The vision thing

So here we are, back on line sooner than I expected, on the new computer -- still getting used to its maddening little idio- syncrasies, like the cursor unex- pectedly jumping to odd places and making fast typing hell. (How do I edit those keyboard shortcut preferences again? . . .)

We stayed at Sharon and Hoyle's neat new guest house Friday night, and made our way Saturday to Tampa, where I'll get my cataracts fixed Monday and Tuesday. We're camping out in a Ramada for the duration, and fortunately it has great wireless net access.

Between the keyboard and the eyes, heaven only knows when I'll be back on -- but I'll be seeing you soon, and lots better.

I'm speechless

A word for Microsoft

(_____). I can't print it here, so I'll let you fill in the blank.

Between migrating to a new laptop, Microsoft's various settings against digital piracy and our oh-so-slow dialup connection out here in the country, posting here has been impossible in the last few days.

Unfortunately, don't expect anything in the next few, either: We're heading to Florida -- first for a visit with Robert's brother, Hoyle; and then on to Tampa where I get my cataracts fixed, and a pair of implanted lenses. The doctor called to bump the surgeries up a day (they're Monday and Tuesday), after which we'll hang around a bit to make sure everything takes, and then I'll be off to audition for my new job in Key West (photo at right).

Assuming I'll feel like looking at a laptop, I'll post an update next week. Till then, stay safe and well.

Technical difficulties

Making transitions between computers -- plus problems uploading. Back when I can be.

Anseres ad custodiam præferendi sunt canibus

Sunday morning echoed Rome 2397 years or so ago. You don't know the story? From Aelian's On the Nature of Animals, XII, 33:

Geese are better at keeping watch than dogs, as the Romans discovered. At any rate the Celts were at war with them, and had thrust them back with overwhelming force and were in the city itself; indeed they had captured Rome, except for the hill of the Capitol, for that was not easy for them to scale. For all the spots which seemed open to assault by stratagem had been prepared for defense.

It was the time at which Marcus Manilius, the consul, was guarding the aforesaid height as entrusted to him. (It was he, you remember, who garlanded his son for his gallant conduct, but put him to death for deserting his post.) But when the Celts observed that the place was inaccessible to them on every side, they decided to wait for the dead of night and then fall upon the Romans when fast asleep; and they hoped to scale the rock where it was unguarded and unprotected, since the Romans were confident that the Gauls would not attack from that quarter. And as a result Manlius himself and the Citadel of Jupiter would have been captured with the utmost ignominy, had not some geese chanced to be there.

For dogs fall silent when food is thrown to them, but it is a peculiarity of geese to cackle and make a din when things are thrown to them to eat. And so with their cries they roused Manlius and the guards sleeping around him. This is the reason why up to the present day [2nd CCE] dogs at Rome annually pay the penalty of death in memory of their ancient treachery, but on stated days a goose is honored by being borne along on a litter in great state.

Thus was Rome saved. Our geese left a different sort of litter.

Great balls of holly

Part of the prep for things like Monday bridge is getting the grounds in order.

Mind ya, most of the ladies don't venture out -- maybe Anne, who's such a gardener that I get a massive inferiority complex every time she cocks an eyebrow at a yellowed leaf, though I've largely gotten over that. Live and let die, I say.

Still, Ray and the crew make sure everything's shipshape, and Joey has proven quite the shaper of boxwoods and hollies.

Some are showing their age, but others, like these off the pool terrace, are pretty as a picture.

New leaf

. . . in a not-so-plain pink wrapper.

Lucky night

Back when I was doing "social work" for the newspaper, I got a delicious invitation from Danny Newman, the old-time press agent for Lyric Opera of Chicago.

(Danny is worth a book, not a brief mention. He was present at Lyric's creation, built its subscription-based marketing system -- a first in major nonprofits, and still going strong -- and flourished his borsalino to flog every opera season, diva, divo and maestro for almost 50 years. But I digress.)

Would I like to have dinner with Pavarotti, Danny asked?

Um, yes, thanks!

So there I was on a sleety weeknight, in a new marble-and-glass lobby in the Loop with a few other press people, some Lyric angels, Ardis Krainik and Danny -- and Pavarotti. The developer had opened his first floor to the black-tie group for the evening as yet another bit of marketing, and had arranged a wonderful little supper under the high ceiling. Pavarotti was charming, and got extra helpings of charm in return (this was long before his feud with Lyric over no-shows).

