Liberated Letterman

   So now that it's all over for him, essentially his life's work, he realizes, he says, that what seemed vitally important and significant at the time, was really just silliness.  I think he was always aware of that, judging from his demeanor and his thinly veiled sardonic and sarcastic outlook on life.  If it's any consolation to you, Dave, and I realize it is not, you can rest assured knowing that your newly proclaimed revelation is true for almost everybody.  The heart of what we do, what we spend our lives engaged in,  does not amount to that hill of beans.

Bottle Return

    About a dozen to twenty--that's the usual number of returnable bottles or cans that are in the trunk of my car.  I don't like them to accumulate in my house because of the possibility of their attracting ants or other bugs.  And I can't count on the probability of using the bottle return at the store I go to because at least half the time someone is returning their empties, often by the trashbagful.  Hoosic Valley Shop'NSave must hold some kind of record for bottle deposit returns.  People apparently come from miles around, and often with truckloads or at least trunkloads of empties.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  But that's why I carry just a few small bags of returns in my trunk---to slip them in if and when the station is empty.
   Yesterday, when I pulled into the parking lot, prior to visiting Rite-Aid, and then ShopN'Save, I noticed a man who had just finished depositing his returns.  Here's my chance, I thought, to deposit my small trove of refundables.  I would wait until he left.  But he walked over to the 2 receptacles next to the refund machines, took  a largish plastic bag, maybe the one that had held his returns, and proceeded to forage through the trash bins.  He just didn't skim the surface; he went in deep.  At first I thought he may be an employee.  But no, when he crossed in front of my car to his vehicle, he had an almost full bag of the returnables that evidently were not accepted by the machines.  What most people give up on, he was collecting.  Better than working the roadside, I'd say.

What is beauty?

     To everyone who proclaims the beauty of the American Eagle, that undeniably majestic and impressive bird,  I say take another look.  The cold beady eye of the hunter, the talons meant to impale, the curved beak meant to scoop out entrails.  I guess it's a matter of what everybody says when they misunderstand or otherwise fail to comprehend, that it's all a matter of semantics.  What is beauty anyway?

Did'ja Ever?

     Have you ever done something like this:   go to all the trouble to rescue some bananas that are on the counter---peel them and mash them and add lemon juice and put them in a container so that you could potentially, maybe, possibly, bake banana bread the next day, and then, only a few hours later, when you open the refrigerator door for some other reason, stare in complete wonderment at the container, with no idea of  what could possibly be in it.

Nanny

   She came from Ireland at the age of 18 and lived in Troy. A brother was already here.  I have no story of how she met and married her husband, her widowhood, or much else about her life in Troy, which ended when her teenaged son died in a tragic fall when the scaffolding gave way  from a building he was working on.  With the $200 she received as some kind of settlement, she was able to move from Troy, where she had suffered that bitter loss. She ached to get away from that city.  She bought a place in the country.  There is no record any more of how and where she met her second husband, the father of her last child. I vaguely remember  some Hogan relative being there in her kitchen once in a while, and recall going to a funeral for one of the Hogan's, perhaps that man, or a brother maybe. I remember the name, Jim.
    The point is, there is no information about my grandmother.  Our only memory , at least mine, is of her sitting by her kitchen table, and when we were really little, walking with her and Helen and us around her property.  She had a little tan dog, named Tiny, which she had trained to jump over her cane when she held it out.  Tiny never looked too happy about performing that trick though. Not back in the day when dogs had to obey their masters, or else.  I can recall her visiting us only once or twice.  I think it may have been when we lived in the house on the curve, possibly just before or during our move to Valley Falls.  She was anxious to get back home.
   Years later, Ann Burke Donovan would mention to me that she used to walk by the house in Troy where the Donovan's lived.  She would be  walking with her father and  her brothers and sisters, and he  would greet Nanny as they walked by. Ann said Matt was most likely one of the unknown kids on the porch who she would later meet and marry under entirely different circumstances.
  Apart from a few brief references, Nanny's life, as far as we were concerned, was spent entirely in her kitchen.  Even though she must have been an adventurer in her day, to emigrate into an unknown country, with no resources at her disposal and to give birth to 6 children under what must have been in conditions of dire poverty.
  Anyway, though my mother was not one to dwell in the past, every once in a while, she would tell a tale: I remember the story she told me of Nanny and the pot of chili sauce:
    They lived in the city, she and her brood of kids, back in the day when kids were like weeds, kind of  a nuisance.  Another woman, maybe a next door neighbor, or maybe a tenant in the same building, and who also had a flock of kids, brought Nanny a pot of chili sauce.  I suppose they ate of it.
   The next day the woman asked how they liked the chili, and Nanny said it was good.  "Oh," said the woman, "I have a funny story to tell you about that chili.  While I was cooking, I put the pot on the floor to cool, and when my back was turned, little Timmy saw the pot and peed in it.  But it would be okay to eat.  He's just a baby."
   I don't know what else happened at the time, but Ma said Nanny never spoke to the woman again.
 

