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Isn’t it Ironic

June 14, 2013 by mountainmornings

We had lunch at the University’s President’s house, then were shuttled to the Ulysses S Grant Presidential Library of Mississippi State University. It was an elegant affair, the occasion? My sister-in-law Jorja had donated the contents of my brothers study, a shrine to Grant replete with books, photographs, letters and artwork. His entire collection is now carefully archived and preserved in the John Grisham Room. Yep, Charlottesville’s famous author graduated from MS State.

Dr Mark Keenum, the above mentioned University President, spoke about how ironic it may seem to have Grant’s Library in MS. Almost like my northern brother, Mike, coming down here to conquer and capture his beloved, an Ole Miss (that northern school) Beauty Queen. “He gave me a big life,” she said. And even after death, he’s still getting all the publicity.

This morning the doves are singing, the wind chimes are ringing, and the Great Dane Carmen is napping. The bride and Groom slept in the bedroom that was home to Mrs Julia Grant during the Occupation. Sitting on the screen porch of this magnificent Antebellum home, I feel I’ve gone back in time. I’m waiting for the Love Bug to wake up, and wishing so much my brother could have known her. He would have loved her contrariness.

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Life in the Fast Lane

June 11, 2013 by mountainmornings

I’m on the road again. It’s a brutal ride in one day to Nashville, filled with trucks, billboards, country music, and this time I brought an audiobook along for fun. Inspired by our trip to see Gatsby at our newest cineplex, I’m listening to Z : a Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, by Therese Anne Fowler. Zelda Sayre was nearly 18 years old in Montgomery, AL when she first met the author, masquerading as a soldier in 1918.

The book takes Zelda’s point of view since really all we’ve ever heard about her was that she was crazy and institutionalized. Her father was a judge in their Southern town and marrying the Northern carpetbagger, against her parents advice, seemed like a good idea at the time. And that’s where I am now, in a wi-fi free zone somewhere in TN, when she gets off the train for the first time in NYC. She’s going to meet Scott at St Patrick’s Cathedral, with a priest.

Excitement is building, I can’t wait for them to meet  Pablo Picasso, the Hemingways and Gertrude Stein! And to find out if she was really mentally ill, or just another smart woman not willing to compromise or subsume her life to align it with her husband. The Flapper once told me about an aunt who stopped cleaning the house, and stopped cooking after one or two too many babies. She was sent away to an asylum, and never returned.

When I left this morning, I heard that Richmond Airport had been evacuated because of a “serious threat.” The Rocker was flying but not through this VA airport, so I just kept packing the car. Then I heard on an NPR station that Princeton University was evacuated:

“Please evacuate the campus and all university offices immediately and go home unless otherwise directed by your supervisor,” the school’s website message said. “Do not return to campus for any reason until advised otherwise.” http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/11/us/new-jersey-princeton-evacuation/index.html?iref=allsearch

Fitzgerald attended Princeton and Joyce Carol Oates, a Princeton Prof, tweeted: “At some schools, like Princeton, there is a formal honor code. But “honor” shouldn’t be just for undergraduates.”  I wonder if Fitzgerald, who just missed serving in WWI, could have imagined a world where bomb threats are called in to his alma mater. Where newspaper reporters, a nearly extinct breed who would rather risk jail than give up their sources, have no choice when their emails are hacked. Where buttons are pushed in New Mexico and people are killed in Pakistan? Unknown

 

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Imagine

June 8, 2013 by mountainmornings

Imagine a time when women were addressed by their husband’s name, Mrs Andrew Ford for example. Imagine a time when we couldn’t vote, or inherit property. I know, it’s hard for us to imagine all this, although when I went off to college I was not allowed to wear pants on the street or in any fine restaurant. We were not given a tie, like a man who might show up tie-less, and told we could now enter their dining establishment, we were just scooted out. Girls were dying or becoming infertile because this was before Roe vs Wade, and back-alley abortions were as common as…coat hangers. Our lives were less than, and then we changed all that.

