This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 8 Pepe 0008. (October 2019)

 

“It wasn’t enough to get what you wished for, there had to be someone around who envied you for it.”
Hill, Reginald. The Woodcutter: A Novel (p. 254). HarperCollins.

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

A. TIME PASSES EVEN THOUGH IT IS NOT A FOOTBALL GAME (The home team always loses in the end):
Today is my 80th Birthday. Over the past week, I attended three birthday parties and in a few minutes, I am off to the fourth party in the Golden Hills. The first party occurred last week at Peter and Barrie’s house. We had driven there a few days after returning from our trip through the Pacific Northwest (see below). My granddaughter Amanda, her mom Hiromi, my son Jason and grandson Anthony arrived Wednesday evening all bringing gifts.

The Gang. 

                           

Amanda and I.
At the hospital the next day, my doctor told me that recent tests have been positive enough that, should they continue like that for a while longer, he may be able to terminate treatment even if the existing growth remains.

The second party, more or less, occurred on Saturday evening. Naida’s son-in-law Mark had traveled to Bodega Bay and returned with bushels of fresh oysters for his annual oyster get together. Naida had purchased a birthday cake for me. It had green icing and imbedded in a circle on the top, Oreo cookies with candy eyes. After shucking the oysters and downing our fill of delicious bivalves while sitting under the great mulberry tree that covers the deck, Naida brought out the cake with four candles aflame and everyone sang Happy Birthday. I looked appropriately bemused, blew out the candles and along with everyone else ate the cake. After, we shared photographs of Jennifer, (Naida’s other daughter) and her husband’s recent journey through Provence as well as those of our recent trip. I enjoyed myself immensely.

Pookie blowing out the candles.
One odd thing occurred that evening. While enjoying devouring the oysters, I suddenly felt that a glass of the sparkling wine everyone else was drinking would go well with my meal. So, I got up to go into the kitchen to get a wine glass. When I walked into the house, however, I suddenly could not find the kitchen. I stood confused in the middle of the room for a few moments before I was able to regain my bearings. This was the first time that had happened to me and it frightened me a bit. Was this the beginning of ———–  Nevertheless, after the initial shock of my confusion had passed, I was able to amuse myself trying to find my way back to reality.

The third party happened on Sunday. My beloved sister Maryanne threw a party for me in Oakland. Naida and I decided to take the train from Sacramento to the Bay Area instead of driving. On the train, we met our dog walker (Boo Boo the Barking Dog was being minded by the dog walker’s daughter) and her girlfriend on their way to SF for a two-day mini vacation. They managed, much to my embarrassment and I admit pleasure, to get everyone in the car to sing happy birthday (could this be considered another birthday party, making it five in all?). Naida and I got off the train at the Richmond station where my sister picked us up. She drove us to her son Brendan’s new home in the Richmond Hills. Shortly after their marriage, Brendan and Ashley purchased a house previously owned by a landscape designer who left behind a fantastic garden including a few fig-trees, the ripe fruit of which I happily plucked from the trees and greedily devoured as we walked about.

We then drove to Jack London Square on the Oakland waterfront where we had lunch at a southeast Asian restaurant called Farmhouse Kitchen. After lunch, the wait-staff surrounded our table accompanied by clanging cymbals and banging drums sang an odd version of Happy Birthday.

The party in Oakland
After the party, Maryanne drove us back to the train station and we returned to Sacramento.

On Tuesday, my actual birthday, I drove into the Golden Hills where HRM and some members of the Scooter Gang (Kaleb and Ethan) baked me a birthday cake. The ingredients included crushed Oreo’s. I thought it was delicious.

Hayden, Ethan, Kaleb, Pookie, and the cake.

 

The days since my birthday have passed leaving little behind in my memory. The passing days often leave little behind in my memory now. I wonder if that means only that which remains in my memory exists or, for that matter, ever existed. As I wrote the previous sentence, I turned to Naida and asked her, “Just what have we done since Tuesday?” She replied, “We recovered from our trip and your birthday parties.” She also reminded me that we went to Goodwill to buy this year’s collection of Hawaiian shirts as her birthday present to me. I then recalled that we did (an act of creation?). We had bought a smashing green shirt with an unusual oriental motif and a silk shirt with glorious large red flowers on a black background. (Note: I insist on buying my Hawaiian shirts second-hand at either Goodwill or Denio’s Auction only.) Naida also reminded me that this week she paid many thousands of dollars in income tax. Me, I no longer pay tax or for that matter even to file — it is sort of like my insistence on buying only second-hand Hawaiian shirts, paying taxes or even filing when one has no income after retirement other than Social Security offends me. He or she should neither pay taxes nor be forced to tell the IRS that they are living off SS and buying second-hand Hawaiian shirts.

