Last week, on the second day of a perfect weekend, George and I took Mom to the local cemetery to plant some flowers on the family graves.  Our local cemetery - especially the older part which holds stones of folks born in the 1700s - is an exceptionally lovely and peaceful place.  Like an ocean beach, it is a nice place to visit, but one wouldn't want to be there permanently.  Getting started on this expedition was not dissimilar to setting out on an Arctic trek; the preparations were onerous.  Although we had no need to stock up on pemmican and thick outerwear, we did have to bring Mom around to the idea of going in the clothes she had on; she had it in her head that we were headed for either church or a funeral.  Finally, though we were able to stop just short of flinging her into the back of a truck, and we were on her way.  She began declaiming some poem on the way, that began "Under the something something sky/ Dig my grave and let me lie...".  Really, when one's parental unit is as loony as a bedbug, it can be kind of funny.  She couldn't tell you who I am to save her life, but she can quote oodles of poetry and suchlike. 

Anyway, once we arrived, she was far more in the present and actually recognized the graves of Dad and Frankie.  "He was such a sweet little boy," she said.  Mom and Frankie had a very special relationship - one quite different from that which she had with the rest of us.  She must have sensed (or perhaps nature gave a more concrete hint) that he was to be the last of her children, and at a very early point, she and he became pals.  There was never any doubt that she was the parent and he the child; Mom wasn't one to tolerate any rannygazoo.  But unlike the the parent that tries to be a kid with her child, she drew him into being semi-adult at an early age.  It isn't that she conversed on adult topics, but they had adult-like conversations.  I think she must have told herself that this one she would enjoy.  And he enjoyed her back - not only the parental love thing, but a really friendly laughing-at-each-other's-foibles, and at those of others, in a complicit best-friend sort of way. 

Several of us began as red-heads then darkened, but Frankie remained a redhead, although not the flame-haired youth of fiction, but more a dark-red/brown combination.  He had the requisite number of freckles to play Tom Sawyer in any film, and the same blue eyes that were the gift or burden of all of us.  Frankie had no mild emotions, he was passionate about everything.  When he was thwarted his whole body would droop so theatrically that Mom had to laugh.  When things went his way, which they did surprisingly often, he enjoyed life to the max.  He was the most like that Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes of all the children I have ever seen.   Frankie's Hobbes, however, was not a stuffed animal, but a bicycle.  From the moment he could walk, he wanted to ride.  It was not long after he could reach the handlebars of a two-wheeler that he began asking his older brothers if he could 'walk their bike'.  He couldn't ride, but he would hold the handlebars and walk with the bike rolling beside him to any place he wanted to go.  He hardly seemed to feel that a destination was worth going to, if he couldn't walk there with a bike.  If a brother demurred, Mom would say, "Oh, let him use it; you aren't using it." and the brother would usually give in.   It mostly seemed weird and bemusing to us that he wanted to walk our bikes, but he never tired of doing so.

When he was quite young, he got the measles and on the morning the spots disappeared he came running down the the stairs all excited.  "Mom!" he demanded, "I have to go outside.  Last night I dreamed how to ride a bike."  I don't know how it is now, but back then it was an object of faith that one must remain convalescing indoors for some days after measles for fear of relapse or death or something.  I forget how long this period of imprisonment was, but that morning was well within it for Frankie.  No way was Mom letting him outside into what was a very cool day.  Every so often that day he would renew his plea, saying desperately,  "Mom, I'll forget!"  But Mom was not about to send her youngest out into the perils of a relapse-inducing Spring and his pleas were in vain.  Frankie had the ability to persist when he wanted something which didn't quite descend to the nagging or whining of the rest of us, and thus he wasn't usually sent to the rightabout when he persisted with a request after being denied.  Mom, however, was not a parent to reverse her decisions once given, especially in the face of all known medical science, which was how conventional wisdom re measles was regarded in our household.  I know when I was recovering from measles, I actually believed that if I went outside, I would, if I didn't actually die, suffer forever in a wasting sort of way.  I think I lived in a mental opera of the tragic sort until I was about 20, seeing a sad, though lovely, death for myself at every misstep. 

