News reports show hundreds of people in our nation who are rendered homeless, communities devastated by terrible storms. Our president steps forward and announces that he is going to make available loans to help them rebuild.
I despair of any hope in trying to understand the motivation of our president, who is giving billions and billions of American dollars to Ukraine, and offers loans to our own needful citizens.
Are our citizens less worthy?
(Havng just re-read "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service)
The Cre-ation of Groups of Three
There are strange things seen on our lovely stream
By those who search its banks …..
… and the sights that I've found as I gaze all around
will make my soul give thanks.
There, a flock of six turtles, giving up all their hurdles
While soaking up the sun ….
In two group clustered tight, in the morning sun's light
they were gathered together in threes.
Like biscuits so placed with their sides all embraced,
touching each in a snug ungreased pan —
Then they lurched down to drink in the nearby wide sink,
making ripples — in circles they ran...
As they sank out of sight, for my soul 'twas delight...
though gone, nevermore to be seen;
And I know that they're there, so I give not a care —
for their sons and their daughters all live there underwater, and leave me without a closing rhyme. How mean ...
by Billy Mitchell March 24, 2023
I have regarded my condition in recent years with a smug pride. Since I returned to Texas in 2014 I have found a place to live, furnished my quarters adequately, and live a comfortable existence. Comfort, both in regard to physical circumstances and to my mental/emotional existence. I read of older folk having problems — especially those who live alone. And I take pride in my equanimity in my reclusive life style.
Until recently. During the past two or three months I have been unusually emotional.
I begin to mourn. Which I have previously avoided. But I feel sadness that is bothersome and distracting, thinking often of loved ones who are gone. Some of them departed for as long as twenty years. Why, now, do I grieve?
I ponder.
And then it comes to me.
The trigger — that intrusion onto my placid existence. . .
It seems so obvious. I should have recognized it sooner.
Not that it would have mattered. I would still have gone down the same slope.
Actually crying on occasion. Drinking a lot more than I have ever done in the past. Sometimes three drinks in a day.
But I will preservere.
(What seems like a carelessly misspelled word may be a neologism. Not that it matters, but I may be attempting to engineer a portmanteau)
That trigger referred to above would have been the death last November of my friend Carl. It's as if he opened a door that I had assiduously kept closed, secure against the storms of sadness. And through that open door came a flood of suppressed emotions.
I resolve to assert a stoic composure — I will not tolerate such juvenile diversions.
I hear Pop's voice — “Buck up, boy — men don't cry.”
Okay, Pop.
Railroad Vine, Ipomoea pes-caprae from an internet soirce: “The Railroad Vine blooms during the summer and fa...
