O.K. 'Fess up. How many of us women who were teenagers in the mid-to-late 1970s had a version of the "Farrah flip" hairdo at some point during those years?

Yep.

I don't have a heck of a lot to say. I've never been particularly fangirlish about Farrah; in fact, one of the strongest memories I associate with her is a girl in my freshman gym class who used to make fun of me and call me "Farrah." For the life of me, I can't remember why; still less can I remember why the hell it bothered me so much. Probably because I thought she was making fun of my appearance, implying that I was anything but an icon of beauty.

Farrah was apparently this young woman's icon of beauty, because she had long blonde hair, done in layers of the classic "flip," and used to wear a lot of makeup. My late grandfather saw her picture in my freshman yearbook and said, "Oh, my, she's... precocious." Which was apparently euphemistic for saying her makeup was sorta kinda age-inappropriate. Looking back from the standpoint of being 45, I wonder if there were things in her life that weren't so awful good, as we'd say here in Minnesota, things that led to the "precociousness" and the petty bullying. But at the time, being all of 14, all I knew was that she was mean to me.

Anyway, one day in gym class I finally had enough. I wanted to use a weight bench that she was sitting on, idly chit-chatting with a friend of hers. I asked several times, she rebuffed me in a snotty way, and the next thing I knew I was hauling off and slapping her across the face. Hard.

Now we see the violence inherent in the system.

Of course it wasn't the right way to handle the situation. Yet, mixed messages: The teacher separated us, pulling me aside, and muttered in my ear, "Good for you." I don't think she was advocating hitting people, just reinforcing that it was O.K. to stand up for myself, and that maybe I ought to try it more often. I'm still working on it, thirty years later, sans the slapping. ;-)

So, about Farrah.

Here's what I posted as a comment on a post in another LJ, re: wanting to hear something besides nonstop coverage about Michael Jackson's death:

Yes. I myself was more stricken by the death of Farrah Fawcett. Odd, considering her initial image was that of the Pretty Blonde Airhead, but she went on to do some pretty respectable work, much of it drawing attention to issues about the abuse of women; and she seems to have been a very good and caring person, according to those who knew her personally. Mainly, I was just deeply saddened that she lost her life so soon to the cancer she was struggling to heal from.

And I'm also saddened that Ryan O'Neal has to live with the grief of losing her, especially before they could go through with the marriage ceremony they decided they wanted to do before she died. But you know what? When two people have been together that long, I think their lives and spirits are entwined in a way that is, itself, the very definition of what it means to make a marriage. Better to have successfully married their lives, with or without the formal ceremony, than to have had the ceremony without the marriage.

Oh... and has anybody taken the time to note the passing of Ed McMahon? Yeah, it seemed like so much of the guy's life was sitting by Johnny Carson's side and chuckling, "Huh, huh, huh," heartily and resonantly, but he did it so well. ;-) Another icon, of a different sort. Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon were definitely from an Older School of humor, but they were part of my childhood. And with all due respect to the memory of Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon deserves to have his passing noted, as well.

Thanks to everyone for your kind words about the passing of Felix on Monday. He was jemby's cat but he held a special place in my heart.

Here's a more lively looking picture of him, which provides a nice contrast to his half-lidded Cool Cat look in the picture I posted yesterday:



Jenny says this picture should be called, "Do I have whipped cream on my head?" I'm not sure what that is behind his head--probably a bunched-up blanket--but in the small view on my cell phone it did, indeed look like whipped cream. ;-) No matter how neat we try to be, in real life we always have a few odd bits lying around our homes. In the future, I will try to remember to remove stuff from the background before snapping a pic, but I think this was just a spontaneous snapshot, so I didn't. But I do have an awesome picture of Mr. Felix that is Full Of Win. MEOW!

(Note: Yes, I usually put pictures behind an LJ-cut, but these are Special. Also, they have been cropped to a reasonable size. I promise I won't make a habit of spamming the f-list with un-LJ-cut pictures.)