One day, Naida was invited to a nearby retirement home for lunch with an author residing there. I tagged along because of my interest in meeting the author and because in the same facility there was to be held a Renaissance Society lecture on Plate Tectonics we both were interested in. The author was a husky-voiced woman of 87 who had written about 30 books mostly fairly popular historical romances. You know, seduction and sex among Elizabethan nobility and the like. She struck me as being remarkably and pleasantly mercenary about her artistic career.

After lunch, we sat in on a gathering of residents at the home at which some of then recited from journals they had written. It was the day commemorating the Kent State Massacres. One woman had been a professor at that University and there on campus that day with her husband. She read a fascinating account of the events. Near the end of her reading, she broke down crying when speaking of those that died, she read the line, “They were just children. For God’s sake, they were only children.”

We then moved to another room to listen to The Renaissance Society lecture. The Society is a program offered by Sacramento State University that we had joined a few months ago. It allows old people like us to attend University level classes and lectures, often taught by retired professors probably bored by retirement. It was very interesting. The lecturer had been a US AIR Force officer who had been sent by the military to study plate tectonics when it was still an emerging science in order to better understand how the movement of the plates affects the accuracy of mapping satellites and to examine their impact on the underwater terrain in order to improve submarine navigation.

Dick and I had breakfast this morning to bring each other up on things Hayden. After an eighth grade of worrisome incipient adolescent rebellion, HRM’s grades have improved to mostly A’s and his behavior in class has returned to the type of conduct that consistently led to school awards for deportment. Perhaps this change can be explained by a story his guidance teacher told Dick.

At the beginning of the school year, there was a new student in the class. He was an upperclassman from Thailand. He could not speak or understand English. The teacher tried to use Google Translation to communicate with him but each time she showed him the translation the student would shake his head. The teacher grew frustrated and impatient. Hayden raised his hand and when the teacher called on him he said, “The translation is wrong.” “How do you know?” the frustrated teacher barked at him. “Can you speak Thai?” “As a matter of fact I can,” Hayden responded. Dubious and annoyed she said, “Let’s see you try,” obviously believing he was putting her on.

Now, Hayden’s first language was, in fact, Thai, but he hid it because when he began school in the US he was classified as a nonEnglish speaker and as a result, some primary school teachers thought he was slow. He then turned to the Thai student and to everyone’s amazement they both began speaking rapidly and extensively in Thai. He now remains the unofficial translator for the Thai student while he learns English. The teachers are pleased. Hayden is pleased that his classmates are impressed with his linguistic prowess and Dick and I are pleased that the teachers see him as a good kid again and that HRM appears confident once more.

 
B. Odds and Ends:

 
1. One day while I was discussing politics in general and Republican politics during the late sixties and seventies in the eastern suburbs of Sacramento specifically, the friend I was talking to exclaimed: “Out of Orangevale came the John Birch Society,” and “In Sacramento Rush got his start and the Lovers of Limbaugh were born.”

2. On another day while talking on the phone to a friend who lives on the East Coast, he mentioned that an ex-client of mine who I believed was a good friend as well as a client, “Hates your guts.” I was taken aback by this especially since, among other things, I had saved him (the client) from being indicted and rescued a major project of his two weeks before he would have lost it as a result of ignoring my advice for two years. “Why?” I asked.

“He said you fucked up, lost all your money and squandered your career,” he answered.

I thought about this. True, I had fucked up and lost my money, but I had done this before, several times in fact and always came back, but this last time I was 69 years old and I had to decide whether to struggle once again or spend my declining years in genteel poverty in a foreign country, raising HRM, and living a pleasant dissolute life by the sea or in the mountains or among the seedy dives of Bangkok. I chose the latter. “He’s probably just jealous,” I decided. After all, “Life is what it throws at you.” (Ivan Doig. “Last Bus to Wisdom.”)
Take care of yourselves.