And Maybe the exPresident of France married a model, and maybe President Xi Jinping of China married a pop singer. But our President married a no-nonsense lawyer. And good for Michelle, for not tolerating a heckler. Bravo! “I do not do this.” Haven’t we all wanted to shout that to the roof tops? I do not mop floors! I do not bake cookies! I do not join PTAs!! I know, I did all those things, but still… I remember when a cousin told me she just doesn’t cook, and I thought to myself, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Shame on you people who thought Michelle was acting like an “angry Black woman.” Here we go again, trying to restrain our evil womanly ways, and spinning it like it’s a racist thing. I was so happy she came out of her First Lady persona to call out a heckler, at a gay fundraiser. She went right up in her face, she got in her grille. And that’s just the way you want to fight, standing up for yourself, defending your right to be there, to speak your mind. So it’s fitting we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of a little known English Suffragette this month, Emily Davison.

At the 1913 Epsom Derby in Manchester, Emily threw herself into tho ring to place a Suffragette banner on the King’s horse, at full gallup. Good idea, bad execution, since 4 days later she died of her injuries.  An active, determined fighter for women’s voting rights, “She was frequently arrested for acts ranging from causing a public disturbance to burning post boxes and was sentenced to a month’s hard labour in Strangeways after throwing rocks at chancellor David Lloyd George’s carriage. During her sentence, she went on hunger strike and blockaded herself into her cell, leading prison staff to turn a hose on her and almost fill her room with water.”                                                   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-22826644

Today, it is hard to believe that we had to witness yet another panel of mostly military men (yes, there was 1 woman) sitting before Congress. And exploring the level of sexual assault in the services has reminded me of the Catholic Church looking into pedophilia and priests. The word clueless comes to mind. So, I’m asking our First Lady, a staunch supporter of the military, to step up; tell Congress and the Pentagon we don’t do this. American women are not only wearing pants in the street and in battle today, they are bringing home the bacon once they return in record numbers, and they are being treated as less than by their superior officers. Please sign this petition: https://www.thisispersonal.org942532_492383090840563_145442712_n  And Michelle, if you want to stay home for your daughter’s birthday this weekend, that’s fine by me!

 

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What’s the Story Morning Glory

June 6, 2013 by mountainmornings

“Hello Mrs Miller, this is Harvey Johnson can I speak to Debra Sue?” Did you hear about Hugo and Kim; did they really get pinned? And are you guessing where I’m going? No, Bob and I did not play in Bye Bye Birdie in high school, although come to think of it, that would have been swell. But after hearing about our government’s secret court order to direct Verizon, my cell carrier and virtually every family member and friend’s too, to turn over their metadata, not sometimes, but on an “ongoing basis,” I was flabbergasted. Or to use a more British term, since the Guardian broke the story, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order Gobsmacked!

OK, slowly but surely I realize that privacy is becoming so last year. Everybody is tweeting, linking in, texting and Facebooking their lives away in public. But at least you can decide which picture goes up on Facebook. Look at me, I’m blogging to you right now, but at least I’m in charge of what I’m saying. I control what can be seen, and try to keep some sense of privacy by referring to my kids with pseudonyms. Now, I’m assuming, the NSA knows how often and how long I talk with the Bride. And who I’m voting for on The Voice!  BL5Da16CQAAqdjZ.jpg-large

Now you know too. I love The Voice, I admit it, send me to Gitmo.

Remember when I told you how our little town was the first in the country to outright ban the use of drones? Well that brave measure came from Charlottesville’s Rutherford Institute,  a nonprofit organization “…dedicated to the defense of civil liberties and human rights.” It seems fitting that Mr Jefferson’s Village would host such an organization. And the Rutherford’s director, constitutional law attorney John W Whitehead, recently wrote a book that has a few tongues wagging. A Government of Wolves posits we are fast becoming a police state – think about the overused and possibly racist “stop and frisk” programs in big cities, and think about when the city of Boston was put on a lockdown after the Marathon bombing.

The book “…paints a chilling portrait of a nation in the final stages of transformation into a police state, complete with surveillance cameras, drug-sniffing dogs, SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, blood draws at DUI checkpoints, mosquito drones, tasers, privatized prisons, GPS tracking devices, zero tolerance policies, overcriminalization, and free speech zones.”   https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/on_the_front_lines/nprs_all_things_considered_weekend_edition_spotlights_constitutional_attorn

And this week SCOTUS rules in Maryland V King that the police can take your DNA just for being arrested! Secretly investigating newspaper reporters for possible security leaks is one thing, but as one intrepid news anchor named Roaseane Roaseannadanna used to say,  “Well, Jane, it just goes to show you, it’s always something–if it ain’t one thing, it’s another.” Or as Former Vice-President Al Gore said in a tweet: “In a digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22793851

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What’s in a Purse?

