Home Again, Temporarily...

     

Tucson Weather Today

____________________

When you write non-fiction, you sit down at your desk with a pile of notebooks, newspaper clippings, and books and you research and put a book together the way you would a jigsaw puzzle.
--Janine di Giovanni

I'm back home for the weekend but will return Sunday evening to reside with Eva for another week. She will be accompanied in her home for the next two days by Cedric and Tycho.

A curious thing happened yesterday. I received an email from a man who asked me to remove a semi-nude photo of a celebrity from one of my earlier blog entries. He said he had taken the (autographed) picture and he owned the copyright, and that he would rather it not be bandied around the internet. I removed it immediately and replied to his email letting him know that I had complied with his wishes.

_____

Did You Know . . .?

The population of Ireland still hasn't returned to where it was before the Potato Famine of 1845 to 1852.

_____

HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt welcomed approximately 4,000 women attending a women's division meeting of the Democratic National Committee to Washington D.C. He and his wife Eleanor's plans to host the event at the White House, however, had to be modified at the last minute, as they had originally expected only 100 guests. Documents recounting that day do not reveal exactly how many women showed up at the White House on May 3, nor where on the grounds FDR addressed them.

FDR's openness to the idea, originally Eleanor's, reflected his support for women's political advocacy.

_____

WORD FOR TODAY

conundrum  [kuh-NUHN-druhm]
noun
1.  anything that puzzles.
2.  a puzzling question or problem
3.  a riddle, the answer to which involves a pun or play on words, as What is black and white and read all over? A newspaper.

_____

CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

James Joseph Brown, Jr.

(May 3, 1933 - Dec 25, 2006)

James Brown was an American recording artist and musician. One of the founding fathers of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century popular music and dance, he is often referred to as "The Godfather of Soul" in a career that spanned six decades,

Christina Rene Hendricks

(born May 3, 1975)

Christina Hendricks is an American actress. She is most known for her role as Joan Harris on the AMC television series Mad Men and as Saffron on the FOX series Firefly.

Dule Hill

(born May 3, 1975)

Dule Hill is an American actor. He is known for his roles as personal presidential aide Charlie Young on the NBC drama television series The West Wing, and as pharmaceutical salesman-private detective Burton "Gus" Guster on the USA Network television comedy-drama Psych. He has also had minor roles in the movies Holes and She's All That.

Genevieve Nnaji

(born May 3, 1979)

Genevieve Nnaji is a Nigerian actress and singer. In 2005 she won the Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Nnaji started her acting career as a child actress in the then popular TV soap opera Ripples. In 1998 at the age of 19 she was introduced into the growing Nigerian film industry with the movie "Most Wanted". Her subsequent movies include Last Party, Mark of the Beast and Ijele. Nnaji has starred in over 80 Nollywood movies.

__________

Golf is a puzzle without an answer. I've played the game for 40 years and I still haven't the slightest idea how to play.
--Gary Player

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am

   

Meditation, Yellow Balloons, etc.

It has been nearly a full month since I arrived here in Arizona.

This morning early just as the sun had topped the peaks of the surrounding mountains I wandered repetitively around and around the pool's fenced perimeter sipping sustenance from a cup of hot black bitter tea while Eva snarled and growled and barked in canine joy as she energetically leapt about snapping at startled flies and instinctively chased the scurrying and obviously terrified lizards into patches of protective cactus plants.

A pair of faded turquoise sweat pants and a thin pullover white shirt labeled BUBBA Burgers with my feet encased within a pair of 20-year-old Florida deck shoes was sufficient for comfort in the warmth of the beginning day.

Above, an Air Force fighter jet arrowed through the upper atmosphere leaving behind a mere whisper of wartime warning. And then I saw in the distance a completely silent high-floating yellow balloon.


The silent balloon traversed the city of Tucson and I wondered if it was the same yellow balloon I'd seen previously when it landed at the base of one of the Santa Catalina mountains a short distance from where I stood among the landscaped cactus garden near the swimming pool.


I think that if someone were to offer me a free ride in the hurtling jet-plane or even in that huge meandering hot-air balloon I would with a painted-on smile graciously decline the invitation. Why would any thinking human being choose to drift above the relative safety of the surface of the Earth? To escape from what dreadful land-based threatening event or situation?

Additionally...

Why would a human being force one's self to exist within a narrow cone of safety to daily munch organic raisins and 100 percent natural pecans after a breakfast of a single Fresh California Navel Orange in place of Crispy Bacon and Sunny-Side-Up Butter-Fried Eggs and Hash Browns and Creamy-Golden-Slathered-Toast rather than face ALONE a hypothetically hostile and frighteningly unknown environment?

Why do we human animals do any of the curious things we do?

One could meditate endlessly on the various ramifications of such a conundrum without ever having reached a satisfactory conclusion


"They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude."
--William Wordsworth