After supper, Danny rose, cleared his throat and launched into a voluble introduction of the man who didn't need one.

Polite applause from the little group, and the great Luciano rose, spoke for a moment about singing for his supper, paused, vocalized a bit to test the acoustics --incredibly bright, lots of reverberation -- and then launched into "Nessun Dorma" a capella.

In an opera house, that voice is strong. In the glass and marble lobby, it bounced back in waves. Covered in gooseflesh, I listened
. . . then rose quietly to steal into other angles, my heart shimmering in the reflected sound. Back into a corner -- astounding! I couldn't hold back tears. Around a little wall -- amazing. Into the even tighter elevator lobby. . . .

Where a street person sat, disheveled, slumped in an elevator-door recess. Our eyes met. He crooked his finger: come closer.

I bent down.

"Am I in heaven?," he said, his eyes bleary -- and also pouring tears as the voice soared on. "I have to be. I hear an angel."

Dawn's early light

. . . is fading.

Better than any calendar, or first red leaf or first fat berry or first riot of southbound geese, the day's first light tells me the season. Thready, weaker, more a dying fire than a blaze.

And what I see in my eyes, I hear in my bones:

September's song: Summer's gone.

Yes, deer

Over the weekend, we were getting ready to go out when Robert rushed into my bathroom, toothbrush in mouth, to tell me, "Quihh, loo ow eh winow."

And there, on the far side of the lake, framed in the last of the crepe myrtles, were two does and a fawn, part of the deer herd that calls our home theirs.

"Mmh," Robert said, gesturing wildly.

At the south end of the lawn was the buck who runs the group, a six-pointer who gave a blast of his air horns and bolted when I tried to take his picture.

The next morning, as I was watering next to the shop, one of the does came within 30 feet, looked inquiringly at me and then into a wild cherry tree over her head, and got on her hind legs to graze.

Country life.

My favorite delft pot

Back to nature

So, I'm back on these green things rather than politics. Pardon my foray -- and my missing day.

We had heavy rains Thursday (the lawn is smiling!), which plays hob with my already-shaky internet connection way out in the country.

Besides, my camera batteries finally gave up the ghost, after three years, and the replacements arrived only yesterday.

At any rate, here's a close view I found edgy: layered elephant-ear leaves. The right is the foreground, if you're wondering.

The teachable moment

Pardon my political excursion, but I happened across something today at the Bark Bark Woof Woof blog that I just had to share. I don't know much about the blog's proprietor, except that he's a liberal in South Florida, but his take on Sen. Craig (R-Mensroom) is something I wish I'd written.

So I'll just rerun it in full:

Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) announced emphatically that he is not gay and that he has never been gay. Fine, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't like having sex with men. That would make him homosexual, but not, as he says, gay.

What's the difference between being homosexual and being gay? A lot.

Being gay means that you are aware of your attraction to people of your same sex but it isn't the be-all and end-all of who you are. It means you have overcome the stigma that certain parts of our society -- most notably the religious fundamentalists -- have placed on this facet of your life. It means that you're able to have a mature and loving relationship with people of whatever gender without focusing on the sexual aspects. Most well-adjusted people of whatever sexual orientation are capable of having friends without sleeping with them, and the fact that some people are obsessed with sex shouldn't define everyone else.

The tough part about being gay is that it's liberating. Rather than go along with the program that has been defined by certain religious creeds and Madison Avenue that being straight is the only way to be, gays and lesbians have to make their own way through society's maze of accepted behavior and re-define the American dream in their own way. Some find that a daunting task while others embrace the challenge and use it to lead happy, productive lives with healthy relationships with their friends, their families, and, if they're fortunate, someone to share their home and heart.

Unfortunately there are those who, for whatever reason, cannot accept that they're not a part of the mainstream. Whatever it is that causes them to hide their true self, be it religion, society, family, or political ambition, they work very hard to suppress their natural instinct, often with tragic consequences. It forces them to focus on that part of their programming that cannot be repressed: their sexual desires. No matter how hard they try, they can't get beyond that, and therefore it becomes the driving force in their lives. That's incredibly sad, because there is so much more to life than who you sleep with.

So I'll take Senator Craig at his word: he's not gay. On behalf of the gay community, may I say, "Whew." I don't want to have someone like him as a part of the gay community, especially given his voting record on gay issues and his apparent penchant for risky anonymous sex with strangers in public places. Being gay or lesbian is enough of a challenge without any help from people like him.