Next morning, Frankie arose early and again began the assault on Mom's defenses.  "I still remember," he told her, "But I'll forget."  Finally she actually gave in; the first time in living memory that such a thing had occurred.  "It meant so much to him," she always told us afterward.  She wrapped him so thoroughly in so many outer garments that he resembled the world's largest ball of yarn more than he did a human child.  So Frankie flew out of the door, stopped only momentarily by the problem of squeezing ten feet of wool thru a three foot opening, and ran to the bike.  He picked it up, mounted it, and rode for the first time without a bobble or a hesitation.  He was ecstatic and perfectly willing to come inside after his signal achievement.  That was Frankie; he never made Mom sorry she had acquiesced in something.  They really were a team.  But Frankie had wooed and won his one great love, and from then on, seeing Frankie on foot was like seeing Ironsides walking. 

Frankie was a fighter; the youngest of eight boys (and a girl who could beat most of them), he more than held his own.  Our next oldest brother, George, was a very quiet, almost withdrawn boy and tended to get pushed around a bit.  One day when George finally snapped on the schoolbus and pummelled a tormentor well and good, Frankie was happier than if he had himself kicked the lad's backside.  As the bus reached the Farm, he flew off the bus (the only mode of egress he ever employed) and yelled, "Mom!  George beat up a kid on the bus!"  This was not tattling, this was heralding victory, and as nearly always was the case, Mom saw Frankie's point of view.  

At that time, one knew nearly everyone in town, and no one thought twice about letting her child go out on his own in such a safe haven.  Frankie made friends easily and was always to be found riding his bike with a group of the boys from Reedville.  The whole town was their playground and their kingdom.  There was the old dam in town built to power a mill now gone, which created a waterfall about eight or ten feet high, where the boys fished and explored.  There was a small park to hang out in.  There were various roads here and there which were fully explored.  The central hangout, though, was the parking lot at a four-corners adjacent to one of the town's two grocery stores - the Grand Star.   "Mom, I am going to Reedville; if you need me call the Grand Star," Frankie would yell as he shot out of the front door on a summer day.  The Grand Star had a public telephone facing the parking lot, and if one called its number, whoever was passing - usually one of the boys who rode with Frankie - would answer.  If Mom did need Frankie, he'd be told and be on his way home.  The parking lot provided a smooth area to ride bikes and try out new tricks, and there was pop (we never called it 'soda') or Fudgsicles available inside when someone had a dime to pay for one or the other. 

From the first, Frankie had a streak of sweetness in his nature to which people responded.  He was popular with other kids his age as well as with adults;  even his older siblings were kind of proud of him and only beat him up when it was entirely necessary.  And those siblings had to be well up in the ranks by age to be able to do so, because Frankie fought with his whole being just as he did everything else.  He was able to persuade his friends to do almost anything.  One morning he was up at the crack of dawn because, he told Mom, "I have to bring back the bike I borrowed."  This set all Mom's sensors on alert, because dishonesty of any sort was a super no-no in her book; an attitude she passed to all her children.  "What do you mean, you borrowed a bike?"  Apparently some malfunction in his own bike led him to borrow that of a girl he knew, because it had been getting dark and 'home by dark' was the law in our house.  It was never really clear to me if the girl loaned the bike willingly or unknowingly, but Frankie was off and had returned it very early in the morning as he had promised her (or himself) to do.  He then had to walk home from wherever the girl lived.  Reedville was a mile from the Farm, and that distance was taken for granted by all off us when we were young.  We walked to the store, to the library (how I loved coming home with new books to read!), to church, to meet our friends, to play in any of a dozen places.  To us the walk to Reedville was merely an outer extension of 'home'.   Once on a really hot day, Frankie arrived home all tired and sweaty (the bike must have been in need of repair, since he was walking), and he told Mom, "I trudged all the way home."  When Frankie was only about eleven, he acquired a girlfriend, Brooke Kemp.  In every way he flew headlong into life. 

