Policy Pete's Dream Book ---Perhaps

     We were getting ready to leave for an important and rather elegant function. Valerie pulled up in her car and I looked and saw that Don was inside and also a young teenaged girl. I asked if there was room for Dorothy, and there was so she got into the car. I said I wasn't ready yet and that was true. I was not only dressed in my most raggedy work clothes  and worn-out shoes, but  in addition I was grimy and needed to shower. I would catch up to them later. Valerie morphed into Marilyn and she said she'd help me. We went into a palatial building, and down hallways and open spaces to elegant buildings and stairways, all leading to wherever our goal was, to help me get ready for the trip I was to take. I told M. that I would be lost, not knowing where we were or how to get back out  of the circuitous complex of luxurious edifices.  She said not to worry, we were right outside Kohl's on the corner, and so, easy to get to.

  I started to think how could I get ready in such a place---I didn't even have my shoes and where could I take a shower. This was a mistake, I thought and I wanted to undo it, but didn't know how. Then I heard a voice, quite loud, demanding, "M-m-m, Take me someplace."  The voice got so loud it woke me up, and it seems it was my voice.

      

Security Be Damned.

 It's crucial that highly sensitive documents and paperwork be retrieved if ever they escape their ordained location.

   Last year, I was mailed, along with my Social Security statement, the extensive account of another person. I notified SSA and offered to destroy the mis-sent account, but 2 SSA spokespersons were adamant that I should  return the other person's paperwork, even sending a prepaid envelope for that purpose.

   I followed their directive, but of course I could have made many copies of that missive if I had chosen to.

   And so could copies of secure information have been made, right? Real-life spies use their cameras for that all the time, discreetly, I understand.

It's little wonder...

 ...that my mind is still tormented with interpretations. As an English major still in my teens for the most part, we had to analyze the writings of a multitude of authors.

"Under the glistening cherries, with folded wings

Three dead birds lie:

Pale-breasted throstles and a blackbird,

Robberlings stained with red dye."

  D.H. Lawrence is responsible for that nightmare.

The Fair Is Here

    As I drove toward ShopnSave yesterday, there was a line of large white vehicles approaching north on Route 40, almost like a closed parade. They turned left and into the Fairgrounds. So it's real---it's that time again.

Hydrangea

 

The Butterfly

 Beautiful flying symbol of all that is holy and good. Until you take a closer look:

stuff

 

Deforestation

 Since 8a.m. the sound of cutting and chopping or chipping. The other day, the ditches and areas above were cleared. Today it's the wooded areas beyond the shoulders and ditches, involving the chopping down of some mature trees. And these are only a part of the vehicles involved.

Madigans of Old Can Joe ID any?

    The only one I recognize for sure is my father, Charles,

in back row center. Could that be his mother he is standing by? I  think the man on left is Joe, and that must be his wife holding his arm. Frank (Peter) is the tallest, with his arms crossed. And maybe Walter on the right end?  No idea who the young women are, though one, standing, bears a resemblance to young pics of me. I assume the picture was taken at the old family homestead in Pittstown.

Support

    "Being supportive is important, like carrying some emotional furniture up a flight of stairs,  but it helps to know which end is the heaviest."  Author undisclosed.

Deer at Risk

 

Snaking around

As I started to climb the step, I saw a tiny head climbing onto the concrete. I waited, of course, and then it crawled up and slid across the step down to the other side. I thought it was a garter or garden snake; it was very evenly patterned, and quite long.

     A few minutes later, I heard a car slow down, and 2 young deer had crossed the road and run  into the very same area behind the shed as last year's family of doe and 2 fawns. Sadly, one of those fawns had been killed crossing the road. If I hear the squeal of brakes, I'm not looking.
 

Language Woes---Innocuous but annoying

 Language is a continually evolving structure, but do the changes have to be so gross, ugly and just plain annoying. So the word Black is capitalized but even combined with another marginalized segment of society, the word brown is  not. Jack fell down and broke their crown. To heck with subject verb agreement. The word before has been replaced by ahead of.* Sounds cooler, I suppose. The word furbaby has been coined and people voluntarily use it. Sort of along the lines of furhat, I suppose. 

  Now the powers that be in the written media have decided to have parents "share" their children or offspring. Not that the parents are necessarily divorced or separated, but a common expression denoting, I guess it could be more,  that the kids have 2 parents. Used to be that parents or others shared custody, but no, now it's the sharing of their actual physical being. Sharing in this sense would best be defined as having a portion of something split with others. Can you really share a child. Ask Solomon. 

* And the replacement of the word "from" by "out of." If you want to sound like a police report.

Oh, very well. I'll oblige.

 Just received a message to submit more articles, so, being the compliant sort, I'll do so. 

