Saturday, August 30, 2014

Houston

Nine years ago today much of the nation was glued to the TV, watching in disbelief as conditions in New Orleans continued to deteriorate following Hurricane Katrina. I was one of those watching, almost unable to comprehend that that kind of horror was happening less than sixty miles from where I sat safely in my house.

Many of the people who evacuated New Orleans ahead of the storm came here to wait it out. A lot of them are still here. Many others, those who had stayed in New Orleans and were trapped there when the waters of Lake Ponchartrain breached the levee, eventually were rescued and boarded buses to whatever towns or cities had indicated a willingness to take them in and help them out. One such place was Houston:


The song is "Houston" by Mary Chapin Carpenter.
Click here to read the lyrics. 
Thanks to paganmaestro for skillfully combining amazing images with this song and posting the video on YouTube.

Friday, August 29, 2014

Hurricanes and Other Foul Winds

It's a good year when Louisianians make it through the week when August ends and September begins without any trauma or turmoil. Usually it's a hurricane or tropical storm that causes the trouble:

  • On today's date two years ago, Hurricane Isaac made landfall on the Louisiana coast.
  • A year earlier, on September 3, 2011, my sister and I cut our Appalachian vacation short and drove straight home to beat Tropical Storm Lee's arrival here.
  • In 2008 Hurricane Gustav arrived here on September 1st, Labor Day. 
  • The one everybody remembers, of course, was Hurricane Katrina. Katrina made landfall in Louisiana exactly nine years ago today.

Rain is predicted for every day of the Labor Day weekend, but no damaging winds are expected to accompany it. Thank goodness and knock on wood.

This year a different kind of ill wind has blown into our area and continues to grab the headlines. News broke on Wednesday that Scott Rogers, a prominent local TV personality, had been found shot to death in his upscale home as a result of an apparent murder/attempted suicide. The alleged shooter remains in the hospital in critical condition from a gunshot wound as doctors apparently fight to keep him alive so that he can eventually be indicted for Rogers' murder. Go figure.

Rogers' TV show, Around Town, came on too early in the morning for me to watch on a regular basis, but I've certainly seen him on television often enough through the years to know he was on Baton Rouge's hypothetical "Who's Who?" list. I would have described him as pleasant, mild-mannered and...perky, maybe. I might even have added slightly effeminate, notwithstanding the fact that the average Louisiana good-ole-boy would apply that adjective to every male who has a British accent and isn't James Bond. Comments at the end of early online news articles have given me the impression that Rogers enjoyed an impeccable reputation in Baton Rouge and was highly regarded for his kindness in general and for his efforts in regard to the promotion of non-profit fundraising events.

As if the killing/botched suicide weren't shocking enough, the ongoing news story is being peeled like an onion, and the layers now include allegations of a child molestation trial in Rogers' native England and a long history of molesting other young men over a period of many years, two of whom followed him here from England, one of whom is his alleged murderer, business partner and son-in-law. According to news reports, a 10-year-old adopted son and a 2-year-old foster son were removed from Rogers' custody about two weeks ago.

I'm sensitive enough--human enough--to realize that this story is tragic on many levels, and I do feel sympathy for those whose lives were affected, positively or negatively, by a relationship with Rogers and/or by his death. But I'm also honest enough to admit that the avid crime-novel reader in me finds this whole story fascinating. I doubt that I'm alone in that. This wouldn't be the first time that the concept of a double life--a charismatic character with a dark side--has kept readers turning pages late into the night.

You can read about Scott Rogers here and here. If this story doesn't turn into a book or a made-for-TV movie, I'll eat my hat.

Monday, August 25, 2014

More of What I've Been Reading: The Trilogies

The Lake Trilogy:
The Lake
Troubled Waters
Safe Harbor
by AnnaLisa Grant

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=the+lake+trilogy&rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Athe+lake+trilogy&ajr=0

The Kindle edition of the first book in this series, The Lake, had four stars and was free on Amazon.com. How could I pass it up? I got hooked on the story and wanted more when it ended, so I bought the next two books. (That's why they offer the free ones, right?) These books reminded me of the Twilight series, but without the vampires and werewolves.