 

 

 

 

PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY:

 

 

 

A BRIEF COMMENTARY ON RECENT WORLD EVENTS.
For the past two hundred years or so the countries of the West (primarily Western Europe and North America) and the two large empires of the East (Russia and China) clashed over influence and control of the smaller countries along the borders of the two empires. At first, the conflict was mostly commercial (trade and the plundering of resources). After the Second World War, ideology was added to the mix (the extension of Democracy or the prevention of the expansion of the totalitarian form of Communism). During this period the West managed, for the most part, to resist the incursions of the East and deny it the military presence and control of the resources of the area (oil and trade) that they coveted for so long.

Recently, with the ascendency of the Trump administration, this relatively stable balance of power has all changed.

It is important to begin by exploring the motivations of Vladimir Putin in order to understand much of the actions and policies of the Kremlin in the past few years.

First, as is true with most revolutions, the inevitable reaction to the cause following the successful revolt often results in the reinstitution of the structures of the old regime usually with new titles (but the same slogans). In Russia, the new oligarchs, like the soviet commissars before them, have decorated their dachas and palaces like the Tsars from whom they had been taken. The old prisons have been reopened and refilled once again with the enemies of the state. The so-called secret services have been restored and given new names.

The Tsar’s rentier aristocracy was replaced by the industrial Commissars. The Commissars have now been replaced by a financial/commercial oligarchy. True, the Commissars were governmental employees at the time they acquired their wealth and power and the oligarchs are not, but like the landed aristocrats they still owe their wealth to the Tsar in the Kremlin and they cross him at their peril.

Second, Putin is not only the head of the Russian government but the chief and undoubtedly the wealthiest oligarch of them all.

Third, Putin is a Russian, a child of the Rodina, and as such the humiliation of Soviet Russia by the American commercial and military empire is a stain that any patriot would work tirelessly to remove.

Fourth, he was previously a low-level bureaucrat in the Soviet secret service (KGB) trained in espionage. As such, one would assume he is more comfortable with the strategies of subversion than those of military conquest.

Finally, he is extremely popular in Russia (and in many other areas of the world). Ninety-six percent of Russians approved of his military initiatives in Ukraine; ninety-five percent believed that America was goading Kyiv to persecute ethnic Russians in that country. Ninety-two percent believed the same situation existed in Russian enclaves in the Caucasus, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.

In brief, we have an exceedingly popular, short (he is a tiny but exceptionally athletic man), greedy, subversive nationalist with a special antipathy for the United States.

Initially, Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election victory of a totally unfit, ignorant and impulsive leader of the free world, whether or not Putin had a hand in either, were necessary pre-conditions for Russia to attempt to achieve their historical ambitions of creating an economic, political and physical buffer to the Rodina.

His first move had been the invasion of the Crimea. Although he was successful militarily on the ground, the response from the then unified West, made it clear that further military adventurism came with an economic and political cost to Russia too great to be ignored.

With the erosion of western unity following the two elections, and the recreation of a modern version of the Boyar aristocracy he appears to have become emboldened enough to take additional steps to restore the ancient geopolitical aspirations of Russia.
(To be continued)

 

 

 

 

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:

 

 

 

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN IDAHO, WYOMING, AND MONTANA (continued):
1. From Boise to Idaho Falls:

 

The next morning after breakfast we left for the long drive across southern Idaho. Upon leaving the city precincts, we crossed the bleak high desert covering eastern Oregon and Southern Idaho. During the hours and miles, Naida kept up a running narrative about the pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail along the same route, their hardships, technology, and social relationships. She told about the Native Americans who lived in the area prior to the arrival of the pioneers, how they lived, their horse breeding prowess, and their initial reactions to the arrival of the white immigrants. Eventually, as we approached the Snake River patches of green cultivated land, some of which were on the bottomland of the river and others on lands watered from the massive irrigation projects of the New Deal.

We eventually arrived at Shoshone Falls, about halfway between Boise and Idaho Falls. Until the installation of the nearby hydroelectric project diminished them, the falls were reputed to be higher than Niagara. Directly downstream from the falls the Snake passes through the steep canyon where in 1972 the entertainer Evel Knievel attempted unsuccessfully to jump across the canyon on a rocket-powered cycle. Although I had watched the failed attempt on television way back then, I had no idea how wide a canyon it actually was.

Shoshone Falls 

 

Knievel attempted to jump this canyon.

