. Humans? Don’t be silly!

There’s an obvious contradiction between my views of the idea and my recent murderous behavior. In the ideal view, Earth will have returned to a natural state, free of the deviant attacks perpetrated by humankind. In today’s reality, though, an innocent scorpion that stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time was savagely butchered by a beast who longs for a time when beasts don’t sully the planet. Methinks there’s a lesson to be learned from the recognition of the dissonance therein.

The time is now 5:08. The likelihood that I will return to bed and get some sleep is declining with each passing moment. I just checked the outside temperature which, according to the gauges and computer reports, is an ungodly 85 degrees Fahrenheit. That fact, alone, is evidence that humankind has committed a sin against itself and Nature. Nature would not, of her own accord, allow pre-dawn temperatures to rise above 79 degrees.

I know this, because I’ve had conversations with Nature in which she said to me, in no uncertain terms, “I would never permit pre-dawn temperatures to rise above 79 degrees, unless compelled by the Forces of Darkness to do so. In fact, I would not permit temperatures to exceed 73 degrees except to warm humans that their wanton ways have consequences.”

Shortly after expressing those thoughts to me, Nature coughed and began to cough convulsively. She passed soon after, leaving us to cope, alone, with what we’ve done to our planet.

My thoughts remain with the poor scorpion. Why did it choose (if scorpions can make conscious “choices”) to go into my wife’s sink in the bathroom? How would this story have been different if it had, instead, climbed up on my flip-flop and waited patiently for me to slip into said footwear as I arose to go to the bathroom or get up for the day? Would my mind have wandered to the drying aquifers of Arizona had the scorpion opted to stay outside this morning? If a chance encounter with a scorpion can impact my thought processes so dramatically, then it must be true that a butterfly’s wings disturbing the air on another continent can, indeed, affect the climate in North America. We do, indeed, rely on “the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”

It’s no longer 5:08. I’ve allowed my mind to wander and my fingers to rest, so it’s now 5:26 a.m. Time to stop filling space with meaningless drivel and, instead, fill my cup with something more valuable.

A blogger, a man I’ve never met but who seems in many respects to share some of the emotional framework that keeps the flesh on my bones, wrote today about losing a friend and mentor. His mentor was a teacher, several years his senior, who recognized my friend’s need for a resource, a counselor ready to offer support and advice. As I read of his experience, I felt both pain at his loss and envy that my friend had the good fortune of having such a mentor. I’ve always wondered what my life would have been like if I’d had an older and wiser counselor; not to direct me, but to offer guidance and opportunities for input.

My father was fifty years old when I was born, so by the time I was fifteen and ready for advice and counsel, he was a sixty-five-year-old man ready to retire. I was the sixth of this children to need and want something in the way of advice, but by that time he was tired, I think. I don’t remember any substantive “father to son” advice from him. And I don’t recall any male teachers or other father figures who might have offered that father-to-son advice that I’ve always felt I missed growing up. I don’t know the details of the  youth of my friend whose mentor just died, but I suspect the presence of his mentor was a substitute for a father who wasn’t there in the way that we traditionally think fathers should be “there” for their children.

I do not fault my father in any form for failing to be my mentor. I don’t know how a sixty-five-year-old man could relate to a teenager who was just beginning to bud. I’m nearly sixty-five years old now. I would advise a fifteen year old kid to find someone else with whom he could relate; I’m neither interested in nor willing to invest my energy in a child at this stage of my life. That sounds cruel and selfish. My father was neither. But he had invested his time and talent in five other kids by that time; he was tired. Even if another adult had been available and willing to be available to serve as my counselor and guide, I doubt that I would have accepted the help. I was an angry kid. I still am in many ways. But I guess today the anger is directed at myself for having been unwilling to open myself up to people who were willing to help. I know they must have been there, but I was an angry kid, unwilling to accept help.

At any rate, I feel for my friend for his loss. He feels guilt, I think, that he did not take the time to go see his mentor recently, before the man died, to tell him how much the man meant to him. I understand his sense of guilt, though I think it’s misplaced. I am sure, based on what I’ve read about their interactions, that his mentor was well aware of how much his mentorship was valued and how strong the bonds of friendship had grown. Regardless, loss is hard. It’s brutal. That is true of life itself. I’ve known that for years and that’s why I’ve sometimes pondered ending it. But I won’t. Because there’s too much to learn, too much to appreciate, that outweighs the pain.

Yep. I’m wandering and making little sense. I do that sometimes. Like whenever I write and let my fingers be guided by my brain.

There’s nothing appealing about my blog. No reason a person would want to come back to read it after they stumbled upon it once. In one sense, I’m okay with that. But in another I wish I had the capacity to write something of interest that would appeal to a broader audience. I’m here to tell you that’s not going to happen. This blog is mine and I will write what I want to write. I do wish more people would visit and comment, but that’s not why I’m posting here. I’m posting here for me. I think there are people “out there” who would love to read what amounts to my journal and expository of some of my writings. But they are few and far between. Such is life in the expressive mumblings of a man like me.