_______________

The Prairie Trilogy:
O Pioneers!
The Song of the Lark
My Antonia
by Willa Cather

http://www.amazon.com/Prairie-Trilogy-Pioneers-Song-AntoniĆ”-ebook/dp/B00JT04KNU/ref=sr_sp-btf_title_1_12?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408977078&sr=1-12&keywords=willa+cather

I love historical fiction, and that's what these old books are. Willa Cather's words paint vivid mental pictures of times and places I wasn't alive to experience and made me believe I was there.  I only wish something exciting had happened during my visit.

_______________


The Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle:
Fifty Shades of Grey
Fifty Shades Darker
Fifty Shades Freed
by E L James


A few people told me, "You must read these books!" A few others said, "They're horrible! Don't waste your time." Finally, a friend on the "must-read" side convinced me, emphasizing that "the second book explains a lot about how [main character] Christian Grey got that way."

Well, I read them, and my opinion about Fifty Shades of Grey is neither black nor white. Some of the writing was better than I'd heard it was; some of it wasn't. The pages were about evenly divided between story and sex. I actually liked the story that continued through all three books, but the sex scenes grew tedious quickly. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing; once they became repetitive and boring, I could skim over several pages and get back to the story faster.

I will say that the only books I've ever read that were as sexually explicit as these were a couple of well-worn, dog-eared paperbacks my husband found on a power-plant construction site back in the '70s. Those had practically no plot at all.

Do you think that's what all the fuss is about? Do you think maybe the many thousands of avid fans of Fifty Shades have never had access to construction workers' libraries?


To read a description and reviews of any of these books,
click on its image above.

Friday, August 22, 2014

What I've Been Reading

Boy, have I been reading! At the expense of everything else, it seems. I try to keep a running list of books I've read (actually, it's a digital image folder full of book-cover screenshots), but I've been so busy reading that I got way behind. This morning I had to backtrack through my Kindle page by page to recall the titles that have slipped through my system. 

It's been almost two months since my last book post, so to keep this one from being too long, I'll break the list of most recently read titles into two posts. Here goes:


Love in the Present Tense
by Catherine Ryan Hyde

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Present-Tense-Catherine-Ryan-ebook/dp/B000TDGGNS/ref=sr_sp-atf_image_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408725773&sr=1-1&keywords=love+in+the+present+tense+by+catherine+ryan+hyde


A Reason to Live
by Matthew Iden

http://www.amazon.com/Reason-Live-Marty-Singer-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0081MW9LM/ref=sr_sp-atf_image_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408725851&sr=1-1&keywords=marty+singer+books


Blueblood
by Matthew Iden

http://www.amazon.com/Blueblood-Marty-Singer-Mystery-2-ebook/dp/B009CAV2RO/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1408725894&sr=1-5


One Right Thing
by Matthew Iden

http://www.amazon.com/Right-Thing-Marty-Singer-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00BSMRE80/ref=sr_sp-atf_image_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408725966&sr=1-3&keywords=marty+singer+books


The Spike
by Matthew Iden

http://www.amazon.com/Spike-Marty-Singer-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00HEZJ7CQ/ref=sr_sp-atf_image_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=1-1&keywords=marty+singer+the+spike


One Pink Line
by Dina Silver

http://www.amazon.com/One-Pink-Line-Dina-Silver-ebook/dp/B00AKJ2HDO/ref=sr_pi_pm_npnf_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408726089&sr=1-1&keywords=one+pink+line+dina+silver


Where the Wind Blows
by Caroline Fyffe

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Blows-Prairie-Hearts-Novel-ebook/dp/B008J2KT1G/ref=sr_sp-btf_image_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408726156&sr=1-1&keywords=where+the+wind+blows


