Because I relate everything to theater anyway

At Bridget's grandmother's funeral, I told her something that had occurred to me during the mass.  And I don't know what it says about either of us that we both found it both comforting and rather cheering.

"When your grandmother passed away, her show closed. And this is the closing night party where we talk about what a great show it was."

Reconciliation

Night flight to San Francisco. Chase the moon across America. God! It’s been years since I was on a plane.

When we hit thirty-five thousand feet, we’ll have reached the tropopause. The great belt of calm air. As close as I’ll ever get to the ozone.

I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening …

But I saw something only I could see, because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired.

Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead.

At least I think that’s so.

From Angels in America by Tony Kushner

For Lori

A friend passed away on Saturday, much too young.


Borrowed Time by David Moreau

I will not die tonight
I will lie in bed with
my wife beside me,
curled on the right
like an animal burrowing.
I will fit myself against her
and we will keep each other warm.

I will not die tonight.
My son who is seven
will not slide beneath the ice
like the boy on the news.
The divers will not have to look
for him in cold water.
He will call, "Daddy, can I get up now?"
in the morning.

I will not die tonight.
I will balance the checkbook,
wash up the dishes
and sit in front of the TV
drinking one beer.

For the moment I hold a winning ticket.
It's my turn to buy cold cuts
at the grocery store.
I fill my basket carefully.

For like the rain that comes now
to the roof and slides down the gutter
I am headed to the earth.
And like the others, all the lost
and all the lovers, I will follow
an old path not marked on any map.

4:30 AM. Awake.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

In the midst of death

I go to more funerals these days than I used to and I read this right around the time that I went to my friend Judie's recently.

In Arto's was the funeral party this time, but before we could begin first Zachara and Besso who wasn't speaking together almost three years must settle their quarrel and even I had to be friends again to Cucule and both we forget what happened, all for Uncle John's remembry. Is good this, even if an old-time way. It lets a man be sure he will finish from the grave, at least, what he has a duty to work for through his whole life -- bring peace among his friends.

So twenty men we sat down around the table to drink toasts for Dzea Vanno* and eat for him shilah p'lavi, the Meal For the Day of Death. Rice, it is, with enough pieces of fatted young lamb in and salt and black, black pepper, and onions, and thyme all cooked together until it turns velvet smooth. Hot and rich. Special good for people that is cold from new-turned ground, empty with looking at open graves.

But we didn't fill the glasses only for Uncle John this day. We remembered other men, too, that left our table. Davit and how every year he went to such troubles and strunged nuts on strings for dipping in thickened grape juice -- all to make chuchkella so little kids born here would know what candy tasted like at home.

A toast for Papa, too, who hunted thirty years to find somebody could speak our language and never thought his time was wasted.

Yes, and Nick, and Vasso, and Petri, many others, we remembered them, every one.

And somehow the table did what all the words couldn't -- gave us back ourselves and made us a promise that so long as one of our friends sits down to take pleasure in food and company and wine so long, too, we shall never be forgotten. More than that no man can want.

And so like everything in this world must, it came to an end our party, and Eliko rose for the last toast. To Dzea Vanno.

"I drink this little glass," he said, "for man who had the good sense don't leave us no fortune to fight over. He leaved us instead his responsibilities and his pleasures, too, with a good example how to enjoy them. Still lots and lots left to do in this world yet. So priest gonna excuse me, I'm sure if a little I change the Bible words he reads on the cemetery and say different way. In the midst of death still are in a life. Amen.

Amen.

From Anything Can Happen by George & Helen Papashvily


*Uncle John

Longer

I read today that Dan Fogelberg died yesterday from cancer. I wasn't a big fan of "Same Auld Lang Syne," but I was always rather fond of "Longer" which is just a sweet, pretty little love song. I haven't heard it for years and years and may be the only person I know who remembers it, so here it is in Mr. Fogelberg's honor.

Longer by Dan Fogelberg

Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean
Higher than any bird ever flew
Longer than there've been stars up in the heavens
Ive been in love with you.

Stronger than any mountain cathedral
Truer than any tree ever grew
Deeper than any forest primeval
I am in love with you.

I'll bring fires in the winters
You'll send showers in the springs
Well fly through the falls and summers
With love on our wings.

Through the years as the fire starts to mellow
Burning lines in the book of our lives
Though the binding cracks and the pages start to yellow
Ill be in love with you.

Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean
Higher than any bird ever flew
Longer than there've been stars up in the heavens
I've been in love with you
I am in love with you.

Sacco and Vanzetti Day

80 years ago today, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed for murder and theft. And, probably, for being immigrants with unpopular political opinions.

Webster Thayer, the trial judge, told the jury "This man, (Vanzetti) although he may not have actually committed the crime attributed to him, is nevertheless culpable, because he is the enemy of our existing institutions."

I have no idea if they did or did not commit the crime because the trial seemed to be more about getting possibly violent foreigners safely under lock and key by whatever means necessary. It was a dangerous time and acts of lethal violence, particularly involving bombs, were being used to make political points.

Gosh, I wish that the whole thing didn't seem so....contemporary.

Justice Denied in Massachusetts
by Edna St. Vincent Millay(1927)

Let us abandon then our gardens and go home
And sit in the sitting-room.
Shall the larkspur blossom or the corn grow under the cloud?
Sour to the fruitful seed
Is the cold earth under this cloud,
Fostering quack and weed, we have marched upon but cannot conquer;
We have bent the blades of our hoes against the stalks of them.

Let us go home, and sit in the sitting-room.
Not in our day
Shall the cloud go over and the sun rise as before,
Beneficent upon us
Out of the glittering bay,
And the warm winds be blown inward from the sea
Moving the blades of corn
With a peaceful sound.
Forlorn, forlorn,
Stands the blue hay-rack by the empty mow.
And the petals drop to the ground,
Leaving the tree unfruited.
The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weed uprooted -
We shall not feel it again.
We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain.

What from the splendid dead
We have inherited -
Furrows sweet to the grain, and the weed subdued -
See now the slug and the mildew plunder.
Evil does not overwhelm
The larkspur and the corn;
We have seen them go under.

Let us sit here, sit still,
Here in the sitting-room until we die;
At the step of Death on the walk, rise and go;
Leaving to our children's children this beautiful doorway,
And this elm,
And a blighted earth to till
With a broken hoe.

The Battle of Bosworth Field

York Memoranda

DATE: 23 August 1485.
AUTHOR: Mayor and aldermen of York.
TEXT: York City Archives, House Book, B2-4, f.169v. (Also printed in Extracts from the Municipal Records of the City of York during the Reigns of Edward IV, Edward V, and Richard III, ed. R. Davies (London, 1843), pp. 218, 217. (English; spelling modernized.)

Memorandum of meeting in council chamber on the Vigil of St Bartholomew, 'where it was shown by divers persons, and especially by John Sponer, sent unto the field of Redemore to bring tidings of the same to the city, that King Richard, late mercifully reigning upon us, was through great treason of the duke of Norfolk and many others that turned against him, with many other lords and nobles of this north parts, was piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city.'

Considering what is know of the character of Henry VII, not a obituary to be casually written.

How to be rich

Brooke Astor passed away at age 105. In the last forty-some years of her life, Mrs. Astor gave away over $200 million dollars to causes large and small.

Richard Jeni (1957 - 2007)

Long years ago, when Mollie, Katy, and I were housemates, Katy found a Showtime special that she taped and said that we had to see. This guy, Richard Jeni, was so funny, she said, that we just had to see him. That is usually the preview to seeing something that leaves you totally cold, but Katy was right. We laughed until our stomachs hurt and we near memorized Boy from New York City. We can still crack each other up with a well-timed Richard Jeni quote.

I got to see him in person doing one of his appearances in DC and he was every bit as funny in person as on tv, if not more so. (I have also been able to see Jake Johannsen and Paula Poundstone live, which gives you a nice cross section of the sort of humor that I like.)

One of my favorites of his bits was his description of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" as the most depressing song ever written: "Want to end a party really fast? Own this record." And he would sing his own lyics to it, like And they lay on the deck/ and they all drowned like rats/ as their lungs filled with water. Which is still making me laugh, even as I read it now.

So it was with sadness that I got home this evening and learned that he died yesterday. The news reports say self-inflicted gun shot, which is even sadder, although I don't know why I think that. Being dead at 49 is sad no matter how one got there.

So here - because he still makes me laugh - are some of Richard's quotes, thanks to Wikipedia.

"My mother never saw the irony of calling me a son of a bitch."

