Just in case ya'll care

There are lots of things that really irritate me in this world, such as: finding the perfect lipstick (or nail polish) and having it disappear from every store three days before it runs out and I want a new one; the rarest of rare, the perfect brassiere that evaporates from the face of every retail outlet on the earth when it's time to buy its replacement. I travel a lot, and have been expecting my oh-so-useful toiletries bag to expire at any moment it's so old. Do you think they make them that way any more? It's perfect - perfect size, perfect shape, it holds all the essential junk within zippered, leak-resistant compartments, lays out flat so it always fits in an overfull suitcase, and it's not even ugly (maybe just a little ratty from years of use). But no, "they" had to 100% re-engineer this perfect, classic, functional design into myriad far less functional forms. Why??
And speaking of "they," why on earth can't they make cotton pants that don't bag out after an hour or two of wear? The elastic content that's in everything makes it worse. My jeans and khakis fit so comfortably and flatteringly fresh out of the dryer, but even the high end ones could fit two of me by the end of the day. And at my size, that's really saying something.
Other things very, very low on my approval list: people whose outgoing voice or e-mail messages tell me they'll get back to me at their earliest convenience. Wow, goodness, I'd sure hate to inconvenience them! (The polite outgoing form, obviously, is to commit to respond at their earliest opportunity.) The nearly ubiquitous misuse of the word simplistic drives me insane as well. Here's another one: the use of frigging (as an adjective) in "polite" company, as a supposedly milder version of fucking. Doesn't anyone know what frigging means??
Do I sound the least bit crabby today?

From the Polysyllaby Department

The following entry is from pages 251-252 of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H.W. Fowler, revised and edited by Sir Ernest Gowers, Oxford University Press, 1965:

"hugeous. Those who use the form perhaps do so chiefly under the impression that they are satirizing the ignorant with a non-existent word, as others of their kind do with mischevious or underconstumble or high-strikes for mischievous, understand, and hysterics. It is in fact a good old word, and corresponds rather to vasty and stilly by the side of vast and still; but it is practically obsolete, and, as its correctness robs it of its facetious capabilities, it might be allowed to rest in peace."

Thanks, I think I'll just stick with ginormous for now.

Who knew ID would be so hard?

I took this early-morning, clear-day photo of a red squirrel chowing down on bright red catkins on the shore of Colter Bay in Grand Teton National Park. I decided it would behoove me to identify the particular tree that produces these striking deep red flowers, and have had the darnedest time doing it. I've even asked one of the Park's naturalists; she and her colleague think it may be a thin leafed alder. Another Park staffer thinks it is a cottonwood (type unknown). It does appear on Googling "red catkin" images that it is a member of the Populus family (laurels, cottonwoods, poplars, and aspens) but I can't nail it for certain and I guess no one else can absent a good view of the trunk/bark and leaves. If you know, please tell me!

The funny thing about getting old...er

I have been with my beloved partner, KLK, for 23 years. KLK is eight years younger than I, and should be commensurately far behind me in the deterioration process we all more or less experience as we hit the start of our second half century.

Since he thought himself a 97-pound weakling in high school, and desired to emulate (or compete with, or prove himself to) his well-built, masculine father, he has exercised religiously since then. His routine throughout his adult life included running for his aerobic workout, and lifting free weights for strength and bulk. I always found his lean physique, gently curved and firm belly, and large upper arms to be endearingly attractive. But I never realized how I have taken his strength for granted. Yes, I surely did assume he would be there at the far end of whatever heavy object needed to be moved, held, or hefted, in spite of increasingly frequent visits to the orthopedist for assurance that this, that, or the other joint or muscle pain was not serious.

Recently (very recently), he celebrated his 50th birthday. Three weeks later, he completely detached one of two bicep tendons in his left arm. He'd been installing a window air conditioner in his grandma's window, but the snap suddenly came when he had nothing in his hands. He's had considerable pain, which he recognized from the moment it happened as serious, since. His doctor says the MRI he had a month ago for shoulder pain shows a partial rotator cuff tear, and the bicep destruction needs no high-tech diagnostics, as it is evident just looking at his arm when he bends his elbow where the muscle has rolled back on itself, leaving a cave in his upper arm where it used to be stretched taut by the tendon attached at the other end to his shoulder. The treatment is rest (he's not terribly good at that), gentle physical therapy, which he will do, and time. The best outcome would be complete resolution of the pain. He will never have that strength of youth again, though, and he cannot, at least in the foreseeable future, be the guy I call when our granite-topped (yes!) dining table needs moving.

In some ways, this has been more of a reality check for me even than comparing photos of my face from 30, 20,10 years ago with what I look like today in the mirror. It's true what they say, even as one pushes 60 there's no inner feeling of difference, though it's also true that memory and other weird things start to slip (I sometimes experience aphasia and entirely the wrong word - spoken, written, or typed - comes out; probably an early indicator of eventual dementia, but I'm not quite there yet).

Denial is a good thing, but it only gets you so far.

Grizzly in motion

This little video of the bear below was shot by KLK:
If you like it, it's worth watching in "high quality" mode at YouTube!

Missive from Yellowstone

For now, this trip report will have to be in the form of a photo only (I'm a little busy catching up back here in Chicago!)

