Daniel E Wolf
In celebration of John Venn’s 187th birthday, a poem in the form of a Venn diagram. From the UK poet Brian Bilston: How very clever – Bravo, Brian!
Also, everything goes better with ice cream.
So, today at 2:30PM in the Highlands neighborhood…
Be there or be square.
PS. More Brian Bilston haikus – here.
Today’s DP story about this tale of two protests is here. Pretend you’re on the jury. How do you see it? Fact is, much of “how you see it” will depend on which evidence you’re allowed to hear.
On the day Lee Keltner died, he attended a right-wing rally in downtown Denver with a man who bore a tattoo associated with a far-right group and another who wore the patch of an outlaw motorcycle gang.
During the rally, Keltner’s son referred to a Black man with a racial slur and threatened to “cut (him) up,” according to court filings. He was carrying several knives. And Keltner, 49, was carrying a concealed hand gun.
But whether a jury should hear that information — and other details about the day — is a nuanced legal question that’s now being debated in the high-profile murder case.
Unlicensed security guard Matthew Dolloff, 31, was charged with second-degree murder after he shot and killed Keltner as he left the rally on Oct. 10. Dolloff is claiming self-defense.
So, c’mon, let’s hear it. You don’t even have to show up for jury duty.
Just leave a comment about this tale of two protests.
After all, no one’s got a gun to your head.
It’s August. That means everybody except me is either on vacation or having adventures. Me, I’m left holding down the fort with only a doe plus a couple of spotted fawns, currently cavorting in our yard, munching leaves and grass. The deer are munching and cavorting I mean. Me, I’ve got coffee and a chocolate-covered doughnut, as is my usual morning custom. There are worse fates I guess.
Rachel and friends should be above tree line right now, having spent last night at Barr Camp. They’re hoping to summit 14115′ before the afternoon start of the usual summertime thunderstorms. OK, the Barr Camp photo was taken in winter, but it can actually snow up top in late August. Like I said, adventures.
Anne just arrived in England visiting Kate and Harry who love posing for selfies. Along with some distinctive British flora and fauna, also presumably posed.
Anne’s UAL flight across the pond was mostly empty.
Allah be praised.
Over the next couple of weeks I’m counting on better pix than the one below, showing the after-effects of a full day’s worth of trans-Atlantic travel. Either that or she just didn’t unpack her sunglasses yet? Ahem.
Back home, there’s only the usual array of ho-hum nothing special…
We’re making do here, holding down the fort while the rest of the world has adventures. There are worse fates, I guess.
Pikes Peak Hikers (Lisa Noll).
Great Sand Dunes (Polifka family).
Roxborough State Park Rox (AVW).
Whitewater Rafting (Conner family).
I know from long experience that the likelihood of my readers making it all the way to the end of a post is inversely proportional to the length of the post. And it’s directly proportional to the density of the humor content. On the other hand, there are times when I have serious things to say that will take up more than the usual amount of space. So sue me.
Lucky for us all, David Sedaris has written a lovely piece about his last visit with his father, Lou, who died recently at age 98. I say “lucky” because Sedaris is a gifted humorist who tackles the hard stuff with wit and verve. The entire thing, titled “Happy-Go-Lucky,” appears in the current New Yorker. You can read it all, here. An extended excerpt is below.
A lot of people my age have have begun losing their parents. And by that I mean of course that their parents have begun dying off. My mom passed in 2015 at age 91; my dad, in 2017, at age 96. Neither of them went “soft in the head,” to echo the locution Sedaris uses about his father near the end. Although my dad did have unusually vivid dreams about flying over the North Pole that he sometimes shared with more gusto than I though he ought – but I digress.
Something about a car running over a policeman and a second officer being injured. This is my assessment of a news story broadcast on the television in my father’s room at Springmoor, the retirement community where he’s spent the past three years in the assisted-living section. It is early April, three days before his ninety-eighth birthday. Amy, Hugh, and I have just flown to Raleigh from New York. The plan is to hang out for a while, then drive to the Sea Section, our house on Emerald Isle.
Dad is in his wheelchair, dressed and groomed for our visit. Hair combed. Real shoes on his feet. A red bandanna tied around his neck. “Well, hey!” he calls as we walk in, an old turtle raising his head toward the sun. “Gosh, it’s good to see you kids!”
The dining room, which fits maybe six tables, is full when we arrive. Women greatly outnumber men, and no one except for us and the staff is ambulatory…
“Eat, why don’t you,” my father says.
I am conscious of everyone watching. Visitors! Lou has visitors!
My father looks up and pats the space beside him at the table. “Stay for dinner. They can make you anything you want.”
I can’t remember my mother’s last words to me. They were delivered over the phone at the end of a casual conversation. “See you,” she might have said, or “I’ll call back in a few days.” And in the thoughtless way you respond when you think you have forever with the person on the other end of the line, I likely said, “O.K.”
My father’s last words to me, spoken in the too-hot, too-bright dining room at his assisted-living facility three days before his ninety-eighth birthday, are “Don’t go yet. Don’t leave.”
My last words to him — and I think they are as telling as his, given all we’ve been through — are “We need to get to the beach before the grocery stores close.” They look cold on paper. And when he dies, a few weeks later, and I realize they were the last words I said to him, I will think, “Maybe I can warm them up onstage when I read this part out loud.” For, rather than thinking of his death, I will be thinking of the story of his death. So much so that after his funeral, Amy will ask, “Did I see you taking notes during the service?”
There will be no surprise in her voice. Rather, it will be the way you might playfully scold a squirrel: “Did you just jump up from the deck and completely empty that bird feeder?”
The squirrel and me — it’s in our nature, though maybe not forever. For our natures, I have just recently learned from my father, can change. Or maybe they’re simply revealed. And the dear, cheerful man I saw that afternoon at Springmoor was there all along, smothered in layers of rage and impatience that burned away as he blazed into the homestretch.
The writer as squirrel. Or something.
An “It’s Monday Morning!” post in honor of the immanent retirement of TIAA’s Scott Blandford. Otherwise known as a big scoop of… strawberry ice cream.
The road to success is paved with many good intentions but few shortcuts. Some days you’re the pigeon, some days the statue.
Right, JP?