YANK!

Early fall is training time here for precinct workers, to ready them for the  November election.  The classes are mandatory, even if one has worked at the same job for 20 years.  Every year, something changes.  My class this year was, as always,  a roomful of Republicans and Democrats working together in good faith to make sure this election is carried out as seamlessly as possible.

The room was packed.  I’ve mentioned before that the location I select is a windowless room in a county office building that was previously used as the overflow morgue.   Although there are training locations all over the city, this one is nearest my house.  I sign up for daytime classes.  If I see a shadow, I want it to be my own.  Others must feel the same way.

I took one of the few seats available, next to a pleasant-looking older woman who has snagged an aisle seat.  (Okay, it’s possible that this “older woman” could have been about my age.) As we exchanged pleasantries, I realized that I was not looking her in the eye,  mesmerized as I was by a significant hair growing under her chin.  No peach fuzz. . .  this one was a doozie,  so long it had a slight curl to it.  Upwards of an inch, at least.

As she talked on, I wrestled with myself about what to do.  Should I avert my eyes and ignore it?  Surely, she didn’t know it was there!

Recently I read that a friend is someone who tells you that you have lipstick on your teeth.  Isn’t a long chin hair in that same category?  It is hard to know exactly where to draw the line in these matters.

Once I attended a morning brunch and encountered a similar incident.  One woman I didn’t know very well shouldn’t have been there because she had a terrible cold.  (Her husband was a doctor.  You’d think he’d have told her.)  As we chatted, she wiped her nose with a tissue.  Unfortunately, she dislodged. . . um. . .  mucus (can I say wet booger here?) which smeared across whatever that space is called between nose and upper lip.  I quickly did a motion across that space on my own face and told her to wipe again.  It was either that or start gagging.

So back to the whisker lady.  I rationalized that she must not have any friends or they’d have told her she needed to tweeze.

“You have a long chin hair right there,” I said, squeezing my index finger and thumb under my own chin in a pulling motion in order to designate the location.

She answered, “I know.  It won’t come out.  I tried to pull it out and my friend tried, too.  It won’t come out.”

I was stunned into silence.  My fingers were itching to reach over and yank.

I could have had that sucker out of there in five seconds with my bare hands, even if the other end was rooted in her nostril.  Furthermore, , I not only carry a small Swiss Army Knife, but tweezers, clippers, and scissors as well.

Errant hairs, beware former Girl Scout leaders..

Heck, if the woman’s whisker truly required something of industrial strength, maybe the morgue folks left something behind.  I’d have been willing to search on her behalf.

“I’m so sorry,” I told her, then buried my face in my elections manual to forestall any further conversation.

Today I went to lunch with some of my precinct friends (Democrats and Republicans) and told them the story.  They were horrified, but laughed  hysterically that I had been so rash and bold.

So now, unless that woman has a second friend with stronger fingers, she is going to work the entire Election Day with people staring at that eye-catching chin hair.  Oh, the embarrassment!  By Election Day, it may have grown enough that she can tie her name badge to it.  Give that bad boy a purpose.

You may rest assured that I will definitely be checking myself in a magnifying mirror for stray eyebrows and facial hair before I show up to work on Election Day.

And let this be a warning to my fellow precinct friends:  if you notice lipstick on my teeth and don’t tell me, I’m going to do some hair pulling myself.   Yours.

 

 

 

 

 

Count no’Count? Hardly!

Since my Dearly Beloved and I happened to be with friends in Oxford, Mississippi the week of William Faulkner’s birthday, we decided to visit St. Peter’s cemetery where he and a number of his family members are buried.  The original Faulkner burial plot was full by the time William died, so another plot was started and he was laid to rest there, as later were his wife and stepson.

The Faulkners are buried on the side of the marker away from the road and his stepson,  Malcolm Franklin, is on the road side.   I took several photos and although not known for my powers of observation,  I saw nothing in that fourth spot, beside Malcolm’s grave.

