Glorious!

It's stunning outside today and I intend to get right back out in it. With most of the summer up here being an experience from which one must wring oneself out, sunny days like these are to be appreciated to the utmost. The last few days I've been doing a little yard work and Ginger and Mary Ann have worked right alongside of me. They need a little more training in the chomping department when it comes to discerning gout weed from lilies, but they're assiduous and cheery and good company. I LOVE OUR GEESE!! What is it about them? Their fat person waddle? Their chatter our friend Greg describes as sounding like some English dowager saying "Reginaaaaald?" Their eyes craning up to see you, their head at a tilt? The moaning keen they give out when they know you're leaving? Their wing flapping, happy croak crying when I return home? Oh, I'm such a soft touch.

Not much to report. Wonderful visits with friends. A terrific shoot of my sweetie's short film. A great trip down to Waterford CT and the Eugene Theatre Festival to see the new hatchings from the "title of show" group which was great fun. Most of the time I'm simply enjoying life with a capitol E and L. Right now Richard is across the road swimming in our pond and trying to get Ginger and Mary Ann to join him. They're a bit reticent. They still don't get the idea of this 6 foot "parent" turning into a splashing, flopping suspended head just above the water surface. It must be akin to a goose horror flick. Whatever, they just don't see the pluses in joining in when we're in the drink. Oh it looks so fine out there. I may have to take a dip myself.

30 years ago today on my cross-country bicycle trip I was in San Diego having helped some new found friends from Jerome, Arizona, drive across the desert to California through a lightning ripped night. A few days before I'd been reduced to walking my fuji bike up a long, high hill in the hot Arizona sun and an RV had pulled over to lend a lift up the hill. Soon I was helping this group move a relative in to a new home in Jerome, a former copper mining boom town named after Winston Churchill's American mother and in 1979 a kind of hippie-ish artist colony (now it's an upscale artist's colony laden with all sorts of gift shops). I dined and wined and laughed with them for 2 days and agreed to help them drive over to San Diego. I'd been wondering how I was going to get across the desert on my bike. The only way to do it during the summer is to try and coordinate it with a full moon, so you can pedal through the night by the light of la bella luna. I had not planned or coordinated for that and this ride offer was really a God send. However my perfectionistic side was having bouts of looking this gift horse in the mouth, saying to myself in true purist fashion that I should be riding the whole way. Little did I know that a nice challenging ride up the coast to San Francisco lay ahead with the wind against me the whole way.

My new friends were a colorful lot. The older patriarch of the group had been a musician in the Harry James Band and he regaled us with stories of long ago as we drove all night across the desert with hot, hot 70 mph wind barely cooling us as we sped along. One of his claims was that Hoagy Carmichael had NOT written "Stardust", but had stolen it from one of his buddies. The lightning show outside accompanying this gossip was spectacular with bolts starting high, high in the heavens and zig-zagging down to the desert floor far below, splitting the pitch black sky with flashes that looked like illuminated rivers on ebony maps, seen only for an instant. Glorious. As glorious in its dramatic flash as the wind wafting through the screened in porch is now in its subtle whisper.

The geese are calling me out to play so I must heed my calling.

Hope this finds you all well.