Well, he was a cat, and a mighty awesome cat, at that, until he died Monday morning.

Felix was old when my sister jemby got him about three years ago. And for most of those three years he was amazingly robust and keen for an old cat. But a few months ago he began to show signs of decline: wandering about, meowing for his food, forgetting that he had just had his bowl filled not five minutes earlier, starting to lose physical stamina and agility. Then, about two weeks ago, he lost his appetite, and then his thirst, and started showing signs of a cat preparing to leave this world. Jenny did the best she could to make him comfortable, hoping he could have a peaceful passing at home because he REALLY hated going to the vet, and she didn't want his last moments to be traumatic ones.

I got to spend some time with Felix on Friday night, to offer him comfort and tell him it was O.K. to move on if he was ready to go. Stuff like that. The Meow-Cat Book of the Dead. On my way home from the writing conference Saturday evening I stopped by Jenny's to spend some time with Felix again. I didn't write about that on Saturday because I wasn't yet ready to write about it. I wrote about the writing conference instead.

That was the last I saw Felix. Jenny waited with him through the weekend, and his physical condition continued to decline, but still he was hovering between life and death. So Monday morning she decided that it was best to take him to the Humane Society and have him euthanized. She and her husband, Tyler, were with Felix to give him one last round of love and comfort before saying good-bye.

We figure Felix was about 18 years old when he died, so he certainly did not pass from this world untimely. But for the short time we had him in our lives, he was a cat full of personality and love and the loudest, most insistent MEOW I have ever heard from any cat. Perhaps he thought he was a lion and was attempting to roar.

Felix was a magical cat. When Jenny and I would do tarot readings, he would poke curiously at the cards, and poke even more curiously at the edges of the Reiki-blessed/charged/whatever-you-call-it tarot cloth. He would act sensitive to the stick that fell on my windshield one day (back when I had a car) and that I claimed as my wand. He was very sensitive to various crystals, especially a beautiful citrine crystal that I had gotten about the same time this picture was taken, the summer of 2006. And whenever Jenny and I would do any kind of spiritual ritual, Felix would stay in the circle with us, and--I am not exaggerating, if any of you reading this are skeptical--he would prowl around the perimeter of the circle without crossing over the boundary, poking curiously as if sensing something, then settle down contentedly somewhere within the bounds until we were done and opened the circle, at which time he would go bounding into the rest of the house.

Felix always recognized me, even though I didn't get to visit him nearly as often as Jenny got to see him. (Of course.) He would hear my voice echoing off Jenny's phone and start meowing at her until she held the phone up to him so I could say, "Hi, Felix." He seemed to like me, though I have no idea why. ;-) He would always greet me when I came by their house, and he would even settle in my lap at times and just sit there contentedly, at least till my allergies got the better of me. I took a lot of nettle leaf in order to hang out with Felix.

Felix liked tomato sauce. Weirdest frickin' thing in the known universe. If Jenny and I ate spaghetti or something similar, we would put the plates on the floor, and Felix would lick every last speck of tomato sauce off the plates, and MEOW at us for more. I even bought him a little can of tomato sauce as a treat on at least one occasion!

Man, I'm going to miss not being able to buy tomato sauce for Mr. Felix, the Meowing Meow-Cat from Meow-Town. But it was his time to go, and I know his spirit lives on. We love ya, Felix! MEOW!

A little over a week ago I got walloped with the cold-flu-whatever that's being going around; that's why you haven't heard from me in a little over a week. ;-) I did my best to keep a positive, upbeat attitude throughout most of it, figuring that wallowing in misery wasn't going to make me feel any better. And I only had to take one night off work--though truthfully I would have liked to have taken two, but I didn't want to lose too many hours off my paycheck. But, hey, if my calendars are correct, it was the first sick day I'd taken in a little over two years, so I'm doing all right.

