January 23, 2014

Happiest Day, it even makes me happy to recall what I can.

In the late fifties Hazel and I found ourselves many evenings sitting on the cement steps leading to the Potomac, embracing the relative solitude at the Watergate and waiting for the entertainment of the evening to start.  It was always free which was just about what we could afford  The concerts continued until the early sixties and then gave it up because they could not compete with the noise of the jets arriving just up the road a bit at National airport.  We lived just down the road a piece in Alexandria.  It was the happiest time for me.  Hazel and I were very young and thrilled with our town and our future which was always uncertain except we were happy with our lot and we knew that opportunities were always just around the corner.

January 22, 2014

Happiest day of your life

 Our Town is about the fictional town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. In the first act, Emily Webb and George Gibbs are children together; in the second act, they marry; in the third, Emily has died in childbirth and is looking back from beyond the grave with other dead citizens of Grover's Corners, and she decides to revisit the happiest day of her life, her 12th birthday.

Saw this in the writer's almanac this morning along with the poem , I apologize for the gloomy track I seem to be walking on today.  BUT the premise is a hard one for me to answer.  I can invoke moments that would qualify for the happiest, but only moments.  

A good thought when the chronological clock will not slow down

It Is Enough by Anne Alexander Bingham

To know that the atoms
of my body
will remain

to think of them rising
through the roots of a great oak
to live in
leaves, branches, twigs

perhaps to feed the
crimson peony
the blue iris
the broccoli

or rest on water
freeze and thaw
with the seasons

some atoms might become a
bit of fluff on the wing
of a chickadee
to feel the breeze
know the support of air

and some might drift
up and up into space
star dust returning from

whence it came
it is enough to know that
as long as there is a universe
I am a part of it.

January 20, 2014

Looks like SteamPunk I would say

I am reminded of one of the wife's many crafts she does so well. it's called SteamPunk. It is a conglomeration of things you might see if you toured a boiler room. Hazel my wife of 58 years has the knack. That's a term I use for someone who is self taught. It reminds me also of a song about the music going round and round and it comes out here. She has mastered nearly all of the crafts she tries.

December 14, 2013

The British museum released over one million pictures into the public domain. I looked at a few and was impressed by the Brit sense of humor.

November 24, 2013

What was the old amish saying, too soon alte, too late schmart

I ran across this on stumble upon. I'm approaching serious old age now and I wish I had adhered more to the message the cartoon is passing along.