I went off to college when Frankie was only five, so much of what I know of Frankie's adventures are what I was told by Mom or the other kids.  I was fortunate enough to meet his greatest friend, though.  This was Old Dog Tray, a stray dog that showed up one day and between whom and Frankie it was love at first sight.  Frankie presented the dog to Mom with such a heart-rending plea to keep him that her defenses were breached after only a brief sortie, and her usual, "but No Animals In The House!"  was the sign of total surrender.   Since the dog equalled Frankie in its ability to look dejected and oppressed when this was needed, Mom took to calling him (or her) "Old Dog Tray" and that was what we always called him.   Frankie loved his dog as he loved his bike.   Oddly none of the rest of us really had a dog, like Frankie had Old Dog Tray.  When I was very young, we had acquired a wonderful old collie along with the Farm which those of us who were around then liked, but it was a working dog and we liked it like we liked our horses or chickens.  There had been other dogs, but ODT was a pal.  There was another story of another animal pal of Frankie's which Mom used to tell me, though I wasn't home at the time it happened.  Dad had begun calling Frankie 'Deedee' early on, and we all called him that most of the time.  One summer, early each morning when Frankie would be eating his breakfast cereal, a bird used to perch on the wire that ran to the house from the pole by the road.  The bird had a loud cry that sounded like it was calling, "Deedee!  Deedee!"  Frankie would run to the door and call out "I'm coming!"   One morning, when he was being summoned by the bird, he lost patience and ran into the yard and yelled, "I'm coming out later; can't you see that I'm eating??" 

One day, during a lovely June when Frankie was 12, some guy from Hagerty, the village to the east of Reedville, had a few beers too many and killed a dog near our house while driving.  The next day the same guy had a few more beers and killed Frankie, who was riding his bicycle.  No one did much about it to the guy - this was back before MADD and the legal attitude was pretty much that "Boys will be boys."  I am not sure he was even fined. 

Mom is an extremely private person, and whatever mourning she did, she did privately.  I have seen her cry only once in her life before the onset of her dementia, and that was not for Frankie, but for the death of her sister's three-year-old from heart surgery.  But Mom had lost one of her best friends and she spoke much about Frankie.  Liam has a song where he says, "I have seen my mother at too many graves.," and I am pretty sure that this was probably the hardest of all such events for her.  She'd go sometimes to maintain Frankie's grave and every so often she'd find a letter by his headstone.   These continued to appear through the years, and it turned out they were from Frankie's girlfriend Brooke.  Brooke went on to college and became a nurse but she continued to leave these letters; the letters only stopped when she suddenly died at the age of 21. 

One day, years after Frankie died, Rob came across an old camera and found there was partially exposed film in it.  When we developed the pictures they were all pictures of Frankie; Frankie behind the wheel of our car (I am sure he would have transferred his love for his bike to love for a car had he reached 16); Frankie in his basketball jersey; Frankie with his arm draped over Old Dog Tray.  It's all there - the reddish hair, the blue eyes, the sweet half-smile.  None of us remember taking the pictures, but it was a wonderful gift to see Frankie again as we remembered him.

So the last to join our family was the first to leave it.  I really did not think Mom would know where she was last Sunday when she went with George and me to tend the graves, but she did, and she remembered the boy she laid there 39 years ago.  And, "He was such a sweet boy," she said. 

And what can it be that has our DavidShag dancing in the streets, making little yelps of joy and generally behaving in a way that may cause the pursed lips and hairy eyeballs of the authorities to focus upon him?  Well, among the junky-looking mail of the week, waiting for him in a heap on the corner of the kitchen table was a modest envelope from the government - specifically the Social Security Administration which said, on the topic of reaching full retirement age, in the bold face type and italics it deserved, "After that, your benefits will not be reduced, no matter how much you earn."  And guess when this happy day which the SSA describes refer to as "that", after which benefits will not be reduced, arrives for the hero of our tale, after adding up days and weeks and so forth, carrying the 1, and rounding down?  Ten days from now!  Oh Frabjous Day!  Calloo!  Callay!  How did this estimable policy escape my notice until now?  I cannot help but say say, but in the words of a lady I admire enormously, "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud to be an American!"  Well, maybe the word "overjoyed" fits the case, better than "proud".  Whatever. 

In July, continuing on the theme of jours de gloire, I reach the end of eighteen months at Smallville Solutions, upon which excellent date I will no longer be required to repay that exemplary company for the lavish relocation bonus it dished out to lure me into taking a huge pay cut and entering its employ.  Is it possible that there is actually something good about being (a long way) over 40?  It just may be so.  In short, this means I can begin scooping up $1,934 a month without worry or regret and can work or not, as I wish.  Everyone who has not seized upon that  blessed "not" in the prior sentence, take one step forward.  Well, aren't you the silly goat?!  Haven't you been listening?  Actually, I can use this lavish sum to rapidly pay off my last credit card, and to take care of the last of the big ticket items I need to get into place (the house is already painted and the roof is new), and then, garçons et filles, the Emancipation Proclamation will have finally taken full effect in the US of A. 