"The way I see life, it's like we're all flying on the Hindenburg, why fight over the window seats?"

“I think that's how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough, let's go west.'”

"It is a sad fact that 50 percent of marriages in this country end in divorce. But hey, the other half end in death. You could be one of the lucky ones!"

"Honesty is the key to a relationship. If you can fake that, you're in."

(On going to war over religion:) "You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend."

"The Web brings people together because no matter what kind of a twisted sexual mutant you happen to be, you've got millions of pals out there. Type in 'Find people that have sex with goats that are on fire'and the computer will say, 'Specify type of goat.'"

"There are only two reasons to sit in the back row of an airplane: Either you have diarrhea, or you're anxious to meet people who do."

"The difference between Charles Manson and every woman I've dated is that Manson has the decency to look like a nut the first time you meet him."

"Imagine my surprise when it turned out the main thing that I was qualified for was to get another degree and teach Political Science to other people, who would, in turn, teach it to other people! This wasn't higher education, this was Amway with a football team!"

X-Men's Dave Cockrum Dies at 63

This caught my eye because MSN went for the "let's make this sound dumber than it is" link title, "'X-Men' artist dies in Superman pajamas," which sounds as though the sub-title was going to be "lived in parents' basement."

Instead, it's a very nice short piece about a man who got to earn his living working on what he loved. We should all be so lucky.

I started reading X-Men in the 80s. Kevin had lent North two or three dozen of them and North asked me to return them for him, which I did, but not before I read them. I came in at a good time, too, because the narrative was focusing on the (not necessarily sexual) relationships between Kitty & Piotr, Nightcrawler & Wolverine, and the "grown ups," Storm (pre-punk) & Cyclops. Jean Grey had died and resurrected a time or two already and would continue to do so, so I slogged throught the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix issues. The Brood series and the Sentinel were from that era as well.

I don't know why I drifted away from reading X-Men, but if I had to answer that, I'd say the eventual fracturing of the narrative, the overloading of the "cast," and the near constant re-appearances of Jean Grey. The telling and retelling of her story was as inevitable as weddings and babies during TV sweeps. Jean Grey was the Luke & Laura of X-Men and I grew to really dislike her because of it. Oh, yeah, and spin-offs like Alpha Flight didn't help either. Awful Flight.
I saw the first movie, which I, personally, found disappointing. They were trying to fit 8 pounds of story into a 5-pound sack, so everything got short shrift, except for maybe views of Rebecca Romijn in her Pictish costume? make-up?

I grew up on Wonder Woman and the Justice League, but in the 80s X-Men was a much richer story. I don't think it would ever occur to WW to wonder where her assumed identity of "Diana Prince" left off and where "Wonder Woman" began, but identity and alienation were central to the X-Men - "sworn to protect a world that fears and rejects them..."

For someone who lived on the edge of a lot of groups, but was never really a part of any of them, that really resonated.

Sara

Had she lived, today would have been my sister's birthday. Sara died from what I consider to be an overreaction to some medication.

It seems that the downside to a lot of doctor-prescribed-this-should-help medicine is that while the meds are consistent, our bodies are unique, and we don't know exactly how we will react to them except through direct experimentation. Sara was (as most people do) trying to find a med that would do its job with the fewest number of unwelcome side effects.

My sister was smart and funny and interesting. Unlike me she had always had a strong and active social life and was never a geeky weirdo. She was a Blue Bird in elementary school, which was sort of the entry level for Camp Fire Girls. I was a Brownie and then a Girl Scout, so even in our after school, uniform-oriented, youth organization choices we didn't have much in common.

We never understood each other, although I think we were starting to figure one another out in the last few years. I'm still angry that my sister was stolen from me and that I'll never get to be friends with her. Conveniently, I believe in an afterlife, so all is not lost, just delayed.

Dad told my favorite story about her at the funeral. I don't tell it as well as he does, but here it is as a birthday tribute. Happy Birthday, Sara.

When Sara was in second grade, Mom and Dad went in to meet with her teacher for parents' meetings. Her grades weren't as good as her quick mind and outgoing personality would indicate (well, all right, we had that in common), which puzzled my parents. Her teacher explained that Sara had a lot to do. She had to organize who was going to sit with whom before lunch; who was going to sit with whom after lunch; what games they would play at recess; what the social pecking order was for the day; what would be traded for what at lunch; etc. "Sara's a pretty busy girl," her teacher summarized, "she doesn't really have time for academics."

