;)
Lisa came out Sunday morning and took her mom and dad out to breakfast at Family Restaurant. Sadly, when I pulled out my pocket camera to photograph the occassion, I discovered that I had forgot to put the card back in - just like I had done when I had breakfast with Aaron Fox in New York.
Just like then, I did take a few pictures with my iPhone, but have not yet bothered to download them.
In the afternoon, Kalib and Jobe showed up with their parents. Lisa tried to entice Kalib to give her a hug, but he wasn't going for it.
I tried to get him to give me a hug, too. He didn't want to.
I don't feel too badly about it. I remember when I was small and I never wanted my grandmothers to hug me and it seemed just smothering and awful when they would do so anyway and then try to add a kiss on top of hug.
My one grandfather who still lived never did try to hug me. At that time, in the family and society that I was born into, males just didn't hug each other, period. We would shake hands.
I'm glad that nonsensical code is behind me now.
How awful it would be, never to hug my grandson - if only he would hug me.
How nice it would be to get the opportunity to hug my grandmothers, and kiss them on the cheek - my grandfathers, too - both the one who I marginally knew and the other, who descended into the earth before I had the chance.
The reason they had come out was to snatch Margie away from me and take her back to Anchorage is because Lavina had to go back to work today and someone needs to care for Jobe. That someone is going to be Margie.
From now until sometime in August, when a spot is scheduled to open up for Jobe at daycare, Margie will spend four days of the week in town, caring for him in the day and staying overnight in his family home.
I do not like the fact that she will be gone so much and I will be without her, but for little Jobe, it is worth the sacrifice. He is too little to be going to daycare, anyway. When he is with his grandma, I know he will be loved and cared for to the full measure of her devotion.
This will not be easy on Lavina, either, for she is a woman who loves being a mother.
;)
They had to load up a mattress for Margie into their Tahoe and as they did, Kalib went into the back yard to golf with Caleb. See how he keeps his eye on the ball and how hard he concentrates as he draws back the club to make the swing?
;)
His aim was right on.
Golf never interested me much, but this kid is a natural, I tell you!
;)
Uncle Caleb then prepared to give nephew Kalib a demonstration of what can be done with a different kind of ball - a softball that had just emerged from the snow.
Uncle Caleb tossed that ball and the three of us watched as it climbed high into the sky. I kept waiting for gravity to take hold and draw that ball back to the earth, but it just kept rising, higher and higher, until it was just the tiniest dot. Then it disappeared altogether. It looked as though it had gone into orbit.
Soon, it was time for Margie to go back to Anchorage with them - but after they put the mattress in the Tahoe, there was no room for her.
So I drove Margie to town. Kalib rode with us.
Jacob, Lavina and Jobe reached home well ahead of us. When we finally got there, Jacob came out to get Kalib, unbuckled him and removed him from his car seat. He began to carry him back to the house but then stopped, looked up into the sky and stammered, "what the...????"
It was the softball that Caleb had launched! Maybe three hours before! Finally coming back to earth! In Anchorage! I wonder how many orbits that softball made? Why didn't it burn up on reentry?
I tried to take a picture, but the swoosh of wind from that softball as it plunged downward to bury itself deep in the frozen earth beneath the snow ripped my pocket camera right out of my hands. Fortunately, it suffered no major damage.
;)
This is the bed they fixed up for Margie to stay in, four nights a week for the next four months. Lavina made certain that it included a stuffed Muzz, just for Margie.
I left Margie among family a bit after 9:00 PM to begin my drive alone back to Wasilla. According to the metadata, I took this photo at exactly 9:40:50 PM and it looks exactly as I feel, for inside me wages that ever present battle of light against darkness, of black clouds and night moving against the sun - even during this time when the length of the day steadily increases.
I feel this way for many reasons - some economic, the fact that I am in this house alone with the cats (always good company, by the way) but also because I attended the Wasilla Tax Day Tea Party rally. That rally was largely about getting out the vote to turn around a situation that many participants see as intolerable. They lost out in the last election and now they want to get out the vote and reverse that situation.
That is the way the American system is supposed to work; when it comes to choosing our leadership and the political course of our nation, we leave our guns at home and go to the ballot box. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we lose. When we lose, we gear back up and work toward the next election. And so it goes, back and forth over time. One side rises after the vote, then falls, then rises again, then falls again... and there is impeachment, should enough people and their Senators be persuaded that they had erred in the last election and that the situation has become too urgent to wait for the next election.
Voting. An act of light - one that keeps people from killing each other over political differences.
But there were also clouds darkening at that rally, not-so-subtle insinuations made by people who proclaimed themselves to be patriots, loyal Americans eager to defend the Constitution of the United States even to the point that if they must, they stood ready to nullify by violence the majority of votes, constitutionally cast in 2008 by other loyal Americans, in order to force an outcome more to their liking.
I do not attribute this attitude to all who participated, but the sentiment was there and prominently so.
It is the words of one man that keep coming back to me the strongest. When he was called to the mic, he did not rant, he did not scream, he did not yell. He was articulate and spoke softly, clearly, in words that he chose carefully. He referenced his military service and that of the sons that he had sent to war.
He said many things that I agree with and, in fact, that most Americans, be they Republican, Democrat, or Independent would agree with. I would say 95 percent of his words were along this line. While the comparison would undoubtedly offend the man, in Garrison Keillor's own unique style I have heard him say the same things this man did.
Yet, he spoke with a different end in mind. He made it unequivocally clear that as a Patriot and soldier, he had taken an ever-binding oath to protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic and stood ready to kill or be killed in order to do so. He said that domestic enemies now held the highest offices of the United States, that Barack Obama was not a legitimate President and was not his Commander-in-Chief. In other words, he stated his readiness to kill me and how many other loyal, patriotic, Americans from Wasilla, Alaska and elsewhere, in order to nulliy those votes that we Constitutionally cast in November of 2008, because he does not approve of the President we elected and installed as Commander-in-Chief. To be fair, he was still definitely a part of the "get out the vote" in 2010 effort, but he clearly implied what he felt needed to be done beyond the vote, should that effort fail to accomplish his larger goal.
There is no way around it. That is what he said. I can see no other way to interpret his words. And he was applauded.
Perhaps I make too much of it and it is nothing to be concerned about - just words spoken by a calm, angry, man exercising his First Amendment rights; words that will be blown away and forgotten in the winds of history.
Yet, he spoke as a movement leader to a small town audience of maybe 400 people, with more recycling in and out, their overall numbers growing. Others continually drove by, too busy to stop, but not to honk their horns in support. Over 1000 hot dogs were sold.
A lack of time has prevented me from posting the pictures that I took at the Tea Party rally and time is passing by and the timeliness of the event is fading. An argument wages inside me, should I still take the time to post those pictures and do my write up or should I just move on and let this do it?
I want to make that post, and I don't want to make that post.
I want to just move on, forget about it and just live a peaceful life and let others do the same, whatever their political leanings. We can work it out at the ballot box - but I'm not sure I can just forget about it. Perhaps we now all plunge forward in a direction from which no u-turn can be made.
Perhaps not. I don't know. It's too easy to get carried away by hyperbole.