June 4, 2013 by mountainmornings

In “Purse Politics; Tote and Vote,” the NYTimes thought it might be fun to do a puff piece on what women Senate and Congress members carry with them all the time. And thanks to Jezebel, I found it! Sen Claire MacCaskill said, “I think most of us, while we may look at the cute little purses, our lives don’t fit in a cute little purse. Our lives fit something that is in between a purse and a briefcase, and that’s what I carry.” http://jezebel.com/new-york-times-profiles-powerful-congresswomen-and-thei-511022241

Right, something in between, like a big purse…a tote maybe. In 2013 we have a record number of women on The Hill, 20 in the Senate and 81 in the House, and all we want to know about are the things they carry? iPads and phones, chap sticks and wallets? This article led to a bit of stream of consciousness for me, so follow along if possible.

A book on my teenage children’s summer reading list was, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. It just so happens their English teacher Mr Shea was a friend of the author, and this book has been coined the next best thing to Hemingway in writing fiction about war. It won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger. Unlike lady senators, soldiers in the Vietnam War carried mosquito netting, writing paper, letters from home and tarps to keep the jungle at bay; “For the most part they carried themselves with dignity.”

And I started to think about the things I carry around hither and yon. The damnable iPhone leaves me feeling rudderless should I forget it, and because of my shoulder problem, I’ve switched to a smaller summer purse. I sling it cross-body like a bandolier setting forth to do battle every day with life in the country. Keys, check! Water, absolutely! Wallet is a must have, along with all those plastic cards that let retailers know all my personal information. I’m holding out at Panerra Bread, why do you need one of their cards, really?

When I was working for a newspaper, I always had a small notebook and pencil with me, very old school Lois Lane. Now, I just send myself a text on my phone if I need to remember something. And my text said “WWII and sex.” I’d been listening to NPR’s “All Things Considered” about our GIs and prostitutes in Normandy around the end of the war. Mary Louise Roberts wrote her non-fiction book titled, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France, to bring some attention to some of the lesser known evils of war; like the rise of VD in our troops and the increase in African American soldiers charged and promptly hanged for rape in Le Havre.  http://www.npr.org/2013/05/31/187350487/sex-overseas-what-soldiers-do-complicates-wwii-history

Soldiers to senators, writers to doctors, we all carry a microcosm of meaning with us every day. Diaper bags are toted everywhere with new moms and dads, and they always have less to carry with the second and third child. Still I’d rather read a book about what lady legislators actually do, and how their approach to politics may differ from their male colleagues. What kinds of policy are they willing to compromise on, when do they stand and fight for a bill. Are they cookie-cutter voters with their party mates? Do they bring in cookies for their aides? Are they furious with the GOP for trying to repeal Obamacare for the 36th time? Is a woman fundamentally different in building consensus?

Because in the end, it’s not about what we carry, it’s about what we do with it once we get there. Let’s see; can you guess who is the DC lawyer, the San Francisco businesswoman, the Chicago child psychologist and the Nashville ER doctor?

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Still Crazy

June 2, 2013 by mountainmornings

Well folks, 34 years ago tomorrow I was busily sweeping up around the swimming pool and hoping the sky would clear up for my wedding day. Bob was trying to find the rabbi, in an age before cell phones, and got lost in Livingston.

We did everything wrong. We were not only co-habiting before the wedding, we bought a house, got pregnant and moved all in that same year – the trifecta of stress inducing change. Oh, and Bob started his first job as an Assistant Director of an ER; it was 1979.

The Deer Hunter won an Academy Award; Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” won the Grammy’s Record of the Year; the Iranian Hostage Crisis happened while Carter was in the White House; Mother Theresa won the Nobel Peace prize for her work in India, and in PA, a nuclear reactor had a meltdown on Three Mile Island.

We, surprisingly, survived after all these years. Through shoulder and back surgeries, through deaths of parents and our siblings, through 3 miscarriages, through 2 more monumental moves. One back to NJ from the Berkshires, and this last (I hope) to the Blue Ridge Mountains. What, you may ask, are we doing right?

