Month: March 2024

I feel about this day like Billy Collins puts it in his “Intro to Poetry.” Which is to say, things are not always as they at first appear. And best to proceed with an appreciation for mystery and beauty, rather than as an interrogation with rope and rubber hose.

 

 

 

At the Yolo County Library recently I came across a 1969 title from Michael Crichton called “Zero Cool.”

 

 

Some interesting facts about Michael Crichton…

 

1. He was 6’9″.
2. He died at age 66 of lymphoma.
3. He got an M.D. from Harvard Medical School.
4. He left medicine shortly thereafter to write full time.
5. His first bestseller was The Andromeda Strain. He went on to collaborrate with Steven Spielberg on the Jurrasic Park movies. He also originated TV’s medical drama “ER.”
6. Before all that, he financed his medical education by writing mysteries and thrillers under a pseudonym. He even won an Edgar Award, but never told the docs at Harvard when he went down to New York to accept it.

 

“Zero Cool” is a thriller about a newly minted physician who goes to Spain to present a paper at a medical conference, but ends up getting tangled in a web of international intrigue over stolen gemstones hidden – at autopsy – inside the thoracic cavity of a dead man. Not your typical thriller plotline, but you can see how Crichton’s personal history worms its way into his fiction.

 

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With all that in mind, I was delighted to recieve the following from a family member who saved one of my old dot-matrix-printed missives from 1991, the year our second child was born. It came with the comment “You do have a way with words.  🙂  ”  Thanks, Sue!

 

 

Bonus T-rex cartoon.

 

In keeping with our poetic theme from yesterday, today you get more (cow) poetry, along with a good definition for “rebounds,” as well as a Neanderthal spelling bee. Enjoy.

 

 

A bonus retirement meme for my golf buddies currently on a Mediterranean pleasure cruise. Hope you are having fun.

 

A poem from my childhood on this the first day of Spring.

 

Spring is sprung

The grass is rizz

I wonder where the posies is?

 

 

Alright, truth to tell:  By this time of year the birds have already eaten all the orange berries from the pyracantha bush outside my window. And the snow has already mostly melted. But on this first day of Spring here at 6200′ above sea level, there are no posies in sight.

And yes this post is for all you coastal elites with your pretty-in-pink cherry blossom photos and Spring-smug demeanor. We should all be so lucky, in spite of any poem from my childhood. And BTW, congrats to me on getting my first post published on “The view from my window” – here.

Happy Spring Equinox, y’all!