Time Prompt

Time

Too much and not enough

Stay in the moment

Wrap your arms around it

Don't let it slip away

Don't look back

Don't worry about tomorrow

A step at a time

One foot in front of the other

Live for today

Carpe diem

God! There are an awful lotof cliches about time

Emily Gallo

From Esparto to Stockholm

In 1978, he parked the '49 Chevy in his mother's barn. For 30 years it sat untouched. Not once did he open a door, check under the hood or disturb the dust. Then it was sold to a stranger online who shipped it to an eager buyer in Sweden. Two years later tourists from Chico spot it in Stockholm.

Talk is Cheap Prompt

Talk is Cheap      

Choosing sides and making waves

Angry words you're sorry you said

Telling lies and taking chances

Hurtful glares and stony faces

Forgiving is hard and talk is cheap

Kindness and caring are cheaper

Emily Gallo

Fishing Prompt

Fishing

         He grew up on the lower East side of Manhattan. He told me stories of swimming in the East River - a nauseating thought in the 1960s. But he claimed it wasn't that polluted when he was growing up. There were seven kids in his family and one outhouse in the back yard of his tenement and it was shared with everyone who lived in the building. He was extremely poor, a true city kid right out of the movie, "The Streets of New York".

         He went to law school and became a colonel in the army. One could call it a real Horatio Alger story. He never lived anywhere but New York City until he retired and moved to one of those over 55 retirement villages in New Jersey.

         It was there at the age of 65 that he held a fishing pole in his hands for the first time. He loved to stand on the dock in Neptune Beach, New Jersey, looking out at the ocean. And it was there, standing with my father less than a year before he died, that I saw a completely different side of a complex man.

Emily Gallo

A Leigh Rubin Adventure at the Sacramento Bee with Liz, Mike and Andy

Judging by the Cover

LG was an alcoholic, a wino on the streets of my town
Polite people called him a derelict, and tried to avoid his company
But they didn't know...

When he passed away there was an outdoor remembrance of his life
In the park where he did most of his drinking
Hundreds of people attended
The Mayor spoke
As well as LG's former wife

If, during the 19XXs, you hung out on the streets of "X", California
A University town with a reputation for drugs and alcoholic disorder
You would have been familiar with LG
He was ubiquitous, with a brash, frequently obnoxious persona
And he organized, after a fashion, the winos
If a public event were being planned in LG's favorite park
The wise sponsor would know to slip LG a $20 bill at the beginning of the day
LG would take his fellow inebriates to a different park for their day of drinking
It was an easy tactic to avoid confrontations with the resident drunks
Even the police used it on occasion
In that fashion, and others, LG, was a peacekeeper

But he was erratic

I once saw him, very drunk, fighting another drunk
It was one of the most hilarious moments of physical comedy I have ever seen
The two men rolled and tussled and shouted and swore
The second drunk had a cast on his forearm
He used it for a club, pumelling LG on the head
Not to much effect
The police arrived, broke up the fight
Because they knew LG they didn't arrest him
So he went home, assaulted his wife and broke her jaw
After years of abuse she finally told LG to leave
A year later she married B, and he treats her with great kindness
But she never stopped loving LG
She spoke at his memorial with great fondness for the man

Dilemma

He watched her ashen, bony face, once so rosy and robust. Her eyes were closed but her chest moved up and down laboriously. He’d watched the nurse clip off the tube enough times. She had gone to the store. She’d be gone for an hour. That would be enough time. Her eyes opened and they pleaded with him.

Last Words

His last words were a gently smiling “Thank you”. My father had become very polite in the last stages of dementia. It’s what he said when I put him on his bed that Saturday night in one of our bedrooms, a room stripped of everything except a bed with a hospital sheet.

First Kiss

I pulled up in front of her house. I looked over at Nancy. There was a pregnant pause. She slid over and planted one on me. It was a real juicer! I got out of the car, tripped over the curb, fell face down in wet ivy, walked her to the door in a daze, drove home without lights.

Will you be my Valentine?

Will you be my Valentine?
You’ll know you’ve asked before its time
If the answer’s conversation
Or a lengthy thoughtful explanation
A convoluted explication
Or nuanced Freudian meditation

A simple word is what’s required
An affirmation that’s inspired
A joyous hoped for declaration
Of shining hope and inspiration

And buddy
If you’re not sure of that word
Don’t bother to ask the question

Fishing

Noah didn't bring just two of us on board. He brought two hundred in a big wooden box filled with dirt and table scraps. He even relocated a lucky few every day to the roomier “digs” he had built for us on deck. Because of these astonishing accommodations, we worms considered ourselves Noah’s, and by implication, God's favorite animals.

School for Scandal

Chapter 1
When he saw it, he told me that his first thought was a question.  "Why would someone leave a bundle of rags here?"  Then we saw the blood on the door.

He and I had come to school an hour early that Monday morning in December to catch up on his grading. Two sets of compositions were in the right-hand desk drawer where he always kept homework assignments before they were marked. With compositions it was always twenty points possible--ten for organization and originality and ten for grammar. I'd never done better than fourteen. I didn't have the patience to look up words in those days

He was a fanatic when it came to getting his student's work back within a day or two. It seemed like he was always grading papers before and after school. I guess that's because he never took his work home and there were a hundred and ninety-two of us. He assigned a composition a week.

The Games People Play

The title of this editorial is taken from a book by Eric Berne, MD. In it he offers the following definition of “game”.  A game is a series of complementary transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome.  Descriptively it is a recurring set of transactions, often repetitious, superficially plausible, with a concealed motivation; or, more colloquially, a series of moves with a snare, or “gimmick”….  Every game is basically dishonest, and the outcome has a dramatic, as distinct from merely exciting, quality.”

The book lists the whole series of games that people play: life games, marital games, party games, sexual games, under world games, consulting room games, and finally what he calls good games.  After reading a book I know for certain what I have suspected for most of my life: I'm not a good game player.  My friends know that I am naïve, tend to accept at face value what people tell me, and I try to communicate what I think and feel in a straightforward way. One illustration of this personality characteristic follows.

In Cold Pursuit

In this book, Andrews does what she does best--make the reader "see" the locals she describes. I want to go to Antarctica! I was fascinated by the scientific research that is ongoing and the detailed look at what life is like for both scientists and support staff in this huge, magnificent, deadly "last continent".

I too was unhappy with the editing, although not really put off by it. I was a bit disappointed that Valena didn't have to survive by her wits alone in some remote, dangerous region, and/or kick the villain in the balls and drag his ass behind one of the snowmobiles. She is certainly tough and strong enough to do it. But, and this is a big BUT, she is not Em Hansen

However, the book is a great read; the solution to the mystery satisfying and scientific; Valena is a real character faced with very difficult personal, physical, and academic dilemmas; and I believe that she "falls" for a very cool guy.

Sarah has lived there! She shared the unbelievable beauty and danger of Antarctica, tossed in just enough philosophy to make her quotable, added enough humor and grit to make her fellow adventurers come alive, and best of all, reminded me what it means to be a scientific researcher doing work that really means something!

I have read all of Sarah Andrews’s fiction, and this book is one of her best.

Tea Party Nonsense

When responsible Tea Party members and their Republican standard bearers disavow the cruel, disingenuous, and unchristian sentiments expressed by the characters quoted in this animation, I will agree that a “broad brush” has been used to demonize all Tea Partiers. Until then, I must confess that I enjoyed this “animated” response to the trash talk that infects my email account and pollutes the airways.