Well for one thing, we talk A LOT. We can easily be quiet together, don’t get me wrong, but there’s always something that needs discussing. I will say, “Did you hear that author speak about her book “Gulp” on NPR?” He will say, “Yeah she was fascinating.” Then I’ll ask him why my shoulder still hurts, and he will say, “Your problem is ‘ballistic movement’ with your AC joint.” I will say “What?” And usually this will lead to a long explanation, so I will interject, “What should we do for dinner?” And usually we end up with, “Don’t get me started on health care in this country…” Full disclosure, we both think Obamacare didn’t go far enough to effect real change.

And for another thing, we still LAUGH. We can still kid around together, we can call each other out on things, maybe because that time when we went to the Prom together feels like yesterday. http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/05/19/us/20110519_PROM_USERGEN-5.html I forgave him for going to Woodstock without me, and he forgave me for setting up housekeeping in Westchester first. We’re on the same side in this game they call marriage, and that’s maybe one of the most important lessons I’ve had to learn.

The truth is, we made a pact to renegotiate the marriage contract every 5 years. Here’s a news alert for newlyweds, gay and straight:

It’s never equal you know, never a 50/50 split. Some days it’s 70/30 and others it’s 51/49.

I wanted to be closer to family once the Rocker arrived, he wanted to open an Urgent Care. Every anniversary we’d celebrate at a fine French restaurant, but this year L’Etoile is closed on Monday. Mon Dieu, what to do? Maybe we’ll just use the Maps App to find a new favorite restaurant. Man, look at those bat sleeves Robin!

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Tchin Tchin

May 30, 2013 by mountainmornings

Let’s raise our glasses, or our coffee cups, to the French! Today Marriage Equality is de rigeur in this predominantly Catholic country. Legalizing same-sex unions wasn’t easy, even though the mayor of Paris is openly gay. In fact it’s the biggest shift in policy since abolishing the death penalty in 1981…I wonder if SCOTUS is listening? I am ecstatic, and hoping for a complete overhaul of the wedding industry, which could use a touch of LGBT creativity.

But it’s not just the business of getting married that may be overhauled as state after state grants gays the right to marry. A recent article in The Atlantic posits that we heteros may learn a thing or two from gay marriage.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/06/the-gay-guide-to-wedded-bliss/309317/

“Same-sex spouses, who cannot divide their labor based on preexisting gender norms, must approach marriage differently than their heterosexual peers.”

Liza Mundy has gathered most of the data from around the world on the sociological complications of straight vs gay marriage. Who will pay the mortgage? Who will run the kids from school to tennis? Who cooks and who will do the laundry? There is even a study where researchers threw a bunch of toys out on the floor with a child and its parents to see how parents interact during play…sure enough, it was the hetero dads who played lincoln logs in the corner by themselves.

I was in a bank line that wasn’t moving the other day, so I struck up a conversation with the dad and a stroller directly in front of me. I told him about my Love Bug, and he told me all about the same age baby girl he was caring for, his daughter, who was happily smiling at me whenever I looked at her. By way of explanation he said she was getting fussy so he thought he’d venture out. Then he volunteered that his wife was finishing a fellowship at UVA and they were moving to Seattle in just a few weeks. I said that must be exciting, and told him about my son-in-law’s fellowship in Nashville. But he didn’t seem very excited about moving cross country, and then the line started to move and he was gone.

I didn’t ask him “What do you do,” as I know some others might have done to try and pigeonhole his motives for staying at home to care for his daughter. I could see very well what he did, he had a clean, smiling, happy baby with him. I love to see young men caring for their children, during the week, when it is obvious this is their role for now, while the wife earns the money. Religious zealots, who fear gay marriage for whatever reasons, should take heart to learn that gay men are just as likely to denote one partner to stay-at-home (“specialize”) in their marriage as heterosexual partners. According to the latest Census:

“32 percent of married heterosexual couples with children have only one parent in the labor force, compared with 33 percent of gay-male couples with children. (Lesbians also specialize, but not at such high rates, perhaps because they are so devoted to equality, or perhaps because their earnings are lower—women’s median wage is 81 percent that of men—and not working is an unaffordable luxury.)”

Maybe this fact alone should put an end to the “mommy wars?” My friend Lee was an assistant DA in MA, a high powered attorney. She found a wonderful nanny, from France in fact, and had a very supportive husband with more reasonable working hours. It never occurred to us, both feminists, that we might be at war because I chose to stay at home!

