Mildred and Milton

Mildred and Milton Mallard appeared in our yard one afternoon several weeks ago to our delight and that of our 3year old grandson who is staying with us. There’s a pond, but it must be hard to see from above, hemmed in as it is by the house and a bunch of large cedars and maples. I don’t recall any visits by wild ducks in the 40 years we’ve been here. It was around 4:00 PM and we called off whatever it was we were doing outside to leave them undisturbed. Later it became clear that such respect was entirely unnecessary. Walking within a few feet did not trouble them in the least. They stayed into the evening and over that first night, alternating between feeding and floating on the pond and preening and resting on the ground nearby. After a couple of days they flew off taking in their bellies the 20 small gold fish I had put in the pond just a few days before. But they came back. And then they came and went nearly every day as it pleased them. We put some straw near the water’s edge and they slept on it, but never really formed a nest. We never saw any conjugal relations unlike various domestic ducks who have lived with us from time to time. The domestics made a habit of going at it night and day. Millie and Milt got on fine with the chickens who free range in the same space, sometimes even going into the chickens’ pen, but they had a bit more feisty relationship with the pair of crows that seem to be nesting somewhere nearby. For a while they came for the night and were off to work before we were up in the morning. Then their schedule got very random. They’d drop out of the sky like rocks and could take off with an equally sharp flight path. I was very surprised to see it. Then one afternoon, after several weeks, Millie appeared alone. We can only speculate on what happened to Milt. Did he get hurt? Did Millie send him off. Did he find another girl friend and dump her? She certainly seemed forlorn there alone on the water. And now Millie has stopped coming too. I think it was just too painful to go alone to their old familiar places.


As the old song says,



I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places,

That this heart of mine embraces all day through

…

In everything that’s bright and gay,

I’ll always think of you that way.

I’ll see you in the morning sun,

And when the night is new,

I’ll be looking at the moon,

But I’ll be seeing you.

Addendum To The Previous

From her birth I endeavored to teach my daughter about what we called either Jr High humor or 13 year old boy humor.  This was in order to prepare her, not only for Jr High, Sr High and college, but also for courtship and married life.  And I do believe it has paid off.  However judging by her reaction to the previous post it seems no one has prepared her for 70 year old humor.  Any other reader who did not find it side-splittingly hilarious must  be similarly deprived.

Staying Current

I composed my first tweet this morning.  Since I have no twitter account I thought I would just post it here.  I was preparing my breakfast when it came to me.  Here it is.

Out of Raison Bran.  Bowels slamming shut.

Braggarts

A few days ago I spent about 15 minutes in conversation with a fellow I see very intermittently. When it was over I had an idea of his philanthropic practices (considerable), his filial responsibility and kindness (impressive), and his investing success (really good). A week or so before that I spent even less time with another guy and learned the percentage of world sales of his firm that he is responsible for, how many people’s jobs depend on him setting up big deals, and I think something about his wine cellar. Here’s what I’d like. I’d like to get these two guys to have lunch together and witness the result. The conversation that I imagine titillates my grey matter. Who would dominate? Which one would go the furthest? Would either one listen? Would their claims escalate?  Would they enjoy their time together? What would each think of the other when the conversation ended?  Alas I see no way for them to ever cross paths, but how I’d like to be there if it happened.

Probably I should add that I am no paragon of modesty. For all I know I may be exactly like these two. Nobody has ever intimated as much to me, but then neither did I say anything to them. I do publish a completely ego centric and self indulgent blog. Come to think of it my wife may have been trying to convey something yesterday.

These Days In My Hood

Author’s note: Sometime in the late 70’s or 80’s the phenomenon of gentrification began to sweep across our land rejuvenating tired and faded metropolitan neighborhoods. For reasons I will not go into, in my city this process began on my block, creating a net worth for my wife and me that we never expected and didn’t particularly deserve.

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Pasted below are the 1st, 14th and 15th of a series of emails posted on our neighborhood forum over a period of 7 days. The omitted messages trace a progression from the first alert toward a possible identification. You’ll see.