One of the big ticket items I am thinking seriously of installing is a just-in-time water heating unit.  I bought this house largely because of an enormous sunken tiled area in which I can submerge the old corpus up to its eyeballs while bathing, only to find my hot water runs out just about when the water level reaches my coccyx because of the vast area of my tub and the inadequacy of my water heater. 

A few items from past entries merit updates.  For one, my impressive cousin Warren who, you will recall, went directly from the funeral of his grandmother to the mean streets of Baghdad to do bomb disposal work, has lost his group leader to an IED.  His group was called to a location to dispose of a reported IED, but upon reaching the site, was unable to locate the device.  And then his leader unfortunately did locate it when it exploded, killing him right before Warren's eyes.  Warren says this sad event has made him even more determined, upon his egress from the service, to devote his life to bettering the human race, which seems sadly in need of his efforts.  In a picture of his leader that Warren forwarded to me the man looks so young. 

And not long ago, another cousin, who is well over 50, and who has been a member of the Army Reserve for a very long time, has been deployed to Afghanistan to help eradicate the poppy crop.  Afghanistan, a war theatre for which some justification can be made, has heated up considerably while most eyes have been fixed upon the foolish war in Iraq.  Better, thought GWB and his cronies, to lose two wars, than to win one.  One can certainly say with assurance that Mr Bush's place in history is assured, right down there with Buchanan and the first Johnson. 

Speaking of President Buchanan, do you all know that he was not only gay, but that he lived for 16 years with his boyfriend, Rufus King, who served as Vice President under Franklin Pierce?  Oddly, this fascinating biographical datum was omitted from my high school history courses.  I had learned that Buchanan had not done much of anything to remember, but apparently he did old Rufus, well and often.  Our current vice president would be well advised to follow Mr King's example of making love, not war - and I apologize for the unfortunate visual image I may have inflicted upon you.  This liaison was well known to the Washington crowd of the time.  Although apparently what happened in Washington stayed in Washington.  There is no record as to whether either of the two gentlemen in question assumed a wide stance when in the public facilities of the era.  On second thought, I cannot help but feel that Mr Cheney would be as poor at love as he is at his current hobby, but at least a lot fewer people would be getting screwed. 

Another update concerns me dear old silver-haired mother, who when last mentioned was cause for great concern as she slipped into dementia.  With the advent of Spring, and with our determined efforts to see that she has more company more often, she has become remarkably happier, although she still has no clue who I am, or what is going on, most of the time.  Because she had never been ill, and had no medical records to speak of, and because she controls her own money and circumstances, we were at wits' end in trying to find a solution to getting her into proper care.  Now we have found a really good - and affordable - nearby facility, and - wonder of wonders - Mom seems to be interested in moving there.  Much of the paperwork has been done, and Mom seems lucid on this topic more than on most others.  There are people there she knows, or believes she does, and it is beautifully situated in the town where she currently lives, though it is well on the outskirts; it is, in fact, in a completely rural setting.  I think that, in general, people who work in these types of facilities in the small towns, where it tends to be as good a job as is available thereabouts, are often more caring than their urban counterparts.  Certainly there are wonderful people in many urban facilities, but there are also often people who do not like their job and who do not like their clients very much.  So I think Mom will soon be making the move; I just hope like hell it is as easy and as happy for her as it now appears to be looking as if it will be.  "I think it is time to move," she has said.  And, "Will you come to see me after I move?" she asks me and, although I know she is only making polite conversation to this man whose identity is a mystery to her, I say, "Of course," and I will. 

And another update - the fine young lad next door who is a senior in high school and who, for reasons I cannot fathom, plans to join the Marines upon graduation, willing pulled my lawnmower out of the sucking black mud of my western pond at my brother George's request.  So the next day, while the lad was out mowing his own family's extensive grounds, I resumed my mowing and within ten minutes I had gotten myself mired in my eastern pond's equally black and equally sucking mud.  With good will and great bonhomie (I thought that word had 2 'm's but Spellchecker disagrees and Merriam-Webster ruled in Spellchecker's favor, for once.   I stand corrected.), young Paul, for such is his name, got a rope and something with a stronger engine than my mower, and pulled me out again.   Once the marines have him, I fear I will be doomed to watch my mower languish in the grip of one or another of my ponds, since I seem to have the learning curve of an addled duck.  And what's worse, though I only have two ponds, my estate is bordered by a deep and swift-flowing creek. 