 

Following the brief diversion to the falls, we continued on. About halfway to Idaho Falls, we came upon a poorly signed detour on the Interstate. We became confused and took the wrong road and found ourselves traveling along a ten-mile detour, five miles out and five miles back. There appeared to be no place to turn around. After about two miles, I noticed an automobile parked at the edge of the road. As we approached, I realized it was a police car and mentioned it to Naida who was driving at the time. She tried to move to the left lane but couldn’t because a truck was passing us. Just as we approached the police car its backlights began blinking. We passed it. I then watched in the mirror as the cop pulled out, caught up to us, and motioned for us to pull over. This annoyed me since I suspected this was just a speed trap, especially since the rental car had California plates. We pulled over to the verge with the police car directly behind us. He walked over to the car, motioned to me to roll down the window and announced that we had failed to move over one lane when passing an emergency vehicle parked at the side of a road. After my failed protest, he gave us a ticket and returned to his vehicle.

Our rental vehicle was a new RAV4. It came without an owner’s manual. As a result, we could not figure out many of the intricacies of its operation. So, as Naida started up the car and while trying to determine how to put it into drive, it began rolling back and panic ensued. We crashed into the police car. Naida was mortified. I found it the amusing high point of the whole trip so far. The cop was non-plussed and since there was no serious damage simply told us to drive on carefully.

A few miles after returning to the Interstate we arrived a Rupert Idaho, a small town where Naida spent part of her childhood. Almost every storefront, many of which were empty, had a plaque affixed to the facade declaring it a historical landmark and telling a bit about its history. What fascinated me most was a massive fabric shop catering primarily to the quilting crowd.

Naida at the Rupert town square. 

           

Pookie in the fabric shop.

 

We returned to the interstate and arrived in Idaho Falls at dusk. We drove directly to Naida’s half-sister Christy’s home. After a few minutes of relaxation, Christy got into her camper and we followed her in the Toyota for about 45 minutes until we arrived in the mountains to the east of the city at an area called the Palisades. There, we turned into a box canyon that terminated at the foot of Sheep Mountain and after a brief climb on the curving, unlighted dirt roads that snaked up the side of the canyon we arrived at Christy’s small but comfortable A-frame cabin where we would spend the next few days.

 

2. Christy and the Cabin at Sheep Creek.

 

Christy a hard-living, hard-drinking, dope-smoking, gun-toting, Mormon hating, radical woman of the Continental Divide spent her life hunting, marrying, selling real estate, boating up and down the Snake River, raising children and cooking the greatest pancakes I had ever tasted. That first evening as we got settled, Cristy mentioned that moose, grizzly bears, and other large mammals visit the cabin now and then. I told her about my pathological fear of bears especially those of the grizzly kind. She responded, “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you,” and immediately strapped on her pistol which she kept on her hip the entire time I was there. How can you not bond with someone like that?

We spent the next few days eating pancakes in the morning, sitting on lawn chairs by the cabin staring at the palisades across the valley, smoking, drinking and telling stories. Christy loved her third husband very much. He shared her lifestyle, carousing, boating, racing their ski-mobiles through the forests in winter and the like. She was devastated when he died in an unfortunate accident.

One morning Christy drove us in her van around the valley. We stopped at the base of Sheep Mountain. Naida told me that the canyon and Sheep Mountain had been leased by her grandfather from BLM when he was raising sheep on a ranch somewhere near Idaho Falls. During the summer, he would drive his sheep into the canyon where they would graze along the creek on the way to the slopes of the mountain where they would spend the season. He would spend most of the summer there with his sons and ranch hands and his sheepcamp.

A Sheepcamp.
We also walked along the trails and dirt roads. Naida would try to identify the flora that we passed by. At one point she mentioned that she thought the mountains thereabout were part of the Grand Teton mountain chain. If they were they were not particularly imposing. I decided to call them the Puny Teton Mountains.

On our last day there, Naida and I met with somemore of her relatives who we met in the nearby town of Swan Valley and then, after saying a sad goodbye to Christy, we left the Puny Tetons and headed to the Grand Tetons and the second half of our trip.

The Cabin. 

 

                   

 Christy, her pistol and me.

Naida and I at the head of the Sheep Creek Trail

 

 

The Palisades and Christy’s Boat.

