Memorabilia & Narrow Escapes

IMG_6350Well, at least one of us dressed up for Easter dinner. I put on decent clothes in the morning, but later, while preparing and cooking ham in a hot kitchen, dressed down to gym shorts and a tee. There being no reason to get gussied up again, I ate dinner in that slobbish state. Donna too wore an old tee. Polly, looking fresh as a daisy, sat down to dinner and a movie with us … we watched Tetris on Apple TV, a show about the intrigue and double-dealing behind bringing the Russian-invented game to the West. Surprisingly tense.

I can’t get righteous over rich assholes collecting Nazi memorabilia. I lived in Germany as a kid during the 1950s and again as a newly-married teen in the mid-60s and had plenty of opportunity to collect Nazi relics of my own. It wasn’t something I ever thought about doing, but if anyone had given me some I would have thought it was cool and hung onto it. Imperial Japanese mementos from WWII were harder to find when we were stationed on Okinawa in the late 80s/early 90s, but again, if any had fallen into my hands I would have kept them.*

I can, though, get righteous about a United States Supreme Court justice selling himself to a Nazi memorabilia-collecting billionaire who almost certainly refers to him his pet you-know-what behind his back. And I’ll get righteous all over again when Thomas continues to get clean away with being bought and dirty, and just you watch and see that’s exactly what’ll happen.

Anita Hill told us who Clarence Thomas is. Some of us listened, for all the good that did. And then Christine Blasey Ford told us who Brett Kavanaugh is, and some of us listened for all the good that did. How do these cartoonish villains get away with flagrant, public crimes? Did they, as children, suck the Dalai Lama’s tongue or something?

Grrr. Arrgh.**


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I took this shot of Lulu, Fritzi, and Mister B during our morning walk on the 6th, then posted it on Instagram and Facebook. This was our first photo stop at that location, a neighbor’s driveway five houses down from ours. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there’s a stub of a broken branch on the tree, ideal as a hook for the dogs’ leashes. Not thinking anyone would mind, I stepped on the rocks (wearing nothing but sandals on my feet), looped the leashes over the broken branch, took several photos, then stepped back on the rocks to unhook the leashes.

Three days later, on the 9th, the neighbors who own that house posted this photo to our Facebook HOA group:

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The text accompanying the photo:

Hi neighbors, about 6:00pm today (4/9) had Rural Metro come by and relocate this teenage rattle snake that was by the post at the corner of my driveway and Sunnywood. I think he was just enjoying the sun warmed rocks. It is definitely the time of year to keep a sharp eye out when you’re outside walking or working.

Note to self: pay more attention when picking doggie photo locations, if not for my own sake, for theirs. I swear, there’s nothing in this damn state that doesn’t bite, stab, or sting: cholla balls, mesquite thorns, poisonous toads, scorpions, rattlesnakes, gila monsters, coyotes, javalina, bobcats, mountain lions, hawks, giant owls, fucking bears … every one of which either lives in or occasionally transits our subdivision!


*What I do have is a gear warning indicator light from a Soviet fighter jet, prised loose with my own hands from the cockpit of a bullet-riddled MiG-21 on a bombing range north of Las Vegas. At one time I had a gym bag with the logo for the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics on it, a chipper little bear with the word MOKBA and the Olympic Rings above it, but someone filched it from the B van at a hash years ago. On a trip to East Berlin in the 80s we bought a silver vodka glass holder at a hard currency store for Soviet officers and later contributed it as a white elephant gift for a unit Christmas party.

**Yes, that is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference.

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