And now, to put the icing on the cake of my good fortune, I do not have to work Memorial Day weekend after all; moreover the weather is promised to be fair and warm and just what the doctor ordered.  I was so buzzed by the prospect of the long weekend, that I went out and mowed my entire lawn after I got home at six p.m. Friday evening, without driving into any body of water.  And this was before I opened that portentous envelope from the good folks at Social Security.   I may just go out today and mow the entire town of Reedville. 

I woke up at 2:00 a. m. or thereabouts this morning, and now that it is well after 4, I am pretty sure that sleep is not planning to knit up my ravelled sleeve of care any time soon.  It is a tad early to be out performing manly tasks in the out-of-doors, so I am reduced to sitting in front of my computer, which gives this moment an eerie feeling of being at work, although this is measurably less unpleasant.  However, I am NOT at work and was not there yesterday either because of the happy confluence of two eventualities; the first being that my boss was not anxiously counting the days until my return from vacation and the second being that I have the ethics of a pimp or clergyman.  I had taken a week off to go to California, starting last Wednesday on the 30th of April.  So I returned as promised on Wednesday of this week and my boss, when he arrived to find me diligently working away in the wee hours of the morning (I am always the first one to arrive at work, since this gets me out of there while there is still some afternoon to be had, and also allows me to get a couple of hours under my belt before I am fully awake to the horror that I am still working at my age). 

Quoth he, "What are you doing here?  I thought you were off all week."

Ever one with a snappy comeback, I riposted, "My vacation is finished.  I only took a week and I started it last week."

And then he said the magic words, "But you are still a day early."

The thing was, as soon as he said it, I started to believe it.  I did feel like I had come back early - but then when it comes to work, January of 2015 would have seemed too soon.  So I told him that rather than going home to my squalid apartment that day (which was an awesomely warm and lovely spring day), I would take off Friday instead.  He said OK.  I marvelled to all who would listen that I could have done anything so bacon-witted as to return to work a day early.  So Friday I arrived at the job in my car, parked it heading outward in the corner of the parking lot closest to the exit as is my wont when I plan to head for Reedville and I went in to begin my workday.  My attention was caught by a note on my calendar, which made me realize for the first time that I had, in fact, already taken my full week.  I think the boss had been confused by the fact that I had taken the 30th through the 6th, and he was thinking I had taken seven days in May (good title for a book and movie, that), forgetting the 30th, and had returned on the seventh, thus cutting my vacation short by a day.  I myself had been confused by the fact that he seemed so positive about it.  And now I found I didn't have a day coming after all.  But no one seemed aware of that, so I took Friday as agreed, thereby getting a free day off.  And a fine day it was, for the expected rain never materialized and I was able to begin mowing the pine flats, which is what we call the middle back yard.  I was only moderately disturbed by the fact that I mowed too close to the edge of my rather swampy pond, and got my new John Deere well and truly stuck in this black sucking mud; my mower is even at this moment sitting at a 45-degree angle, up to its vitals in squashy clay.  Although I must say I can't see out my window yet in this Stygian darkness; the mower may have disappeared like the mammoths of yore in the La Brea tar pit. 

Since I have no conscience whatever, I can't account for the fact that I have had trouble sleeping ever since I got home.  But so it is, and thus here I sit. 

My employer, Smallville Solutions for Everything, Inc., is bucking the current economic trend and has been taking orders for its sophisticated and highly expensive products like there is no tomorrow.  We have been hiring like madmen, and the plant is running 24/7.  The plant is entirely dependent on our computer programs to keep to its scheduling and to tell workers what to do next, and to get our products shipped out to the eager purchasers.  So it is extremely difficult to persuade management to allow us to shut down the system for computer upgrades, or balancing data tables and the like, which must be done from time to time.  It used to be that one could buy something and use it till it fell to pieces half a century later.  But with computers, there is a constant move to improve and every company that has a finger in the data processing pie keeps upgrading its product, which is fine, but they simultaneously refuse to maintain the older versions of their products after a short interval, unless one is prepared to lavish extravagant sums in tribute, to persuade them to keep your old version going just for you.  An incidental collateral effect of continuing to use old software, in addition to astronomically higher maintenance fees, is the departure of all the best and brightest programmers, who will find themselves with useless resumés if they continue to work on software that has fallen behind the curve.  One can either pay an amount equal to the Gross Domestic Product of several small nations, to purchase the upgrade and an equal sum to hire extra hands or a consulting company to install it, or one can pay a similar sum or more, a fee which will increase yearly, to retain the old version and have the provider keep it running.  It is a sort of reverse warranty; rather than guaranteeing a product will work for a period of time, these companies are guaranteeing it won't.  There are still companies in the USA making a profit, and the software providers are determined to see that there is something to spend it on.  They live to serve. 