BUT, a University of Mississippi map of Faulkner sites of interest mentions that this fourth gravesite, long vacant, is now marked with a smaller stone for an old family friend, E. T., who “came home to rest with us.”  The map points out that the whole thing is a carefully guarded secret and that no one, except for Faulkner’s nephew, Jimmy Faulkner, knows who it is.

If the stone is there, it must be very tiny, indeed.  I don’t remember seeing so much as a pebble, although at the time, I didn’t realize there was supposed to be a fourth grave there.   At the top of the steps leading to the plot, the family name was etched.   Alas, no E. T.

Perhaps he phoned another home?

Remember the mysterious visitor–or perhaps more than one– who visited Edgar Allen Poe’s grave for over 70 decades on the anniversary of his birth and left behind a partial bottle of cognac and three roses?

It being the anniversary of Faulkner’s birth,  we (empty-handed, I confess) went to see if Oxford folks made a similar gesture at the grave of their famous citizen and left a special memorial of some kind..

Um. . . not so much, although one person did leave an empty Maker’s Mark bourbon mini-bottle by the  column of the marker.  Faulkner would have preferred moonshine, but if not that, Scotch would do. Still, someone had been there.

Perhaps some Oxford residents are still holding a grudge.   After all, he did say this about the town in an interview with Esquire magazine in 1963:

Some folks wouldn’t even speak when they passed me on the street. Then MGM came to town to film Intruder in the Dust, and that made some difference because I’d brought money into Oxford. But it wasn’t until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn’t understand my books, but they could understand thirty thousand dollars.

To give the man his due, he said enough things–brilliantly–that earned him two Pulitzers and two National Book Awards in addition to the Nobel prize for Literature.   Here are a few quotations from his writings, not among his best known, although I found them interesting.

People … have tried to evoke God or devil to justify them in what their glands insisted upon.  – Absalom, Absalom!

Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don’t have time to bother with success or getting rich.  – The Paris Review, spring 1956

People everywhere are about the same, but … it did seem that in a small town, where evil is harder to accomplish, where opportunities for privacy are scarcer, that people can invent more of it in other people’s names. Because that was all it required: that idea, that single idle word blown from mind to mind. – Light in August

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Halloween!

When we were kids, every now and then, my mother’s youngest sister, Mary, drove us to a tiny community in southeastern North Carolina.  She’d park near the railroad tracks and we would wait in the dark to watch for the mysterious Maco light to come bobbing and weaving up the tracks as the old conductor Joe Baldwin continued his 100-year-long search for his missing head.   Sometimes we’d perch on the hood of the car, but we never dared venture up that track in an attempt to be the first ones to spot the light.  No siree!

I can’t say for sure that I ever saw old Joe’s light, although I’d have probably taken my own children to watch for it, too, had the railroad company not, in the 70’s,  removed the tracks and the trestle bridge where the light emanated.  Poor Joe Baldwin doesn’t even have a route to follow any more.

One dependable sighting in the mountains of North Carolina this time of year is this one:

The Bear Shadow

Just when most bears are beginning to pack it in for winter, this one emerges for a couple of weeks when the autumnal sun sets behind Whiteside Mountain, a 5,000-footer near Cashiers and Highlands.  My friend Birdie took this photo a week or so ago and shared it with me.

My blogger buddy, Mountain Woman has written about the bear too, as she also lives near that area.  There is an overlook area where people may stand to wait for it  to appear.  You can even shoot it, but only with a camera.

Now for some of the seasonal delights in my neighborhood. . . .  People around here are big on Halloween.  Perhaps because I ride past them so often,  the two houses one street over always grab my attention.  Out near the sidewalk sits this pathetic scene:

What could be so terrible in the house behind them that these poor babes have been abandoned, obviously in a catatonic state, in this antiquated wheel chair?

Arachnid Manor

Spiders.  EVERYWHERE. . . a giant spider invasion!!!

Just a short distance up the street sits the Ghoul house.  One of the Ghouls must be a surgeon, as the magnolia tree on the right is festooned with hanging body parts.

Ghastly!                              

                                                Happy Halloween !

 

 

 

Cheers!

