Same thing over and over, with a twist

Of course, the radiologists can always find some excuse to call one back. But this time they've managed to scare me. So not only do I have unending clinic visits to look forward to with my usual glee, but also concern for the outcome.

So I've moped around here most of the day with nothing done, not really giving a hoot whether anything's done or not.

Dammitall anyway! Or 90 percent of it. At least 90% of The Kirklin Clinic.

Have to buy that bed that's high enough to crawl under.

What day is it? Where am I?

I knew my clinic appointment was today, but I thought it was Friday. But it's Thursday, so I'll go to TKC this afternoon for another test which they haven't put me through in the last year or so. Then I'll come home and try to crawl under the bed, with no success. Then, if I can get the house raked out and some vittles cooked, we can have the sister supper tomorrow evening.

Part Of a Real Poem

From "Ode To a Nightingale," by John Keats:

". . . Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
To thy high requiem become a sod.

"Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."


Keats had tuberculosis and knew he was dying. He wrote his "Five Great Odes" in 1819 and died in 1821 at age 25.

 'Severn—I—lift me up—I am dying—I shall die easy; don't be frightened—be firm, and thank God it has come.'

John Keats

1795-1821

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If surpassing this poem is possible, Percy Bysshe Shelley surpassed it with his "Ode To the West Wind." These guys wrote 200 years ago, when English was not yet a dead language.

Not much of a poem.

Go Away, Black Cat

I saved your life, but don't assume
that it means you belong to me;
this isn't your home; I have no room
or need for your company.

I only called you “Toby” because
of your white feet and one black toe;
but your pretty paws with their dangerous claws
have not caught my heart, you know.

I've no more chicken-broth or stew
for a poor old lonesome stray;
I'm tired of warming milk for you
because you like it that way.

When you disappear, I start to think
you won't come back any more;
but there you sit like an ebony sphinx,
next time I open the door.

Your eyes are bright, and your meow is light,
and your fur is soft as silk
as you rub my shins. I give up. You win--
I'll just go and warm up the milk.

By JRC September 24, 2012

This Sunny Day

I feel no more than 154 years old--well, maybe a few months older. I'm aware that it's a blessing. I woke up sometime today while it was still a.m., and eventually managed to get out of bed. Knowing what was ahead--and still is: clean the litter box, feed a bunch of cats, pack the eBay sale, take a shower, go to the P.O., hop over the hills to pay my water bill which somehow has slipped through a crack. And now it's nearly 2:30 p.m., and all that is still ahead.

Are we downhearted? No, no, no! When all that is done, I've figured out a way to repaper the wall(s) of the dollhouse. Something to look forward to. Something to which to look forward.

"This is utter nonsense, up with which I refuse to put." -- Sir Winston Churchill

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Sold another doll on eBay. I crocheted this dress a long, long time ago. Bought the doll for a dollar at a dollar store.

A terrible invention

Today I got brave enough to Google a few words from a song that terrorized me in the second grade, and continues to make me feel sick when I think about it.

At that time, there was a family living in or near Leeds. They had a son with a neurologic handicap of some kind. He was red-headed, very large, very loud, and was in my second-grade class. He was probably a good bit older than the rest of us. They called him Bobby.

Although it didn't last long, in the first and second grades, I was a pretty little girl, and Bobby seemed to take a special liking to me. And this seemed to be his favorite song, which he sang often:

"Oh, Johnny Rebeck, oh Johnny Rebeck,
How could  you be so mean?
I told you you'd be sorry
For inventing that machine!

The cats and dogs and horses
Will never more be seen--
They'll all be ground to sausage
In Johnny Rebeck's machine!"

As the song progressed, Johnny Rebeck suffered the same fate as the dogs and cats and horse. On the internet I found that it was really Johnnie "Verbeck" or "Trebeck."

It's just the hideous song I remember with terror, not Bobby. Even that young, and in spite of the song, I felt sorry for him. His younger sister was in some of my classes at the University, and she said that Bobby died young. The sister herself was later killed when her airplane, that she was flying solo, crashed in the mountains near Huntsville, Alabama.

Probably what keeps the memory alive is watching Alex Trebek on "Jeopardy."

Like "The Chambered Nautilus"

. . . Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

1809-1894

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It looks as if a lot of people read my blog. Want to thank all readers, even though you don't often post comments. Sorry if anyone gets offended by my occasional "outbursts." Y'all come back.
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Went to the pharmacy, and coming back I saw a one-legged crow in the road. That ought to be a song.

One-legged crow, hopping like a fool;
Two boys fishing in a swimming pool...

Only it was a man and a little boy fishing in the "creek" at the park.

Autumn pas de deux

Saw two yellow butterflies doing a square dance around the back yard.

Not really a slouch. Not really a blue-eyed Indian?

Every day I do at least one important thing, usually more, then wind up thinking I've wasted the day because I don't get done everything that needs doing. Today I've done some stuff around the house, shopped for our sister supper tomorrow night, paid some bills, visited the Saint Theresa's Church yard sale, and I don't know what all. So there.