How the above impacts me is as follows.  Since we cannot persuade management to allow us to shut our computer system down for as long as a day or two in the ordinary course of events - since the lines that rely on it are making money, while the computer department is merely costing the company, the compromise is that we are allowed to shut down and do the highly complex and somewhat risky work on national holidays and the three-day weekends on which they fall, since that is when many line employees are off for the three-day weekend.  This, of course, means that we computer guys who are the lowest of the low have the pleasure of not only working these holidays, but of doing so at hours when only mothers of newborns are customarily awake.  But the silver lining to this not inconsiderable cloud is that I have a pretty good boss and he has promised to give us two-for-one hours of comp time for the Memorial Day and Fourth of July weekend work.  Each weekend we will work 3 days and get six days off for EACH of these three-day periods later to lie on our backyard decks and contemplate gardening improvements we will never make.  This does not totally suck, unlike most of my life.  

In other news, I am daily awaiting GWB's message to the ruling generals in Myanmar saying, "Heckuva job there!"  The generals have barred most of the desperately needed international aid in the wake of the horrific cyclone, and have seized some of the little that has actually arrived in the country.  They claim that they know best how to handle the crisis.  Their solution so far?  They have given twenty-some television sets and a number of DVD players to some of the survivors - and this in areas which have had no electricity since the cyclone.  This is is efficiency that should make even FEMA stand up and acknowledge that it has met its superior.  Meanwhile about 100,000 bodies are suppurating decoratively in the landscape.  I do believe in every effort to relieve the human suffering, but I must admit that a part of me is thinking, "Fine - have it your way!" and turning efforts to some other land where there is need.  I often think that riding to the rescue of these clueless dictators and juntas that dot the globe when they are incapable themselves of doing their job, is just as enabling to them as is covering for an addict when he messes up on his job.  I would then bombard the nation with every kind of news possible telling the people there how the aid is sitting at the border while they watch their children starve to death.  The generals should be very cautious about giving folks nothing to lose. 

I do think that similar incompetence and indifference shown here in the days after Katrina spotlighted the general incompetence and indifference of the current Administration in ways that will severely cost its party in the coming election.  A nearly unprecedented number of senior Republican members of Congress are getting out in anticipation of the débâcle, with their leftover campaign war chests intact, and is moving into cushy lobbying jobs where those funds can legally be used to bribe such other congressmen as remain in office.  My own prediction for the coming election is this.  I think Obama will be the Democratic nominee, and that Hillary will campaign very hard for him, but not as a vice presidential nominee.  I think that in November, McCain will be behind in the polls slightly and that he will win, to the surprise of everyone but me.  The hundreds of thousands of angry voters who badly want to make a statement of discontent, but not so badly that they would dream of voting for a black man, will vent their spleen by electing Democrats to Congress.  We will end up with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress and a Republican president.  McCain will then have the option of being a much more moderate leader than he would wish and having the chance to leave a record of achievement behind, or of truly being an ideologue and failing as president as badly as the current insensitive fool.  On the other hand, a Democratic Congress will have to rise to a standard never before seen to cooperate with McCain enough to make some real achievements possible.  They probably will sabotage him, however, and we will stumble on without a single real patriot in the nation's capital however many flag pins may be flaunted, or salutes to the flag may be made.  A true patriot is one who puts the nation before the party and before his own personal interest.  And the only folks I see doing that are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The only possible way I can see Obama winning is if a legitimate conservative makes an independent run and pulls serious numbers of voters away from McCain on the right.  It is entirely possible, if Hillary is seen to make a sincere effort to help Obama in November, and McCain wins, that she will be the nominee in 2012. That's my prediction; you heard it here first.

