Summer Thoughts 01

As I sit here finishing my morning coffee, and before I must get ready for meetings, errands, and chores, I am thinking about a few things that please, sadden, confuse, or upset me; for instance:

There is another giant zucchini growing on our back porch.. also two tomatoes showing red. We have already harvested three zukes and four little cukes. This pleases me.. even though I must carry 5 gallons of water each day to offer to my green plants. But they are appreciative.

Tomorrow, Bastille Day, is the 9th anniversary of the death of Elaine Langlois Vaughan. She was 63 years old when she died and should have normally had 24 more years of life in which to watch her beloved grandchildren mature and have families of their own. This saddens me.

Conservative Senators are gearing up to try to discredit Ms. Sotomayor during the Confirmation process. This confuses me. In my mind, she is the ideal candidate to help make the Supreme Court more representative of the U. S. population because she is a woman and an Hispanic. How could any Senator be against this.. besides, if they are too mean to her, they would probably kiss their reelection plans goodbye.

Last night, I opened a can of expensive cat food and found that it was moldy inside. This upsets me. I will be taking it back to the store, together with all of the other cans by the same company. I will ask them to check their stock and notify the company. By "them" I mean the store manager. My tuxedo cat is suffering from hyperthyroidism and if I had not examined the food before feeding it too him, who knows what effect it might have had on him.

Yesterday, we hung a pink rose plaque on the front side of the house. On the bottom, we will be placing our house numbers. Pink is Elaine's favorite color and this plaque pleases her and me. At the same time, we hung her butterfly windsock from the gutter. Now we have a good weather instrument. If it is stretched out sideways, we know the wind is blowing; if it is hanging straight down, we know the wind is calm; if it looks wet, we know it is raining; if it is white, we know that it is snowing.

Our service men are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, this saddens me. Also, the "news" just anncounced that the CIA lied to Congress about a secret program. The news also says that the secrecy was requested (ordered?) by the Vice President. The Constitution was written in such a way that the Executive Branch's actions would be tempered by interaction with the Legislature and the Judiciary. Violations of that procedure should be dealt with sternly, in my opinion.

Man's inhumanity to man continues to confuse me. Why do some people continue to act like animals? Fathers murdering their families. Drive-by shooting. Five-year olds being hit with bullets fired by seventeen-year olds. etc etc Just pick up the paper for any day of the week. And the churches try to curb this inhumanity, but I don't think they succeed. I remember when I was working.. on Monday, those folks who had gone to church on Sunday were very pleasant and tolerant.. but as the week grew older, these same folks reverted back to their old grouchy and prejudicial ways.. but then, maybe it was because it was Government work, and maybe, just maybe, it was me who was the grouchy one.

Finally, there is something that really upsets me. I received word on Saturday that my Uncle Allen had a stroke that day and was being rushed 50 miles away to Boston. Allen is my last living Uncle and is 89 years old. He has survived heart attacks and open heart surgery and I expected him to live to be 105. When he was a lot younger, he was called Popeye, because he was one tough son of a gun. I grew up in the same household as he did and he treated me like a brother.. and I think of him as a brother and also as a kind of father image. So, I am waiting for word now and I hope that his stroke was a mild one. Something that he can overcome.

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