Mother

  I still have many cards and notes and a few letters she wrote me and she always signed them "Mother," though we never called her that, not to any real degree anyway.  We kids called her Mommy when we were little and Ma when we got older.  She didn't seem to mind.
   She was born on March 9, 1905 in the city of Troy, the youngest of 5 children to Mr. and Mrs. Ellen O'Brien Donovan and Martin Donovan.  She had 2 older brothers and 2 older sisters.  The eldest sister, Marguerite, would succumb to the influenza epidemic in 1918; the elder brother died at the age of 18 from a fall from the scaffolding of the Cluett Peabody Building.  Siblings Matthew and Helen would live into their sunset years, but Mary was the only one of the 5 to have children.  Her father died when she was only 9 months old.  She was told that as he lay dying from the tuberculosis that was the scourge of the Irish workers, he would comment on how young she was to be able to make her way  around the rooms by holding on to the furniture. That was her only connection to him.
    Her widowed mother married widower John Hogan, and they had a daughter, Agnes, who was 9 years younger than Mary.  Agnes married Thomas Murray and they had 2 daughters and a son, the eldest daughter still living.
                  Happy Birthday, Ma.  I hope most of your 78 birthdays were happy.  I am approaching that number of birthdays myself, and I know mine were happier when you were still with us.

Tea Party

 I'm in revolt.  I refuse to be intimidated by Federal Government.  I just received another recorded call from the IRS, from a woman this time.  She said a legal case has been opened against my name, and it is important to call this number:  202-599-9660.  I could report the call, but I think it's just plain stupid.  If anyone wants to call the number be my guest.

Historical Amnesia

   I'd say I'm living in a world of deja vu, as far as the OJ Trial is concerned, because I have memories of a found knife and of "previously unaired"  clips of his interrogations. Today's young whippersnappers have no such storage in their memory banks, and neither do they have the presence of mind and the intelligence to look things up. And research is so easy now;  you'd almost think they were motivated by sensationalism.

A Dearth

   Who would ever have anticipated-----a scarcity of the Hot Cross Bun.  Admittedly, my search area is rather narrow, pretty much confined to one store.  Last year, before I realized it, the season was over , and I hadn't come across any.  This year, I looked for and found one package early in the season, and that was it.  It must be that their significance has been lost, and hot cross buns appeal only to the crumbling human infrastructure  that I unfortunately am part of.

Mitt, We hardly knew you...

  It's big of Mitt Romney to take one for the team, another one that is.  It's possible Mitt might  have been in an even more key position, such as POTUS, if the RNC had not effectively castrated him by forcing him to renege every time he said something that seemed as if he was open to discussion, and potential compromise, on any issue of policy.  So Trump was able to hijack the entire Republican Party, hoist on their own petard, as it were.
   Trump is a master manipulator, posing as a staunch conservative while espousing liberal rhetoric when it suits his purpose.  When confronted, he simply says he has changed his mind, has grown, or was misquoted or was misunderstood or the dog ate his email.  His rabid followers don't care; they have committed to him, regardless.  His Republican opponents, terrified of offending his fervid followers who are raging to cast their votes, label Trump as a lying, conniving, inexperienced, grasping belligerent racist, but still vow to support him if he secures the nomination.  Not one of them has the courage to say they could not accept him as their party's candidate.  They agreed, they say,  to do so.  Even in acknowledgment  that much of Trump's bombastic success has stemmed from his defiance of any rules or any loyalties to anyone but himself, the other candidates bury themselves in the stagnant rigidity that gave birth to the rise of the Trumpster.

Wind in the Barberry

   As  I drove past the house on the curve yesterday, where we once lived,  the wind was blowing and it triggered a memory, stored away for so many years:  It was a windy day, a rather chilly one,  and I was outside by myself.  That alone would have been unusual. The three of us, when Dorothy was old enough, were always outside together.  But that day for some reason, the others had gone inside, leaving me alone in the great outdoors.  I remember feeling a kind of freedom, and power, though I could not have been more than four years old.
     The three of us may have been in that particular  area, one somewhat closer to the road than where we usually played, and I can't recall what we were doing before the others went inside. A vivid memory, almost like a photograph,  takes me  to a somewhat bedraggled row of barberry bushes alongside the road at the end of our property.  The air is cold, the wind is blowing, and I am  a solitary figure, running back and forth through the barberries, with the brambles tearing at my clothes.  But I don't mind:  I feel strong and exhilarated, though I wouldn't have been able to describe it that way back then.  I think I must have felt that each time I made it through the thicket, I was accomplishing something on my own, doing something no one else had ever done or would ever know about.
    Even to this day, there is something about wind that is a a little bit thrilling, and ominous in its potential.  Eerie, in fact.

Party Platform

  Declarations after Victory, Sort of
Hillary:   I'm interested in taking down barriers, not building walls.
Trump:   After this, I'm going after Hillary.