The sounds of the monthly “deep” cleaning at my house drove me away this morning. The woman we engage to help in this monthly task brings loud vacuum equipment and noisy brooms. Well, the vacuum is loud and disruptive and I feel like I’m in the way, no matter where she is in the house. So I choose to leave. This morning, I am sitting at Melinda’s Coffee Corner (I think that’s the official name), drinking an iced coffee and attempting to avoid being blinded by the sun. I’m sitting at the chest-high counter in the front of the place where windows allow ample sunlight from the early morning sun in the east. I long for blinds or shades or large piece of plywood to block the light. I could move, but I’ve set up my computer and my coffee and my cell phone on the counter, so moving would be an enormously taxing undertaking. It’s far easier to sit here and complain that the building was built at the wrong angle to avoid blinding sunlight from streaming through the windows.

As I sit here, I overhear snippets of conversation between two women who are talking about the state of the country. I can’t hear enough to know what they think of it. I’m assuming that, if they’re bright, they think the country is going to hell in a hand basket. I think I hear one of them talking about the French resistance during World War II; this is a good sign.

My wife just texted me, asking me to pick up a green tomato and a couple of peaches if I opt to drive up the road to Sarah’s, a little fruit and veggie stand we’ve visited only once. I think I shall. I’m up for some adventure!

I got a hair cut yesterday. I asked for it short. It’s relatively short. But not quite what I have in mind. I realized today, though, that the quality of my haircut isn’t particularly important. The quality of my tears matters more. The depth of my emotions tends to have more import. And that brings me, as irrationally as possible, to this:

I wonder whether any research has been undertaken to examine the relationship between feigned bone spurs and malignant narcissism? Surely some scholarly work has been conducted in an effort to identify and isolate a correlation between feigned bone spurs and sociopathic behavior, don’t you think? A connection must exist between feigned bone spurs and the absence of a moral compass. The link between the two must be so strong that, absent high-resolution imaging evidence to support it, a claim that one has bone spurs should be ample evidence of the need for a mental health hold on the claimant. That is, lock the person up for a full-on mental evaluation. I’m talking long-term here. As in lifelong incarceration. Because, as we all know (having seen sufficient evidence to support the assertion), feigning bone spurs can lead to behavior capable of ruining civilization. At the very least, lifelong incarceration would give the patient the opportunity to get a no-comb-over haircut.

Mortality sucks. Reminders about mortality suck almost as much as the thing itself. My brother is in the hospital in Houston, waiting to learn when the surgeons will perform an operation to repair an aortic aneurysm. That’s serious stuff. Not frequently deadly, but serious and nerve-wracking And it’s the sort of potentially unpleasant surgery that reminds us of our mortality. Which, as I will remind you, sucks.

If all goes according to plan, the surgery will be done, post-operative healing will be speedy, and everything will be back to normal. That’s what we all hope for. But of course we worry that things will not work out according to plan. We worry that the plan can derail and cause all sorts of problems leading to outcomes unlike those we hope and expect to see.  Worry is idiotic, I know. If I can’t control the outcome, worry is a waste of emotional capital. But I can’t help but spend it. I can’t just say “it is what it is.” Would that it were so. Would that I could just accept that the world will spin without my input and control and I must simply accept it. Well, I do, in a way. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want, desperately, to have some influence over the situation.

Many years ago, this same brother who is in the hospital tonight, drove to Dallas after my open-heart surgery to spend time as my nurse-maid for a while during my recuperation.  I stand ready to do the same. My plan for next week was to go to Corpus Christi for a launch party for a book by Corpus Christi authors (including people like me who grew up there). I want to go to that party and read from my story. But if I need to be with my brother, that will most assuredly take precedence. Isn’t that the way it is with all decent humans? And I do count myself amount them, even if there are days…months…during which I don’t think of myself that way at all.

Sorry. If you tried to read my last post and coudn’t, it’s because I didn’t intend to post it and have taken it down.

I’m now entirely incompetent of late.

I am trying to sell my Ford Ranger. It’s the Ranger my late sister bought new in 1997. I “inherited it” when she died in 2010. Or shortly thereafter. And I kept it for a while. But I sold it to a friend after a few years, when it became apparent I wasn’t going to use it much. And then we moved to Arkansas. And I thought I wanted a truck. And so I bought it back from my friend. And I drove it back to Hot Springs Village, stopping along the way to address serious front end issues. And it’s been a year since. What the hell was I thinking? I have no use for it. I rarely drive it. I spent $36 every month for insurance. So I’m trying to sell it. That’s my story. I’m sad to sell my sister’s truck, but she would understand. She was the champion of the underdog. God, I miss her.

Money is a cudgel, a weapon disguised as a tool
to claw through difficulties so we can reach the
peace and happiness buried beneath the
obstacles built from shattered dreams.

Oh, they’re not our dreams; they’re hopes
dreamt by emperors and kings and placed
in front of us, like carrots on a stick,
urging us on to seek what they want.

