Cloudy in the Easr

 

The Cubby Game

Yesterday I invented some games. This is the Cubby Game. Cubby is a girl bear and in the game I do Cubby's voice. Meema is Cubby's mama and she has to help Cubby do things.

I wrote a whole page of rules for Meema to know how to play, but I wrote in pencil and Meema says they probably won't show up in the picture. Maybe if you look really close.

First I drew and cut out Cubby. There she is next to her front door. I also drew her house.

                                             

This is her kitchen. There are shelves with lots of fruit next to the sink. When Cubby is hungry, her mama (Meema) has to give her food. Now Cubby is eating a banana.

                                               
                                                 

Cubby is in her living room. There is a picture on the wall of her friend Niko. He is a blue bird. The floor is a little messy with Cubby's toys.

Then I painted Cubby's bedroom She has a blue bedspread with white stars. Also she has a picture of herself in a green frame and shelves for books and toys.                            

Good night, Cubby!

A note from Meema.  Midmorning, Josie said she was bored and wanted to watch a video but we have a fairly strict rule which is no videos till 1 pm. After a bit of arguing during which I held firm, she went to the dining table and got out her paints and, with no input from me, came up with the Cubby Game. Yay!

 

Worm Food

                                        

“I mean, what is the purpose of life, if, when it’s over, we just become worm food?” he said. “I’d like to think that there’s a little more to it than that. If there’s such a finality and there’s nothing beyond this life, then all of our attempts to live with a moral code, with a sense of owing other people our best, not our worst, then it has no meaning.”

Thus spake Mike Huckabee, evangelical Christian, Baptist minister, and ambassador to Israel. Also a fervent supporter of Netanyahu. Also a believer in the importance of Israel to the Second Coming of Christ after an apocalyptic struggle in the Holy Land. 

Great. Just the guy we need to work toward peace and justice in the Middle East.

But, leaving that major inappropriateness  aside, I am also annoyed by Huckabee's assertion that if there is nothing beyond this life, attempts at living morally are meaningless.

What's wrong with behaving like a moral, caring person without the carrot of Heaven or the stick of Hell? Is that a meaningless life, Mike?

                                         

As I see it, in government, evangelicals and those who count on an afterlife are a danger to a here and now society. What do they care about the health of the planet or, indeed, the suffering of its inhabitants--it's all going to be sorted in the Hereafter. 

They will truckle to one of the most un-Christ-like of men in hopes of bringing about a return of the original and gather in prayer to celebrate the passage of a bill designed to harm many of the least of us. They empower masked thugs who snatch up perceived foreigners willy-nilly. And they conveniently manage not to demand to see the full Epstein files. Rather than listen to the victims, they question, in secret, one of the abusers and reward her with an illegal transfer to a "country club" facility.

Where's that moral code Huckabee talked about?

                                          

Birdie, Birdie

 

Recent Reading

The Caretaker has been sitting beside my bed for many months because I didn't feel ready to read it. Rash can be a tad dark in his always beautiful writing, and the dark time we're in has had me reading lighter stuff. But finally I braved up and began.

Excellent writing as always and the characters and their stories grabbed me immediately.  A recluse with a damaged face, a young couple who marry despite parental opposition, the Korean War, an obsessed mother. . . and  what a plot! I had to keep going. Highly recommended for any time.

I continue to enjoy and be in awe of Leonard's snappy story telling and his way with dialogue. He is a perfect example of the writing teacher's mantra Show, don't Tell. These three were delightful.

On the other hand, I was surprised to find that I didn't enjoy these two from Alice Hoffman as much as I expected to, and found myself skimming through and quibbling with some anachronisms that annoyed me. Also, the two books were very heavy on the Tell as opposed to Show. It's all so subjective --some other time, I might have liked them more.

 

Beach Week for Josie!

Josie and her folks are safely home after a great week at Pawley's Island!

 

Just a Matter of Time?

 The morning view made me happy to think that at least the Golden Grifter hasn't been able to leave his mark on the sun--maybe fu fancy it up with some cupids and curlicues and a big T in the middle.

And while his plan for a ginormous gilded ballroom that will eclipse the White House (the Peoples' House) itself comes nowhere near all his other atrocities, it is really quite annoying to see this power mad toddler trying to piss leave his mark on an icon of our nation.

Oh, but it will be a gift--paid for by him and other donors. 

Ha! His record of charitable giving leads me to doubt that he'll fork over much, if any. And we the taxpayers will undoubtedly absorb a blinding amount of ancillary costs. Kinda like the recent golf trip to Scotland.

As for those other donors--in the Grifter's DC, it's pay to play. Does anyone believe those donors won't get something in return? Not just plaques or invitations to the White House, but an easing of various regulations or lucrative government contracts. Or pardons--his speciality. 

Looking at the plans for the ballroom, I began to think of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles--the gilded pomp adored by one Louis after another while the ordinary people of France suffered and the aristocrats got richer and richer.

Until many of them, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette included, went to the guillotine.

Sometimes the people have had enough.

Rabbit Rabbit

 

Blue Sky Beyond

 

Morning Glories

These lovelies self sow and decorate our steps every year--a most obliging flower!