 

(To be continued)

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

Today’s Poem: NEZAHUALCOYOTL

William Douglas Lansford and his wife Ruth were very active on California coastal protection especially the preservation of the Ballona Lagoon during my association with the efforts to conserve California’s irreplaceable coastal resources. Lansford was also a distinguished author. His Wikipedia page describes some of Lansford’s literary accomplishments as follows:

“Lansford began writing over 300 short stories and articles for American magazines the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Argosy, True, and other Men’s adventure magazines, Leatherneck Magazine, Stars and Stripes and many others. He wrote several non-fiction books such as the biographies Stranger than Fiction: The Real Life Adventures of Jack London (1958) and Pancho Villa (1965). The latter was filmed as Villa Rides in 1968 with Lansford doing an early draft of the screenplay.

“Lansford wrote many teleplays for American television series such as Four Star Playhouse, Wagon Train, Bonanza, The Rookies, Starsky and Hutch, CHiPs, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also wrote the screenplays for made for TV movies depicting Jesse James (The Intruders) and Charles Whitman (The Deadly Tower). He produced, directed, and wrote the film Adios East Los Angelos.”

Lansford passed away in 2013.

After reading my posting of Flower Song of Nezahualcoyotl in This and that (see above #72 above and in my blog https://josephpetrillo.wordpress.com/2019/06/27/this-and-that-from-re-thai-r-ment-by-3th-8-shadow-0008-june-27-2019/) Bill’s wife wrote me the following:

“Bill did a detailed outline for a mini-series on the conquest of Mexico (NOT Cortez centered) but never lived to do the scripts. In the process, he became so intrigued by Nahuatl poetry and its distinct style that he wrote a chapbook of original poems in that style.”

Here is that poem:

NEZAHUALCOYOTL

In the night Nezahualcoyotl awoke; indeed,

He awoke, bolting in the night,

In the darkness; under the moonless void, he awoke,

With racing thoughts of dark despair.

He, a King, our mighty Lord,

Poet of an Empire, Voice of Texcoco,

Thought of his Empire,

Of the Golden Orb of Fire –

Of Tonatiuh, Traveler of the Skies,

Drinker of Blood, Eater of Flesh,

Giver of Life to the World.

Where did the Golden Warrior, the Disk of Fire

Hide each night?

Into the belly of the Earth Monster they said he went;

Swallowed by the Eater of Graves, he, the Earth God,

Tlaltecuhtli.

There he slumbered, regaining his strength, his spirit,

As Nezahualcoyotl had once regained his spirit,

When youth was his and sleep was his beneath the gentle

light

Of Coyolxauhqui, Moon-Sister of the stars, of Huitzilopochtli.

Now Evil Spirits ruled the night; the Ghosts,

The fearsome heads roamed with fangs of flint and burning

eyes

And at the Crossroads the Crying Women waited for the unwary,

And sinners’ corpses, long decayed, rose from

Unholy graves to haunt the living.

Such were our times, my Lords,

That ancient Nezahualcoyotl could no longer sleep,

For slumber, peace, indeed, rest, eluded him and

His Poet’s mind burned like comets, like volcanos

in the night,

Grieving for his people –

Despairing for his country’s fate.

What did Nezahualcoyotl sense in the darkness

That none of us sensed?

Across the Lake; across glittering Texcoco Lake;

Our Moonlake; rested the Mightiest Lord on Earth.

The Emperor Axayacotl, Lord of Aztecs, of the Mexica,

Slept in his palace, amid the splendor of Tenochtitlan,

The Mother of Kingdoms, bellybutton of the Moon.

And now – as the Golden Warrior burst free of the

Monster’s throat;

Now, at the 9th hour, the hour of Tlaloc; indeed,

the end of darkness,

The Snake-drum Priests awoke to greet our Prince of Light –

Sun God – God of Life –

And blood flowed for golden Tonatiuh to drink;

And blood was sprinkled on his altars;

And prayers were chanted

And all was well, yet –

This night was the first when Nezahualcoyotl could not sleep;

No longer slumbered; indeed, could not court repose.

Uncle to the Ruler of Kings; father to 400 Princes;

Lord of Texcoco, Poet to the World –

Nezahualcoyotl found no rest.

And from his burning mind, his fears, his wisdom, and

his sorrow sprang

These words for men to ponder:

We are a river, flowing to the sea –

And we shall not return…

By William Lansford

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S SAPPY QUOTE:

 

 

 

The following was sent to me by my cousin Lou. It’s a little sappy and a little long-winded but at our age (Lou is a little older than I am) being a bit sappy and long-winded is how we spend much of our time.