Still Missing
by Chevy Stevens

http://www.amazon.com/Still-Missing-Chevy-Stevens-ebook/dp/B003P9VZF2/ref=sr_sp-atf_image_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408726220&sr=1-1&keywords=still+missing+chevy+stevens


The Yada Yada Prayer Group
by Neta Jackson

http://www.amazon.com/Yada-Prayer-Group-Book-ebook/dp/B005LXZ4NY/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408726300&sr=1-1&keywords=the+yada++yada+prayer+group


Things We Set on Fire
by Deborah Reed 

http://www.amazon.com/Things-Set-Fire-Deborah-Reed-ebook/dp/B00D237QBS/ref=sr_sp-btf_image_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408726509&sr=1-1&keywords=things+we+set+on+fire


Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes
by Denise Grover Swank

http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Eight-Half-Wishes-Gardner-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0058UXHHK/ref=sr_sp-btf_title_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408726566&sr=1-1&keywords=twenty+eight+and+a+half+wishes


Etched in Sand (Non-Fiction)
by Regina Calcaterra

http://www.amazon.com/Etched-Sand-Regina-Calcaterra-ebook/dp/B009NG18Z8/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1408726681&sr=1-1&keywords=etched+in+sand+regina+calcaterra


To read a description and reviews of any of these books,
click on its image above.


A few thoughts about some of these books:
  • Catherine Ryan Hyde (Love in the Present Tense) has become one of my favorite authors. Read this book or anything else she's written, and you probably won't be disappointed.
  • Matthew Iden's crime novels (there are four of them listed above) may not have the power or the punch of those written by, say, John Grisham or Lee Childs, but I liked them enough to keep on buying one after another until I'd read the whole series. His protagonist, Marty Singer, is a retired police detective whom I grew to like in the same way I used to like Peter Falk's Columbo on TV. I'd probably call these books "comfortable reads" rather than "must-reads," but I think you might enjoy them.
  • I found Neta Jackson's book, The Yada Yada Prayer Group, when I was writing a piece for my Life Writing class and Googled the phrase "church-goingest," which I wanted to use it in spite of the fact I knew it wasn't proper English. Turns out one of the Yada Yada characters had used those words before I did. Now, if you know me at all, you know I'm not very religious, but my Lord, I loved this book! I wonder how many stereotypes would be broken down and how many prejudices erased if we all had the opportunity to spend time with people as diverse as the women in the Yada Yada Prayer Group. The world would be a better place, I think.
  • Maybe it's the influence of the Life Writing class, but lately I've become more interested than usual in autobiographies and memoirs. Regina Calcaterra's Etched in Sand was a good one: interesting and thought-provoking, especially in light of ongoing debates about cost vs. value of social services.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Elementary School: Before We Took the Blinders Off

Yesterday I registered for the September-October session of "Life Writing." It'll be my fifth time taking this class, and I can hardly wait to get started again. It's been difficult coming up with blog post ideas this summer, so I'm hoping that the assignment of specific topics in class will reawaken my writing muse.

In looking through my class notebook, I realized that I haven't shared with you my story on the subject of elementary school. You may recognize one or two incidents from earlier blog posts, but this was the first time I put it all down chronologically, grade by grade.

Depending on your age, parts of my story may closely mirror parts of yours. Please let me know if they do.

**********

The playground at the rear of Phelps Elementary School was five blocks west and one block south of the house my grandparents shared with us in Springfield, Missouri. Sometimes I switched up the route, placing the southward jog earlier in the journey, but I almost never walked the extra distance required to enter the front of the building. I started school there in September of 1948. The youngest student in my class, I wouldn’t turn six until the day after Thanksgiving.

Phelps School.

Mother told me years later that she had walked to school with me every day of my first week in first grade, taking the most direct path to help me learn the way. The second week she walked a few steps behind, letting me take the lead. The third week, she said, she walked half a block behind me and carried a switch to keep me from turning around and heading back home. Fortunately, my opinion of school improved; it was soon my favorite place to be.