In a brave effort to perk my mood at the peak (or trough) of enervation, I checked in with the Daily Zen site's quote of the day. I figured a nice, serene reminder to live in the now and not let temporary circumstances get me down would be just what the doctor ordered. Here's what I got:

Impermanence, aging, and illness
Do not give people a set time.
One may be alive in the morning,
Then dead at night,
Changing worlds in an instant.
We are like the spring frost,
Like the morning dew
Suddenly gone.

-- Kuei-Shan (771-854)

o_O

Not exactly what I had in mind.

Honest, it was only a cold. So, not being dead yet, merely in need of staying home as much as possible and getting as much rest and relaxation as possible, I made use of the time to clear some clutter out of my living space. Anyone who says physical clutter has no mental or emotional effect is full of shit: Clearing the clutter always clears my mind, and makes it easier to focus on my writing and my reading--not to mention easier to find things when I need to find them. ;-)

And speaking of writing, I just registered for a writers' conference taking place on April 5 in the Minneapolis area. I spent most of yesterday morning puttering about the apartment and procrastinating before I finally said to myself, "Self, you are procrastinating," and called the damned art center and registered for the workshops I wanted to attend. Yes, it would seem I still have some inner resistance, fear, whatever, about this business of Being A Real Writer that needs to be (gently) overcome. Also, I am still trying to decide if Ned is going to be a big Bing Crosby fan in the 1930s. Meanwhile, I work on other parts of the manuscript. And try to put off procrastination.

Recently ran across a good article about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Makes me wish I were an Atheist again... but you can believe in Things Unseen and still enjoy the analysis in Daniel Hemmins' Harry Potter and the Doctrine of the Calvinists.

I found the link originally via pojypojy, who commented how the Calvinist doctrine of predestination--everything is fixed, and you can't change it, good or evil is a person's basic nature, etc.--contrasts with the Catholic view in which everyone is always potentially capable of change and redemption. And it struck me that my own Catholic upbringing might, after all, have left an imprint, because if there is one theme that recurs in all of my fiction, "fan" or "original," as well as in the way I live my life, it is this: to refuse to accept defeat as the final word, to refuse to believe that any life is hopelessly tragic, to realize that there is always good mixed in with the bad, victory mixed in with defeat, redemption mixed in with failure.

More colorfully, it is the tenacious insistence that, upon seeing a pile of shit, refuses to give up until one finds a way to spin it into gold.

I'd call that a very Slytherin characteristic, wouldn't you? I know what I want, and I WILL NOT GIVE UP until I attain it.

Reading DH in this light also helped clarify for me something that had been nagging in the back of my brain about what I had been wanting from the conclusion to the Harry Potter series: solidly satisfying resolution of the Harry-Severus arc. Some sense that the two primary characters, Harry Potter and Severus Snape, had GROWN, changed, evolved, from hating each other to, if not wuuuuvvvving each other, at least a form of mutual understanding and respect, that Severus had not really hated Harry, or had grown beyond knee-jerk "you remind me of your awful father" hatred, but ultimately did care in some way about the boy and his fate, and that Harry eventually grew beyond thinking Snape was evil and hateful into a more complex adult understanding of Snape as Human who might not be all he appeared to be through the eyes of a child.

To some extent, I think Book 7 delivered this. Maybe. But the more I analyze it, and read others' analyses of it, the more I think it could have delivered it much, much more than it did. Ultimately, I think I'm disappointed in the lack of depth that was delivered. But that's an essay which, yes, I will be writing someday. In my spare time...

Anyway, the title of this post is a riff on another article by Daniel Hemmins, the conclusion to his multi-article review of Deathly Hallows. For those of you who have followed my occasional rantings against the myth of redemptive sacrifice, you might especially appreciate the article's final section, invoking Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est.

I still have yet to read the other three articles reviewing Deathly Hallows--alas for limited Internet time!--but they're on the agenda. If you read them, let me know what you think.

What better way to brighten your day than with an angst-ridden song about Severus Snape? Someday I will record this and the many other songs I have written and post them online. For now, you'll have to settle for the lyrics.

