I subscribe to Harper’s Weekly, where included items come strung together, the significant mixed with the strange. You wind up with an oddly accurate cross section of current life on this planet. Here are some excerpts:

Movies on AMC and TCM are the movies my mother will watch. Well, sort of “watch.” I’m never sure if she’s really paying attention; I think the movie becomes background noise for her ruminations.
We watched Gold Diggers of 1933 yesterday — or at least I did. Mom wandered off sometime before the end and took a nap. I couldn’t help think to myself that things haven’t changed all that much. Near the end is a production number (Busby Berkely certainly knew how to stage them) centered around a song “Remember My Forgotten Man,” who was the soldier returning home from war, the farmer losing his land to a national depression. He was broke, defeated, jobless, alone. There were a lot of them then, and there are a lot of them now. Sung by Joan Blondell, it’s a very UN-feminist song, but it did reflect the truth of many women back then.
The other night we watched The Emerald Forest. I thought my mom would object to the nudity; the fact that she didn’t makes me think she wasn’t really watching it. I loved the lushness — of the forest, of the people, of the myths. I guess that’s why I can stand living in the situation I’m in: I live in the middle of natural lushness. Even though my vegetable garden has succumbed to various critters, my flowers are abundantly blooming. The sky is curtained with trees, and birds of every color flock to our feeders.(Even though I bought a book to help me identify the birds, I’ve decided not to bother. It’s enough to watch them up close) One feeder, outside our window, puts me close enough to look into their eyes. As long as I don’t move, they don’t notice me through the glass.
Al Gore’s movie about global warming is not playing at the movie theater in town. I guess I’ll have to buy that one:

After she refused to eat the salmon I prepared, after she took my book and hid it in her nightstand, after she walked aimlessly around her space while I sat encouraging her to watch television with me, she wandered over to my sib’s space and is watching tv with him. Ahhhhhh! I have some breathing space before the “4400” comes on.
And so I go and read some of my favorite weblogs and come upon By Bea’s Bedside weblog, to which I linked from the comments left on Ronni’s post at Time Goes By.
Alexandra, who is Bea’s daughter and also her caregiver is having a much different experience than I. I envy her selflessness and her mother’s personality. I plan on reading her often; maybe I can learn to look at my mother through her colorful eyes.
Meanwhile, while I was at Ronni’s I lifted the “Keep on Blogging” poster now in my sidebar from Ronni’s site. I’ve got to get over to Ronni’s more often. Everything she has to say winds up being something I already care about.

I don’t know anyone around here, and my chance of meeting any interesting men is zero.
WRONG!
But I blew it.
I’m standing in the line at ShopRite, and behind me is a tall, gray-haired, slim guy who starts talking to me.
“Ah, watermelon,” he says, glancing in my shopping cart. “You know it’s summer when there’s watermelon.”
And so the conversation starts. I find out that he’s cooking for sixteen people this weekend — chicken on the BBQ, peas and chopped shallot salad, asparagus and procuitto, three bean salad. He loves to cook. He comments on the good stuff I have in my cart, we both have grandchildren, he’s single (he works that in very subtly). He’s SINGLE. I think he leaves me an opening to invite myself to dinner, but I don’t pick it up and run with it.
What’s the matter with me!!
I get out to the parking lot and pack my car with my groceries. I get in and take out of my wallet my weblog “business card.” I drive around the parking lot to see if I can catch up with him — good excuse: I’m always looking for readers for my weblog.
No dice.
I blew it. I am such an idiot.
That snake is living right under my doorstep — scared him/her out when I left to go grocery shopping. Lithuanian folklore says that snakes under your doorstep are good luck.
I blew it.

Iknow that injustice is rampant in this world — bad things happen to good people.
Lots of times those injustices happen arbitrarily: Life As Crapshoot.
But sometimes they could have been avoided, and there are individuals responsible for perpetrating them. I’m thinking of the injustices that Mandarin Meg should never have suffered.
Because I have a hard time falling asleep at night, I often listen to novels that I download from my library and play on my mp3 player. I don’t listen to great literature; I usually listen to mysteries of various kinds. (What has that got to do with injustice, you might be wondering.) Lately I’ve been listening to the “Sisterhood” series written by Fern MIchaels. The stories revolve around a group of women, all of whom have had great injustices done to them that the legal system was not able to deal with for one reason or another. Led by a very wealthy “older woman” (she’s 60; imagine that!) they go about using their individual abilities– vigilante style — to right the wrongs done to them and other women.
As many bloggers respond to the tragedy of Meg’s death, I’m thinking we should start a blogger group that would use all of our skills on the internet to right wrongs done to other bloggers. We could call ourselves

