Sometimes we go for short rides in the car. Mostly for pictures like this:
Oh, like you don’t drive your pets around.
She actually likes the car, for the most part. Or, to fit the feline paradigm, she tolerates it.
photo
10
Mar 16
A 3-year-old’s life
We got to see Liam today. In a word, he’s healthy.
We were going to dinner with friends one night when The Yankee saw on Facebook that he’d just been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. His parents had found bruises that they couldn’t explain and so they went to the pediatrician and that doctor wisely sent them to Birmingham and they caught it in a hurry. I walked from the table at the restaurant that night to the restroom and looked up this form of leukemia, marveling at Google’s knowing what I meant, but also at the prognosis. If it was caught quickly, and with the proper care, it was a scary, hard thing, but easily survivable. And Liam’s parents are marvelous, and they’re fortunate to have good health care and he has had some scare times, and some hard years, and he’s spent too much of his early childhood in a car driving to hospitals, getting poked and prodded, wearing masks and helmets and having his social life limited. But the kid is doing great. He’s amazing. He walked in, sat on our sofa and pronounced it “Quite comfortable.” And then he just plays at that high speed that kids continually run in. Liam is healthy.
So this is a good reminder about how easy it is to register for blood marrow donations. You can do the entire effortless, painless registration in less time than it is taking you to read this. Send off for the forms. When they arrive, swab your cheeks, put them in the envelope and drop them in the mail. You’ve joined the national registry; maybe you’ll get the chance to help somebody one day. Find out more here.
In another word, he’s adorable. That kid has style. Completely holds a room with his charm. Though you wish he’d come out of his shell and be a bit more precocious.
7
Mar 16
Just some pics
We went over to O-town for dinner on Saturday night. I took a picture of the railroad tracks and the overpass and the sunset. It seemed emblematic of something or other:
Those are not planets or UFOs, but simple light reflections in the phone’s lens.
We had a steak and okra last night. The Yankee makes good okra, especially since she, ya know, ain’t from around these parts:
Allie, The Black Cat is hanging out on the guest bed today. It has nothing to do with that big pool of sun she’s in:
I like to think of that look as “You are disturbing me, but I won’t make direct eye contact to let you know it.”
4
Mar 16
“Lucky we were there! It was a historical event!”
There are two days left to see “Assassins,” a Stephen Sondheim musical, at Telfair Peet.
It is powerful show, which goes some good way toward humanizing the people who have attempted, and succeeded, in killing American presidents. The entire production is students and they did a GREAT job. It is dark and comical and thoughtful and full of characters who are inept and darkly successful.
The primary players are: John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, and his accomplice David Herold; Charles Guiteau, who killed President James Garfield; Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley; Giuseppe Zangara who tried to kill President-elect Franklin Roosevelt. There’s also Lee Harvey Oswald, Samuel Byck who targeted President Richard Nixon, John Hinckley who shot President Ronald Reagan and both Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, who attacked President Gerald Ford.
(Also, Ford did a walk-on spot and tripped on the stage. The few of us olds in the theater got it. No one under 30 understood the bit.)
The Broadway version of the play won five Tonys Awards. I wonder if anyone ever told Hinckley, who is still taking family furloughs from his institutional psychiatric care (but may soon be released). Fromme was paroled in 2009 and apparently lives in the Mohawk Valley region of New York. Moore was released in 2007. You figure they have to know there is a play featuring them as primary characters.
A friend of ours is the director of the show. I can’t wait to sit down with him soon and hear more about it. Mostly I just like to brag on the players and crew. They always do such a great job, as full time students no less, of bringing together incredibly productions.
29
Feb 16
Root, root, root
Lovely weekend, weather-wise, for being outdoors. I shot a brief video of the ambiance:
And I took a selfie, mostly for that sky.
