Princess Rose

Our son Todd was walking around the neighborhood with several friends on a particularly warm and wonderful summer night in August 2013. On a street about a half mile from our house, a kitten pranced out of nowhere to greet them. After everyone said "how cute" and "awww" and "oooo", they walked away with kitty following. She followed them all the way to our house and up onto the back deck. Attempts to pet her or pick her up only sent her scurrying under a chair or the table or off the deck onto the lawn. Food enticed her back onto the deck for a while. She had a voracious appetite and consumed as much food as our big cat Tigrr (a.k.a. Bunky).

She settled into a spot on the cement between the Bilco basement door and the area under our porch. She was still there in the morning.

We fed her again and she gobbled it all up, but she was still stand-offish. For example, every time you reached for her, she would scurry under the porch. We kept telling her that it was nasty under there - spiders and other bugs for company, dirt floor, etc. But she wouldn't listen.

As you can tell from the pictures, she did come inside eventually. At first she checked out the kitchen and dining room and then headed out the porch door again. But as soon as we closed the door, we heard this mournful meow. When we opened the door, she just looked at us as if to say, "That wasn't me." 

About the third or fourth time wandering around the house, she found a spot that suited her under the dining room table and settled in for a nap. She was home.

We didn't know if it was a good idea to have her in the house with Bunky. She could have fleas, a disease, worms, or who knows what. But we couldn't bring ourselves to put her outside again. So I made an appointment with the wonderful Paris Hill Cat Hospital (http://www.parishillcathospital.com/). They checked her thoroughly, told us she was a little girl,  gave her a worm treatment, which she swallowed like a good kitty, gave her a flea treatment, clipped her nails, and weighed her - a whopping two pounds and one ounce. They also determined she was about 10 weeks old giving her a birth date of about June 18. 

When the vet asked us for the kitten's name, we said, "We don't know yet because we don't know the kitty's gender." So her first visit was as "No Name", certainly not suitable for such a noble creature. While the veterinarian was handling her, she said, "Oh, she's such a princess." On the way home, it all clicked and Shirley named her "Princess Rose".

She has been with us since then and is thriving and driving Bunky crazy. We joke that she isn't really a cat but a "chow hound" because she is constantly foraging. 

We will update soon with pictures and more stories about the adventures of Princess Rose and Bunky. 

MAD AS HELL

This is the famous rant from the 1976 movie "Network". While some of the references are dated, like "banks are going bust," it is still mostly pertinent 38 years later. That in itself is frightening. We are still battling the same political demons, attempting to scale the same economic and social ramparts to equality.
But we can still get angry!
Read and enjoy.

TV Anchor Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you that things are bad. Everybody knows that things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work, or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street. There's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. We sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know that things are bad -- worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy. So we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller. And all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone." 

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the streets. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!"

So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now, and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

I want you to get up right now! Sit up, go to your windows, open them, stick your head out and yell - "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" Things have got to change. But first, you've got to get mad! You've got to say, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the windows, stick your head out and yell! Say it! "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

Oh Lord, Stuck in Charlotte

Oh Lord, stuck in Charlotte

(Sung to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Oh Lord, Stuck in Lodi Again”)

Fourteen people missed the flight tonight. That’s eleven besides me, Shirley, and our grandson Anthony. And that’s just one flight – US Airways flight 2036 from CLT to SYR (Charlotte, NC to Syracuse, NY), January 5, 2014. The reason? Fog. Once before in my 46 years of flying was I unable to see the ground until seconds before we landed. That was in November 1979 on a flight from Dallas to Denver. We landed in a blinding snowstorm and the landing strip appeared out of the whiteness.

Now I’m sitting in a rocking chair in the Charlotte Douglas International Airport people watching and waiting for the next flight to ‘Cuse. Some folks stride through, some saunter, and some sprint. I want to tell them to take their time because the flight they’re rushing to probably left already. One man was in such a hurry he almost got run over by a shuttle. After he stopped short for that, he started his mad dash again only to trip over a lady’s luggage.

Another observation – pilots and flight crews. They are a fascinating, eclectic bunch. I watched young and mature, clean cut and bohemian, business-like, techie, and “It’s-a-living” types. One young pilot had a portable guitar as part of his luggage but most had the standard carry-on baggage. I did not see one woman in the cross section I observed.

I’m also having thoughts about my choice of travel. I’ve flown five times, six counting this time, in the past year. We drove from Utica to Columbia one time in February 2013 and that was a grueling non-stop drive that left everyone worn out and ill. Two earthy looking folks passed me a few minutes ago in a rush. They looked terribly unhappy like they wished they were catching a train instead of a plane or riding in their electric car or bicycling to their destination. I’m thinking seriously about taking a train for my next trip South. Yes, it’s slower and I will lose some time with my grandchildren, but it is much more environmentally friendly and relaxing that an airplane.

I know there are some destinations that you must fly to, like international or cross country. But I haven’t taken a journey like that in years. On the other hand, I think I would love to drift on an ocean liner to a European or South American country.

Happy Trails to You!