On Theme

 

This photo was uploaded on 07/24/24 with the intent that I would have written and then posted the subsequent post. 

Here we are some days later, well into August and here I am writing and posting.  

In the interim one aunt celebrated her 94th birthday (she, the mother of an only daughter) and another, celebrating birthday number 87 next month expressed extreme frustration with her only daughter.  

This only daughter celebrated and mourned for deep, deep reasons in conversations with both.  

For the record, when I talk about family, aunts, uncles, cousins, it is primarily my maternal relatives I speak of. I don't really have a relationship with any of my dad's side.  I am virtually connected to a few cousins but we haven't spent any face-to-face time together in decades.  When they speak of our grandparents, their parents, and our shared cousins, I'm at a lost.  I don't have the comfort of the history they enjoy.  

Also in the interim of the posting of that lovely sunflower a neighbor died.  Our across the hall neighbor, with whom we had a companiable relationship, had gone silent to her distant (she didn't have any relatives in town) relatives. After a couple of days of her not responding to messages, they called our local police for a well check.  

Her brother (driver of a vehicle with Texas plates) is here to . . . do what needs doing.  He's been here for two weeks.  Neighbors who have seen, met him outside the building report he isn't doing well; he is deep in the grips of grief. 

I can relate.  Deeply.

For also since the posting of that lovely sunflower yours truly celebrated another birthday. Conversations with my brothers (one actual phone conversation the other a conversation by proxy--my older brother and I do not talk) along with conversations with other relatives and friends kicked up a bunch of memorial dust. m

Here I sit on August 14th . . .  well, basically it, here I sit.  I'm not making plans beyond the next 24 (okay, maybe 48) hours.  I am living in the moment, taking it all a day and a step at a time.  

My knees will not allow much more than that.  

In other news I have posted at least one post a month save June.  What happened in June?  Still, on pace to hit 1,130 posts before years' end.  (I'm at 1,128 LOLOLOL) 

Take gentle care, gentle folks; life is a celebration, Celebrate Life.  (of Fame -the TV show, fame).  

More than Halfway

Can you believe it is already August!? Or, depending on how you're coping with some measure of isolation, quarantine, pandemic situations, it is "just" August!?  

In either case we're more than half-way through 2020.

Outside of Covid news, there is the election.  I feel like that should be typed in all caps, bold, underlined, and highlighted; THE ELECTION! 

I'm getting the sense that folks are trying to hold on, trying to stay a course, counting on THE ELECTION  to be the catalyst that changes the course of where we are and where we may be headed, which is nowhere good. 

Simply put, we're in deep doo-doo and it's getting deeper.  

I can't talk about it much because every time I do. . . rage.  

In other news...well, there isn't any other news, really.  I'm a year older, my son is exploring musical expression, my daughter is frustrated with work and her car. In the meantime we are masking, distancing, keeping our respective worlds small, and adapting.

Illinois has 195,00 confirmed Covid-19 cases.  Over two thousand new cases were reported yesterday.  There have been 7,846 deaths as of the tally reported yesterday. 

I heard a song a couple of weeks ago, a new release by newly named, "The Chicks" titled, "Set Me Free" and is a haunting love-gone-wrong, nasty dissolution anthem. But I heard it as a battle cry to be released from the horror of  45.

Decency would be for you to sign and release me. If you ever loved me, then will you do this one last thing? Set me free, set me free. 

    

Throwback Thursday

Selfie 

For Some, It Is That Time

My daughter with drink in hand. 

Summertime and the living is easy.*

*for some folks, don't you know.

*for some of the time, for sure?

*credit DuBose Hewaard and 

the Gershwins (George and Ira) 

#Six Word Saturday     

Amity is a Summer Town

 . ..and so, summer has begun. 

Summer in Chicago for many, if not most residents equals being outdoors at one festival or another. The weekends are chock full of options from one end of the city to the other.It is a grand opportunity to visit a neighborhood that is not one's normal stomping ground, to sample foods that may be outside one's comfort zone. 

A random art fair aside, outdoor festivals are not typically my cup of tea. My sensibilities are turned off by three elements inherent in these fetes: 1. crowds 2. outdoor eating 3. too many people, wearing too few articles of clothing, imbibing too many fruity spectacles delivered in a culled out pineapples.

On the positive tip though, attending festivals is an excellent way to get in s-t-e-p-s.

While not your typical festival dweller I will,  depending on the weather, other commitments, and the neighborhood, check the calendar, pencil in the possible events, and try not to talk myself out of attending at least 3 over the next 3 months. 

Summer has just begun and I've already missed more than a dozen. Don't fret there are dozens more. 

The actor embraces the festivals and would attend more if he wasn't more often than not, working. He will, though almost always make time for the Printer's Row Lit Fest (I would have gone there had it not been the same weekend as the 57th Street Art Fair) and the Blues Festival.  

A Tribune photographer captured the actor at the blues festival last weekend. Check out the gallery. And yes, he pretty much dresses this way for everything, winter or summer, rain or shine. 

I do look forward to summer in Chicago, more for the opportunities to get out on my bicycle over attending festivals. But it is grand to know that weekend IN and weekend OUT there is something I could do, somewhere I could go--have a fruity spectacle delivered in a culled out pineapple--if I truly wanted to go that route. 

Roll on Summertime. ♥ ♥ ♥