Too bad, in any case

A conversation with a girl who was young a long time ago now:
She, an avowed animal lover, had just watched some show featuring seals, and their cute and endearing antics.
 "I'd love to have one for a pet," she said.  "But it's too bad they have 4 legs."
I attempted to correct her.  "You mean it's too bad they DON'T have 4 legs."
 "Well, no," she responded, looking a little confused, " I don't want to say that,  because they don't have 4 legs. But I wish they did."
 
 

The Waste Land

"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain."

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.