Home grown produce from end of year

 While walking down the street this morning it was quite muggy.

Pam, the girlfriend of Bob, who is working for the wealthy Ruch Family, gave me a sack of delicious tomatoes.

Grown from their own garden.

Meantime Scott had eaten a red banana shaped pepper which was really hot! He loved it.

Thanks, Pam. 

THE TOMATO VINE

Red and green,  Red and green

Ripening under the love or wrath of God

Produces in the minds of God's children

Like me and other garden watchers

Peace prosperity and well wishes to us all.

.....

JOE BIDEN on the News Hour ranted raved and stuttered

as he sounded his trumpet, there will be no more war in Afghanistan

How I admired that burning bright tough man, his wife at his side.

ROBINS - The birds - NO, not Hitchcock's Birds, Scott's Birds

 

Ed Asner, died recently of old age. Born: November 15, 1929, Kansas City, Missouri Died: August 29, 2021

Okay, we know what a baby robin looks like. Scott came over and told me one of the robins had fallen out of the nest.

He did research on the Internet and had black gloves on to shoo the robin back in the nest.

He also had his stepladder

and was prepared to lift the baby into the nest.

It worked!

We saw four or five babies on the smooth velvety grass of his backyard and apparently both MOM AND DAD retrieved them.

ONE MORE THING.

I ran after Mailman Dante to mail something to my accountant.

I did not have first class stamps so I stuck on 6 postcard stamps.

Dante actually let me lean on his truck while I pasted em on.

AND we are listening to the terrible sounds of the hurricanes down south.

Good God it's so stressful to raise wild robins, ain't that right, BIRDING WITH RUTH PFEFFER? 

Ellen Rosenberg, I finally found you!!!

 Finally, finally, I got in touch with Ellen Caserta Rosenberg and we talked for 30 minutes.

What a life she's had.

We spoke about many of her relationships.

She and St Anthony still love each other but they are no longer a couple.

Why? Her body is messed up from all her diseases. Her left hand is a claw. Truth.

Call her at 267 992 1429.

I could not frigging believe she answered. 

Visitors? Yes. Joanne Davis. Joanne had driven her here before she checked into Brandywine, then checked into Foulkeways at Gwynnedd, where the care is better.

You must read my blog post here. 

If it doesn't work, click https://ruthzdeming.blogspot.com/2015/05/visit-to-new-home-of-ellen-rosenberg.html.

We're talking and everything I say, she challenges.

You are sooo oppositional, I say.

Johannes Ponsen moved into Cathedral Village. 

They have a great pool there.

Once or twice I met my friend Rose there and went swimming.

Johannes' photo is on the home page of New Directions.

Scroll WAY DOWN. 

Ellen's son Adam is getting married. I said, have Anthony drive you, just go into his tractor trailer. In fact, they will do something like that.

She said she thinks of me fondly.

Moi aussi!

Bataan Death March - Hurricane Ida today - Tik Tac

 

On one of my World Channels, I have been watching the Bataan Death March for several hours.

The images are real. It's from a series called THE WAR by Ken Burns.

Death March:  April 9, 1942 - April 17, 1942. People are still alive from those days, their minds etched by the atrocities they witnessed.

The War, a seven-part series directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, tells the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of a handful of men and women from four quintessentially American towns. The series explores the most intimate human dimensions of the greatest cataclysm in history — a worldwide catastrophe that touched the lives of every family on every street in every town in America — and demonstrates that in extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives.

The film honors the bravery, endurance, and sacrifice of the generation of Americans who lived through what will always be known simply as The War.

...

The film highlights the brutality of the Japanese and the simple and cruel things they did to Americans who were captured and made to walk through dangerous terrain and eat food laced with worms and maggots.

...

I needed to get up out of bed and record this, as I am doing now.

...

And of course in the present moment Hurricane Ida is flooding different parishes of Louisiana.

...

Signing off to a very difficult world. 

One more thang. Thank you Columbo the Departed

Scott bought me these Tic Tacs. Very refreshing. But you know what?

Undoubtedly they're terrible for your belly, so I've pushed em out of the way in my bed and will restrain myself.

...

Also I was quite hungry so I went downstairs and ate two slices of Killer John Bread with Woodstock smooth and creamy peanut butter spread on top.

...

And now I think either Hillary Clinton awaits my presence or Scott Kelly from Endurance.

ANIMAL CRACKERS - short story for our Sat. Writing Group

 

ANIMAL CRACKERS - short story

I have lived next door to Mrs. Abrams for as long as our family lived in our house here in Huntingdon Dales. Now that the pandemic is over, scores of ads arrive in our mail boxes every single day. What a waste. Sam and I throw everything into our recyclable bin. Believe it or not, park benches will be made out of them. That’s the way it should work.

          Mrs. Abrams was a Holocaust survivor. A very old one. Sam and I kept track of her when she would walk down her driveway and pick up the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her pace got slower and slower and we wondered when she would pass away. She had told us she had no heirs – they had either died or moved away - and everything would go to her next door neighbor, Larry Sanders.

          Mrs. Abrams wasn’t sure how old she was. Her nineties, she thought. Neighbors like Larry would buy her groceries. She would often think of the Inuits who would simply walk out into the bitterly cold Arctic and freeze to death. Oh, a horrid death, for sure, but what death was not terrible? 