Rollo

Dad sent the following "all hands" e-mail (below) to the family and some friends. Rollo was a very friendly, happy dog who made all comers welcome in his home. He was a good guy and we'll miss him. Several of my good friends have older dogs and we all know that even the best-loved pets don't live forever - except in our hearts.

* * * * *

Hey Folks!

I'm sure that most of you have already heard the sad news but I wanted to include all in this note. It was a sad day last week when we realized that the time had come to do the last right thing for Rollo, our friend of over 16 years. It was even sadder on Friday when we took him to the Vet. I hoped that he would just not wake up one morning but that was not to be.

Poor Ole Rollo has been going downhill for a while. He was almost blind from cataracts. He did not hear very well except when I was opening a cookie package. Many days he chose to sleep late rather than get up and ask for breakfast. Lately he has had trouble getting up and down stairs. His back end was becoming less and less reliable. He fell down the stairs a few time while we were away. But 16 is really old for Golden Retriever-almosts and so he got a full measure of life.

It was a healthy and happy life almost always. He was seldom at the Vet's except for the annual maintenance work. He did get shot in the back way back when we lived on the Farm. The bullet was still there when he passed on because the Vet thought that it was too close to his spinal cord to risk removal . Probably some kid with a new rifle getting a lucky (or unlucky, depending on point of view) hit on a long range shot, probably a .22.

And so, let me tell you about Rollo and his life with us at the Farm and here in Martinsburg. He showed up one day when Bill was visiting before he went to Africa with the Peace Corps. Probably was dropped off down by the elementary school at the end of our lane by somebody who figured that some kid would take him home with him/her. We had two dogs at the time, Topper, a Great Dane, and Sunny II a Great Dane-Doberman mix. Bill named him Rollo and kept bringing him into the house at feeding time. At the time, I was consulting and had a lot of early morning meetings with clients that were impossible to manage from the Farm and so I had an apartment in Rockville that served as both office and sleep-over place. I usually went in on Monday AM and came home on Friday PM. The first time I came home after Rollo's arrival, I asked Audrey about the new dog. We had discussed dogs before that and agreed that two were enough, maybe more than plenty. She told me about him showing up and her trying to find the owners. She thought that he might wander on and not hang around the Farm. I asked her why she was feeding him and she replied that she could not, in good conscience, feed the other two and leave him hungry. I thought a long minute, and seeing the hand-writing on the Wall, I asked her with a serious face and voice, "How much food do you think it will take to drive him off?" I got one of those Audrey looks that suggested my supper might be in danger. And so Rollo had found a home and, in fact, was at home!

He took up residence under the kitchen table where he could be part of the action but never in the way. Eventually Audrey put a small rug under the kitchen table for him. New visitors often looked a bit quizzical on seeing the rug, especially if Rollo was not on it at the time. It soon became a fixture in our kitchen and Rollo spent a lot of time there.

Rollo was a very smart dog and, in some ways, an alpha personality. He wanted to be in charge but, as long as Topper was around, he was Second Banana at best. Sunny II was a shy lady and did not want to run anything more than her own life and sometimes, not that. After Topper passed on, we rescued Chevy Chase, an out-of-control black Great Dane. He ate 150 feet of garden hose at one sitting and committed various other acts of destruction during his early days with us. We tried several methods of training him but none worked very well until we bought one of those electrical collars with the remote button. The first time Audrey put it on him, he ran off like he always did but Audrey, being alert, pushed her button when he was about a hundred yards away. He went straight up, yelped once, and scooted back to Audrey and hid behind her legs. He went from Outlaw to Christian in one fell swoop. It took a couple of other minor lessons but the deed was done. Now Rollo, having been in charge during the time between Toppers death and Chevy's arrival, was not ready to let go his position, regardless of Chevy's size. Besides Chevy was, in his heart, so gentle that he would not contest much of anything. It soon became clear that Rollo was the Big Dog, even though he was the little dog. And all was well in the pecking order.