All the teachers at Phelps were women. So was the principal. The only man in the building was the janitor. All of the staff and all the students were Caucasian, most of us with surnames that originated in the British Isles. Nearly all of us were Protestant, predominantly Baptist. If any of my schoolmates were Catholic or Jewish, I wasn’t aware of it; we hardly ever compared notes about religion. A boy named Tony Robertson and I were the only two students in my class whose parents were divorced.

We started each day at Phelps by placing our right hands over our hearts and reciting “The Pledge of Allegiance,” changing our recitation in fifth grade when the words “under God” were added to it. In an era that was largely peaceful, we filed outdoors two-by-two for fire drills and occasionally practiced ducking under our desks in case the Russians bombed Springfield.

During the Christmas season the entire student body sat around an enormous tree in the main hall and sang Christmas carols. Once a week the music teacher rolled a piano into our classroom and taught us to sing “Oh, Susannah,” “The Erie Canal,” “The Marine’s Hymn,” “America the Beautiful” and other traditional songs. We also sang “Dixie” without giving a single thought to its history or its lyrics.

In art class we dabbled in poster paints, clay, and papier-mĆ¢chĆ© on brightly patterned oil cloth brought from home to protect our lift-top desks. The distinctive smell of the oil cloth was a favorite scent, as was the minty aroma of the white paste we used for art projects. Each February we decorated shoeboxes and cigar boxes with red and white crepe paper and passed out Valentines, but only to the kids we liked.

We joined after-school organizations that encouraged good citizenship and taught us important life skills, such as how to make Rice Krispie Marshmallow Treats. In second grade I was a Blue Bird. Instead of progressing to become a Campfire Girl, I dropped out and later switched to the Girl Scouts. No matter how many friends I made among the students, it was the teachers who meant the most to me.

Me, wearing brand-new Girl Scout uniform - 5th grade - 1953.
In this photo I was facing our house. The buildings behind me were
part of what was then Southwest Missouri State Teachers College.

My first-grade teacher was Miss Davis. (We called them all “Miss,” though many of them were married.) Miss Davis was a grandmotherly woman with a kind face and fluffy silver hair. Wanting to learn the names of all those children I’d never met, I concentrated each morning as Miss Davis called the roll, beginning with Jimmie Paul Allen, on to me and then Jane Kay Burke in the B’s, and on through the alphabet as far as Edward Lee Wheeler. To this day, if I think of a child who was in my first grade class, I usually remember his or her middle name.

I took learning seriously and was apparently distressed when it didn’t go fast enough to suit me. Miss Davis once reported to Mother that she’d found me crying because I didn’t know how to spell elephant. She showed me how that day. Writing and arithmetic were fun, but it was reading that excited me. We whipped through the books about Dick and Jane and Spot and Puff and I wanted more, more, more. In April of 1949, near the end of first grade, I read for myself the newspaper article about Kathy Fiscus, a three-year-old California girl who fell into a well and died while the nation waited and prayed for her rescue. That’s my first memory of being deeply moved by something I’d read.

Second grade is a bit of a blur. I remember that my teacher was Miss Hutchinson, a perky young woman with a blonde pixie haircut, and I remember having a boyfriend, Bruce Crane (Alan Bruce Crane), a crush that carried over from first grade. Bruce was the son of our postman, and I liked him off and on all through grade school.

Compared to the other grades, third grade was the pits. Miss Butler stood only about half a head higher than her students and was as big around as she was tall. She couldn’t reach her feet to tie her shoes, so she’d show up each day wearing slippers and appoint one of us children to assist her into her work shoes. She was never without her wooden stick--one I now recognize as a conductor’s baton--and didn’t hesitate to use it. Miss Butler rarely smiled. What she did do, for which I’ll forever be grateful, was read to us every afternoon from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. I wrote a letter to Laura Ingalls Wilder that year and received a handwritten answer from her. I wish I knew what happened to that letter.