This is a large, wild grizzly bear, probably a boar (male). Enjoy!

Be Here Now

The webcam is pointed into the Upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park; this morning steam is rising from Old Faithful, Giantess, Beehive, Lion, and Giant, among several other thermal features visible in this capture. I really can't complain, I will be in the park by Friday this week. It's been a long and exceptionally wet winter, things are just beginning to green up, and the wildlife, especially the top-of-the-food-chain predators, has been abundantly visible. I can't wait to get home!

A bit from my bio

At the request of a cousin, some months ago I started writing my autobiography. It's been a tremendously interesting exercise, though it is going slowly. But I think it might be fun to post sections of it here. The following is from my very early years:
In 1954, my parents took me on the first of several summer retreats to Martha’s Vineyard, when it was as yet undiscovered by many but well-to-do black Americans. As an interesting side note, I was entirely oblivious to that historic fact, in spite of several return visits as an adult, until only perhaps 10 years ago. A neighbor and friend, a distinguished executive of African-American heritage herself, happened to mention her acquaintances who had a home there. She expanded a bit, and eventually I understood that black doctors, lawyers, educators, and businessmen have been the builders and occupants of many of the stately homes on that attractive dot in the ocean off Cape Cod over the last hundred years. The TV movie, The Wedding, with Halle Berry, is set there, more or less contemporaneous with my family’s visits. Happily, children, (and, apparently, some adults), are color-blind.
We went again in 1955, 1956, and in 1959. It was during those halcyon summers that I discovered Nature. We rented a little cinder-block “cottage” owned by a man named Sisson. It sat among a couple of others at the end of Shirley Road (this latter information is thanks to Google Maps, 2008; it was gravel and very sparsely inhabited in those days, and it would not be surprising if it had not yet been named then) in poison-ivy-filled woodlands adjacent to the Lagoon. On the shore of the Lagoon was (and still is) the State Lobster Hatchery, freely open to our explorations. It delighted me to see the Brownian flagellations of millions of hatchlings in small, smelly concrete tanks with their churning bubblers. Also for my viewing pleasure were a couple of adult specimens of gargantuan size or with especially bizarre claw deformities.
The Lagoon was Nature-made, resplendent with sea life. Every day we found washed up on the little beach live horseshoe crabs and dried compartmentalized strings of conch egg cases, with a thousand fully formed miniature shells inside. In the water itself, and in the brackish wetlands behind the Lagoon, were healthy scallops with neon-blue eye-dots and blue crabs that blithely came to eat the chicken legs my father tossed into the water on strings, only to be scooped up in his net and boiled for dinner by my mother. Elsewhere on the island were tiny wild blueberries, and on the unprotected Atlantic side, below the spectacular cliffs of Gay Head, dangerous Portuguese-Man-O-War jellies washed up on the beach, tempting curious little girls to touch, or at least to throw rocks at them. In 1954, hurricane Carol made her way up the coast and, besides terrifying my mother (whose experience with hurricanes in Puerto Rico informed her fears) lifted the pleasure boats and those of lobstermen alike onto the sidewalks and the docks, and caused much other memorable havoc.
Unfortunately, whether because of the interference of man, or because of Nature’s whims, the last time I saw the Lagoon it had changed extremely and was no longer the fruitful cradle of the 1950s. The outlet under the bridge was silted up, thus the source of fresh seawater and nutrients was choked off.

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day to Eleanor Lawton-Sebeok, March 10, 1912-January 24, 2005. I'm thinking of you, as I often do.

And I quote...

A student who works for us brought me a little souvenir mother-of-pearl bookmark from his home country of Korea. It's quite sweet, very pretty, and comes with the following helpful description on the back of the package:

The product which it sees bites Korean tradition and ocean it is beautiful the color which the materials is brilliant with the product which it manufactures with mother-of-pearl lacquerware technique the nature which will wind to express like that

I have to say, the spelling is impressive, it's just the punctuation that seems to be lacking.

They're alive! updates

Photo from Bob Smith/JH News...How 'bout this for a fine update of my long-ago post on this roly-poly (amazingly so following a long winter hibernating, and taking in nothing) family? Read the very good article about their current status in the Jackson Hole News. Let us hope the cubs soon decide to wander far from civilization and, in a few years, successfully make some cubs of their own. We hope very much to see them when we're in the Tetons again this May—what a thrill that would be—and as the article points out, this is very likely to be the last stretch of weeks or months that they will be seen together. YES!!

Clams make good pets, don't they?

From my neighborhood paper's want ads section...I've always thought a clam would be a good companion to me (and to my dog), but I never knew they merited $13/hour training, playgroups, or walks and jogs!

Creativity limited to...

I'm a little busy with other stuff, taxes, homework from my class, and just getting a grip on the general post-travel mess in my home. So my creativity will be limited to posting a few photos from our travels in southern California last week and the week before. More useful narrative follows, eventually, I hope.

OH NO! White shoes are in again this year!

So are bone! Just search on "white" at Zappos.com, if you don't believe me. ARGH!!

Back from SoCal

More photos and stories to come. Meantime, here's a pic from Joshua Tree National Park. Enjoy!