And when their dreams become heavy and
splinter under the weight of their own
broken promises, we’re taught that money
can buy our way through the shards of loss.

Finally, when we realize money is a weapon,
we find that the cudgel is stretched into a
steel rope and wrapped like a harness around
our necks, leading us to someone else’s dreams.

Everyone needs to tone it down. Everyone. Sean Hannity. Brian Stelter. Chris Cuomo.  Jake Tapper. Tomi Lahren. 45. You. Me. Everyone. Rage, if allowed to go on unchecked, will lead to an outcome no one (except lunatics on the outer edges of both fringes, who need to be locked up) wants. Have you heard of civil war? That’s where things appear to be heading. That’s not an outcome I ever would have thought conceivable until recently. But I think it’s possible now. I really do. Perhaps not the “classic” model (but possibly exactly the “classic” model), but sufficiently ugly and monstrously damaging to this country and the world order that we must avoid it if we can. How can we avoid it?

Let Sarah Sanders eat in peace. Bake the cake. Conduct the marital ceremony. Sell the flowers. Let them pray when and where they want. Let her take the course (more on that in a moment). In short, none of us are required to let our opinions or beliefs dictate the way in which we interact with people. We ought to be guided by that simple law of reciprocity to which many of the world’s religions subscribe: Treat others the way you would like others to treat you” or, framed in the negative, “Do not treat others in ways you would not want others to treat you.” The law of reciprocity does not say, “If other treat you badly, treat them just as badly or worse.” But that seems to be the way we are conducting ourselves. At least the media (mainstream or not) seems to behave that way. Just chill. Avoid civil war.

About that course. I read about a journalist for a deeply conservative organization being denied access to an online course organized by an organization with ties to left-leaning organizations. The course sponsor had a provision in its terms of use that said it reserved the right to deny access to people who did not subscribe to its political philosophies. The journalist who was denied access was okay with that. I am not. Just like a restaurant ought to feed people, regardless of political position, an online (or not) education organization ought to teach people, regardless of their viewpoints.

I understand, I really do, the desire to take a stand against outrageous political crimes committed against the humanity of which we are all a part. But allowing that stand to pervade every aspect of every bit of the fabric of our lives is dangerous. To those who stand firm with the restauranteur who asked Sarah Sanders to leave, would it be okay for a conservative restauranteur to ask Elizabeth Warren to leave? And how about the conservative owner of a gun range: is it okay for her to refuse to allow Anderson Cooper to pay to do target shooting? We can get upset with bakers and florists refusing to serve gays or LBGTQ folks and we can express our upset, but I don’t think we ought to retaliate by becoming just as bigoted as they are. We teach tolerance by being tolerant. End of rant.

Today is my wife’s birthday. It coincides with the umpteenth World Tour of Wines, so instead of celebrating by going out to a nice dinner at a nice restaurant, we’re going to join eight friends at Coronado Center to experience the food and wine of the California Sierra Foothills. We’ll celebrate on our own, someplace nice, in the days ahead. Birthdays have grown less occasions for celebration in the past forty years or so. I guess that’s what happens when time and age coalesce.

I posted number 2600 without fanfare because I forget I was at that point. My forgetfulness notwithstanding, I think number 2600 deserves acknowledgement; just a tad bit of respect. I’ve spilled a lot of thought on the screen to have reached 2600. I suspect I’ve embarrassed myself many times over. The advantage of having virtually no readership is that my fumbles and stumbles and embarrassments are viewed by so few. Thanks, by the way, to those of you who have witnessed my many, many mistakes for opting not to call them to my attention. I know they are there; but thanks for pretending they are not. Perhaps I should be happy to have achieved number 2600, but I’m not. If I had written something worthy of having been read, it would have amounted to something. But I think this blog has become a repository of drivel. I guess I’m feeling sorry for myself, which merits nothing but contempt on the part of the reader.These feelings will fade. I will extract from these pages the gems, and I know there are plenty, that will be well-suited to a consolidation, an anthology, of me. I wrote, not long ago, that I should compile an “anthology of myself.” And I should, if for no other reason than to record the emotions that shape my view of the world from time to time.  An anthology of me. How odd, but how attractive…to me.

I awoke this morning to evidence of heavy rain and wind while I was sleeping. My big tomato plant was bent in half, blown away from its metal cage and its leave water logged. The forecast, which calls for more rain and thunderstorms, does not portend well for me having a good time while picking up trash along the roadside, which I will be doing shortly. I volunteered, along with a dozen other church folks, to clean up a stretch of roadway this morning. Despite the rain, we’ll do it. And I will return home and shower, hoping my long pants and insect repellent keep the chiggers and other unpleasant beasts at bay. I may write more about this exciting experience later. Or I may not. I’m taking a baseball cap along with me, just in case it starts raining again. I loathe wearing baseball caps, but they do help keep rain drops off my glasses, the presence of which I loathe even more than wearing baseball caps.