And now the sun is rising and birds of all kind are twittering in anticipation of my emergence from the house.  I cannot disappoint them.  May all of you also find bosses who can't count to seven.

During the entire period of the Irish potato famine, a period when the death toll from starvation was in the millions, Ireland was exporting food.   The landlords of the time were concerned that giving food to the Irish would sap their moral fiber and create a class of indolent parasites dependent on the state.  So the millions who starved to death did so with moral fiber intact, one of the more notable moral triumphs in recent history.  One must regard with awe the strength of character it required for the ruling political party in Britain to hold fast to its principles regardless of the facts on the ground.  As this shows once again, there has always been a party that supported values.  Whenever one despairs of the state of mankind, one can add this to the list of proofs that there will always be people who stand fast, adhering to their principles.  I am always perplexed when people, who cling to their values through thick and thin against all evidence, are displeased when someone like Ahmedinajad does the same. 

I have been to Sacramento and back this week.  I was scheduled to get there before noon on Thursday, stopping only in Minnesota, but the airline, which has a reputation to uphold, chose to give a long wait on the tarmac and a free extra stop in Las Vegas, a city for which there is no possible excuse, and deposited me in Sacramento as dusk was gathering, at which point I was almost too tired to do what I went there to do.  However, I was able to spend Friday and Saturday doing it several times, so I guess all was not lost.  The weather there was flawless, what little I saw of it, and I returned to Reedville to find the weather here was pretty darn spiffy, too.  All my apple trees are abloom and I saw my first rose-breasted grosbeak, clinging to the little cage full of suet that hangs on the front porch where it can be seen by anyone doing dishes in the kitchen, were such an eventuality actually to occur.  I leave you to guess which is the rarer sighting: a rose-breasted grosbeak or me doing the dishes. 

Speaking of 'rare', have you noticed that this fine and accurate word for the unusual has been largely abandoned (especially on television) in favor of 'unique' wrongly used?  I knew you had.  And speaking of television, are you as weary as I of the inability of any newsperson to say that someone has said something, without characterizing him or her as either 'speaking out' or 'breaking his silence'?  In the latter case, the silence has lasted usually about as long as the period of time between which one drops a hammer on one's toe and that in which one cries, "ouch"?  I prefer the phrase "breaking one's silence" to be used sparingly, and to refer to a silence that has lasted months at a minimum.  It should also, in my own humble opinion, be said in reference to a statement on a topic which the reluctant speaker has been pressed to discuss and which he has heretofore declined to do.  Actually, I err here - there is nothing humble about my opinion, on this or any other topic.  "Speaking out," too, has a more specific sense to me than the mere opening of one's yap in the presence of the press.  I tend to believe it refers to someone courageously making a public statement on some topic, when one has been pressured implicitly or explicitly not to do so.  It involves risk.  It does not refer to some divorcee saying she's pissed off at the former spouse. 

On the topic of "breaking silence" I must ask whyever Barbara Walters found it necessary to cop to rolling in the hay with a former senator.  I have had to ingest vast quantities of mind-numbing substances in a futile effort to erase that visual image.  Good grief, can't people just shut up?  The cacophony of people around me at each step of my recent journey mindlessly babbling to invisible friends would argue that the answer is 'no', but Babs had done so well at shutting up for so long.  I had always been unsettled by Babs' kittenish ways with the men she interviewed, but I had no idea that the cat element I was seeing was so much more pussy than kitten.  When Ms Walters coyly 'fesses up - 'speaks out' as it were - (and she will) and vouchsafes unto us the name of the unfortunate gentleman, I just pray it isn't going to be Jesse Helms.  Having that image inflicted upon my consciousness may keep me from ever sleeping again in this lifetime. 

I am struggling not to break my silence on the ineffable Jeremiah Wright, a buffoon who so perfectly embodies my image of the ultimate clergyperson that I might have invented him.  Holding foolish views goes with the territory, self-aggrandizing is a given; for a clergyperson pride is not one of the cardinal sins, it is a job requirement.  Blighting the dreams of one's congregation is also the norm; every time a Catholic pol runs for something, some bishop somewhere announces that he personally will deny the eucharist to the poor fish, should said fish ever swim his way.  But heretofore such blighting has at least been done under the pretense that the congregant has behaved counter to some holy rule.  Old Jeremiah has broken new ground in setting out to screw a congregant who has not only kept within the 'Thou shalt nots' of man and god (at least so far as the old fool has been able to demonstrate), but who had, until now, lauded him at every turn.  Poor Barack: with all his experience in diverse cultures, he has apparently missed that fable which ends with the line, "You knew I was a scorpion when you took me in." 