#1: I just wanted to alert people that we had an strange person come to our door last night while we were eating dinner. He knocked loudly and repeatedly until my husband answered. The guy was disheveled and yet wore a tie, he was a little overly eager and loud and was asking how to get to Montlake. We told him he was in Montlake, at which point he said he needed to get to "the store."

We weren't suspicious at the time, but thought more about it and decided he was probably trying to figure out what the interior of our house looked like and what might be valuable, etc. Anyway, given that break-ins have been a problem lately, I thought I'd alert others.

# 14: Hi - we lived in Montlake for four years, the same person tried the "locksmith" bit two separate times. He lives in an apartment above Fuel or works for the building, I am not sure which. I often saw him cleaning the sidewalk and taking out the trash. Good luck.

# 15: If you are going come this close to accusing a specific person of misbehavior, I think it more appropriate you take your information to the police and get the matter settled immediately. You shouldn’t make accusations unless you are both quite certain about them and willing to follow through on them. In this case you have simply pointed to the wrong person. I happen to be a friend of the person you are describing and you are totally wrong about him.


The following day there were 6 messages posted under the subject, “New suspicious solicitor”. Here’s the first.

We just had a visit at dusk by a suspicious solicitor. It was a young African American man with a close shaved head. He is tall and thin and carrying a clipboard. He was
wearing a light colored shirt and dark pants as well as a tie. He had blue
baseball cap attached to his belt. He said he was from "urban development,"
which we never heard of so we sent him away. We saw him bend down to try to see
through our opaque glass entry.

Be alert.



These six were followed by six more under the subject, People With Clipboards Roaming The Neighborhood. Here’s the first of these.



Batten down the hatches. On E McGraw St just saw at least two people with clipboards roaming around.



Finally I felt called upon to offer my own post, to wit:


A few weeks ago as I rode my bike up our street toward home my thoughts happened to fall upon the cars that lined the street at the curb and in the driveways. I thought how the current set of cars might compare with those that rested in the same spots in 1969 when we moved here. I wondered what would be revealed about changes in our street by such a comparison. With that in mind, on a Sunday a week or so later I picked up a clipboard and proceeded down the block making an inventory of the vehicles to be found. In some cases, if a machine was a bit outside my common familiarity, I stopped to scrutinize what I found. I would like now to apologize for any alarm I may have raised in the breasts of any of my good neighbors by this behavior. I suppose it was even more likely in as much I was wearing a faux leather jacket I got at the  Goodwill, some tattered Carharts, and Keenes, without the benefit of socks. Sorry.

As for the results, I found 1 Maserati, 1 Ferrari, 1 Jaguar, 2 Porsches, 4 Beemers, 1 Audi, 3 Mercedes, 1 Cadillac (a classic), 8 VWs, 4 volvos, 1 Harley, 1 Vespa and a bunch of other stuff too mundane to mention. All I can report from 1969 is the '63 Chevy II that we owned and my own Vespa which is now long gone. A couple of years later we picked up an International Harvester delivery van. The Chevy has been replaced by a Honda Civic. We still have the International, but it is now a chicken coop.

Apologetically,

Paul Gibson

Good Smells, Bad Smells

I happen to be married to an incredible olfactory system.  Not like that of my dog, of course, who can't go 20 feet up the sidewalk without stopping to check her messages (not my line unfortunately), but for a human really quite remarkable.  I, on the other hand, have a substandard system.  If you were to add us together and divide by 2 you would get about the standard for our species.  It turns out this disparity of talent is quite useful.  There's a lot of bad smelling stuff in the world and a lot of it needs to be cleaned up, moved around or otherwise handled.  Those, naturally, are my jobs.  This is not a complaint.  The sense of smell might be a place where given a choice between supper good and rather poor a person would be wise to go for being less gifted.  It may well be that the world offers us more and stronger bad smells than good.  In my wife's case even the supposedly good ones, e.g. perfume, are often punishingly bad. 

Just musing.

You can stop watching the news

Newt Gingrich is going to be the next President of the United States.

With his nominees the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade and the conservative majority will last for decades.

Mother Earth is screwed.  Well, she would be if she cared, which, being a planet, she doesn't.  But anybody living on a low lying island is.

My record at predicting the future stinks.