( Deathly Hallows spoilers, to the max. )

Another story about Severus Snape. (Essays forthcoming, I promise.) Even if you are not into the Harry Potter books, you might enjoy this story.

Warnings: I bawled my eyes out as I was writing this. Deathly Hallows spoilers behind the cut.

( As We Are Known )

In case anyone missed the addendum to my August 1 post, I was not on the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis that evening.

Thanks to all of you who checked in with me to make sure I was O.K. It was great to hear from you, and yes, it did help.

(And no thanks to the few who did not bother to check in because, apparently, there's no point in seeing if I'm O.K. if I'm already dead. Whatever.)

Something I did not know until after I posted my addendum to my August 1 post:

As I said, I did not find out about the bridge collapse until after I had taken the bus from downtown to the Dunn Bros. coffeehouse at Lake and Bryant in south Minneapolis. After using more than my fair share of Internet time *ahem* I went back to my table and told my friend about it. We were hanging out for the evening, she studying, me attempting to write instead of freak.

About an hour or so after I told her about the bridge, my friend mentioned, "You know, I take that bridge all the time when I'm going home from Minneapolis, and if you hadn't texted me to say you were meeting me down here, I would have left for home around that time."

Um. Yeah. It took a while for the total freakoutness of THAT happy synchronicity to sink in.

Meanwhile, other people don't have the consolation of a fortuitous near miss, so please continue to keep them in your thoughts, prayers, and sendings of spiritual energy, however you choose to label them. ;-)

Our local paper -- probably like most local papers -- has had its share of letters to the editor protesting some of the "disrespectful" responses people have made to Jerry Falwell's death. These people are crying out that it is an Attack on Christians, that it fails to See the Good that Falwell Did as a Soldier of Christ Fighting the Good Fight, etc., etc., and besides, we ought to show respect for the dead.

I might buy the point about showing respect for the dead, though to be fair, the dead didn't show a hell of a lot of respect to a hell of a lot of people while he was alive. Which might be why in death as in life the mention of him elicits less-than-respectful sentiments from a hell of a lot of people.

But as far as criticism of Falwell's views and work being an Attack on Christians... give me a freakin' break.

Number One: Christians are still by far the majority religion in the United States. Christians are not a persecuted minority. Unless, of course, you define one small, marginal sect of Christianity as the sum total of True Christianity, and thence argue that the Christians criticizing you are Not Really Christians and, hence, are actually False Faithful persecuting your True Believing selves. Which would be a bit neurotic. But of course the intersection between neurosis and religion is far from being a null set.

Number Two: Even among Christians who share Falwell's evangelical interpretation of Christian theology -- Jesus died to save us from our sins, accept Jesus as your savior, and so forth -- there are many who adhere to and proclaim their beliefs in ways that are still respectful of others, and who are in turn respected even by those who don't share their beliefs. Billy Graham comes to mind here. I really seriously doubt that, upon his death, people will be making jokes about Billy Graham finding himself in hell. He sowed respect, and he has reaped respect. Which brings me to point number three.

Number Three: The "ministry" of Jerry Falwell largely consisted in attacking people who didn't fit his narrow definition of Christian faith and life. Is it really unethical to counter an attack -- or in Falwell's case, a decades-long pattern of attacks? Public figures are fair game for honest assessment of their lives and work, particularly upon their deaths. Joking about Falwell being in hell might be a bit beyond the pale of a level-headed evaluation of what he said and did in his lifetime, but then, Falwell felt no scruples in condeming thousands of other people to hell, e.g., gays, lesbians, liberals, feminists, the ACLU, and, of course them godless atheists.

And of course, it may very well be -- as many of us believe -- that God not only does NOT damn gays, lesbians, feminists, the ACLU, and atheists to Eternal Hellfire, but that God in fact is on their side.

Ponder THAT for a while!

(With apologies to FAW for borrowing his punch line.)

