San Anselmo, Maggie’s house ::Almost Birthday Party::

HB2U coming up Monday 4/7, will be 59. Whoah! Today Celina’s tribe and Layla came for a party. Midmorning I found Adrienne laying out a jazzy table setting with chili-peppers-on-black party tablecloth. The colorful streamers, the baloons (falsely printed Happy RETIREDMENT!), party hats and a birthday tiara for me.

The little kids made the chocolate cake: Rhiannon mixed, and Dameon iced. I got all presents with a food theme: a kitchy gadget that’s a spatula, a tongs, a whisk, but wait there’s more. Apron, wooden salad tongs, a book of captioned animal pix from Layla, and a gift cert for snazzy lunch come monday with Adrienne.

Joe and Celina doing some sort of therapy, made some conversations odd-sounding. Jessica very proud: Picture on the front page Marin newspaper sport section, tagging an opponent at homebase, and she’s OUT! I enjoyed their visit. We had fun today.

This seems like a good spot to start my weblog.

Lots of people — some of them I knew well — have failed to achieve this milestone. So I’m grateful for the good health and long life (so far) which I have enjoyed …

I got several calls from family and a friend to wish me a happy — Folks, keep those cards and letters coming in! — So far having a pleasant day, and Adrienne cooked us lunch. The casual visitor here may not appreciate the earth-shattering significance of …

… the significance of Adrienne cooking lunch.

While I cook us many meals, and enjoy having somebody cooking for me — it seems a loving and neighborly thing to do — Adrienne, the woman, doesn’t like to ccok. She could live an eternity on yogurt and apples, I’m certain of it. Maybe a can of tuna fish. For many years, on certain years, around Christmas/Thanksgiving time, I might get a vegetable pot pie made with a cat face cut into the crust … if I was lucky.

Some years, no cat-face pie. Too bad. I was looking forward to that cat-face pie.

You know those stories your mama used to threaten you with, when you were very little. No, not the stories about the– Wait a minute. Let’s start over. You know how your mama used to threaten you around Christmastime with the claim that bad children would receive a lump of coal? (What was with this lump of coal? In Texas nobody uses coal. It’s natural gas, man. Why the hell Santa would bring coal?)

Well, a year with no cat-face pie seemed like getting the lump of coal in the stocking. Just out of luck, for now. Maybe next year …

In the meantime, I’m almost 59, and very happy to be here, thank you very much, and I’d like to thank the members of the academy, and my mother, and …

Seeking wild adventure, Adrienne and I drove in my motorized automobile. We took a prepared list, and then we …

And then we went first to the Petco, where we bought some stuff. Then we went to the Trader Joe’s, where we then bought some stuff. And then we went to the Whole Foods, where we, err, bought some stuff.

And that’s the way it was.

April 7, 1944. Visilia, California. Margaret Ellen Hurn (army nurse) and Jack French (dashing soldier) hit it off. The resulting human shows up and begins yet another chapter in the vast library of humanity.

Soon after, Margaret visited her parents farm 8 miles north of Henrietta Texas. I see pictures of each of my uncles holding me as an infant. The uncle that looks the happiest in this role is her mother lounged in lawn chairs behind, dressed in stunning, up-to-date 1940’s fashions. That is, somewhat baggy dresses of light material, tending to be covered with tiny, tiny, tiny little prints of flowers and lacy stuff at the collar.

Modern times!

It is Sunday, and it has been raining. The air is now cold, and the sky is dark in the middle of the day. Tulip, my border collie, shivers. She can hear thunder in the distance, though I cannot. This is a good day for writing a weblog.

What is new about weblogs?

What’s new here is that anyone can publish. No thought required about the format, about FTP clients. Just open a webpage, type into a box, and click. Bango! You’re published. This means that …

This makes web-publishing as easy as surfing, or operating a television. Your mama could do it. That means it’s easy.

In addition, now we get the smarty-pants, the artsy, the web designers. Suddenly they’re artistes. They can tweak and twitter, and all the world is aglow in the bask of their friends, and wine. No doubt. This is a fine feeling. I may sneer, but wouldn’t I go back to college age — just for an hour — and experience the richness of the emotions among my peers, the admiration, the fun? Of course I would. You would too. Don’t lie. You know you would.

So the point is: these young ones get all artsy, and by golly, here’s the truth: This is a new creative outlet! It’s a new outlet in three ways. You can have beautiful layouts. You can have cool pix. You can write with beauty and style.

If you got no style, you can scour for cool stuff and post that. Sort of getting your admiration by being the most clever scavenger-hunter in the group. You remember that from 5th grade, don’t you? Scavenger hunts?

This is something new. It will grow like topsy.

Marines sweep title. Scoreboard Marines 150,000, Iraq 200. Recently Saddam Hussein forgot to Beware the Ides of March, and … Whoops! At first, I was thinking …

It was an anxious, tense feeling, reminding me of a day in October of 1962, standing on the lawn of Midwestern University, looking up into the huge trees before the vast Admin Building. Listening to the radio, hearing how our navy was moving into position to block the Soviet ships approaching Cuba.

War hovered; it was scary. It was a fall day. The sky was grey, the branches of the trees were mostly bare, and a light, breeze spun across the lawn and through the trees. It was very quiet, except for the tinny sound of the radio.

Then, I went to lunch. It was fried chicken, at some place across the street. Why do we remember these things?

No matter. Saddam has fallen. And the current feeling is well expressed in this swell little ditty ‘Bomb Iraq‘, by Vince Vance and the Valiants. See and here it is now, hear, hear! — Bomb Iraq Music Video

Sounds good to me.

Henrietta, Texas: When I reached high school, studying a language was optional. We had a choice of Latin.

Our school was small, and the reason we had Latin offered, instead of French or Spanish or German, was because of Ms. Edwina Nutter. A teacher of English, she also knew Latin.

Ergo, Latin.

(J’regrette! Lo siento mucho! Gotdammenstein!)

Ms. Nutter was no nutter; shrewd and humorous she was. She liked to travel, and since a nine-month teaching job paid frugally, every other year she’d promote a grand tour of Europe, with herself as the guide, travelling free. An educated woman in a small Texas town.

Latin not useful, you say? Ha! I beg to differ …

To this day, I still recall these five handy phrases …

• Semper Fidelis. (Always Faithful.)
• Agricolae puellae sunt. (The girls are farmers.)
• Pax vobiscum. (Peace go with you.)
• Vini, Vidi, Vici. (I came, I saw, I conquered.)
• Est ne puella? (Are you a girl?)

As you can see, these five phrases will cover almost any situation. At least, they have for me. Highly recommended!