Wednesday before Thursday

What's happening? What's the buzz, tell me what's happening? Reading early this morning, this and that. Read a long Vox piece on the collapsing Retail segment of our economy, it all makes sense, everything is available online; in Retail stories, falling sales, reducing staffs, overworked and unhappy employees, poor in-store service, facilities going shabby, out of stock situation, are all intertwined.

Finished another really weird, man, they're way beyond eccentric, Fiction piece in The New Yorker, this one in a June issue that I'd laid aside and just now gotten round to.

Started the story last evening, it twisted up the mind, I realized what was going on probably just about the point that the writer intended, but the hour was getting late (our bedtime is nine o'clock, head down on the pillow and pull up the covers, Linda keeps it 69°F in here at night), so I put the magazine down, leaving the strange tale to finish this morning.

Okay, the story was a success: getting into it, I saw what was happening, unethical using a man's mind, manipulating who he is to extract secrets that were meant to have been taken to the grave, from the brain tissue of a dead man. I didn't know what to expect for the climax/ending, and it was the usual unnerving surprise that leaves issues unaddressed. A surprise ending, which is what happens with Mark's 16:8 cliff-hanger ending of his gospel except that stupid editors added to it, messing with Mark's agenda-driven climax.

Let's see. I was going to jot down some things, but interrupted myself with early breakfast: hot & black coffee, a Victoria's Last Bite chicken salad sandwich on whole grain brown bread, with Duke's mayo.

My sandwiches I like to cut into two or four triangles (today three trapezoids), instead of the usual slicing the square sandwich into two equal rectangles. Each Time I do that, though, triangles instead of two rectangles, the thought floats through my mind that I'd not have dared to do that when I was growing up, because my father would have made a shaming issue of it. Walt might understand what I'm saying, Gina certainly would've.

One of my life's treasures is the long conversation, the memory of it, that Gina and I had standing at the door of Community Health & Rehab Center that day in 2011 when I was leaving and she was arriving to visit our mother, who was there and in care of both Community and hospice because of constantly falling at home and now ending. Our conversation was for me a total eye-opening revelation of our growing up lives in the family. That day, I was 75 years old, finally learning and realizing.

Another such conversation was a few years later, during a hospital visit with Gina while she was recovering from a heart event.

At some point in life, we finally realize and learn that we need to have these conversations while we are still alive. There are so many questions that I'd like to ask Mama, and my father, and both grandfathers, my aunts Ruth and EG. And especially Gina.

Wandering: my specialty, eh?

Anyway, on to the news as told online (I read my news online. Unless it's weather emergencies I don't like television news, because I like to decide for myself what's newsworthy, I don't like a television station or network deciding for me).

Disappointingly but unsurprisingly, Ukraine forces are not applying their resources most effectively. This war is either going to be very protracted or is going to be lost to the super-bully, who will then be further emboldened, or it is going to open into WW3, which is what I think we're already being eased into.

On other fronts, hurricanes are natural events, you know, and the news is that Hurricane Hillary may have given the western US a brief reprieve on water shortage, helping Lake Mead.

Which prompts me to check the National Hurricane Center for our prospects

good so far, but we're still looking at September and October, which since Hurricane Michael have become ominously doubtful. Don't leave town without clearing everything from both outside porches. Going on five years, we still see blue roofs around town and Bay County. And tall naked-dead trees threatening homes. Tyndall has done a good job clearing fallen trees, a wise caution against wildfires.

Totally wandered off into the brambles instead of wherever I was intending to go a couple hours ago when I started this nonsense?

Gave up looking for Steen's cane syrup locally last evening, asked Bud where he gets his, and ordered it from Louisiana on Steen's website. You pay for it, of course, but they're all free shipping, which is why ordering four 16-ounce bottles is just fractionally more than ordering two. Four bottles would last me a lifetime though, so if you need some just say so, I'll give you a bottle.

A Day in the Life Of: not walking much messes with my strength and energy. Just one glass of wine fights with my heart meds. A high carb breakfast sends me back to bed for a long morning's nap. Right leg, ankle and foot are size and half-a-size because of the CHF, reach for the FuroForty. I've got the touchup paint for my car, but it's too hot to go down to the garage and do it, maybe in October? Yesterday at Tyndall Commissary I bought the jams for the layers of my birthday cake: strawberry and raspberry from Germany, elderberry from Sweden; looked for boudin but no, I'll have to go to Grocery Outlet for it. Joe reports that my beloved 17 year old Cadillac SRX that I gave him at Christmas is running fine at its new home in Kentucky. The heat index (feels like) here today is supposed to be something like 117°F - - my life experience on the other end of the scale was the winter night in maybe 1981 that I spent in Chicago O'Hare watching the horizontal-blowing wind-driven snow outside the windows, in a chill factor of minus-190°F. The United Club closed about ten or midnight, and I spent the rest of the night on a bench staring out at the blizzard. I was heading from the West Coast, home to Harrisburg and WashingtonDC, those were the years, my friend, I thought they'd never end.

What else? IDK, there was lots more, but it all slips my mind, a growing fact of life, which still and all is incredibly Good.

RSF&PTL

What's the buzz?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?

Why should you want to know?Don't you mind about the future?Don't you try to think ahead?Save tomorrow for tomorrowThink about today insteadI could give you facts and figuresEven give you plans and forecastsEven tell you where I'm going

When do we ride into Jerusalem?When do we ride into Jerusalem?When do we ride into Jerusalem?When do we ride into Jerusalem?When do we ride into Jerusalem?Why should you want to know?Why are you obsessed with fightingTimes and fates you can't defy?If you knew the path we're ridingYou'd understand it less than I

What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?

Let me try to cool down your face a bitLet me try to cool down your face a bitLet me try to cool down your face a bitLet me try to cool down your face a bitLet me try to cool down your face a bitLet me try to cool down your face a bit

Mary that is goodWhile you prattle through your supperWhere and when and who and howShe alone has tried to give meWhat I need right here and now

What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happening?