short Grantsville get-away

To see Esther as her health was declining, we drove to Grantsville Friday evening. Turns out, Saturday was her last full day on earth. It was overcast and Guy's Tires seemed to be telling me the truth about things as I went to get her last vial of morphine. The hitching post sign, across the alley, was putting on a cheerier face but seemed conflicted with its digital communication dishes gawking at the buggy and getting messages from the sky.

nature's way

The garden's the thing these May days. I check out the peas first thing daily because I'm trying peas after at least eight years of giving up on them. Soil, natural, garden--all words of great virtue. But if you go for nature you have to take the whole thing, including dead creatures.

What was it? Dad robin bringing the first worm of the day back to the nest and flying just a little too low across the road and stunned? A pesticide-laced morning dew drink?

a sobering read

Not all information at our pixel outpost in Monterey gets digested from online. Here's an actual tree technology book. I read it last week.

Faust is the president of Harvard, but, I guess, first of all a historian. Don't ask me to borrow it. I'm putting it up on Amazon, whence it came. Got it for half of the listed $28.

An entirely new niche to the war research of 1861-65--the impact of death. We're talking here of 620,000 youthful, mostly, bodies. A few civilians. We're talking here of acres of corpses in summertime.

Not only was the anguish over the death itself, but over the loss of identification. Over half were never identified. So the parents in Vermont, say, didn't know if their son died in Virginia or Kentucky. We would say closure was never possible.

Who picked them up? How and where were they buried? What did the preachers said about death. It sheds light on the context of the Gettysburg Address--by 1965 getting around to respecting the bodies. Let's see, we're the civilized half of the world, right?

Toadstools?

Mushrooms cuddling? Toadstools? What are these growths in the lawn?

Here are some definitions: "an edible agaric (contrasting with the inedible toadstool)"--whatever agaric is. "Fungi of Basidiomycota with a cap at the end of a stem arising from underground mycelium."

Well, my Latin is not very good today, so whatever that means.

I remember seeing things like this which had popped up overnight when I was a kid. I was so fascinated. I don't think my parents (or any of my fiends' parents) ever bought mushrooms at the local pop and mom grocery. What a waste! Buying air. It's not food. It won't fill you up or stick to your ribs.

I knew enough to know that some people eat them. My Mom knew enough to tell me that some are poisonous. Which ones? She didn't know. I don't know. There was no internet to tell us how to tell the difference. The online dictionary reserves the term "toadstool" for the bad ones. So am I looking at a scrumptious topping for my hamburger or agonizing indigestion and possible death?

I'll never know, because I had to mow them down.

It just leaves me with the thought--why isn't the atomic bomb cloud called the toadstool cloud?