When my English friend e-mailed that she was having her neighbors over for drinks on July 4, I asked her to send a photo.   Remembering her Burns Night Supper a couple of winters ago, I suspected that having friends over for drinks didn’t mean setting out a keg and some Solo cups under a tree.

While we celebrated our independence with cookouts and picnics, she and her husband  invited their neighbors to a garden party.  The photo upped my Anglophile feelings another notch.

Have a look:

Absolutely lovely, isn’t it.

The British are much more current on international news than we are, so they probably know more than they want to know about our absurdities, our crazy politics, etc.  Do you think they might, like the parents who pull out the champagne when the last kid finally leaves the nest, the Brits might have enjoyed a toast to our Independence?

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When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat. – George Carlin

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.
– Winston Churchill

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
– H.L. Mencken

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
James A. Baldwin

Get A Room!

When my friend Beanie took two of her grandchildren to the Washington Zoo in the fall, she was expecting that she might hear questions from them about some of the 1800 animals in the zoo.

But she WASN’T expecting to run into this Aldabra tortoise scene right by the entrance.

Hard to tell him to get a room when he already has a house on his back.

Looks like that makes her a two-story.

(Many thanks to Beanie for the picture.)

Poppies for Remembrance

Veterans Day. . . Poppy Day. . . Armistice Day. . . Remembrance Day.

Today, many will observe two minutes of silence on the 11th hour (11 AM) of the 11th day of the 11th month, when the Allies of WWI and Germany signed an armistice agreement.   The firing stopped immediately.

Here, we honor and remember all veterans on this day.

Thanks to my friend Alison for sending me the link to this stunning tribute in London.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-29935592

This poem is so touching. . . the earnest Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a surgeon and also a poet, was moved to write these words as he mourned the loss of his friend, Lieutenant Alex Helmer.  Since a chaplain was not present, McCrae was asked to conduct his friend’s funeral.  Like all funerals on the battlefield, it was conducted in the dark.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

by John McCrae, May 1915

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Blog Post. . . .

E-mail is perfect for talking gardening with friends.  I never tire of seeing pictures of their gardens.  I haven’t sent any of mine this year.  I should, lest folks think the duct taped cherry tree is the highlight of our yard.

My British friend and I write frequently of gardens, books, and grandchildren.  She is the friend of the Burns Night Supper,  who lives in a village which holds flower festivals in late summer.

Lately we have been talking Delphiniums and roses.  I recently bought a Delphinium plant, which probably won’t make it through the summer in our hot, sticky climate.  (In the South, larkspur is planted as a substitute.)  Her Delphiniums, though, are profuse and beautiful.

Want to see enchantment?

 Yes, that is a thatched roof on her house.   And look at that lovely rose!

One of her Delphinium flower beds.She sent this next picture to show how she was coaxing a rose up a contorted willow tree that she doesn’t particularly like. I didn’t see anything unsightly about the willow tree, unless she was referring to that headless branch, and said so.  She wrote back that she’d talked to her pruner about those branch stumps he kept leaving to no avail, so she tries to hide the stumps under Paul’s Himalayan Musk Rose plantings.   (Like me, she is married to her tree man.)

That should explain why I was searching through her old e-mails.  I looked up Paul’s Himalayan Rose and although the listing doesn’t specifically mention “covers duct tape” in its attributes, I think it is something worth considering.  Bonus:  the instructions say,  “No pruning!”

(I should mention that my Dearly Beloved is  a very good pruner.  With proper supervision, of course.)

Not long ago, I mentioned to my friend that I wanted to make a little fairy garden in one corner of the back yard and she responded that she was working on a fairy den in her own garden.  Here, for instance, are her fairy wind chimes.  

As her grandchildren are all girls and mine are all boys, I supposed that we didn’t imagine fairy gardens in the same way.

Then she sent this video. ( No, this isn’t her pruner, nor mine.)  Take a look at this hedge!

 Fairies are invisible and inaudible like angels. But their magic sparkles in nature. ~Lynn Holland

Owl on the Prowl

Perhaps it has been Dearly Beloved’s attempts to recreate the dry rub ribs from The Rendezvous that has put us to thinking lately about our years in Memphis.  We loved our house there and our street was a wonderful mix of interesting neighbors.