We always kept a lot of chew toys around the house so that Chevy could have something besides a chair to chew on if he chose to chew. Rollo had never been a chewer at all before Chevy arrived. But now, if Chevy chewed, Rollo chewed, at least most of the time. Besides that, Rollo decided that the house was too messy with Chevy's chew toys scattered all over the place. He would often go around the house, pick up all the toys, one at a time, carry them into the dining room, make a pile of them, and sit on the pile. Chevy would cry and whine until somebody would take some off Rollo's pile and give them to Chevy. But after Chevy get tired of chewing, Rollo would go get them and put them back in his pile.

One day we were sitting in the kitchen, Chevy was chewing on some toy and Rollo decided that he wanted that toy. So after trying to snatch it away a few times he went off and sat for a bit. Then he jumped up, ran to the front door, and barked enthusiastically. This was the usual signal that somebody had driven up to the door. And so we, Audrey, Chevy, and me, went to the front door to greet our guests, whomever they might be. As soon as we were on the way to the door, Rollo turned and dashed past us, grabbed the toy in question, and hauled it off to a corner for his own chewing pleasure. He was settled in the corner before we got the front door open and saw that nobody was there. We saw immediately that we (all three) had been had. He did the same thing again a few days later so we were sure that it was planned, not random.

Rollo always tried to do what he thought we wanted him to do. If we could explain what we wanted he was more than happy to do it. When I used to go road-walking in the mornings after I left full-time work at MITRE, there were lots of cars on the road. I taught him "Car-Sit!" which meant that a car was coming and he was to sit where he was until I called "Car Gone!" He was smart enough to add the first part which was "Get out of the Road" if appropriate although he was seldom in the road when we walked. He loved to roll in the snow and would seek out the remaining snow piles as the weather warmed up after a storm. Chevy ate snow but Rollo just rolled in it and used it as a back-scratcher. He also never saw a creek that he did not want to get into and stand belly-deep. Not a problem with that but getting out usually meant a fair amount of mud coming with him. I could not find a sandy bottom creek for him to wade in. Audrey's view of creek-walking might be a tad different from mine.

He also had a thing about groundhogs. He went after every one he saw and actually killed quite a few himself and a few more with Chevy's help. I did not attempt to dissuade him because groundhogs dig holes, in pastures, that break horse's legs. One time we were walking through the peach orchard and came across the granddaddy of all groundhogs. That dude was bigger than a basketball when he curled up against a tree, ready to fight. They fight by getting their teeth going like a buzz saw and anything that gets near their mouth gets ground up like a hamburger. Well, Rollo was ready to go after him because it was right there in his job description, "Kill all Groundhogs!" I grabbed his collar and pulled him away, explaining that there would not be any honor to be gained in that fight, that if he won all there was to win, he would still come out poorly. As we moved away (not a retreat but an advance in another direction!!), Ole Groundhog scooted for his hole and we never saw him again. I figured that we surprised him and he was too far away to get into his hole and would not entertain the idea of a running fight with Rollo. So he put his back to the tree and got ready to do or die right there. After I explained the cost-benefit relationship to Rollo a couple of times he saw the wisdom and agreed that there would be better opportunities later on. He said that ties go to the guy who has a nifty collar to wear.

The only exception to him doing what we wanted was barking at trucks, particularly red pick-up trucks, which, for some unknown reason, were anathema to him. They say that dogs are colorblind but Rollo knew a red pick-up when he saw one. This trait dissipated when we moved to Martinsburg, at least largely. Two of our frequent visitors drive red pick-ups and those did not bother him. Don't know what happened to him early on to cause his dislike of red pick-up trucks.

He always got sad when we got the suitcases out for a trip. We tried to pack when he was asleep because he moped around so much after he saw suitcases. He was also exceedingly happy when we came home. The time we were away in England and Africa for five weeks, he was beside himself when we packed. On the day we got home he almost turned cartwheels, he was so happy that his people were home where they belonged and he could keep an eye on them to keep them out of trouble. His Job Description again!!

As he got older, Rollo became more sedentary but even in the past few months, there were times that he ran and frisked like a puppy. He learned which of our visitors could be mooched for a biscuit and, as soon as they walked in, they became his "very best friend" of the moment, at least until he got his biscuit. Then he would pick out his next target. He was a help to me when I was trying to lose some weight because, if I got a snack, he would come sit in front of me with those pitiful eyes asking for a share, his share of my treat. I sometimes skipped the snack just knowing that he would beg, beg, beg and Audrey had convinced me that people food was not good for him, said the Vet.

