Changing the Guard, day before Thanksgiving, 2018

HI my dearest.

Swapping fresh Russell Stover chocolates under your picture. Last year was Truffles, bright foil cranberry wrapping,  am replacing with box of All Dark Chocolate, shiny royal blue.

Blue for Hanukkah, days away, December 2, 2018.

How we'd pig out on those buy one, get one specials at grocery ... buy one, get one free...your eyes bright with expectation, maybe mine, too although I couldn't see myself, but through you, the world shone.

Taking showers together

I dreamed we were taking showers together and you made me spill the shampoo. We laughed. Maybe as teenagers at the beach ... sweet.

Terrific Copy re Miami Book Fair, 2018

The MIami Book Fair begins next week and this session is titled Will American Democracy Survive Trump? 12:30 p.m./ Room 2106

The Founders never anticipated a realpolitik in which the most powerful man in America is a reality TV star with autocratic impulses, kleptocratic policies and an itchy Twitter finger. What role should citizens of good faith play when confronted by a leader who neither understands, nor abides by, the rule of law? This will be a spirited and provocative about the future of our democracy , featuring Sarah Kendsior, a regular on MSNBC's AM Joy and author of the the View from Flyover  Country; David Cay Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Making of Donald Trump; and Steve Almond, New York Times best-selling author of Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country.

Carole, after I keyed this copy form booklet. and still with bronchitis , I crashed and dreamed Mom was saying or visa versa ...The car engine needs a lime over ....

WE were together...a long, glorious trial into backtime ....

Wipe Out for Halloween Witch

Carole, did you ever have bronchitis?  Am thinking you had.

Can you believe we still don't have nationalized health and my very own daughter — an ER nurse — loves Trump so much she doesn't care???? Needless to say, our relationship approaches the superficial. 

Am still connecting to you on my older computer because I don't know how to hook this to the floods blog that I update on newer one. Daylight savings ended or began, this morning. And when the time cycle changes again, it will be a another hurricane season and I am so petrified!

Danny and Josh are doing well, Danny got his contract renewed for filming and leaves Houston in a few days. Josh is in the media business, too.

Hi Brethren. 

No writing class for me Tuesday, and possibly a nixed book club Friday. Rogue Witch Nana managed to catch bronchitis Halloween night.

You wouldn’t believe all the sweet, gorgeous, germy kids, hordes In Palmetto Bay, swashing up end down streets, BBQ’s every few blocks. 

Germs winged in a flash and then too sick to text, or open the computer, I plotzed into bed and didn’t move. Except potty trips with all that coughing and coughing. Exhausting. And amazing how quickly it spread, one hour trick or treating, the next overcome with something I couldn’t explain. 

Saturday, when finally texting my dear friend Sharon in New Mexico, Miss Sharon scared the waddens right out of me, saying the coughing and unusual CRACKLING sound indicated bronchitis possibly turning into pneumonia …."Get to a doctor, NO EXCUSES!!!"

Sharon was right on target. Sharon saved Witch Nana from miles away.

Baptist Urgent Care was / is the best: x-rays, strep and flu tests, doctors, nurses, technicians and meds all in one place.

Having insurance imperative, we need MEDICARE + Medicad, good PUBLIC health for everyone. Remember when voting this Tuesday. VOTE BLUE! 

Democratic. Medicare — public health — for everyone! 

 

Grandson William with Witch Nana 

October 19. 2018

My dearest,

Shortly after my surgery, and before you died, I ran into you at Ross. I recall my surprise at seeing you there.  All these years and months and cataclysms, and stars as if yesterday.  I believe this memory is true. Its vividness evidence? Now I wonder if you'll come again, corporeal in the flesh ... as then unto now.

So too the black leather tooled wallet you gifted me last year at Hanukkah. I'd been looking and looking, combing through store shelves....and you'd placed it, behind the platters...so I'd find it — you'd read my mind. 

October 2018. Three days away from 17 years: epicness

HI my love.

Today is October 16, the 19th this Friday. All we should have shared, been doing, still are in a sense, am back to writing, not reading in class this week.

RUFOUS, reddish brown in color, apparently relates to hummingbird.  maybe birds in general, word streamed across my computer screen.

September 11, 2018

Seventeen years ago ....

5779 Rosh Hashanah 2018

OH Carole, gotta figure out how to open from other computer. High Holidays begins Sunday, kids will hopefully be here Sept. 19 for Yom Kippur Break the Fast although no one fasts or attends services —to say I miss you with all my heart an understatement.

Caught up with Joshua today, he is doing so well, so is Danny as usual. Both in media, Danny as cameraman, Josh as media manager, sending stuff from cameras into computer... both different shows and jobs.

Curt is on treadmill he's doing well, too.

The #MeToo Movement has taken hold, makes our book easier to to understand and yes, I am back to it ....

Oh my dear sister ....

Sam just texted, texting before you time? He is dropping Kelly the Belly off, his greyhound... he is doing s volunteer fire shift, William is with mother, three big red X's  are out there on the national hurricane site storming from the African coast ... Carole, if the kids weren't here, I'd be gone in a flash, to where I couldn't say ...

Josh completed a documentary, Evolution of Nails, about a painter who adds three 3D with nails, is hoping it makes it into competition. Truly interesting, how light and shadows effect ...the guy us a talented artist. Marcus Levine ... here's the link but you might need a password https://vimeo.com/280272906

Politically, things are tragically disgusting here, and with my daughter supporting Trump—well things are difficult to say the least, never in a million years would I have expected ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/.../trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

2 days ago - The Times is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in ..