Near the end of my vacation week, I got a bit of a cough that morphed into a full-blown hideous cold -- just in time for me to return to work on a Monday night, so at least it didn't ruin my vacation. ;-) (For the record, I spent my vacation week here in Minneapolis, reading, resting, writing, hanging out, eating out, getting together with a few people, and posting to LiveJournal.) I've spent the past week and a half recovering from said cold, which is why my posting to LiveJournal suddenly dried up.

But: I'm Not Dead Yet. Unlike Jerry Falwell.

Seems like a lot of people are eager to consign Falwell to the fiery flames of hell, so, in the interest of balance, I resurrected the following scrap of doggerel that gives the guy a shot at heaven:

Fantasia on Tinky-Winky

What lies concealed in that Trojan purse?
What makes that triangle chime?
"Again! Again!" from your lips
To mine would be sublime.

Begone! Thou purple demon!
Thou temptest me to stray
From the straight, the narrow mind.
Silence, thou beguiling lay!

This roly-poly fiend of hell
Frolics, heedless to my cry.
I gaze, entranced, into his navel--
O, surely damned am I!

And yet, how sweet to hear that voice
Softly croon, "Again. Again."
If good intentions lead to hell,
I am sure to go to heaven.


(Copyright 1999 Karyn Milos. All rights reserved.)

NB: Speaking in puns is a Gift of teh Spirit.

O.K. I've been saying for months that I would post about the stupid family crap that happened back at the end of July and beginning of August last year, about the time that my grandmother Mema died. So here it is, just to get it out of the way so I can go back to rambling about books and writing and stuff like that.
( Putting this behind a cut because I just realized it's pretty long... )

It all started when James Brown died on Christmas morning. I couldn't help but wonder if he was wearing a nice pair of Christmas Shoes. As we all know, the first thing Jesus looks for when you pass to the other side of Teh Veil is what kind of footwear you're sporting.

jemby told me they would have been sparkly shoes. Of course. And probably with a big pompadour on the vamp of each shoe.

Then former President Gerald Ford died. And I overheard people complaining how terrible it is that everyone is so hyped up about the death of James Brown that the death of Gerald Ford is being ignored. Well, you know, I kinda think Gerald Ford would have wanted it that way. Certainly James Brown would have wanted it that way. Ford was not a flashy sort of guy, and a low key passing would certainly have been in his style, just as being splatted all over the world's media is the proper send-off for Brown.

At any rate, I've been amusing myself by imagining James Brown and Gerald Ford meeting up in Teh Afterlife. What an interesting conversation that must be.

And now we've really showed the world how tough we are by hanging the pathetically broken insane shell of the Iraqi dictator the U.S. put into power in the first place. We one badass force to be reckoned with. Frankly, I would have found it more fitting to let the man rot into obscurity in some dark jail cell somewhere... and to subject other murderous leaders to a similar fate, regardless of whose "side" they are purportedly on. Killing mass quantities of people as a form of government is just wrong, mmmkaaaayyy?

As a friend of mine recently wrote in an e-mail, the term "war crimes" falsely suggests that some acts of war are not criminal.

It's not that Saddam wasn't bad. It's just that some people don't see that he's not the only one.

So, yes, it's been a busy week at Teh Pearly Gates. Lots of traffic. Quite the holiday rush. So give Jesus a break and put off your death a while longer, if at all possible. And have a Happy New Year. ;-) Hoot.

Yesterday morning I stopped at the local Dunn Bros. coffee shop to check my e-mail and pick up a cup of Roasted Chestnut Chai before toddling on home to sleep, and, browsing the bookshelf, I found a copy of Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One. Remembering that it was one of those 20th century classics that I was supposed to have read, I grabbed it so I could add one more 20th century classic to my list of Books I Have Read.

It grabbed me. ;-)

For some reason, I was expecting, by the title, something sappy and sentimental, along the lines of How Green Was My Valley, maybe. Instead, I got what has to be one of the funniest and snappiest satires of Death in America. Good reading for Halloween, you betcha.