“THIS IS RIGHT ON THE NOSE. …….READ IT SLOWLY… I DON’T KNOW WHO WROTE IT, BUT I AM GUESSING IT WAS A SENIOR!!! I FIRST STARTED READING THIS EMAIL AND WAS READING FAST UNTIL I REACHED THE THIRD SENTENCE. I STOPPED AND STARTED OVER READING SLOWER AND THINKING ABOUT EVERY WORD. THIS EMAIL IS VERY THOUGHT-PROVOKING. MAKES YOU STOP AND THINK.

AND THEN IT IS WINTER You know. . . time has a way of moving quickly and catching you unaware of the passing years.

It seems just yesterday that I was young, just married and embarking on my new life with my mate. Yet in a way, it seems like eons ago, and I wonder where all the years went. I know that I lived them all. I have glimpses of how it was back then and of all my hopes and dreams. But, here it is… the winter of my life and it catches me by surprise…How did I get here so fast? Where did the years go and where did my youth go?

I remember well seeing older people through the years and thinking that those older people were years away from me and that winter was so far off that I could not fathom it or imagine fully what it would be like. But, here it is…my friends are retired and getting grey…they move slower and I see an older person now. Some are in better and some worse shape than me…but, I see the great change….Not like the ones that I remember who were young and vibrant…but, like me, their age is beginning to show and we are now those older folks that we used to see and never thought we’d be.

Each day now, I find that just getting a shower is a real target for the day! And taking a nap is not a treat anymore… it’s mandatory! Cause if I don’t on my own free will… I just fall asleep where I sit!

And so…now I enter into this new season of my life unprepared for all the aches and pains and the loss of strength and ability to go and do things that I wish I had done but never did!

But, at least I know, that though the winter has come, and I’m not sure how long it will last…this I know, that when it’s over on this earth…it’s NOT over. A new adventure will begin!

Yes, I have regrets. There are things I wish I hadn’t done…things I should have done, but indeed, there are many things I’m happy to have done. It’s all in a lifetime.

So, if you’re not in your winter yet…let me remind you, that it will be here faster than you think. So, whatever you would like to accomplish in your life please do it quickly! Don’t put things off too long!

Life goes by quickly. So, do what you can today, as you can never be sure whether this is your winter or not! You have no promise that you will see all the seasons of your life…so, live for today and say all the things that you want your loved ones to remember…and hope that they appreciate and love you for all the things that you have done for them in all the years past!

“Life” is a gift to you. The way you live your life is your gift to those who come after. Make it a fantastic one.
LIVE IT WELL! ENJOY TODAY! DO SOMETHING FUN! BE HAPPY! HAVE A GREAT DAY!

REMEMBER:….
“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.
“LIVE HAPPY IN THIS YEAR AND EVERY YEAR!

LASTLY, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING:
TODAY IS THE OLDEST YOU’VE EVER BEEN, YET THE YOUNGEST YOU’LL EVER BE SO – ENJOY THIS DAY WHILE IT LASTS.
~Your kids are becoming you…….
~Going out is good.. Coming home is better!
~You forget names…. But it’s OK because other people forgot they even knew you!!!
~You realize you’re never going to be really good at anything
~The things you used to care to do, you no longer care to do, but you really do care that you don’t care to do them anymore.
~You sleep better on a lounge chair with the TV blaring than in bed. It’s called “pre-sleep”.
~You miss the days when everything worked with just an “ON” and “OFF” switch..
~You tend to use more 4 letter words … “what?”…”when?”… “what?” . ???
~Now that you can afford expensive jewelry, it’s not safe to wear it anywhere.
~You notice everything they sell in stores is “sleeveless”?!!!
~What used to be freckles are now liver spots.
~Everybody whispers.
~You have 3 sizes of clothes in your closet…. 2 of which you will never wear.
~But Old is good in some things: Old Songs, Old movies, and best of all, OLD FRIENDS!!

Stay well, “OLD FRIEND!” Send this on to other “Old Friends!” and let them laugh in AGREEMENT!!!
It’s Not What You Gather, But What You Scatter That Tells What Kind Of Life You Have Lived.”
Robin Stevenson, January 7, 2016