What we have here, of course, is that age-old struggle between the secular and the clerical powers; one that had such notably happy results in the matter of Thomas a Becket.  (Sorry, I am on my Apple and I don't know how to accent the 'a'.)  There is every possibility that if Obama were to succeed and actually manage to implement some portion of his message of inclusion, the power of the black ministry, which thrives on persecution, both real and imaginary as, indeed, does the white ministry, might be diminished.  It is no accident that the only profession still publicly characterized without any shame as either black or white, other than within that sister branch of entertainment - the music industry - is that of the clergy.  Things were much easier when the head of government was also the head of the currently prevailing religion.  The old pharoahs were not only kings, they were also gods.  Except for that nasty little Akhnaton interval, an early instructive example of what ensues when either a ruler or clergyman (or a god) actually forgets him- or herself and attempts to make some sense of things, the pharoahs did pretty well for a pretty long time.  Still the nagging question must have been bubbling under the surface, waiting for someone to - wait for it! - speak out: "How come god keeps dying?"  God's regular demise must have caused some discomfort among the sentient, few though they are in any age, moreso perhaps even than the sight (and sound) of him farting or taking a divine dump - one can only hope that the custom of preserving holy relics arose long after samples of that last-mentioned item were to be had.  That little contretemps of the 1970s when someone or other declared that god was dead was hardly new stuff - the old Egyptians must have found themselves saying the same thing every few years.  I imagine it was unsettling.  And yet the Nile still flooded and the sun still rose on schedule. 

Somewhere along the line, the clerically-minded spotted the flaw and various mythologies arose which kept the priestly class busy interpreting the wishes of the various divinities, who now dwelt on mountaintops or in special chambers, or behind curtains and who were said to whisper the eternal command in the ears of their priests, the command always boiling down to yet another form of "Gimme some cash".  Eventually, a great many came to believe that the mouthpiece of the deity resided in the Emerald City - or was it it the Eternal City? - something with an 'E', at any rate, and the message only crescendoed.  As the civil government begin to diverge from the religious powers, an inevitable conflict arose, one that today may be stated as basically, "Who gets the newest Cadillac; the reverend or the senator?"  Were I a praying man, I would be on my knees beseeching the clouds above to gift old Jeremiah with the same glorious "Thanks" that Becket earned some time back, but since I am not a praying man, being wholly unable to suppress my reasoning for the necessary length of time, I am resigning myself to being forced to watch old Jer wave his tongue as if it were his dick, whenever a television camera is in sight. 

For all the service that Jer is rendering unto the black god, it pales (pardon the pun) in comparison to the service he is rendering unto the white Caesar.   Were I a conspiracy theorist, I would be certain of the machinations of K. Rove in the old fool's prattlings.  I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I am a firm believer that there is no degree of foolishness so far-fetched that someone somewhere will not attain it.  While old Jer has done what he can to ensure that the church retain its separate colors, it is as nothing to the service he has rendered to the millions of white folks who would swim in pools of feces before they would vote for a black man - the so-called "Reagan Democrats" whose sobriquet has the same whiff of perfidy one might discern in "Arab Zionist".   These are folks who will tell a pollster (or anyone else who asks) that, of course, "Obama's my man!" as they head for, or emerge from the polls in which they vote for anyone but.   I imagine such folk pride themselves that the old cliche "At least he's honest" will never be applied to them.  One can only admire someone who remains so true to his inner self.  I imagine the reflection that they now have a new Al Sharpton to live with seems a small price to pay for the terrific cover old Jer has extended to them.  "Well, I wanted to vote for Obama, but, gee, that church he goes to...".  Actually, the current public figure that Jer most resembles is Senator Craig, who preaches about the vileness of the gay folks while searching frantically for one or another of them who is willing to offer his dick for the sucking; similarly does Jer revile the white man publicly while doing more to serve the worst of that ilk than most other men since slavery was abolished.  And my bet is the sheep will continue to flock to his presence for the shearing. 

"Ka-ching!" goes the cash register.