Candy on a stalk

One day after being here (after being absent for a week), Becky was a no-show again this morning, so Robert and I scrambled to hand-water pots in the mounting heat before leaving for town for lunch with Mom and Cousin Sally.

It was so great to see Sal again -- it's been almost a year -- and her glowing company made up for the venue: the decidedly uninspiring Golden Corral. Both John Gray and my dad had been quite fond of the buffet there, so it still holds at least an emotional draw.

At dessert, when Robert noticed that Mom had piled up M&M's from the dessert bar, he flashed back to Dad's favorite dessert there: old-fashioned corn candy.

At which point I flashed -- to this bromeliad by the summer house. Edible only by eyes.

All buffed up

We had polish lessons around the kitchen table this morning -- lowercase, with a short 'O', not things like "djiekujie" and "prosze, Pani."

Becky came in from the gardens, Joey from the fields and Robert from the bridge game on the computer, and in 90 tarnish-killing minutes we went through just about everything, from the big stuff (the lazy susan, the double chafer, the punchbowl, the tea set) to the last little compote.

We're getting ready for Robert's Monday bridge group here in a couple weeks -- and remembering things like silver that Shirley tended to as a matter of course, but now fall to mere human hands.

She got to know our silver well -- which means that, like us, she had a love-hate thing going with it: High-maintenance, but oh, the glow when it's all fresh and shiny.

Finally, the rain

At last, at dawn, thunder from the south. Lightning striking in the woods, ear-splitting cracks and instant bursts of light, then mist, then rain, then rain. Scent of wet earth and sweet relief.

All politics is local

. . . which means within about three blocks, in our case.

Jimmy served on the City Commission for 14 years before three two-year terms as mayor -- and then lost in '05 by two dozen votes out of 5,400. Don't get me started on that campaign, or on the harbor-bottom muck that a vendetta-prone local rag has tried to coat him with for years.

The current mayor is an amiable nebbish, but I'd rather focus on the smiles Jimmy and Susan give me every time I'm in my beloved Fausto's, which his grandfather founded, the advice he gave me on pursuing our windows case or the bearhug he surprised me with on the day we got our Certificate of Occupancy. What other mayor will make sure your duck confit is in good supply, or dazzle you with his knife work s butterflying your pork chop?

Of course that's a lot more personal than his work on Clean-and-Green issues, rational enforcement of the historic architecture guidelines, workforce housing, hate-crimes laws, the domestic-partnership ordinance. . . .

Whatever, I sent the check today.

Full swoon

This is what a night-blooming cereus blossom looks like the morning after opening into that splendor I showed you the other day.

And it's what I feel like, even early in the day.

At 8, when I'm out hand-watering pots (finishing at about 11), it's already in the high 80s or low 90s.

This afternoon, when I ventured out for groceries, the car thermostat showed 104.

Ennhhhhh

The breakfast club

One advantage of having to water every morning: Getting up close and personal with the fauna, as well as the flora.

Lots of what we plant -- like these pentas in the veranda garden -- bring bees, butterflies and hummingbirds by the swarm, and we've all gotten used to each other over the weeks.

Sometimes very used to each other. It's taken some self-control not to shudder, but when I have a light coat of sweat I often feel butterflies landing on my shoulder and back, taking a quick taste, and moving on to the sweeter stuff.

Queen of the night

Round midnight, Robert reminded me that the night-blooming cereus should be out. They were, their sweet scent lying thick on the lawn.

This one, with its luminous center, is for Lou.

Sickbed notes

The brugman- sias by the pool have kept popping out their wimple- style flowers, which would sway like paper bells in the breeze if we had one, while I was curled into a little ball of pain upstairs in the den for the last few days.

I think it was redux, not reflux, from some tropical bug I had the misfortune to ingest 35 years ago in Nicaragua. It comes back in waves every decade or so.

But all is mending, if slowly. The Richter scale may be open-ended, but on the 1-to-10 pain scale, I've gone from spikes of 9 down to steady rumbles between 2 and 4; the real world can't be far behind.

And life has gone on. Out in California, my dear friend Lou put my discomfort in perspective with a crisis far more severe, being taken to the hospital in the middle of the night when her pulse dropped dangerously low. They knew she was better when a doctor, trying to see if she was finally lucid, asked her who the president was, and the response started with "God help us. . . ."

On the other end of the joy spectrum and the country, Ray has been conching out in Key West. When emails from there close with the line, "It's raining again, and the palms are doing their magical dance. I may just nap the day away," you know the therapy is working.

