No, not Andy and Dougy (though they do wish you a blessed Christmas), but from my friend Deborah’s Charles and André, here in a holiday photo slide show.
“Meow! Meow!”
Deborah assures me Charles enjoys dressing up, and that he purrs while in costume. On the other hand, Dougy and Andy prefer to walk around in their birthday suits!
A special greeting to my friend Ralph in Paris on this holiday and to my friend Michel in Amiens! Need I add a hearty and heartfelt vive la France!?
http://www.france.fr/en/institutions-and-values/french-flag.html
In this the 150th Anniversary year for the end of the Civil War, it seems at times we still are at war. The fight for basic civil rights…. The traitor flag, the racist flag, the heritage flag that is the Stars and Bars…. The regional divisions…. The inability to work together with others for the common good if it means setting aside our personal agendas….
Yet, we have more in common than we sometimes acknowledge. At the start of this Fourth of July, I’m dispensing with the patriotic message and encouraging you to listen to a few songs common during the Civil War period, some of which you’d hear sung or played on both sides of the battle lines.
Thanks to cool, rainy weather the past few days, the potted flowers I put out for Memorial Day survived nicely.
Today, though, it was time to bring them home. After a few days, the city removes flowers and decorations not retrieved by family and friends, so I always err on the side of “too soon”.
They have, after all, served their purpose on the holiday, and now it’s time to serve a happier, more decorative purpose on my front steps.
My camera battery “died” after the first two floral portraits. A third flower will have to wait to be photographed. This is how I let my brother and sisters know I took care of Memorial Day here.
A cousin who usually decorates two of the same graves I do (her father and our paternal grandmother; my parents) didn’t make it up to Alliance this year for whatever reason. I’ll call her because it is very unusual for her to miss Memorial Day. She publishes a major issue of her newspaper this time of year — I just got it in the mail the other day — and I am concerned she may have worked herself into a bad cold or something. This special edition always takes a lot out of her, so I am concerned she missed the holiday here.
I know she will feel better knowing those two graves were tended to, so this is how I will let her know, too. I pray she is OK.
The Fourth of July isn’t a favorite holiday. I like quiet, and this is a noisy holiday. Days of it, not just the 4th. It seems odd people celebrate the founding of a country based on the rule of law by disturbing the peace. I just don’t get it. I don’t like fireworks shows either because every once in a while they always toss in a bomb just to make a loud, unpleasant noise: “…the bombs bursting in air…” Ugh.
It is odd, then, that the quiet place I will spend the Fourth of July afternoon is the military museum where I volunteer every Thursday, nestled among the noisy artifacts of war, now rendered inoperable. Yet it is quiet there, library quiet, if you are old enough to remember when the spinster librarian shushed you every time you peeped. That quiet. I will take a book to read. I started it three weeks ago there, and I’m nearly done. It’s a history about how America ended up in WWII.
Don’t let me rain on your parade, though! If you like the noisy elements of the traditional celebration of this holiday, by all means blow up a few hundred bucks worth of fireworks! Just don’t do it in my neighborhood. Thanks!
p.s. Andy and Dougy aren’t afraid of loud random noises like thunder, sirens, or fireworks, which is a blessing. Some animals suffer needlessly in fear till the noise is done. My cats are tough!