Miss McDonald taught fourth grade. She was tall and slim, with collar-length brown hair parted and swept to one side. She liked the theater and directed our class in two plays we presented to the whole school. The first was a Christmas pageant in which I played the non-speaking role of the innkeeper’s wife, and the second was Blue Willow, an adaptation of the Doris Gates book about the daughter of an impoverished migrant worker and the Blue Willow plate that was her prized possession.

By fourth grade I was riding my bike to school. Local ordinances prohibited bicycles on sidewalks, so I rode in the street, near the curb. One day, returning to school after I’d gone home for lunch, I saw a man come out of a house half a block away and get into his car, which was parked in my path. He didn’t start the car immediately, so I continued riding until I was about a car-length behind him, then stopped to wait until he drove away. I expected the man to drive forward, but he didn’t; he suddenly began backing up to turn onto a side street. I jumped off my bike but didn’t have time to pull it out of the way before he ran over it. The man leaped from his car and appeared to be horrified at such a close call. He tried to talk to me, but he was a stranger, so I left the broken bicycle in the street and ran all the way to school.

The lunch hour hadn’t ended yet. I ran past all the children on the playground and up the stairs to Miss McDonald’s empty classroom. She found me there minutes later, scared and shaken. As I tearfully explained to her what had happened, the principal arrived. The man had followed me to school, bicycle in his open trunk, to make sure I wasn’t hurt. I guess the principal had spoken with him and then gone from classroom to classroom in search of a child in distress. After a brief telephone conference with my mother, who was at work, it was decided that the principal would accompany me home to the comforting arms of Mammaw, my grandmother. The stranger who’d run over my bike drove us there.

Miss Challis was my fifth grade teacher. She lived close enough to us that I could ride my new bicycle (a gift from you-know-who) to visit her at home sometimes. The worst day of my elementary school career was the day of our fifth grade Halloween party. I don’t remember what my costume was supposed to be, but I recall teetering across the playground in Mother’s high heels and seeing Jim Burns, a big, strapping sixth-grader, punching on my fifth-grade classmate, Jimmie Allen. Jimmie was the smallest boy in every grade; I was a head taller than he was. I wobbled over to where they were and turned to face big Jim. I must have said some variation of the line about picking on “somebody your own size,” because that’s what he did. He socked me right in the stomach. I remember sitting in the playground dirt next to Jimmie and looking at my outstretched legs, the toes of Mother’s shoes pointing skyward as I sucked in big gulps of air.

By the time I’d recovered and made it upstairs to Miss Challis’s room, the temperature had begun to drop sharply and a light rain was falling. When the last of the jack-o-lantern-shaped cookies had been consumed and the dismissal bell rang, the rain had turned to sleet, and the air was so cold that the sleet was sticking to the ground. I didn’t know that Mammaw had driven to school to pick me up because of the nasty weather. She waited for me to come out the back of the building the way I always did, but I, not wanting to get fresh playground mud on Mother’s shoes, had gone out the front door. Mammaw and I missed each other. I trekked all the way home in those floppy high heels. Every few yards I’d have to stop and balance on the slick sidewalk to hitch up the borrowed nylon stockings that kept slipping out of their loose garters and falling to my ankles. The wet, droopy nylons were sheer misery.

In sixth grade I was in Miss Engleking’s class in the same classroom that Miss Butler had used when I was in third grade. Miss Engleking, tall and stout with tight, iron-gray curls, permitted no nonsense. When a boy named Luther annoyed the boy in front of him, John, by repeatedly thumping him on the head, Miss Engleking allowed John to choose the largest book he could find--an enormous dictionary--and give Luther one good whack over the head with it.

