More this and that

 

This is one of our native scrub jays. Such a boring name for such a lovely bird. Much like the house finch, it suffers from an unduly modest sobriquet. If you were a traveler from a distant land and came up on its gorgeous plumage for the first time you would think to call it a blue paragon of gorgeousness or something similarly suitable. 

But no, it was destined for ignominy by some forgotten taxonomist with zero vision and/or literary skill. 

We (mostly Leslie) feed them peanuts in the morning. We have quite a scrub jay troupe around here.

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A CIA linked Afghani refugee shot two people back east, a tragedy. I would like to mention that this wretch was one guy. I have known quite a few afghans in my time, many of them translators for our troops overseas and the great majority I have met are wonderful people.

They helped us do whatever the hell we were doing over there, much like the Montagnards did in Vietnam. It is senseless to send them back over one misguided man's actions. These people helped us immensely and would be sitting ducks back with the Taliban.

A deluded Christian named Scott Roeder murdered the abortion doctor George Tiller. Eric Rudolph, responsible for several bombings, was an anti abortion Catholic. Are we going to blame the whole religion for the horrible behavior of a few? Where shall we deport them?

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I got a call from my cousin Linda Forman's sister Francey (also a cousin) that Linda had passed. She loved the blog, was a frequent commenter,  the eighty year old went by the name honky tonk angel. More about her here.

Linda lived in Western Massachusetts, started out in my family's stateside birthplace, Providence. 

Here is a picture of her, she is on the left, Francey on the right.

Both look a lot like my mother, their first cousin. But nicer.

Here is a picture she sent of a building that once held the Roberts Paper Box Company, our longtime family business.

Linda and I were two peas in a pod. 

She loved Dylan and Nanci Griffith, Zevon, Guy Clark. Libby Cotton. John Hartford. Was longtime friends with Sam Bush. 

All that weird music I like, she liked it too. Must be genetic. 

We had similar artistic tastes too, she owned a Werner Drewes and a Lozowick  and a Peggy Bacon.

She was married to a pretty famous bluegrass musician once upon a time and sent me all her old Sing Out magazines last year.

She filled in a lot of family history for me. I did what I could in return.

We also had near identical political leanings.

She liked to piss off the people in her gym, wearing shirts like this:

She was a liberal beatnik and owned an original Woodstock poster.

She would occasionally quote Ram Dass.

It was such a pleasure making friends with each other so late in our respective lives and I will miss her letters and support dearly.

Never met her in the flesh but it doesn't really matter. We were family through and through.