So look out all you newly married heterosexual couples. Gay marriage just may have a profound effect on our culture, in a very good way. The old playing field is getting some brand new sod, and everything you may have once thought was traditionally your duty in marriage, is up for debate. Now, Bob, about that cooking class in Italy…

First French gay couple wed

Meet the first French couple – Vincent Autin, left, and his partner Bruno Boileau sign a document during their marriage in Montpellier, southern France, on May 29, 2013

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/05/29/meet-frances-first-married-gay-couple/#ixzz2UmudbzoC

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Friendship 101

May 27, 2013 by mountainmornings

“There are people who make an art form out of not being intense. They can remain on an amusing yet completely repetitive level. I can’t operate that way.”

Do you remember when I said I wanted to join a writer’s forum, and the only way to log in was with a twitter account, so I joined the Twit-o-Sphere? Well, it’s through that writer’s website, “Medium,” that I found myself reading an important essay this morning on friendship: “The Games Women Play: Part 2” By Lauren Mechling (author, editor and saint).

The author interviews another author, Susanna Sonnenberg. about the ebb and flow of friendship.  She Matters, is a memoir  of Sonnenberg’s twenty most important female friendships done as a chapter-per-friend. They talk about neediness and intimacy, about expectations and loss. https://medium.com/the-lauren-papers/a30ac0d4b1d0

Sonnenberg asks, “What do you want out of a friend?” Mechling says she wants somebody she can call on the phone any hour of the day or night. Which means she wants her friend to answer her calls, and be there if she

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needs her. I had a different take on that question, although maybe it’s in the same general category.

I want a friend who knows where the spoons are in my kitchen.

For me it’s about the comfort of showing up and listening. My BFF Lee from MA showed up at the Rocker’s bris with armloads of flowers from her garden. No one asked her, she just knew what I needed and she always knew the right thing to say, to bring me back to myself. To help me see my best self, and even coax me toward grace when I was listing away. Here is Lee to the left at the Bride’s wedding; and the Bride’s Duke roomie Sally on the right, who just had a baby last week!

Obviously, no one person can fulfill every longing we may have for a friend or a mate for that matter. Is she intellectually curious; fun to be around; supportive in a good way; adventurous? We all know the sunny-day vs rainy-day friends paradigm. It’s a rare and wonderful thing when that type combines – it’s the lottery of friendship! And yes, things do change once our identity shifts into motherhood. There can be rifts, and ruptures, not all friends can stand the ebb and flow, the test of time.

Like a good marriage, a good friend will still love you with all your faults. “If I show you this, will you still love me? If I show you this, will you still be with me?”

Honesty and loyalty, pretty much says it all. Like the authors, I need to have a certain intensity in order to fuel a friendship, we need to go deep sometimes, soul-baringly deep. I feel lucky to have found a few good friends at this stage of my life, in my empty nest. ps The spoons are to the left of the kitchen sink.

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Care to Camo

May 25, 2013 by mountainmornings

It’s a weekend for sales. It’s a weekend for barbeque. And it’s a weekend to remember our fallen soldiers; only this time instead of waxing on about our military might, and the bravery exhibited by countless men and women in uniform, I thought I’d take a different tack.

I have to say I’m a bit embarrassed by: 1)  the crop of sexual harassment charges popping up in all forms; 2)  I’m super-shocked at the continuing hunger strike that is going on at Gitmo. But now I have to think that the pint-sized para-militray operation known as the Boy Scouts of America is taking one tiny step in the right direction. So it came as a bit of a shock to read that 3) Justice Antonin Scalia, a weekend scout leader for decades, has resigned!

“Some of the happiest memories of my adult life have been as a scoutmaster. Huddling under blankets around the campfire, and so forth. But now, all of that has been ruined.Ruined.” http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/05/scalia-resigns-post-as-scoutmaster.html

Let me be clear. I always wanted to be a Brownie. My foster mom didn’t drive, so it was a given that I couldn’t join those coveted ranks and wear that precious uniform with the beauty pageant-like ribbon decorating my chest. I had to sit in sacred Heart Church, in the noxious maroon uniform of Catholic school girls everywhere, bow-tied tight, and just watch as the Brownie troop entered, marching in time, stage to the right of Mary Mother of God. It was unnerving.

