Post Script: I like the word, cackle! It diminishes the cackler!
Post Post Script: This is definitely cheating. I haven't been to Chicago in years...but I wouldn't mind going again.
Post Post Post Script: The cackler pretends to be a photographer.
I say: Humph!

I'm trying to get away from posting flowers.

Yesterday, someone cackled at me at Bridge...I'm not good at being cackled at. It's not that I don't cackle at people but mine is a silent inner cackle...I cackle on my blog. I don' think one is supposed to cackle at one's opponent in Bridge. In Monopoly yes...but in Bridge...or Chess...or Scrabble? No, definitely not. I don't know how to cope with cacklers. I want to verbally hit them but I don't think that in certain circles verbal sparring is approved of in Bridge...or Chess...perhaps monopoly... definitely at the beginning of a race track...if one were racing cars.                                                                                 When I was growing up, no siblings cackled at me...I had no siblings...I suppose that is what is meant by only children being spoiled...but I suspect my grandmother would have frowned at cackling and she was the standard by which I operated. Not that she was tolerant. Not that she could not throw a good verbal spar...but...she would not cackle...and she had seven siblings...So my goal this week is to become deadly in Bridge...I won't have to cackle...I'll just...win...if my hands are good! That is what is called Fate...One has to work with the hand one is dealt with!   Now I am cackling!                           

And Gordon!

Rarely do I get the name of the flowers I find save for the obvious...but this one is called Bee Balm...It must have been too windy for the bees!

So I suffer from hubris...of course there are things I can write about...at the moment only me, Julia, and and Sandra are reading them and that's the fun of it. I like to know people who don't know each other...

A thousand years ago I edited a newsletter for a group of teachers. I diligently wrote and sent out newsletters without much input. In fact first bit of input I got was from a Board member to say that I should check my data base since I had sent her two newsletters. It was my first communication from a Board member and I felt an overwhelming freedom. I responded immediately to say that there would be no more problems since I had decided to not continue with the newsletters. She wrote immediately to say: But I enjoyed the newsletters! And I replied: Ah but, that is what you should have said first! I like the newsletter but...
     Teachers have to watch not to turn on the find-out-what's-wrong switch...it is well meaning but it sometimes is destructive!
      That was probably ten years ago.
      Recently, I've been writing the newsletters and doing the mailings for another and very different group. I just received the note to ask if the sender was a member or should she be renewing her subscription. Is it too much of a coincidence that she has the same name as the lady of ten years ago?

Speaking of pretentious...these birds are too far away really...but I just can't not post it. They are Great Egrets (or white herons) two adults and a fledgling...

The picture does not do them justice...

But I will remember them!

Put aside the pansies; put aside the poppies; put aside the bees...this is the week of lilies...

I have so much to write about but I can't because it is sensitive material...

That sounds pretentious...but it is so...delicious gossip that I can't deliver...and so...advice from Joyce Carol Oates on the art of writing.

1.       Don’t try to anticipate an ideal reader – or any reader. He/she might exist – but is reading someone else.

And even more intriguing: The first sentence can be written only after the last sentence has been written.

I am a jealous person - there is no two ways about it - but I can laugh at myself. Yesterday I was in the dentist's office and couldn't help overhearing the conversation in the hygienist's office. One tends to should whilst having one's teeth cleaned. A woman was talking about how she had given up on all those questions that are asked when one wants to create an Internet account...beginning with the password. Suddenly she was inspired and decided that all her passwords would be some variation of horse - yes the word, horse. If she were asked for additional numbers, she would write, horse1 or horse1,2,3
She extended this practice to answering the obligatory privacy questions. What was the name of the first street you lived on? Horse. Who was your best friend in kindergarten? Horse. What is your mother's maiden name? Horse (Why not?) And I metaphorically whacked myself on the side of the head! Just the day before I had been trying to decide if my favourite colour was purple or pink. If I had given the answer, horse...I wouldn't have had to start from scratch! Naturally I would not use the word, horse - that would be cheating!