We have, luckily, friends and relatives in that area with whom we’ve stayed in touch.  Lately, our conversations have centered around the same subject:  OWLS.  Not just owls in general, but the strange attack owls of East Memphis.

After seeing my brother’s owl photos on BroJoe’s World, my friend Sharon sent me pictures of the owls nesting behind her house.

My cousin lives in that same area, and when I asked her had she seen the birds, she sent a news article which told of some pretty strange happenings around there.

An early-morning jogger had reported that he was attacked from behind–slammed in the head by an owl.  It hit him again–also without warning–a few minutes later.  The bloodied guy reported, “It had the wingspan of a Buick.”  

A couple of weeks later, that same runner was smacked again. His hasn’t been the only report; early morning joggers never know when they’re going to be struck.  One victim said that the owl took his cap and i-Pod.   Even the county district attorney said that she’d been attacked.

A driver reported that an owl hit his BMW.  The man stood nearby, wondering what he should do.  The owl lay dazed for a while, then flew away.

Because the owl is silent and glides into its victims from behind, there is no warning.  No one is certain whether it’s only one owl on the prowl or more.

Pretty darned creepy!

My friend sent one more photo.  Look carefully.

An owlet!   Could that explain the thuggish behavior going on there?

Whooo knows?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boxing Lessons

Fed-Ex and UPS trucks stop in front of our house quite often, but they’re usually making  deliveries to the condos across the street.  When a driver headed toward our door with a very large box recently, I threw open the front door in anticipation of a big surprise.  The guy ignored my greeting and shoved the box in on its side. The address label side was against the wall and when I bent over to turn it to see who it was from, the guy mumbled “thebottomcameopensignhere”  and stuck the electronic scanner in my face  for my signature before I had a chance to look.  He hurried back to his truck.

The bottom was indeed completely open–he’d been holding it closed with his hands, so I reached in and pulled out the contents:  a lovely, HUGE basket containing several bottles of wine, nuts, crackers, dips, spreads, and chocolates, the whole wonderful assortment wrapped in that crinkly cellophane that is used only for good things.  Jackpot!

There was no card.  I turned the box over and yanked off the label envelope.  Sure enough, there was a printed note from someone, saying Thank You and how much they’d enjoyed their stay at our mountain home.  Uh oh.  I yanked back my hand which had been ready to dive for one of the chocolates.  A  couple of issues popped into my head:  (1) I didn’t recognize the names on the card and (2) we don’t have a mountain house.

Dang!  Don’t you hate it when that happens?

I looked at the address label.  Not our name, not our house number.  The driver had transposed the numbers, like reading 4139  as 4319.  Since he was long gone,  I decided that rather than trying to contact the company at 5 PM, I’d simply take the basket up the street to the correct address.  I shoved it back into the box and when I picked it up, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to walk up there carrying the box.  Dearly Beloved took it out to the car for me.  I drove up to the correct address. . . where no one was home.

I walked around the house and found a covered porch at their back door, so I left the package there.  Immediately, I started to worry:  What if they’re out of town for two weeks? I went to the house next door and the lovely old gentleman who answered assured me that the people were not out of town.  He gave me paper and pen so that I could leave a long, convoluted note (the only kind I know how to write) about why the box was opened and how I came to have it.

A couple of hours later the rightful recipient called to thank me for my delivery.  I told him that I thought the devil had made the carrier do it because it contained such a tempting basket of goodies.

I was in the bathtub when the doorbell rang a couple of hours later and I couldn’t get decent in time to answer it. When I looked out front a few minutes later, I found a pretty gift box by our front door.  I opened it and recognized the chocolates that I’d seen a few hours earlier in the large gift basket.  Ahhhh!

Yes, honesty is its own reward, but chocolate sweetens it considerably.  I called him to say thanks.

A few days later, as Dearly Beloved and I were heading out for a hamburger, I noticed two large boxes of gift-basket size on our next door neighbors’ front porch.  “STOP,”  I yelled.  “They’re out of town. We need to do something with those packages!”