    Every once in a while, I'll  go to the Physician Ratings Site and see what's new with the doctors I've known. Of course, these ratings are patently unfair because anyone   can leave a review and say anything. And there's no recourse for the doctor but to live with what's been written. I'm sure not all doctors even read them. I have never left a review on this kind of public site, only if I receive a request from the physician's office or treating hospital. But I occasionally review the site anyway.

    I checked the site for Dr. Frank Congiusta, the orthopedist who performed my knee replacements 8 and 9 years ago, probably the most successful of all my medical ventures. The doctor, then in his late 30's and  fairly new to the practice, is now approaching 50 and holds title of Chief of Orthopaedics at St Peter's Hospital, among other honors.. The reviews left on the Ratings Site have increased in number and sing his praises. Except for a single one. 

That review, left by a woman, reads: "Dr. Conquistador is not as great as he thinks he is."   Why this is funny I don't know, but it is

To A Mole (Apologies to R. Burns

   The best laid schemes of Moles and Men gang aft agley.

Eerie Memory

   Reading about the woman found dead  in the woods in Schaghticoke brought back this memory, from around 1957-58  or so.

   The garage building next to our house was vacant then. Customers of Sara's store frequently parked there, alongside the driveway we used then. But a white car was parked there for a while, with no driver anywhere around. Someone must have notified the police the next day when the car was still apparently abandoned there. It was a neighborhood mystery when the authorities showed up to examine the vehicle. So much intrigue that my sister, completely out of character for her, skipped classes at Albany State to wait for news of the mystery car. That evening, when I was working in the store, 2 strange men came  in and bought flashlights and batteries. Besides being strangers, a rarity then, they seemed gruff and serious. They were joining a search party for the missing driver, a woman, the wife of one of those customers. 

   The search party was headed for the woods on Stover Road, with Johnny Daurio joining in the search. It was  late evening that rainy day when they found her, her body dangling from a tree deep in the woods. Johnny said it was a terrible sight; he was there when they found her, and was moved by it. 

  The back story was that they looked in the woods because her husband said she loved the woods and often hiked through them. 

   The rest of the story, pieced together as it was, was that she had driven from another state, maybe Pennsylvania, and had paid a visit to Dr. Sproat's office, no appointment needed back then.  She was concerned about her health, deeply worried that she might have contracted a venereal disease that her husband had brought back from North Africa or someplace. Dr. Sproat confirmed her suspicions and she drove her car down to River Road and walked to her beloved woods and hanged herself. 

    I don't know the circumstances of the death in Schaghticoke, but the car parked alongside the road and the statement of there being no signs of foul play made me think of that other poor soul.

The Remaining Bastards (Muses, that is.

 Thinking of Professor Brooks and relevance today:   The true muses have definitely been retired. (Just ask George Will.) So the bastard muses have been  more than ready to take over:

  The muse named Pornography is ultra evident, so much so  that even scholar Brooks could probably not have foreseen the degree. The definition, legal and societal, of what constitutes pornography has broadened so that few formerly apt definitions now apply. Child pornography exploitation seems more prevalent, but that is pure criminality.  Brooks alluded to the ability of pornography to distort the human dimension by its focus on a powerful human drive at the expense of the human dimension. Enough said.

   In  contrast to Propaganda and Pornography the bastard muse of Sentimentality seems benign, but it may pose the most widespread  threat of all to the debasement and distortion of the values for which many have laid down their lives. Sentimentality devalues the human dimension by working up emotional responses unwarranted by the occasion. We as a nation are committed to the love of animals, in general,  and especially for dogs, and more especially for young dogs, puppies. Even older dogs are referred to as puppies. If a canine of any age gets lost or injured  in any way, facebook reports the many prayers that are offered up for its safe return or recovery.  When humans and dogs are at risk because of accidents or crimes, attention is more likely to be focused on the animal involved. I can relate because I loved my childhood dog more than life itself, but even at ten years of age, I realized its place in the world we lived in. The term "calf" has been transmuted into baby cow. The sight of a noted chef choosing a lamb to be led to slaughter causes outrage. We are subjected to the horrors of life and death in the Ukraine but are inured to the devastation by the sight of a young girl selling lemonade or such to help those poor children---get them a toy or maybe a book. Praying for a lost puppy and supporting a fundraiser for lost children are simple and gracious ways to help. But such virtue signaling should not substitute for the understanding of the human condition  and the events that can lead to its dissolution. Like the other two bastard muses, that of  Sentimentality offers only a partial account of life in its fullness, which is not nourishing but debilitating. I would speculate that the epitome of the  sad state of America's  learning could be the coinage of the word "furbaby." 

Bastard Propaganda Muse

 See previous entry, July 31, Part 11