Yes, what if…………………………

Last year, we had a skink living under our front walkway. It had a chevroned scale pattern and was an irridescent blue/green.
This year, we have a garden snake living under the outside steps. I wonder if it ate the skink. Do snakes eat skinks?
Meanwhile, the air is rife with damselflies, wings like chiffon and cut velvet. They follow me as I trudge out to the vegetable garden that is capitulating to various bugs and diseases. They alight on what’s left of the tall tomato plants, of which some large animal has chewed off the tops. ( I figure it’s the deer; they tend to wander pretty close to the house.) A green darner floats by. It’s so humid that everything is moving in slow motion.
I meander among the failing stalks; the damselflies circle my head, annoyed at having their rest disturbed. “Another F**king Learning Experience,” I think to myself. It never occurred to me to space out the plantings in terms of time so that all of the lettuce, for example, isn’t ready for picking all at once. I wonder if I bought tomoto plants that already had some kind of blight. We should have put up a fence to keep out the critters of all sizes. I should have sprayed it all with something more effective. Bleh. This whole summer’s blighted anyway.
Why not! The whole planet is in afflicted with various kinds of BushBlight anyway. As non-blogger myrln says:

I sat with my mother tonight while we watched four hours of Lifetime movies. I did learn one thing from one of them: an aspen grove is the largest living organism on this planet; the trees in the gorve all are part of the same root system.
As this site explains:

As you must have noticed, I’m trying out some of Mandarin Meg’s design tips. Her brilliance is still alive and inspiring, even though she no longer is.

Mandarin Meg, a blogger known far and wide for offering free tips on how to make a blog more visually interesting, passed away. The big “M” at the beginning of this post, the codes for which I got off Meg’s Mandarin Design website, is my tribute to a woman who reached out to the world through her creativity and caring.
I didn’t “know” her (the way bloggers get to know each other) because I haven’t had the time to join the “comment conversations” or to learn codes that will let me tinker with the look of this weblog. But I knew OF her from reading other bloggers, such as Frank Paynter, Jeneane Sessum, and Stu Savory, who already have posted their goodbyes.
When Frank was doing a series of blogger interviews (He also interviewed me! Imagine that!) he did one on Meg, which you can read here.
Meg leaves a wonderful legacy for bloggers like me, who are slowly picking up on the useful blogging tips she left behind.
Rest in Peace, Mandarin Meg.

A mourning dove and a chipmunk vie for the bird seed I’ve thrown under the well-used bird feeder. I am watching them from the rocking chair on the breezeway, where I am idling away this rainy Sunday morning while my mother still sleeps.
The dove is smaller than the usual ones who come here; maybe it’s still a fledgling. But it’s still bigger than the glutonous chipmunk, who must be stuffing his cheeks, since I can’t imagine that he’s ingesting all that he’s taking into his mouth.
For a while, the two critters keep a safe distance from each other, but as the foodstuff dwindles, they find themselves too near each other for comfort. The dove makes a threatening sound and fluffs her wings. The chipmunk backs off. That goes on for at least ten minutes, the chipmunk coming back for more after each time the dove takes a stand.
Eventually, the dove gives up and wanders off into my slowly evolving rock garden; the the persistent chipmunk has full reign in the rain, and the dove flies off to look for less annoying feeding grounds.
I returned here yesterday from an overnight trip to Albany to attend the benefit screening of Serenity with my women friends — who knew nothing of the Firefly television series or the Serenity movie that sprang from it. They joined me as a favor to me, not really expecting to enjoy a sci fi movie. As we left the theater after the movie, several were talking about renting the DVDs of the series and also watching the movie again, this time with their male partners — who, they believed, would also like the movie. The persistence of the Browncoats, which is what the Firefly/Serenity fans call themselves, has paid off wonderfully for Equality Now, which gets the proceeds from the benefit screenings. (Total proceeds from the world-wide screenings are nearing the $50,000 range. Kudos to the Browncoats and the persistence of the instigator and coordinator of these benefits, theonetruebix!)
I still haven’t unpacked — not only my clothes and sundries, but also all of the food and other staples I bought while in Albany with access to BJ’s Wholesale Club. I don’t really have room to store such stuff here. So now I have to spend the rest of the day persistently staightening up. Of course, my mother will wake soon, and my day will be taken over by her persistent needs.
The persistent chipmunk always seems to get his way. But, unlike the mourning dove, I can’t just fly away.
UPDATE: This afternoon, on the ground where the dove and chipmunk sparred this morning: a dozen gray feathers. I don’t know who won. Both were back a little while ago, keeping their distance. My sib went out and sprinkled bird food in several other places to give each the opportunity to avoid another confrontation. We wondered what kind of bird feeder we could make for the mourning doves that would keep out the chipmunks, who have learned to climb fences and are experimenting with climbing up the cedar siding on the house. It’s going to be a toss-up to see who will be most persistent — and that includes us humans, too.