And except for finding out that the youngest little Girl Scouts now have a troop called “Princesses” in Cville, I’m delighted to find out that this largest of all organizations dedicated to All-Things-Girl has always had an all-inclusive policy when it comes to their members’ sexuality:  “Girl Scouts of the USA and its local councils and troops value diversity and inclusiveness and do not discriminate or recruit on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, national origin, or physical or developmental disability,” reads a statement on the organization’s blog. http://www.advocate.com/youth/2012/12/19/3-big-differences-boy-scouts-versus-girl-scouts

Hurray for Girl Power! Now, I’m not sure about that SCOTUS article, since it did seem rather tongue in cheek. But if Scalia did resign, well that is his right. I personally, on this chilly May morning, couldn’t imagine cuddling with him around any campfire, ever!

Thank you President Obama for having the courage to send out the message that this war on terror is not sustainable. That our military needs to be focusing on other things, and that terrorists throughout the world are better caught by intelligent spying and good old fashioned police work. Self-radicalizing nut jobs are becoming much more of an issue world-wide. If a soldier can be hacked to death in broad daylight in a London suburb, why did it not surprise me that a woman, who is a cub scout leader, talked him out of killing anyone else? She said it was better her, than her child who was on the bus with her. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2329236/Woolwich-attack–Moment-heroic-woman-tries-remonstrate-knife-wielding-soldier-killer-police-arrived-scene.html

Now that’s what I call courage.

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Sounds of Silence

May 22, 2013 by mountainmornings

To the town of Moore, OK – Please accept my sincerest apologies for Wolf Blitzer. Did you see the part where he asked a young woman with her 18 month old if she thought God was with her on Monday because she had the guts to get out of her bathtub and get into her car and drive south, away from that tornado. And when she didn’t answer fast enough he kept pummeling her with this most important question, “Was God with you?” Finally, she smiled and said, “Well actually I’m an atheist.” Sorry Wolf, guess God didn’t run that twister into 2 elementary schools for kicks and giggles either.

This is what I was starting to write about on Monday night; not the sounds of a tornado and the bloviating sounds of carnivorous reporters. I was going to tell you about the sweet country sounds of Spring.

I have a beautiful sister, Kay, who has lived alone in NYC for far too long IMHO. When she visits me, the silence of the country is deafening. No taxis, no jackhammers (well there are the woodpeckers), no gun shots or calls for help. I take that back, we do have hunters shooting in the woods on occasion. No, really, she finds our little mountainous region a bit too serene for her taste. Not much to do, except maybe go to the Earlysville firemen’s spaghetti dinner, or the farmer’s “City” market in Cville. Well not anymore.

This morning I was helping Bob plant a few fig trees in the lower forty. By “helping” I mean I was directing and supervising and cleaning up. Our soil is Albemarle red clay, as hard as bricks and mixed in with flint rocks as big as baseballs. Added to that, I have a bum right shoulder. Lifting and hauling my beautiful little 20+ pounder Love Bug around the last couple of visits has taken its toll. Some physical therapist should invent the grandmother workout – prepare your body for the most lovely, intense physical labor ever! And Jane Fonda should NOT do the video. Here she is very proud of herself for pulling herself up in her crib after a nap! 264582_10200580364125708_198299485_n

Anyway, I was in the woods with Bob when I turned and saw these big, ugly, larvae-looking brown bugs clinging to a small evergreen. I dropped everything and insisted that Bob get his glasses and get a look at them. It’s happened. The cicadas are here!

I’ve been hearing about it on the news, every 17 years la de da. I really didn’t pay much attention, but sure enough, here it is in black and white: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/05/13/theyre-here-cicadas-are-emerging/

It’s been raining for days and the ground temperature must have just hit 65 degrees. Bob said, “Listen.” So I listened and screened out the  usual noises of tree frogs and crickets and those pesky woodpeckers and various birdsongs, and underneath it all was this whoosh. Whoose Whoose Whoose. It’s like I wanted the Rocker to come and record it, it was that good. It was like a helicopter getting ready to take off in the distance…it’s the cicadas…

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And that, coupled with the magnificent red cardinal who’s been banging his head against my guest bedroom windows for almost a week now, should put my sister at ease. His mate must be nesting nearby, and he’s telling that mirror reflection of himself to go take a hike. He sits on the sill, then will fly up, wings extended in glorious crimson and attack the window! It’s the territorial imperative at its finest. I thought about that for a second. We could really end all war if we could just get over this territorial thing.photo copy

So please Kay, come back to Virginia. We love you and want to see you.

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