One day well into the school year Miss Engleking confronted me in the lunchroom as I passed the teachers’ table: “Someone told me you were singing a song about me being fat, and I’d like to hear it.” I hemmed and hawed, saying that I didn’t really remember what I’d been singing, that it was just something silly I’d been making up on the spot. “I want you to sing it,” Miss Engleking demanded. “Here. Now. Loud.” I did sing it, my head bowed, voice cracking in shame and embarrassment. When I finished, Miss Engleking surprised me. She laughed, and then she encouraged me. She told me the song was “very clever” and that I should write more to develop my writing skills. Then she added one more bit of advice: “Next time try to write something that will make someone feel good.”

We learned so much in the safe cocoon of elementary school. We had no idea how much more there was that we needed to know--or that we’d spend the rest of our lives trying to learn it.

Monday, August 18, 2014

"Butt Out, Mama!"

Do you ever feel as though your pets don't need you? Yesterday afternoon, at the request of three of our four dogs (Lucy was sleeping), I let them out into the backyard. I usually go outside with them, but yesterday I was in the middle of something and didn't join them until five minutes later. I might as well have not shown up when I did.

Levi, Gimpy and Oliver were lined up on our side of the chain-link fence. Lined up facing them on the other side were my next-door neighbor and two of her lady friends. It looked like two pared-down volleyball teams until one of the friends squatted to pick up the green tennis ball that Levi had just pushed under the fence. She gave it a hard throw back into our yard, and Levi and Gimpy raced to get it and poke it under the fence again.

This sequence was repeated over and over for another ten minutes while I watched and gave an occasional tip, such as, "If you tell him, 'I can't get that,' he'll pick up the ball and move it closer to you." She did, and he did. The polite visitor tried to include me in the activity by asking a series of questions about the dogs in between pitches, but Levi and Gimpy rarely even glanced my way. They made it quite clear that they had their own social life happening and didn't need or want me to stick my nose in it.

It feels sort of weird to think that my dogs are getting acquainted with people I don't know. I don't guess it'll be a problem as long as they don't start inviting their new friends over for dinner.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Simple Pleasures

What a lovely day this is! It's bright and sunny, with the temperature hovering somewhere in  the mid-80-degree range, just enough of a drop to take the abject misery out of summer.

After fasting overnight, I hit the road early this morning to go for more blood tests. The woman in line behind me at the lab was holding a three-week old baby girl, whom I volunteered to hold while the mother filled out paperwork. At first the mom declined, but minutes later, when she had to go to her car to retrieve insurance forms, she approached and asked if I'd still be willing to hold the baby. Of course, I would.

The baby slept the whole time she was in my arms. That's good, because I'd have hated to have panicked in front of strangers. I loved having a close-up view of her tiny, delicate features. Her brown skin and straight black hair were so different from the pale pinkness and blonde fuzz of my own children and grandchildren, but were every bit as precious and beautiful. In fact, I can't really think of anything more beautiful than a newborn baby. Although Last Comic Standing's Rod Man makes a good point to the contrary.

The television in the waiting room was showing a clip about a lost dog's reunion with its owners. From where I was sitting I could see all the other patients in the room. Everyone was turned toward the TV, and every face wore the sweetest, gentlest expression when the dog saw its people for the first time. Happy dogs do that to people.

When the lab technician called my first name, I jumped up and followed her back through a curtained door, where she handed me a gown and asked me to change. What?!? I have to strip for blood tests? Turns out a different woman named Linda was there for x-rays. I knew lots of Lindas in elementary school, but these days it's rare to run into another one.

Later, when it was my real turn, I felt sorry for the lab tech who tried to draw blood. She blew the veins on her first two tries, which made her so nervous she almost gave up, saying she didn't want to stick me again and suggesting that we wait for another, more experienced tech to return to the office. I talked her down off the ledge and assured her the third time would be the charm, which turned out to be true. I hope her bad experience with my stingy old veins didn't destroy the confidence she needed for the rest of her patients today.

