Tiny Tomato Plant and Potential BLT's

I think I see a tiny yellow bud opening, forerunner of a tiny tomato?

The Ideal Patient in Hospital-Speak

  An otherwise healthy young man is brought to the hospital on an emergency basis in the early morning hours, and is found to have appendicitis. A surgeon performs the operation, a successful procedure. The patient is released that same day. The family barely had time to get the word out, and certainly not to gather round.
   A perfect outcome, for patient and medical providers. Hospitals are compensated for such medical events at a "packaged rate." One price coded for each procedure, regardless of the time spent. (At least that's my understanding.) So the quicker the patient is discharged, the less time spent under care, the  more of the allotted funding the hospital gets to keep. I'm sure it goes to defray the costs of those who are not such ideal patients. Young and healthy is the way to go.

This was The Schroders in Kingston, NY

   Herman and Gertrude installed this swimming pool in their back yard on  Wrentham Street in Kingston in May, 1969. I remember because I was in St. Mary's Hospital in Troy and family members were working on the pool while I was having a baby. All the action seemed centered there: I felt so alone. (Though Dave was here of course.)  The elder Schroders already had 6 grandchildren, but they lived across the country. Herman especially wanted the pool for the grandkids, I think.
  So a few years later, in the summer of 1973, as the picture shows, the whole family was in the pool, all 9 grandkids. Danny missed it, as he wasn't born until 4 years later. His time in the pool was limited as his grandfather died the year Danny was born, in 1977, and things were never the same.
    Unfortunately, in an attempt to include the pool in the picture (and it was a spectacular pool for its time) some of the people got severed, notably Bill and one of his 4 sons, I think Thomas.
Dave is kneeling in front of those 2 wounded  people; next to him is David, and John Schroder. Of those 2 little cousins, David was the elder by 5 months.
Grandpa Herman is sitting next to Grandma who is holding Marilyn.
I am standing next to Norine and Don and  Barbara are  on the end. The taller boy in back is Paul (I think) and then Phillip, the 2 redheads Martha and Carl, and the youngest of the 6 siblings, Annemarie.

It's summer. 90 In the Shade

Double Negative Morass

So wrote Philip Nolan, The Man Without A Country:
 
"He loved his country as no other  man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands."
    Did he, full of self-loathing, feel he deserved the draconian punishment rendered throughout his life, or did he feel his sentence was too harsh?
   No man deserved less would serve as  the opposite of no man deserved more.  Less punishment?  More punishment?  Any other man could deserve more or less punishment. But if no man deserves less, does he feel he had committed the ultimate offense? 
    I guess since he used the word "but" as a contrast, he thought he deserved what he got. 
Then again,  since this was his posthumous message, he could be thinking "more" would be an even stricter sentence, so no man, nobody, deserved less. 
    Between the Mueller Report and this tale, I've gotten a headache. Nobody deserves that more than I do. Nobody deserves that less than I do.

Life Revised

No longer the calm before the storm, but the storm before the calm...

Ann Burke Donovan 7/1/1986