One reason I find myself handling Mema's death with a sense of peace and tranquility is that my spirituality is strongly grounded in a sense of the Wheel of the Year and the cycles of life and death and transformation. I have long had a sense of life's journey as, ideally, following a natural arc of waxing and waning, like the seasons, like the year, like each day. And when death comes at the end of a long and fully-lived life, and the body is clearly saying, enough, already, it's time to move on, it just feels natural and right. I grok a rightness about it, if you will. ;-) And as I've said, I've been going through the process of separation and grief for several years, seeing firsthand my grandmother's process of separation from this life and this world. Long before she passed over to the other side of the veil, it was plain that she was at the end of her journey.

As someone who is used to always thinking in terms of bright horizons just around the corner, this was a major shift in awareness for me. "Do not go gentle into that good night," indeed, when there is still much life to be lived, and especially if death is not physically impending but is rather merely a temptation of escape from the depths of depression and despair. But when the day is quite done, and night is definitely at hand, then a gentle slip into sleep is not at all inappropriate.

The only thing, at this point, that I truly regret is that perhaps we were all too reluctant to let Mema go when she was truly ready to go, that some (or many) of us were, at least unconsciously, "clinging" to her and wanting her to be with us forever, just like old times. Ah, the nostalgia trap... it gets us all, when we're not living mindfully enough. ;-)

Blessings of the Autumn Equinox to all of you. Count your blessings and give thanks for the bounty of the Earth at this time of Harvest!

You would think the passing of a 94-year-old woman would be a fairly simple and straightforward affair. Grief, yes, and sorrow over the finality of it, but also a sense of peace and acceptance because, after all, everyone has to die sometime; if not at age 94, then just when is it O.K. for someone to die?

Never, I guess. ;-)

My grandmother's passing, I've been able to deal with. The bizarre and sometimes hostile (towards me, for "not understanding" or "being cold") manifestations of grief over her passing have been the real source of stress and emotional distress. I thought we all had pretty much come to a point of acceptance that Mema was going to have to leave our company -- and that, given her state of deterioration, it was better to let her let go and move on from this life than to cling to her and wish she wouldn't go yet. And I thought we all were seeing pretty clearly that senile dementia had pretty much taken over my grandmother's mind. Yet at a recent gathering, the first time I was with my family since my grandmother's death, I was chided by a younger sibling for being "insensitive" and "lacking in social graces" for commenting on what I thought was obvious: that my grandmother's compulsive and spontaneous repetitions of the end of the Lord's Prayer were not signs of her "great faith" -- which she did have, during her mostly-lucid lifetime, but in a rather more grounded and solid, Episcopalian way ;-) -- but symptoms of the dementia.

She wrote the words on a Kleenex box, shortly before she died. And this was the cause of my sibling's reprimand: I remarked how sad it was that "some of the family" apparently were taking comfort in these dementia-driven scribblings, and my sibling took on a condescending air and informed me that I was not in a position to appreciate such spiritual matters, and shouldn't be criticizing the deep faith of others that, clearly, I did not understand.

I am not making this up. Oh, how I wish I were making it up.

I know very well the feeling of trying to anchor myself in the material world when my mind is slipping away. In my case, the cause was a youthful (and not repeated!) experiment with mind-altering substances, not senile dementia, but I saw the parallel: In an effort to feel grounded and try to get control of my out-of-control brain activity, I grabbed a pen and a pad of paper and very determinedly sat trying to write and hold a single train of thought. That is what I saw in my grandmother's actions: a clinging to something familiar, something she could get a hold on, something to anchor her and keep her brain from floating away from her altogether. And I find it far more sad, and offensive, to take the symptoms of her illness, and her struggles against it, and hold them up as examples of her "strong faith," than to simply acknowledge that, at the end, she was losing her mental functioning.

Anyway, I know my grandmother would understand, and does understand, and if she has any time at all right now to be watching all the family drama, she is probably shaking her head at being turned so quickly into an icon instead of simply remembered for being the person she was. My grandmother's spirituality was not of the Jesus-on-a-tortilla variety. Her faith, though expressed in conventional Christian terms, was very broad-minded and accepting, and her primary expression of faith was, "God is so good. God has truly blessed us." She saw God as a source of goodness and unity, not as a bludgeon with which to hit people of differing viewpoints and faiths.