The last few months were hard for the old gentleman. He had good days and bad days. He couldn't catch biscuits anymore because of his cataracts. However, he did not appear to be very upset when he missed, he just set out to find the biscuit on the floor. He never seemed to be embarrassed when he was unable to perform, he just tried again until he succeeded and then went on with whatever he was doing. Rollo was always a gentleman in every sense of the word. We all could do a whole lot worse than to take him for a role model for how to live a gracious, elegant life. We will all miss him very much and I hope that he has found a fine kitchen table to lie under where he can be involved with the action but never in the way, a place where doggie biscuits and people snacks can be found in great abundance, where there are toys to stack and guard and friendly dogs like Chevy, Topper, and Sunny II to trail around with, and where snow lies in piles to roll in and get his back scratched. Maybe I'll find him again some time, some day!

Love to All of You,
Charlie

December 31

The game is to find 3 events, 2 births, and 1 death that happened on your birthday. "Gakked" from John & Liza.

Events

1946 - President Harry Truman proclaims the end of hostilities in WWII (The Big One).

1862 - President Lincoln signs an act admitting West Virginia to the Union.

1600 - Queen Elizabeth II grants the Royal charter of the British East India Company.

Births

1738 - Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis and British General (died 1805).

1572 - Emperor Go-Yozei of Japan (died 1617).

Death

1460 - Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury (executed along with Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York and Edmund, Earl of Rutland - Neville's brother and nephew - after the Battle Wakefield).

* * * * *

The truly perspicacious, or, more likely, those who have been unable to block out my incessent chatter, will notice that one of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn't belong. All but one relates to the things I prattle about at greath length, given the opportunity. Can you guess which thing is not like the others before I finish this song?

Keeping in Contact

I have two answers for "What was - so far - the worst day of your life?"

Number one was Christmas Day 2003 when, after hearing the news from Audrey, David and I drove out to Mom's to tell her that Sara was dead. On the All Time List of Sucky Jobs, telling your Mother that your sister is dead ranks right up there at the top.

(As far as can be determined, Sara died from a reaction to some medication she had been prescribed. It's not uncommon for patients to have to try several different meds before the one is found that solves the problem the best with the fewest unfriendly side effects. At least two meds had given Sara seizures. She was also a pretty heavy smoker. Since she was 9 years old. She tried quitting once or twice but never made it stick. She told me once when she was in a quitting phase how interesting it was to run until your legs hurt instead of running until your lungs hurt.)

Horrible Day #2: Jenny (my then roommate) was out for the evening and her friend Katsi called. I said Jenny was out and Katsi asked me to a pass on a message - that she had seen an item in the paper that Tom (a college friend) was dead. She wasn't positive it was the same Tom, but the last name is pretty unusual and the town was right, so she thought Jenny ought to know. I agreed to tell her, hung up, and got to work. There was absolutely no way I was going to pass that news on without finding a way to verify it.

To make a long story short, I tracked down Tom's mother and called her. I said I was a friend (I'd met him once) and had heard something odd about Tom and was he okay? She said no, he had been killed in an accident the day before. The funeral was scheduled for the following day and she was going crazy because she didn't have any information on Tom's friends outside of first names. Could I help her? I gave her the names of the people I knew that Tom knew and said I'd call them. I spent the rest of the evening on the phone, making people unhappy. Before I went to bed, I left notes all over the house Jenny, asking her to wake me up when she got it in.

The only upside to that story is that if Katsi hadn't called me and I hadn't called everyone else, none of them would have known about the funeral in time to say good-bye to their friend. Or lend their support to his family and each other.

So I keep a copy of my Christmas card list in the same file with my will. If anything happens to me, people who are far away can be notified. And someone will post a comment here, I hope. I'm in good health and I look before I cross the street, so I expect to be around for quite a while, but fate is capricious.

I suggest y'all do something similar.

Very long distance

Years ago, when I first moved in with Brett and Chort, I was given the usual run of house rules. After listening to Chort give me detailed instructions on how to handle any phone calls for him (this was actually pretty reasonable - he worked for the Post Office and they would track people down and drag them in to work on their days off), Brett chimed in with "and if either of our mothers calls collect - don't accept the charges." I knew that both of their mothers had passed away before either guy had turned 18, so I agreed that that would be "very long distance."