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

June 23, 2018 — Max Bruch

Violin Concerto Number One in G Minor conducted By Josh Bell.... exquisite, have no clue what G Minor means, how many *minors" there actually are, but announcer said, and you would have understood. Thought of you and cried.

Called Snooky yesterday out of the blue, thanked him for being nice to us when we were kids, he and Aunt Arlene picking us up from Nana Sophie's and taking us to Narraganset Beach. Snooky is now 84 ... guess I am catching up on unfinished business. He had been kind, pulling up in front of Nana's with his new T-Bird ... a convertible!

Thought of you in part because Sam and Wizardry William, age 7, are here for hot showers and suppers ... plumbing issue at his house, Sam's working on.

William is so adorable ... sweet,

as you and I must have been— you and I then chiRpY together —

half-a-century past ...  six decades since ...  more than sixty years ago ...

chiRpY enchantment.

May 10, 2018

Hi Carole, May 10 must have been a Mother's Day during our years together because I dreamed of your flouncing, presenting a bouquet of flowers the way you used to do, an outstretched arm full of colors, your  smile beatific and broad across your face. Along with your ebullient rich brown eyes, radiant.

I hit the 70-year-old mark without you, who could have ever imagined either?

Still in my older computer, have a nice image of Curt and I at South Pointe Park on Miami Beach ... not sure how to transfer it.

OK, I emailed it, can't drag from email into blog so dragged to desk top and will import ... we shall see ... it worked!

Will add pic of Danny taken 2 days ago, he' s back from filming in Houston. TX.  He rode an electric / battery like over. I was so happy to see him! Danny is off to Europe next week with gf Elena, Josh, and Giselle, a graduation present to her.  Unsure of their exact plans, not sure if they know!

Can't add captions to Danny's images taken May 3. 2018.

The family is coming over Saturday,  May 12. Maybe more pictures then.

May 12 also our mother's yahrzeit, perhaps five years after your passing.

And so it goes.

March 2018

Students Lead Huge Rallies for Gun Control Across U.S.

Hi Carole, header above from NYT ... received my replacement computer from Apple a few month ago and will attempt to do this blog and Pinecrest Floods,  https://pinecrestfloods.blogspot.com/ from the newer one .... I get confused accessing different blogs, so had used this older one, circa 2009,  for us and the other for Pinecrest Floods ...

Students Lead Huge Rallies for Gun Control Across U.S.

By THE NEW YORK TIMES 28 minutes ago

• Hundreds of thousands of protesters, outraged by a recent school shooting and energized by the student survivors, gathered in Washington to call for an end to gun violence.
• More than 800 protests are planned in every American state and on every continent except for Antarctica. Follow our live coverage.

A side note ±

Carole ...

PS: I took 7-yr-old grandson, William,  to Toy R Us yesterday for Skylanders creatures ... a video interactive game he plays on Miguel's old Xbox.

Historic because Toy R Us is liquidating, all stores going out of business, bankrupt. Sad.

I filed the receipt and some toy packaging in my hope chest — a time capsule.

PPS: Craig's tree spirit is still fastened on the sea grape tree ... hung perhaps 15 years ago, a year or 18 months after you died, a spirit to you, from him and to Curt and I.  Carole, you are with me everyday day ...

PPSS:  Seemingly our last bit of cold weather ending ... will be heating up and then into another storm / hurricane/ flooding / hurricane season ... am scared beyond. 

February 14, 2018 — Valentine's Day School Massacre

 Light and love and warmth ... how I miss you.

BUT WAIT ... the air has changed ... love and warmth to massacre —

—————

LOCAL: Gunfire has just been reported at a high school in Broward County ... Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School ... there are 3,208 children in grades 9 - 12 enrolled there ...

BREAKING NEWSA shooting was reported at a high school in South Florida. “There are reports of victims,” the police said, and an armed suspect was at large. 3:40 PM 


OMG, Celeste was here last night, with son, my Miguel, 13 year-old grandson. She left early for work schedule today, an ER nurse working in Broward Medical Center where the injured and dying are being transported.

Pavane for a Dead Princes

Maurice Ravel into my living room while I hunchbacked on the couch, stare at your picture on the mantle, tears streaming, you 19 -years-old, Mediterranean almond eyes downward. And I see you through those tears, years ago, time and its disparity — you chirpily telling me that you'd been an Egyptian princess once and I never disbelieved.


********

Was it you with your reach divining into a dentist appointment for me tomorrow ... my aching tooth scheduled two weeks ahead?

Oh Carole, how I miss you.

Two days later, Wednesday January 24, 2018.

Carole, could you imagine a Divining Dentist Appointment would make so so happy? First getting, then the results???? NO extraction, or root canal! I'd had a buncle ... "it was a buncle," I'd cried, and he finally surmised I meant carbuncle, an abscess, dumb me.  Outdated Ampicillin given for another tooth still viable.

After that good news, went to class and one upped. May be going to AWP conference in Tampa in March, a classmate booked herself, we'll share a room and she'll drive.  More to follow. Am reading Atwood's The Heart Goes Last, a dystopian madcap. Zany-plus.

Also reading Glick's Time Travel. Between the two, our Three Attention Deficit Sisters and the Mafia. 

January 3, 2018

Hi Carole,

Were you here, we'd be a year apart in ages, whatever those numbers confer ...