Fluish

Just when I was getting back into the swing. . . .

I'll be back when I can.

Ray, meet Dean

I bid Ray farewell here in Tennessee on Saturday, and Robert welcomed him to Key West Sunday night.

(Robert flew back here on Tuesday!)

Ray is on Southernmost watch for a few weeks --with one side project. He took our big cast-iron rooster down for our front porch, after having welded a bolt-down plate on him so he won't "wander." Robert says it looks wonderful, and I'll post pictures when I can.

Just in case, I also gave Ray a hurricane re-entry pass, which lets you back on the island after a storm.

Of course, there hasn't been a storm yet this year . . . until this morning, when Dean popped up on the radar.

If the forecast track holds (an awfully dicey proposition this early in the game), the bad news is that it will be a Cat 3 by Monday. The good news is that it's likely to bounce against that great track-buffer to the South, Cuba.

In any case, Ray has that pass.

High as an elephant's . . . ear

I mentioned elephant ears the other day.

When the sun's just up, when it's in the middle 80s and direct heat is just reaching the summer house, the clumps stand well over 6 feet tall. (Those are banana trees behind them.)

They get lower as the temperature climbs -- but they always remind me of a morning in Kenya, standing in a Jeep while several hundred real elephant ears whooshed around us like a stream roaring around a rock.

Mothers, bulls, aunties, babies -- a rumbling gray herd, paying us no attention as they moved to new grazing ground, ears waving as if caught by a soft-pulsing wind.

Gray or green, I love them.

How the pool sees a banana tree

On blogging

Cyril Connolly, the British critic and intellectual (that used to be a job description, sigh), died in 1974, so he'd have no idea of blogging. But I happened across one of his epigrams Saturday, and it pinged against my head, and the echo ends up here -- and about this:

"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."

Tropical Japan

Which bromeliad, where?, one of you asked.

We have a few at the summer house, but I meant the one in the foreground, just to the east of the torii gate we built six years ago this month for an engagement party in honor of cousins Amanda and Aon.

Time does fly.

The gate, 16 high and 16 wide, spans the break in the boxwoods between the courtyard and the summer house lawn, with raked gravel on both sides, and then a moss-floored bower of impatiens, ferns, elephant ears, caladiums, plumbago and that big, happy bromeliad on the side nearer the pool.

Only one hitch: Given the heat, the moss has taken the summer off.

Hot pink

Hot as in a heat index well over 100. Pink as in the bromeliads going crazy by the shuffle- board court.

Bromeliads don't wilt -- these "petals" may look precious, but they're cactusy -- and these temperatures give everything else the fantods.

So instead of the alternate-day watering we usually do in midsummer, I've had to drench daily.

Steamy work.

Still foggy, but it's dawn

Shirley died four weeks ago today, and it's time to pick myself up and dust myself off.

It's not as if we haven't been doing anything. There was a wonderful funeral (who would have expected those two words together -- but with Shirley, who could have expected otherwise?).

There were heartwarming times with Ray, and the kids and granddaughters -- even laughter and splashes in the pool.

There were daily reminders of the hole she left in our lives, and of the whole she made them.

Sunset, sunrise.

Robert went down to Key West to show Harry -- his bridge buddy and our CPA -- around town, welcome Sharon and the boys for a few days around their camp-out in the Dry Tortugas and get ready for Ray to go down next week.

He and Shirley had planned the trip down for months, and Ray and his son Jeff will go instead. I hope it will be a little solace in paradise.

And maybe some cool weather: Here in Tennessee, the car thermometer read 102 today when I took Mom to lunch at Cafe Roma, ran into Ann McCoin (who's handling Shirley's estate; she also did my dad's and John Gray's) and had some terrific vermicelli with pancetta.

And the other news is . . . the windows.

Monday must have been slow in Key West, because Mandy Bolen called to ask where our case stood. Ain't heard nothin', I told her -- which was at the top of Page One Tuesday.

Then: The Building Department called Tuesday afternoon to say our permanent, final Certificate of Occupancy was ready. Robert picked it up Wednesday, and we are now legal, even with outlaw windows. Clerks have blessed the paperwork to refund our substantial performance bond and, as the saying goes, the check is in the mail.

I don't know how, or why. The city still hasn't told me what gives, and whether our victory before the special magistrate sets a precedent for the rest of Old Town.

When I find out, I'll let you know. I'm back.