On the way home I stopped at McDonald's two minutes before they stopped serving breakfast and scored a Diet Coke, hash browns, and a bacon-egg-and-cheese biscuit, probably my last one. I've been cheating on the low-carb diet for months now (hell, not cheating--over-indulging--occasionally binging), as evidenced by tight-fitting clothes and higher cholesterol levels. I know I need to stop that. The only thing that's holding me back from healthy eating today is the blackberry-cobbler ice cream in the freezer. Oh, and the Cheezits in the pantry. As soon as I finish all that, I'll get back on track.

Anyway, with breakfast bag in hand, I sat down at the computer to watch the Tiger Cam, but it seems to be turned off this morning. Instead, I'm getting my wildlife fix by watching a tiny lizard,  no longer than three inches from nose to tail, that has crawled through a small hole in the window screen and can't seem to find its way out again. Tigers...lizards...I'll happily watch any of God's creatures that has four or fewer legs.


Hm. A minute ago I discovered that the Tiger Cam trouble is on my end, not the zoo's. It's not too difficult a problem to solve, just time consuming, what with resetting Safari, rebooting the computer, and remembering infrequently used passwords, so wait a couple of minutes...There, it's fixed now.

The tiger cubs are sleeping. So are all four dogs here at my house.

Yep, it's a good day. Not without its minor complications, perhaps, but still peaceful and lovely--and a little bit cooler, thank goodness.

Monday, August 11, 2014

It's The Eye on the Tigers; It's the Thrill of the Sight

As you might guess from the dearth of new posts, things have been pretty boring around here lately. At least for me. Most of the folks I know have plenty of interesting things going on in their lives, but I don't. It's all routine. Maybe I'm the one who's boring.

I've had a routine visit to the cardiologist, who sent me to the lab for routine blood tests. I'm going to see my new primary physician for the first time tomorrow, but the purpose of the visit is to get a long-term prescription refilled. They've allotted only 15 minutes for the visit, so I don't expect it to amount to much.

The weather has been typical for this time of year: hot, hot, beastly hot, thunderstorms. I suppose I should be grateful for boring weather in the midst of hurricane season.

I've spent my days reading one book, then another and another and another until I struggle to remember the ones I finished two weeks ago. The last few have been fine; they just haven't charged my emotions the way a really good book does.

Just when I thought I was mired in such lassitude that I'd never crawl out of it, an article in our local online newspaper this morning caught my attention. A Malayan tiger at the Baton Rouge Zoo gave birth to two cubs near the end of July. The cubs aren't old enough to go out into the zoo's beautiful "Realm of the Tiger" exhibit, but there's a live stream "Tiger Cam" on the zoo's website. All morning long I've watched the mama tiger tend her babies in their den. She cuddles and licks them and doesn't object when they crawl on top of her or snuggle underneath to nurse. They nurse often.

Just now I watched her stand up to retrieve a cub that had strayed to the far end of the den. She picked it up in her mouth and carried it to an innermost corner, where she laid it down and licked it gently for a few seconds before exiting the den, leaving the cubs on their own. In less than a minute she came back, stuck her head in the door to check on the twins, then left again. In another minute she came back to stay. She stepped carefully around the sleeping cub to pick up the rowdy one; it's climbing on her again now. She's a good mama, that one.

The last time Kim and I went to the zoo was in April of 2013, and I posted a few photos the following day. This morning I searched through all the photos from that trip to see if I'd happened to take a picture of the mama tiger. Yep! I've matched the right side of the live-stream tiger stripe for stripe with this one:

Photo at Baton Rouge Zoo - April 22, 2013

A beautiful animal, she appears to be a little heavier now. Childbirth will do that to you.

Watching the tigers on the live feed may be slow entertainment, but their interactions are too life-affirming to be boring. I expect I'll clock lots of hours viewing this big-cat family in the coming weeks. Click on the image below to join me there if you can.


http://www.brzoo.org/index.cfm?md=pagebuilder&tmp=home&pid=103
Screenshot of nursing cubs - Tiger Cam - August 11, 2014

Saturday, August 02, 2014

Happy Birthday, Wanda June!

