If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes and read this beautiful flash by Maryanne Stahl—Baby Pictures.
Apologies for the nearly week-long silence. Have had company all week and not had a chance to read or process anything news worthy.
Happy Birthday to the love of my life, Allen!!!
This has the potential to be quite cool–Musipedia:
Inspired by, but not affiliated with Wikipedia, we are building a searchable, editable, and expandable collection of tunes, melodies, and musical themes.
Every entry can be edited by anybody. An entry can contain a bit of sheet music, a MIDI file, textual information about the work and the composer, and last but not least the Parsons Code, a rough description of the melodic contour, to make the encyclopedia searchable by melody.
This morning, bringing Darby and Mae for a walk we crossed the lawn. As we did, Mae lunged for something. It was a red squirrel and it was moving slowly enough that she almost got it. Then on the way back, same red squirrel, same almost capture of it in dog jaw.
WTF? Get outta here, Red Squirrel? Can’t you see this is not a good place for you?
Several hours later, coming around the corner from taking Mae for a pee and Red is there again, but this time he’s sort of lying on his side gasping for breath. Mae lunges before I can reign her in and gets the poor thing in her mouth. I command her to drop it but not before she gives it a few death shakes.
Then both dogs try to go for it.
The poor thing lies on its side breathing heavily. I get the dogs inside and Allen takes a closer look. Its little front paws are shaking.
I start to freak out about rabies. No, it didn’t bite anyone but what if it is rabid and then Mae had it in her mouth? She’s had her shot but can she infect us? What? I call animal control but there is no animal control. I call fish and wildlife but they are only available from 9-5 on weekdays. I am referred to a private company who will come and take away potentially rabid creatures. Allen talks me out of calling.
After more research, I learn that squirrels aren’t typically carriers of rabies. Instead, they spread things like Typhus. Great.
There are many squirrels and chipmunks around here–so many, in fact, that one starts to not see them. Even when they are squished on the road, after you see the first dozen or so, your heart sometimes turns cold. Sometimes. You can’t grieve for every dead squirrel. Can you?
I can but I try not to. It’s part of my conquer-my-fear-of-death campaign. I’ve stopped doing the sign of the cross four times every time I think of death. I’ve stopped doing it whenever I see a dead creature. I’ve stopped doing it at all.
But when I see something dead on the road, a flash of thin white teeth, eyes pecked out by birds, guts abuzz with flies, I often lose my breath. Same when I see lobsters in a tank in the grocery store. If it happens to be a certain type of day, I have to get myself out of there fast before I break down.
One time–a hot, gray skied June day—Allen and I were on the sidewalk outside of K-Mart. There were rows and rows of plants for sale–annuals, perennials–roasting in the sun. Many had not been watered, were pale and droopy, were brown and crispy, were dusty and dying. I had to get out of there. They were on a baking sidewalk in a crappy strip mall and they were dying and no one gave a shit.
I make lunch as the squirrel lies dying on my lawn. I look out the window now and then. Check for movement. Maybe it is playing possum and will get up and scurry back to the trees.
I think of an old roommate from Greece and how when she would see gray squirrels on the telephone wire, she’d stop and admire them. “Look! Look!” she’d say, “A squirrel!”
A few hours pass and a chorus of squirrels and chipmunks chitter on the fringes of the lawn. Allen goes out to check and its eyes are partly shut. It is dead.
It lies there now, pale belly exposed to the sun. Soon we’ll put on rubber gloves and find a place to bury it beneath the pine needles and moss.
Stoic Toru spends most of his time during the two years after his best friends suicide in a fog, as an observer, never, it seems, breaking out of his monotone. And in his voice we read this tale of love, lost and gained, which makes up Haruki Murakami’s fascinating novel, Norwegian Wood.
While Toru admires such books as The Great Gatsby, reading them over and over again, he never does say which of the characters he relates to most–is it Gatsby himself or is it Nick Carraway or is a combination of the two? Since he almost always seems to find himself as the third wheel (with Naoko and Kizuki; or Naoko and Reiko; or Nagasawa and Hatumi; or Midori and her father), he seems a likely Nick Carraway, but like Nick, maybe there is more Gatsby in him than he realizes, for people are drawn to him.
For me, the most touching scene in the novel is when Toru opens up to Midori’s dying father. They are alone and it is, perhaps, the first and only time we see Toru talking to someone without that person drawing conversation from him. In fact, he becomes a regular chatterbox by telling the man about Euripides and deus ex machina. And then the two share a simple meal. Here, Toru seems to be breaking out of the fog that has taken over him since Kizuki’s suicide. He is being won over by Midori, the young woman whose charm and lightheartedness in the face of tragedy cannot help by bring some light into his life.
In the end, one loses count of how many people commit suicide or otherwise die or disappear in this narrative, but what is key is that the others, those left behind, manage to carry on, to keep going, to show their strength and resolve. To live. The question remains open as to whether Toru (is he even alive?) and Midori will end up together but what matters is that there is potential for it to be so–at some point, in some life.
I realize I’m late to the party in reading this novel, but I’m awfully glad I did. While it is depressing in many aspects, what it left me with was a great sense of hope and a belief that maybe love does conquer all.
Mae, whose eyes are not really glowing orbs. 
I mean, really. She’s too cute. Even when she’s getting her hair all over the hooked rug my mother-in-law made for us. 
Unfortunately, when Allen’s sister,her husband, and their four kids come to get Mae back next Saturday, Darby and I are going to have to say, “No.” Sure. The kids will cry but nowhere near as much as Darby and I will. Look here. He’s even given his spot up on my couch for her. 
A week and a half ago, I saw a turtle walking across the lawn. I thought it was a box turtle, as they are meant to be nesting now. When I first saw it I called to Allen, “Quick! Quick! Come see this!” He thought it was hilarious that I had told him to come quickly to see a turtle, but I swear the thing was speeding along.
A few todays ago when I was running, I saw something rooting about in the grass by the road. I stopped for a closer look. It was a porcupine. I’ve never seen one in the wild before. I didn’t stop long to look at it because I didn’t want to spook it.
The past few days, I’ve noticed that the liquid in my new hummingbird feeder has gone down. I thought it might be evaporating but then today I saw a hummingbird actually feeding from it (I also saw a squirrel trying to feed from it but that’s my fault for having it too close to a tree).
Love this!
After Uncle Fred Nearly Dies, We Send the Tape to America’s Funniest Home Videos
by Stephanie Lenox
myfanwy collins 