Easter
Thursday and Friday were busy days at our house, opening the swimming pool after all winter long, and finding it needing attention before the girls come to visit Palm Sunday weekend. It’s an “Endless” exercise pool installed for Linda’s mother in 2000 or maybe it was 1999, has been highly satisfactory. We also did what is for us -- or at least for me, Linda works hard in the yard whenever weather permits -- major garden work, including finishing transplanting the last of the azaleas, large plants covered with lightly fragrant pink blossoms. Is it blossoms or blooms? Or flowers. And my six-monthly climb up on the roof of the house to blow off leaves and sticks and clean out the gutters. I don't mind getting up there, it's the climbing down that kills me. Also, dizzy at 78, I'm not keen on getting very close to the edge.
Expecting all six of my girls to be here next weekend, Palm Sunday. Instead, we’re going to treat it like Easter. Easter a week early. There’ll be a Cumberland Gap ham, and I think Linda has lamb on the list; steaks cooked outside on the grill, cut to the thickness preference of each person. And for me and whoever will join me, a bottle of Salentein Malbec from Argentina, had a glass with Christian the other evening
In the Western Church Easter is the Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the vernal equinox, not earlier than March 22 nor later than April 25. For the computation formula, which requires the Golden Number and the Sunday Letter, click http://www.bcponline.org/ then scroll down and click “Tables for Finding Holy Days.” Calculate the date of Easter yourself and risk having the Easter Bunny skip your house, or take my word for it: April 20.
Occasional car driving by down front, two in the past hour. And I can hear the Bay, the sound of waves splashing ashore. Might be the tide, or a ship or boat passing. For my part in life, I’m glad my seagoing days are past.
Sad this morning about the tragic shooting at Fort Hood. According to the press, in a conference call from Air Force One last night, the President said these brave men and women serve with valor and distinction, and when at home they need to feel safe. OK. This morning’s media report that the shooter, under treatment for mental imbalance, was in a rage, furious because Army authorities in Washington had just denied his request for extra time off related to the death of his mother, and that when his mother died in November, in Puerto Rico, authorities gave him less than two days off. These obviously aren’t all the facts; but on the face of it, as well as “they need to feel safe” they also need to feel that the Army cares deeply about them as human beings. If people are treated like shinola, or think we are, we will act like shinola. Will personnel policies and decisions be part of the inquiry, or just security? Very bad vibes from Fort Hood. Not to mention more than a dozen years of treating young Americans like --- , sending them repetitively away to an odd war.
Waves still breaking vigorously in the Bay down front, washing up in my front yard. Plus, now there goes the sprinkler system cutting loose.
TW+