Son Jed sent off for one of those genetic tests that tell you where your ancestors came from. His came back indicating that he is 100% European. Looks like there were some Vikings in the woodpile at several points. Even if Grandpa Ramey (Paw Paw) was wrong about his mother, the Satterfields have Indian-mixed ancestry. The American Indians supposedly came from Asia. Maybe all their Asian blood froze up when they walked across Siberia and Alaska.

Or maybe all the original Indians were really from Siberia, which is considered European. So maybe I'm really one-eighth Russian. It ain't gonna worry me for long.

A poem 15 years in the making

Swans At Portsmouth, On a Receding Tide

That woman on the shore is staring at us,
Her eyes like saucers in her rain-washed face;
Perhaps she wonders why we paddle wildly,

Only to remain in the same place.

She wandered over here, while her companions
Explored aboard the ship called Victory.
Inside that little shop, out of the downpour,

She might have sheltered with a cup of tea;

Instead she stands there dripping, spies upon us,
And makes us awkward in our exercise;

It's hard enough to concentrate on paddling,

Without the scrutiny of foreign eyes.

Why do we struggle in this muddy water,
Performing an insane impromptu dance?
The tide would bear us farther off from England,

And leave us shivering on the coast of France;

And that wet, dripping, maybe weeping woman
May sense that swans, and humans even more,

Must paddle, row and swim with all their power

Against the terrors of an unknown shore.

Our wings are strong, and human wings are stronger,

And yet the weight we carry weighs us down;

And though we're left hip-deep in mud and gravel,

We did our damnedest, and we didn't drown.

By JRC, September 10, 2012

Maybe sometime I can make a better last line, but that's all I could think of at the moment.

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5:10 p.m.: I've already thought of a better last line: "The distant shore may be a paradise." So I have to redo the whole last stanza. Back to the drawing board.

First Friday

Jed arrived Friday evening in time for dinner. Then Pat and India came bearing libations and tiny roast potatoes, and Susan brought a divine dessert, fresh apple cake with ice cream and caramel sauce toppings--recipe on her Blackberry Creek blog. So much food in one place--chicken and salad and grillin' beans and green beans and mashed potatoes! And those little crescent rolls that I can eat a bagfull of, if somebody doesn't stop me.

When we three sisters get together, it's rare that anyone else can get a word in edgeways. The air rang with conversation, and little India and little Jed did manage to speak now and then. They actually were the tallest members of the party, so they should have asserted themselves more.

Part one of Season One of "Downton Abbey" was good, too.

On Saturday, Jed helped me clean out and reorganize one section of the kitchen cabinets, which I can't totally reach into without climbing. Then we went to Logan's and lunched on grilled tilapia, then Jed went back to Atlanta. He has to give five presentations in Florida in the coming week, so it was very good of him to come over for my Friday dinner.

Just thinking

Wore myself out yesterday, yet everything looks about the same. I think it was Friday, tugging at that rug. Got a crick in my neck, and it took a while to recover.

A few thoughts on the Bible: It seems to me that some of the new "translations" of the Bible are more like paraphrases, or putting the verses into what the "translators" think are clearer terms, so that children and dummies like me can understand them. The trouble, it seems to me, is that each paraphrase may really get a little bit further away from the original meaning. Maybe we can't know precisely what was intended to start with. Translating from the original scripts probably got one step away from what was intended, in some cases. As some scholars have pointed out, one word in an ancient language can have different meanings and associations, and choosing differently from what the original speaker or writer intended, can be misleading and even more confusing.

As an example: I heard one preacher comment on the Bible verse that said Jesus "had not where to lay his head." Au contraire, said the preacher, Jesus was affluent and owned a lot of houses. The verse simply meant that the disciples hadn't found or fixed up the place for Him to sleep that night. This same preacher said that when Jesus told the young man to "sell what you have and give to the poor and follow me," that He only meant for the rich young man to keep on selling his products and contributing to the poor, and to follow Jesus's teachings.

So the more you "tranlate and simplify," the less certain you are of the original meaning. I think that's why a lot of scholars, especially in bygone times, preferred to read classic writings in the untranslated versions.

Saint Jerome was close to the true meaning of the scriptures he translated. Wycliffe was farther away, but closer than we are. The men who put together the "King James" version were still farther away, but they were much closer than nineteenth- and twentieth-century "translators," and they largely agreed on what they wrote down. And seventeenth-century English is not impossible to read and understand with a good dictionary at hand.

Anyway, that's what I think right now.

September High

Funny, I still feel that rush of excitement on the first day of September, that I felt as a child. Looking forward to the first day of school, seeing lots of people instead of moping around by myself. Sometimes a new dress and/or a new pair of shoes.

So far I've sold two of the dolls on eBay:


Red Venus

Shirley

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Back in the spring, the carpet cleaners left the big area rug in the living room placed wrong, with a big streak of the carpet pad showing in the front. I had tried many times to reposition it, but the rug was too heavy and the pad was sort of stuck to the carpet underneath. Yesterday I made up my mind to fix it or set fire to it. So I rolled up the rug, put the pad where it's supposed to be, then rolled the rug out on top of the pad. It wasn't nearly as easy as it looks. My arms and shoulders are sore.