That's an example that can inspire us all.

My grandmother, known to me and to many others as "Mema," passed away yesterday afternoon, July 29. Although I will miss her, my primary reaction was a profound sense of relief. I never thought I would say, "Thank God" (with nice intentions, that is) upon someone's death, but there it is. Since the end was obviously at hand, I didn't want it to drag on forever, to no point but ongoing pain and inability to do anything other than lie in bed trying to deal with the pain. Mema lived a long, full, and happy life, and more than anything I am simply happy that we had her for as long as we did, and got to spend as much time with her as we did. I am especially grateful that my son got to meet her when he was old enough to remember her. She was still quite lucid when she first moved out to Minnesota, four and a half years ago, so he got to meet the sharp, funny, Scrabble-playing Mema that I had grown up knowing.

Of all the memories I have, the one that keeps pushing to the forefront, for some odd reason, is the memory of "Mema Donuts." When my siblings and I were children, we would go out to Maryland in the summer to visit Mema and Pop. And inevitably, sometime during our visit Pop would make a run to Dunkin Donuts and pick up a few dozen for the family breakfast. And Mema would cut all of the donuts into quarters (or, sometimes, I think even in sixths or eighths) and arrange the pieces all neatly upon a big plate. And when, inevitably, we kids would comment about how the donuts were all cut up into pieces, Mema would say, quite emphatically, "That's so everyone can have a little taste of everything!"

It makes sense, then, somehow, that the Mema who was so equitable about donuts would slip out of this world while nobody happened to be in the room with her. My mother, aunt, and one sister were out at lunch, and had planned to return to the nursing home afterwards, but it was while they were at lunch that Mema died. With so many of us, not only here in Minnesota but all over the country, and world, who would have wanted to be with her in her final moments, it would not surprise me if on some level she chose to make it all nice and equitable and play no favorites. ;-)

Or, maybe, she just decided she didn't want anybody hovering over her at the moment of death. ;-)

However it may be, I woke up, at home, perhaps a half hour before she died, and decided to sing a Gaelic blessing for her. Perhaps it helped to ease her way onward; I'd like to think that, somehow, she was able to hear my song, and my blessing, and my love.

Deep peace of the running wave to you;
Deep peace of the flowing air to you;
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you;
Deep peace of the shining stars to you;
Deep peace of the gentle night to you;
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you:

Deep peace to you.

Blessed be. Thank you all for your well wishes and prayers.

For sheer WTFness, it's hard to beat this.

I had a PartyLite Candle party at my home this past Saturday. (Hey, you celebrate the Solstice your way, and I'll celebrate the Solstice my way.) Afterwards, since all the guests were family and friends, we went out to eat at the Uptown Diner. In the course of conversation, a little bit of silly childhood doggerel was brought up:

Bang, bang, you're dead,
Brush your teeth and go to bed.

Well, I always thought it was stupid, made no sense, was meant to be ironic or something. (Yes, every child sees irony under every rock... of course.) How can you brush your teeth when you're dead? Ha ha. But, I was informed, it was actually (supposedly) meant to be used as a variation on those delightful childhood games in which "you're out" and, hence, "time to go home," you're not in the game anymore. Dead, as it were.

O.K., I'm belaboring the point.

As we were laughing about the first couplet, I mentioned how the one that follows it is even more stupid. Visualize collective HUH??? And so I recited the Rest of the Story:

The cemetery told me not to,
But I farted in my head.

Nobody else, including the ones I grew up with, had ever heard of it.

I know I did not make it up myself. But I'll be damned if I know who taught it to me.

Myself, if I'd heard a cemetery talking, I wouldn't be around long enough to listen to what it was saying. But maybe, at any rate, this childhood rhyme is the origin of the phrase "brain fart."

He lived according to his best lights, but some of those lights needed new batteries.