The 2nd Shriek

   The First Shriek:   The Sparrow in the Shower
         Blood-curdling that time, much like the "Psycho" scene where poor Janet Leigh is accosted in the shower. This was the shower and she was in there, most likely conditioning her hair, when somehow a poor misguided sparrow found itself in there at the same time. It was chilling, the sounds. All the rescuer needed to do was open the window, which is in the same venue as the shower itself, and the bird flew away.
        The Second Shriek:  The Chipmunk Beneath the Walkway
                Years later, so this time the shriek was more of an excited nature, though still of repulsiveness, when she happened upon a chipmunk poking its head through a  crevice in the brick walkway leading to the house. It was of her doing this time, because  her overly diligent attempt to remove crabgrass growing between the bricks left an opening, which evidently struck a chipmunk family as the perfect housing opportunity. She was walking out toward her car, and a chipmunk stuck its head up through this hole:

The last 24

Recliner abruptly collapsed, with me in it.
Dave fell out of bed at VVH.
Fernando gave me a bottle of cold water.
Frank gave me 2 Snickers bars.
Met a man who had severed the nerves to 2 fingers on his right hand while drying a knife, and who had shot himself while target shooting when the bullet ricocheted off a metal plate in the bank installed by the owner to discourage such shooters.

COMMENTARY (Not just a Letter to Editor) Albany Times Union August 21, 2019

50 Years A Cave

Househunting in the 40's

   My parents were always in the market for improved housing.They'd started out in a house or apartment in Valley Falls, near where the entrance to the mill was, then to a farm tenant house on Route 40, and on to Brundige Road, then the house by the the Reservoir and, last as non-owners, the house on the curve going out of the Valley.
  Somewhere along the line, someone my father knew, Mr. J., spoke of his  house in Melrose, on Route 40. It was situated above a roadside concrete wall, near where Wood's turkey farm later was. We all drove over there one day, and my father went to the door. There was no answer, though J's mother was supposed to be home to see about the house. My father must have looked through the window, or maybe the door was open. Anyway, he saw the woman lying on the floor.
    He took the next step, which in the days of no phone access or emergency services as we know them, meant he drove to J's house and told him what he'd  found.
   We kids were pretty young. I have a vivid memory of the  man leaving his house and going to his garage, where in order to open the door to get his car out, he had to remove a number of boards that supported, as well as made up, the garage door.  My mother thought it looked like a scene from one of those comedy movies, the man desperately unbuilding his garage or such.
   I don't know what happened after that, only that we did not move into that house.
 

The Longest, Though Very Beautiful, Day of My Life

  I see the ads for all the things you can do in Cooperstown, and I'm reminded of the week I spent a day and night there. It seemed like a week.
   It came about because of a conflict in Hoosic Valley school activities. The Senior Band Concert was scheduled for an evening during the weekend of the Yorkers Convention in Cooperstown. The students in both organizations, and there were several, had to make a choice, to go to the weekend convention or to fulfill their commitment to participating in the band concert. A dilemma to be sure, but that's life. As it turned out, most of the students torn by the decision  chose to attend the Yorkers convention. Danny thought it unfair because the band would definitely suffer from the loss of several of the junior and senior musicians. Yet he wanted to attend the Yorkers event as that was the culmination of the year. What to do?
  Dave and I solved the problem, at least in part, by driving him to Cooperstown AFTER the band concert. We all stayed  at a motel for the night.  Because he had taken the bus on the trip to Cooperstown, he was not permitted to ride home in it either. At least that's my recollection. I remember dropping him off at the Yorkers facility near the break of dawn, very early anyway.
   So now Dave and I  had the whole glorious day to spend in Cooperstown, waiting until it was time to pick Danny up. What do we do?
   After breakfast, which was early, we toured Cooperstown. Of course the Baseball Hall of Fame. I had been there a few times before, and didn't have any acute interest in baseball, but it was something to do. There are numerous displays and galleries, which we walked through. It was off season for baseball so the visitors were sparse; we were out of there in less than 45 minutes, if that.
  Next?  We walked through the town and then to the water, sat on the dock for a while, and waited until we could justify eating lunch. Even Dave wasn't hungry.
After lunch, we still had hours to wait. We found a movie theater in town, most likely the only one. Jurassic Park was playing, and it's a pretty long movie, but we were out of there and it was still early afternoon, with hours to wait. I honestly can't remember if we'd checked out of our motel. We must have, but I'm sure I wanted to go back and fall asleep, just to pass the time.
P.S.  That marking period, the band teacher was Miss DeLong, and Danny received a final grade of 106. 

Oh, them Albany State students...