DB backed up and pulled into their driveway. He went up to get the boxes and put them in the trunk of our car, but he examined them and came back empty-handed.

“They were delivered to the wrong house.  They belong to Larry up the street.”

Once again, the carrier had transposed the numbers.

DB contacted Larry and told him the whereabouts of the boxes.  Larry was thrilled because the boxes contained speakers that he’d been watching for all week.  He rushed up to get them.

Every time I see one of the trucks on our street, I have to resist the urge to run over and make sure the package has reached its proper destination.

What do you think?  Coincidence?  Dyslexic driver?  Or are our suspicions correct that yes, we really do live in The Twilight Zone?

 

 

Mary Lee is WHAT???

BroJoe sent me the first headline a couple of years ago, something about Mary Lee hanging around the Outer Banks.  Huh?  Since then, I’ve received a stream of fun headlines from friends.  I prefer the ones that refer to “rock star Mary Lee” instead of words like “massive” and other references to weight.

Mary Lee prowls East Coast

Mary Lee Has Come For a Visit

Great White Mary Lee passing by Charleston coast again

Great White Mary Lee Moves Back North

Mary Lee is back in North Carolina

Mary Lee checking out St Helena sound

You do know Mary Lee, right?  Rock star?  Also a Great White Shark.

This one was left at my front door a few weeks ago:

Tagging a Great White Shark was a big deal.  The SPOT  (Smart Position and Temperature) tag attached to her dorsal fin sends data to the nearest satellite and it is passed on to the research team.  When she was tagged, she was christened (so to speak) Mary Lee, after Ocearch scientist Chris Fischer’s mother.  Still, I feel a connection.  Other sharks will always be asking her, “. . . now,  is Lee your middle name or your last name?”

The SPOT gives location, water temperature (GWS like waters around 50-70 degrees) and water salinity.  Usually they stay in salt water, but Mary Lee entered brackish waters around Cape Cod.  That’s close!  She has also pinged within 200 yards of the Carolinas coastal areas.  Mary Lee prefers her summers around the Cape, winters farther down the Atlantic coast.

A crew of Ocearch marine biologists followed her when she headed down to Jacksonville, Florida, where she began swimming with a smaller, Great White Shark there.  That’s how the crew discovered Lydia, who was then tagged and released.

Mary Lee has her own Pinterest and Facebook sites.  Google her and you’ll find over 1,000,000 links.  See?  Rock star!  

Here’s a video of how she was tagged:

With the crazy, cold winter we’ve had, I worried that she had checked out for South American or Africa, so I was pleased to learn that she was in the Savannah area.   Mary Lee may prefer the Atlantic coast,  but her more adventuresome friend, Lydia, headed out to sea.

A couple of days ago, my blogging/Facebook Irish friend Steffi Walsh posted a Look Who’s Here blurb announcing that Lydia was nearing the waters around Ireland.  Amazing!   I e-mailed to ask Steffi to tell Lydia that Mary Lee said Hey.  She refused.

I’ve read many fascinating facts about great white sharks, like their favorite foods:  sea lions and seals.  One article speculated that if they attack a human, it’s because they’ve mistaken the human for a seal.  Over 70% of humans attacked by a great white survived  because, it is believed, that they realize their mistake and let go.  Hmmm.

(See, Steff, you could do it!  Just try not to look like a seal.)

A good meal can last these sharks up to three months.

Recent articles about Mary Lee say that she may be pregnant. Yowsah!  Gestation period is 11-18 months, so it’s an educated guess  right now.  If it’s true, Fischer’s mother will be pleased.

 “Mary Lee is a sweet, sweet woman. This is a sweet, sweet shark,” Fischer said. “Now she keeps asking if it’s pregnant, saying ‘I want grand-sharks!’”

Lydia, who has been tracked for more than 20,000 miles, is also rumored to be pregnant. She could continue to swim toward Ireland or she may turn toward the Mediterranean.  There is a favorite shark birthing spot near Turkey.

Both of them pregnant?  That must have been one heck of a Spring Break in Jacksonville!

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Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent. – Dave Barry