I was updating some numbers in my mobile phone today and, of course, Sara's number is still there. And an e-mail from Bruce Miller is still in my saved e-mails at work. (Bruce died unexpectedly about a year ago. I've gotten too many e-mails titled "Sad News" in the last year. And gotten too many of those phone calls as well.)

So I started to wonder -- what would happen if I called Sara? Or e-mailed Bruce? I know what would really happen - "that number's been disconnected," the e-mail would bounce; I'm not a total idiot. And it's not like Sara answered her cell messages with any consistancy anyway. But what would happen?

Someone set up a (IMO) creepy service where after a person dies, the service will send out "one last e-mail." Sort of a "PS, I love you" from the great beyond. Ick.

I haven't deleted Bruce's e-mail from the cache and I haven't deleted Sara's phone number from my mobile. Why? I'm a sentimental pack-rat mainly, like my mother. And let's not get too High Romance about it - I still have a couple of phone numbers in that phone for people with whom I'm no longer friends. I accept that the friendship has gone, but the phone number is data.

And, God knows, I don't want her to answer. "Maryland woman scared to death by call from beyond the grave......"

But what would happen?

To Sara on her 39th birthday......

Today would have been my sister's birthday. She died last year on Christmas Day, apparently from a bad reaction to some medication.

We weren't close and hadn't been since she was 3 years old, when in a fit of pique over not being included in a party to which I was invited, she decided if I didn't want her, she didn't want me.

Dad told that story at her funeral, actually. It's one of those family stories that shows the good and not-so-good sides to a person at once. Basically, the birthday party to which I was invited was for 5-year-old kids, so Sara didn't make the cut. When Dad got home that evening, she was very upset about this and he told her that she couldn't depend on me to include her in everything I did and that she should make some friends of her own. By the time he got home the next evening, she had rounded up a gang of her own, which is pretty impressive for a pre-schooler. The down side, of course, was the "and the hell with you" that I got ever after. (I, of course, was a perfect big sister and never, ever gave her any cause not to adore me. Uh-huh. Yeah.) She took the same slash-and-burn approach to a lot of her life, usually to unfortunate ends.

We were sort of developing a relationship when she died. Not a hang-out-with-each-other-and-talk-about-the-good-times relationship (what good times?), but at least a glad-to-see-each-other-when-we-both-happen-to-be-at-Dad's, let's-catch-up-for-a-bit relationship. I figured that over time, eventually, I'd have a sister.

Her husband, my brother-in-law Bruce, whom I like a lot, and I both feel as though we had the future stolen from us. The two of them did the hard work - the last kid was headed off to college a couple of months ago (*and she was class President* - you go, Angela!), now it was gonna be Miller time. It makes me mad and sad when I think of what got taken away from us. And there's no one to blame, it's just fate.

The soundtrack in my head

I am woman of my time (more or less), so I don't have a diary, I make mix tapes. I recently moved up to iTunes, so now I can make mix CDs to reflect the current state of my world. My first mix CD will get burned sometime in the next couple of weeks. Probably.

The playlist has been percolating in my head for the past few months. I mentally add and subtract, I ponder, I add and subtract some more, I collect the needed music in various formats. All that is the easy part, really. The hard part is setting the order for the songs. Some songs lend themselves to a particular spot. For instance, for this CD, I know that "Belleville Rendez-vous" will be the opener and "Beyond the Sea" the closer.

Every tape (CD now!) that I've made has had a general theme and captured a particular time in my life and the theme for this one is loss. So the playlist is much more melancholy and high romance than usual, but them's the breaks. It just seems that the last year has been full of loses of one kind or another: my sister died unexpectedly (she was only 38) on Christmas Day, three friends lost their Dads, Ira lost one of his best friends, and Gordon - a good theater friend and all-around good guy - died unexpectedly on Thanksgiving Day at age 55. A friend is going through a separation that will probably end up as a divorce. Another friend who is particularly important to me is apparently checking out of our relationship. So there's the loss and heartache part.

Another part of the playlist came from some conversations I've had with a new friend. Some of what I call "dumb ass flirting" conversations and some "I'm there if you need a friend" conversations.

And then there are the "I just love this song" additions.

These mix things are like a snapshot of a chunk of my life. Many of them came about when I was trying to puzzle out relationships. Some grew out of crushes. One is built around my love of percussion.

I'll post the playlist as it stands later. Suggested running orders cheerfully accepted.