We are watching “The Chronicles of Narnia” on my sibs big-screen tv. It’s night. It’s dark. She reaches over to hold my hand as the griffin and other mythic flying creatures drop rocks on the army of the White Witch. “They can’t get into our house, can they?” she asks. Are you afraid, I ask her. She nods. Yes. I hold her hand and try to explain that it’s not real.
Everything she sees on the television screen is real to her. For her, there is no suspension of disbelief. And it’s always all about her (but then, it always was). The people in the news are people she thinks she knows. She’s afraid that the crimes reported on the news are going to happen to her. I can no longer sit with her and watch the shows I like because, inevitably, they include violent scenes. Her faith in the phony is unfaltering.
I, on the other hand, love to suspend disbelief. I like to speculate, imagine, what if.
If you go to this site and put in your birthdate, you will find all kinds of facts and speculations about yourself. When I put in mine, for example, I was told this:

–The moon’s phase on the day you were born was waxing crescent. [fact}
–Your date of conception was on or about 19 June 1939 which was a Monday. [probably true}
–You were born on a Mondayunder the astrological sign Pisces. [fact]
–Your Life path number is 1. [ok, let’s suspend disbelief]

This is what it says it means to have a life path of 1:

The Life Path 1 suggests that you entered this plane with skills allowing you to become a leader type rather easily. Your nature is charged with individualistic desires, a demand for independence, and the need for personal attainment. Many of our military generals, corporate leaders, and political leaders are men and women having the Life Path 1. When you display positive 1 traits your mind is capable of significant creative inspiration, and it possesses the enthusiasm and drive to accomplish a great deal. You are very good at getting the ball rolling; initiating new projects is your forte. You are at your best when confronted with obstacles and challenges, as you combat these with strength and daring. This is both the physical and inner varieties of strength. With this strength comes utter determination and the capability to lead. As a natural leader you have a flair for taking charge of any situation. You have a tendency to do this, even if, at times, it is not appropriate for you to do so.

Highly original, you may have talents as an inventor or innovator of some sort. In any work that you choose, your independent attitude can show through. You have very strong personal needs and desires, and you feel it is always necessary to follow your own convictions. You tire of routine and highly detailed tasks rather quickly.

You are ambitious and assertive in promoting yourself. Although you may hide the fact for social reasons, you can be self-centered and demand to have your way in many circumstances. That said, for the most part, you are considered very good company, friendly, good-natured, and a wonderful conversationalist. People like you and are drawn to you. It is a good thing they are, because you are very sensitive to disapproval and you don’t handle it very well.

There are several ways that the negative side of the 1 can show up. The 1 always has the potential for greatness as a leader, but they may fail as a follower. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to follow for a while before you are allowed to lead and this can be a difficult time. When the 1 Life Path person is not fully developed and expressing the negative side of this number, the demeanor may appear very dependent rather than independent, particularly in the early years. If you are expressing this negative trait of the number 1, you are likely to be very dissatisfied with your circumstances, and long for self-sufficiency. This might be defined as the weak or dependent side of the negative 1 Life Path. On the strong side of this negative curve, the 1 energy can become too self-serving, selfish and egotistical. Avoid being too bossy and demanding.

As far as I’m concerned, I pretty much fit the #1 profile, including the negative. Maybe there is something to all that numerology stuff.
Check your birthday facts and fancies out and let me know how you do. If you can, leave a comment.

After Meryl Streep made some telling introductory remarks as she introduced Equality Now honoree Joss Whedon, the creative writer, himself, responded with a brief speech worth taking the time to listen to. After being asked hundreds of times by various interviewers why he creates such strong female characters, Whedon insists that’s not the question to ask. “Why don’t you write strong women characters?” is the question that should be asked a hundered other guys.