 I open the Primer and choose a page:
                                  THE OLD WOMAN
    The cat lay dead beneath the rocker's rung.   Its crushed back curled in resignation, opposite the way of normal bending.  The rocker, tilted at a crazy angle, was just as lifeless and the woman in it, too.  Thus it had been since the clock struck five a day and a half ago.  Thus it had been and thus it was now---all still.
    She had been a lover of cats.  There had been many , and she cherished them all with the same close attention. But the years, slipping stealthily away, had taken one cat each, until just one cat remained. It was all she had.
   A forgotten dish lay empty of its milk.  A spool of thread spilled dead upon the floor.  A rubber mouse cowered wonderingly in a corner of the room.  No light breath disturbed the heavy air.
    The old woman's hair was disheveled, but the cat's had a brush-telling sheen.  Under her smock, her bones jutted sharply from their angled joints, uncushioned, as the cat's, with smooth firm flesh.  Her ragged shawl, moth-eaten, worn, hung where the thick, bright cat's-bed-blanket should have been. She had been a lover of cats.
    She had not heard the curdling screech, or the crushing of small vertebrae.  Nor could she tell why her rocker stopped and stuck, 'til she dropped her arm to the rung below and felt the warm wet fur.  And the last year slipped away.
                        This was the publication of 1959.      This selection written by Cecil Blum.  I wonder what became of him.  His writing style could have used help.  I could have edited this cheesy passage. I would begin by advising him to learn the parts of a rocking chair.  The "rung" is not the "rocker."

It's been so rainy that...

...there are snails on the front of my house.

Reaping the Harvest

From a lone potato I planted in the spring:  All organic, no sprays, not even fertilizers.

End of Self-Exile

Jabbar's ----The Undefeated!

After the Storm: Still Twining

I can't use the rake, but who cares?

August 2, 2017

That's a lot of days without hearing the words "Good Morning." 

I See Dead People

Toledo? Dayton?  They're still dead.

Her Hope

                              The Grief Journey:   Summer Grace
                                 
     "I shall not die, but I shall live."     PSALM 118
    The grace of summer is one of discovery---the discovery that, yes, you will live.
    But it's more than a discovery; it's also a decision,
    A decision that awakens within you as the summer days go on;
    A new optimism that is growing within you;
    A laugh that comes naturally for the first time in a long, long while;
    A dream that leaves you feeling freer and more at peace;
    A spirit that is re-forming an energy that is re-gathering.

   The grace of summer is one of guidance---a sense that new life is more than just a choice you are making.
    It is also an opportunity that you are being offered;
     a gift that you are being given;
     a blessing to be accepted and trusted;
     a guidance through your season of grief.
   You and something wiser than you have a word to speak, and that word is
                                               Yes.

Written to be read

Garden

At the end of the season, when you pluck off some seed casings and throw them all in one box, and then next spring

plant them all together, you can get peculiar results, like morning glories strangling sunflowers

My SD Card won't move beyond July 30. Frustration reigns.

Problem resolved. First, I glued down the tattered edge of the old card, which, amazingly, brought it back to life. But I now have a new SD card, which is fine.

"Black Dog" Depression

  That is what combat veterans called it. Here is how it felt:
    "I do feel I love you. The problem being, this damn depression.  I seem to have very little or no feelings.  My perception on everything seems to be numb and gray. I'm not doing this on purpose, I seem to have lost control of my emotions.
    My feelings, for what used to be important to me, have vanished, god, church, family, responsibilities, and not least of all, you.
   I continually feel that this will change, but everything seems to stay the same, "in the real world."  I struggle with this daily, my feelings for you, against this numbness, and feeling I am wasting your time, with the strong emotion that I don't want to lose you, but am I being selfish, fair to you, fair to our relationship. It's a constant struggle with: am I going to start feeling better before it's too late, is this numbness going to continue forever?
  I've thought many times of going our separate ways, but when it comes down to it, I know my feelings for you are too strong. Soul mates? as we used to say.
   When I'm thinking of going our separate ways is when I feel I'm ruining your life.  Like I say, "I don't even want to be around myself." I don't understand how you can put up with me sometimes. As I said before, I keep waiting and wanting to feel "better," but it doesn't seem to be happening.
    I sometimes get glimpses of how I used to feel, but they're very brief. The hope and desire is there.
    I know this doesn't solve anything or is anything new. I want you to know I love you and want to continue our relationship.
                                                                                  Love, X"
  This was shared with me at the time, and it was a deeply painful time. Both are gone now, and I'll delete in a while, but the letter does tell the story of how depression affects lives.
 

Bad ! Doctor!

    My life of late has been spent, for too many hours, in searching the internet for bits and pieces of information which may eventually be of help.
   Interspersed with medical lore are the often poignant slice-of-life stories that people post for their own personal reasons. As Kathie Lee Gifford has so often proclaimed, and sang, "Everyone has a story." And mostly we agree and sympathize, and then forget.
   But every once in a while, a story resonates and sticks in my mind. Here is one such:
           A man brought his mother to the hospital for a minor procedure. That  was  successfully accomplished. However, before discharge, he was informed that one of the routine tests had turned up an unrelated concern, a shadow or what the doctor called a scar. So  his mother was to remain in the hospital while more tests were performed. She underwent the testing and was told the results would take a while.  The family was in agony waiting: was it cancer or just a benign cyst or such?
    Soon after, a doctor arrived and told then she was being discharged. The family was at first elated, thinking that meant the "scar" was not a cancer. No, the doctor told them, the results were not yet in; she was being discharged pending whatever the next step of her diagnosis would be.
   Do you think it's cancerous, they asked. The doctor replied, "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck."

Rosemary,Since my email is blocked...will post here:

"Pricey New Blood Thinner Might Be Safer for Blood Clots" ELIQUIS
 Open article at www.webmd.com/

3 out of 7

 4 Bikes still left. Come and get them. Cheap.