Hard to see but this is the famous Eagle Cam in Hanover, PA. Eagle mama was brooding two eggs. Snow storms would cover mama but she and papa, who would fly in with food for mom, would dig themselves out of the snow and all seemed fine.But how we worried when those inches and inches would fall.
Finally tragedy struck. The eagles left the eggs unattended and the Eagle Cam rangers declared the eggs "no longer viable." There are theories about what had happened, including "another woman." View info here.
***
Last night I worked on the last draft of my 600-word guest editorial for the Intell. I titled it SHOOTINGS TELL NOTHING ABOUT GREAT PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS. In it I described what happened to Gabby Giffords after she was shot in 2011 in a Safeway Parking lot where she was addressing constituents.
Freda gave her okay about the story. "Beautiful," she said when she called me.
***
When Bella Mused Online first started contacting writers about whether our works were accepted or not, I was furious that she hadn't taken my great short story Summoned, which I submitted somewhere else. "Unsubscribe me," I wrote back.
But when Lisa Shea, the editor, sent us the complete issue yesterday, I found I hadn't done so badly.
Read Spring Issue here.
W/o looking now - am in a hurry as I must write short story for Beehive - here's what Her Grace published of mine:
My poem: Forcing Forsythia in January
My one-act play: The Blizzard
True Story: Mary, The Pizzelle Maker and the Apartments of Doom
Fiction: The Hitchhiker
The writing is of high quality.
Eggs? Mushrooms? Spinach?
I'll be in the freezing cold kitchen making my breakfast.
BUBBY BABYSITS MAX
Bubby, he cried, when I pried open
the stuck front door, running up
for a kiss, gotta eat first, I said,
putting my salad on the table.
Dan kissed me too. Mom, he said,
I'll be downstairs for two hours.
Fine, I said, excited to spend
time alone with this fine young
man, always in a hurry with the
rest of his fam.
YouTube photos mean nothing.
We stared at one another.
Wide-open light-shimmering
brown eyes, offically hazel,
like mine, I'm sure.
Asked him what I was eating. He
never heard of radishes or
cabbages, but knew the other
fellers on the plate.
He was on his iPad, each
box in his brain fully engaged
in NOW. The moment I was done
he pulled out a Zoo Puzzle.
We sat on the hardwood floor.
Dyou like butterflies, he said.
Sure, I said. Most people do.
Most people! How many is that?
Thousands, I said. No, millions.
He asked how many times I'd seen butterflies.
Oh, I suppose thousands of times. And you?
More than a thousand, he said.
Always he wanted to know "How many times."
What are butterflies made of, he wanted to know.
Sugar and spice and everything nice, I said. No,
that's girls.
I really don't know, Max.
The puzzle is 46 pieces, he said, and
had it finished before I could digest my
spinach and mushrooms.
Lemme come around and see it, I said.
He started tearing it apart and I kept
holding down his hands and he laughed and laughed.
You have so much to play with in your house
you never have to leave home, I said.
I picked up a dime on the floor.
What's this? I asked.
A penny, he said.
It's a shiny dime, I said. Worth ten pennies. Let's put
it in your piggy bank.
Upstairs we ran to mom's room. There on a high shelf was
a racing car. He dropped the dime in the slot.
I gotta hold on, I said, when we went downstairs.
Steps as steep as at Cinderella's ball.
Slide down on your butt like a do, said Max.
Bubby walked carefully in her black socks, feeling
the cool floor through a toe hole.
Books books books!
No question. The Richard Scarry anthology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Scarry
As he turned the pages with his sweet little fingers
he announced we must choose our favorite object on
each page. Amending it immediately we could choose
two, no, as many as we wanted.
So much to look at! What dyou wanna be when you
grow up? the page asked by the trains.
A conductor, he said. I taught him the word
"engineer" which is what the train driver
is called.
If you could get a pet, I asked. What would you choose?
Easy. A snake!
Oh, that's right, I said. I forgot you like snakes.
Not a python or a rattler, he said, just a regular
snake, a good snake.
Suddenly Daddy burst through the basement door.
I'm finished, he said, sitting on the sofa in the
living room.
Max ran over and climbed in his lap.
I love you, Daddy.
I love you, Max.
With that, I excused myself and drove home at rush hour
going a very long way by accident.
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