          Lewey Body Disease? Alzheimers? Gasping from Covid 19? 

           Mrs. Abrams lived inside her head. She had one of those toilets like a child’s. You would sit on the wooden chair, do your business, and then pour the results down the toilet or out the back door after dark. The five-bedroom house was now reduced to only two usable areas: Kitchen and bathroom.

         She remembered their kitchen in Berlin. It was white and glossy. Equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running water, a refrigerator, and worktops and kitchen cabinets.

          Good Lord, the things she remembered having. 

          “Purry,” her first kitten, dead years later, all embalmed like mummies in a top shelf in the kitchen – all in attractive tins like an old Rumsford baking powder tin.       

          Her first television, before they moved to The Dales, was a DuMont. The laboratories were founded in 1931 by Dr. Allen B. DuMont. Between each and every one of her thoughts, all Mrs. Abrams could think about was, “What will happen when I die? And how will I know I am dead.”

          These were the times of hurricanes. On her color RCA television, blinking on and off like a stalled traffic light, she could hardly believe her eyes: gusts of wind blew down houses in the Caribbean as if they were birthday candles. And everything below disappeared. Look, Auschwitz and  Buchenwald were nearly forgotten. The blue tattoos on the inside of her arm had faded and sagged from her pitiful old arms.

            She thought about the food she had eaten for all these years. Her teeth had mostly fallen out. Fine. Nothing was worse than visiting the dentist, though she remembered as a child, sipping on Lavoris, a cherry-flavored breath concoction, at the end of every visit.

            And the “prizes” in the bottom drawer. She chose a clipper ship with white sails, very tall – six inches high. She still had it, along with Animal Crackers. They weren’t so good but the package enumerated all the animals in the zoo. Black rhinos, huge tortoises whose backs were big enough to ride on, peacocks up in trees, their claws gripping the branches so as not to fall and crocodiles with deadly spikes on their backs. 

            What if she could choose the way to die? Was that ever permitted?

            Terrible sounds emanated from the outside. Airplanes? Motorcycles? Gales? The Animal Crackers fell off the shelf. And a huge straight-growing oak tree fell right across the house. She was fairly sure she was dead, but she didn’t rightly know.

            What if there was no difference between the living and the dead?  They all joined hands and walked together. Himmler and Rudolf Hess among them. Strindberg, author of The Red Room, Miss Julie and The Creditors strolled along the Danube River, as it roiled in the hot sun. In the background they could hear murmurs and bands playing The Blue Danube Waltz and Tannhauser by the anti-Semite Wagner.

            Did anyone care any more?   

 

Heavy on the Chest - Poem: Simon may be a goner but his weighing scale lives on

 

Here is Dame Ruth Rendell. I just finished her long short story DEATH NOTES from a book called MASTER DETECTIVES I bought years ago for my son Dan's birthday.

He returned the entire book to me.

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE (née Grasemann; 17 February 1930 – 2 May 2015) was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.^[1]

Rendell is best known for creating Chief Inspector Wexford.^[2] A second string of works was a series of unrelated crime novels that explored the psychological background of criminals and their victims. This theme was developed further in a third series of novels, published under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.

SHE DIED AT AGE 85 of a series of strokes.

I wanted to see how much her book weighed. I had finished it in the Reading Room, where the fan cooled me off. 

Coming here into my Composing Room, I found a small scale of my late boyfriend Simon Baniewicz.

It still worked.

The book weighed TWO POUNDS and 10 ounces. I checked outside with Scott. 

Simon, I am so proud of your scale.

SIMON MAY BE A GONER BUT HIS WEIGHING SCALE LIVES ON

You were one of the first to send out orders to your customers on the Internet

You lived with me

You slept downstairs on Aunt Ethel's fancy couch, now at my late mother's house

And I, your - what? - partner? paramour? -

knew much about you and that family that bore you

but did not take care of you

This is one item I will keep.

And cherish.

From your forever grateful whose-it! 

Yawn: Middle of the Night Blues

 Good Gawd. Woke up when I was reading two books: Hillary Clinton's well done HARD CHOICES and

Louise Penny's crime fiction book, I am globbing through.

All the Devils Are Here. 

I walked outside at 3:30 am-ish and threw away two pieces of salad I found on my bedroom floor. 

Sound of cicadas were settling down. No one was about.

Moon was blurry, halo around it. 

What would I do with a beautiful desk when I've already got a fairly hideous Ikea I found years ago on the street?

Hik hik hik from the cicadas.

Oh, look, it's Dr Hoffmann's desk. Ornate wouldn't you say? 

Hello Grandson Max. What a handsome young man you are. Thanks to sister Lynn for the photo.

ALL JUNK MAIL today, but I wanted to send a card. Luckily Mailman Sean was still in his truck wearing his SAFARI hat when I brought him a card with a stamp on it.

I HAVE RUN OUT OF STAMPS !!!!

SCOTT was delighted as he saw HUMMINGBIRDS hovering for the very first time.

Today on Turner Classic Films it is LEE MARVIN DAY. 

WHEN THE HUMMINGBIRDS HOVER 

In another life, I drove down to Norristown State Hospital and read this poem

to one hundred people. Among them was one Wade Berrettini, before his son

was killed by a passing car.

That's emotion, he said to his wife, Christine.

Emotion, the ingredient that divides us from spiders, autumn leaves, and the soprano's lullabye.