Today is my mother's birthday. If she'd lived, she'd be 91 years old, which seems odd, since I can reach into my heart and pull her out at any age I remember her, but I can't imagine her being as old as 91. I don't think she'd have liked it much; the aging process was always her enemy.



Sixty years ago, when she was 31, she was the working mother of two daughters. She'd been divorced from our father for six years, and some of those years were lonely ones. In that summer of 1954 she played one record over and over. She said it was her favorite song and explained to me one day why the little things, the daily kindnesses a good man might show her, were more important than any material things.

Mother remarried in 1957, and she and my stepfather had a son together the following year. She lived until 1999, long enough to see her children grow up and to know and love her grandchildren and her first four great-grandchildren. I'm pretty sure she's still keeping tabs on all of us, including the little ones she never got to meet in person.

I don't know if this song remained her favorite for the rest of her life, but the fact that we had that little talk about it way back when has always made it special to me. A loving, lasting memory is the best kind of little thing.



The song is "Little Things Mean a Lot" by Kitty Kallen.
Thanks to robynfentyfan for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

Friday, August 01, 2014

Lazy Day

It's mid-afternoon and here I sit, still in my bathrobe. Here's a list of what I've accomplished so far today:
  1. Um...
  2. Er...
  3. Ahem...
Okay, so it's a lazy day. And it's raining. I went back to bed for an hour at eight-thirty, having risen at six. The dogs have slept all day, scattered around the house in their favorite places. Two are curled up now, one on his back, sprawled out with his belly exposed, the fourth on his side, paws flapping and tale thumping against the floor while dreams take him on some grand canine adventure. 

I've had breakfast (Ritz crackers) and lunch (more Ritz crackers and a Diet Dr. Pepper). I read for a while after waking for the second time, first from a novel on my Kindle, then right here at the computer, checking must-read blogs and news websites.

I told someone the other day that I don't especially enjoy reading biographies, but today I remembered that I do like autobiographies and memoirs--a lot of them, anyway--so I started making a random list of some really good ones: Angela's AshesThe Glass CastleThe Water Is Wide...

A perplexing question has just occurred to me: If I want to begin a sentence with the word "iTunes," do I capitalize the "i" or leave it lowercase? Either way looks wrong. Anyway, I've had music playing for hours, and I love the iTunes shuffle feature that surprises me by playing classical music after bluegrass or an old favorite hymn after Kid Rock. At this very moment I'm listening to an Irish tune, "Raglan Road," by Van Morrison.

I decided I'd try to work in a blog post because it bugs me when I go from one "Saturday Song Selection" to another one with nothing in between. How lame is that? The best thing about writing on the computer is the world of reference materials available at my fingertips. The answers to anything I'm curious about are just a few keystrokes away. (For example, I've just now learned that, yes, even at the beginning of a sentence, the Apple website spells "iTunes" with a lowercase "i." That's good enough for me.)

Kim is dog-sitting for friends this week. It's funny how different a day feels when no one is expected home at any certain time, and no one is expecting me to be anyplace else. It's a fact that I always have plenty of time to be self-indulgent now that I'm retired, but I don't usually do it with the same wild abandon I feel on days like today, when I'm alone and the hours on the clock are nothing but numbers. It's fun at first. Later on, until I get used to it again, it gets lonely.

The sound of toenails scratching frantically on wood a moment ago alerted me that Lucy is awake now and thought I was in my bedroom with the door closed. She apparently needed me--immediately! Her actions reminded me that there is some accountability in my life, that I'm responsible for feeding these fine, four-legged creatures at a predictable time, that even if dogs don't wear wristwatches, they clearly know when suppertime is approaching, that no matter how reckless and uninhibited I want to be with my own unscheduled hours, I need to rein myself in for their sake. And so I do. As quickly as that. I will not let them down.