2001-04-22 - 18:56 M DST

THE WONDERING JEW

Back To Humdrum

The let down has been . . . . . one. It started, as forcast began snowing last night and still snowing today, chilly out there. Only one saving grace is that still the pavement and sidewalks are warm enough that the snow is melting on them. Tonight who knows, the temperature might take all of our beautiful plants, shrivelling those colorful flowers into garbage. I pray not. Its April, its Denver, that's how the mop crumbles and the cookie flops, no ? Laughed at the news on weather here in Denver, The Sunday Denver Post Has an article headed, "You never know with late snow." Sub head, "Could need shovel today -- or sunblock." that's news ha ha ha ha hoo hee hee to me Hah ?

With a certain amount of things to print, guess what ? Plenteous paper, zilch on ink. This wimp won't go out in the snow to Office Depot to get more.

Seems like after a few warm days here, Denver drivers have to learn all over again how to drive in wet weather and seem to go blind if there are a few flakes in the air. Then of course there are those who drive the magic vehicles, with all their accessories who feel that their heavy vehicles can stop on a dime on the slickest ice and make 90 degree turns under the same circumstances. I know I can drive, I just don't want to be a moving target for the suicidal, inattentive, overconfident drivers of those weapons of stupidity.

Heather and I are holed up, with plenty of food in the pantry and fridge. Son came by in his SUV and had dinner with us, looked over the party photographs of last week and visited with us. Which was the high point of our day.

After he left I attempted to get on the net. I guess everybody on Webtv was trying to do the same, the only thing I was able to do was to read e-mail already in my in box and the response was slow there too. This morning before the whole world was awake the net was pretty open for me - on Webtv. I notice that about eleven thirty Webtv turns a deaf ear to a try for other web sites or any other function of Webtv, again on week days there is a period around the end of the school day/quitting time that is about the same.

The sniffles are plaguing me now, the kleenex is at hand, right next to the saline mist and beconase, Tussin handy if it starts to go down into my chest. Youth has the ability to resist ailments and to recover rapidly from these things. But like John "The Old Gray Poet" will attest, we duffers must pay attention to these things. Its a bummer that with our flu shots up to date and our Pneumovax pneumonia shots in our system that man's ailment that defies any cure and only partial symptomatic relief is still with us.

I notice a book that I wish to get, called, "Orphan Trains" by Stephen O"Connor about the efforts and successes and failure of those attempts to save waifs from the cruel streets of the cities back east and send them to the west from 1854 to 1929. Jeepers, I was eight years old in 29 and the depression hit that year. I had never heard of Orphan Trains in the years of my awareness. There were successes I know, but this book purports to tell some of the failures. It will go on my shelf with my books on Labor struggles, and some of the ugly stories of broken treaties and slavery and other tales of history that are shoved under the table by society. Don't want particulary to rub my nose in it, but I do want to know about it.

I keep dipping into Maya Angelou's poems and one struck me as being pertinent for me at my time of life.

"Insomniac"

There are some nights when

sleep plays coy,

aloof and disdainful.

And all the wiles

that I employ to win

its service to my side

are useless as wounded pride,

and much more painful.

Maya's poems bring a reality check to me now and then.

A message on our answering machine which was recorded near quitting time Friday, in staccato badly enunciated words, has me scratching my head, requesting a return call about an appointment for me on the 25th. With who ? Damfino. After many repeats I think I do have the phone and extension to call tomorrow morning. Have to move quickly on this as my son who is the "third" (I'm "Junior") is a member of the same HMO we are and if it is a call for him it will take some fast dialing to make things as they should be. Heather is making a list of things we need to do and tomorrow it is Back To Humdrum . . . . . .

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