 

Lying LIars

 

The prospect of Ghislaine Maxwell being given a pardon is completely appalling. Any thing she may say or testify to has to be suspect as she's already been convicted of perjury. But the Liar in Chief has pardoned rioters and criminals of every ilk--it will be just another day with the Sharpie for him.

Having her speak only with one of his minions is another cause for alarm. Plus, who is listening to the multiple victims of the Epstein/Maxwell racket? 

Just another reason to wonder why all those GOPers who were frothing at the mouth over Qanon and Pizzagate are so quiet. 

Mute Monday-Really

 

Silent Sunday --Well, Maybe Not

This was going to be a wordless post but there is so much going on that I feel a need to speak out. Where to begin? There are more rant-worthy topics than I have the energy to address at the end of a hot day. So I'll just make a little list, in no particular order:

Mike Johnson sending the House home rather than deal with the Epstein mess; the Epstein mess; the Orange One's multiple golfing vacays that we are paying for; the burning of food meant for famine relief; the ICE thugs' startling disregard for due process; the continued genocide in Gaza; the continued perilous state of Ukraine; the undoing of so much that was accomplished by previous administrations, especially in attempts to mitigate climate change. . . 

Petty annoyances: the tackification of the Oval Office; the destruction of the Rose Garden; the very idea that the mostly MIA First Lady should have the Kennedy Center's Opera House named for her; Karoline Leavitt's cos-play Christianity; Kristi Noem's big-haired, big-lipped heartlessness; those annoying little silver swooshes in Tulsi Gabbard's perfect do as she lies and lies . . .

Oh, dear, obviously I've only just begun. 

 

Ay, Law!

                                                    

A few years ago I read about an innovative way of helping caregivers understand the challenges faced by geriatric patients. It was a suit that forced the wearer into a stooped gait and added weights to slow that gait. There were gloves to limit digital dexterity, constraints to limit range of motion, goggles to simulate various problems with vision, ear muffs to deaden sound. 

The idea, of course, is to encourage empathy for geezer clients. I wonder how widely these are used. You can see one HERE.

When our old friends (he is our age; she is maybe ten years younger--a veritable spring chicken) were her for supper, we got to talking, as one does, of the challenges of aging. I began to tell them about the geriatric suit . . .

Then I realized--I'm in the suit!

Well, not entirely, But bad hearing and compromised gait are daily realities. My fingers still work on a keyboard, but my vision isn't as sharp as it once was.

Could be worse. And probably will be, before it's all over.

Summer Scenes

 

Summer Evening Feast

Hot weather. Old friends. And we were too busy enjoying the meal for me to do more than grab a quick phone picture.

Salmon with cucumber, sour cream  and dill

Corn on the cob

Garden Lettuce and tomato salad (courtesy Louise)

Just picked Flat beans (also from Louise)

Focaccia with Rosemary

Bubbly

Peach and Plum Granola Crisp with Whipped Cream

Coffee

It were good.

 

Ladies of Leisure

 

From the Drovers' Road--A Re-post

 

This historic photo showed up in our county's weekly newspaper -- one of the stock stands on the old Drovers' Road near the end of its days. It's gone entirely now, but for the foundation stones.

But while it stood, like my mythical Gudger's Stand, the house was the stuff of legends. For one thing there were the brown hand prints on floor and ceiling --they looked like dried blood but couldn't be removed, so it's said, even when a carpenter's plane shaved away layer after layer of wood.

They still talk of Chunn's Inn, rumored to be the last stop for many an unwary drover returning home with pockets full of gold. and this is the story they tell.

A drover, riding home from markets to the east, stopped at Chunn's Inn for the night. Perhaps he drank too deeply; perhaps he spoke too freely of the good price his beasts had fetched; whatever the reason, the drover slept fitfully that night, his pistols close at hand. He seemed to hear footsteps or the doorknob turning and would start awake as soon as ever he drowsed.

When morning came at last, he breakfasted, bid farewell to the company, and resumed his journey along the river road.

In spite of his restless night, the drover rode cheerfully, thinking of his return home. The way was lonely, with not another soul in sight and he sang and whistled to pass the time.

Suddenly the horse shied as a dark figure stepped out of a laurel thicket above the road and leveled a pistol at the drover's breast. The bandit's black face contorted in an ugly scowl as he demanded that the drover halt and throw down all his money.

Thinking quickly, the drover reined in his horse and tossed a handful of silver into the dust of the road. When the highwayman bent down to retrieve the coins, the drover pulled out his own pistol and fired.

As the robber fell to the ground, the drover, fearing the man might have accomplices, wheeled his horse and galloped back to Chunn's Inn.

Mrs. Chunn was in the doorway as the drover pulled his lathered horse to a stop, shouting out that he'd killed a Negro highwayman.

"My God!" she shrieked, "It's my husband you've killed!"

Interested bystanders went to see for themselves -- there on the road, sprawled dead as a hammer across the coins, was Alfred Chunn, his hands and face blackened with soot. When they brought the body back to the inn, Mrs. Chunn was nowhere to be found -- but investigation revealed a small back room where blood stains and a chute leading down to the river gave evidence of the Chunn's' murderous ways with their moneyed guests