Sometimes When I Think of You...

...My heart skips a beat.

Okay sometimes it skips a beat for no reason other than premature ventricular contraction.

But I don't remember that happening before I met you. So there.

But PVCs are common in older people. And I'm one of those older people. I even got a discount on my haircut yesterday because, you know, Senior Discount day.

But anyway. 

I love you. And sometimes my heart skips a beat. 

(Boy, this has been the most public private note ever, or something!)

Indian Summer Tanka

Free after dinner 

(The grownups want us outside)

Till Dad calls us in:

Hide and seek on the whole block,

Red light green light, dodgeball, tag.

Tinfoil Hat Grammarians

Deacons

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the body of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”  (Acts 6:1–4, RSVCE)

It doesn't say anything there about deacons giving homilies. In fact, the deacons were ordained so that those whose work was preaching and ministry of the word could concentrate on their primary work without getting lost in more mundane tasks. 

Today I had to suffer through another of our parish deacon's twenty minute homilies. Nice guy. Does great work ("prison ministry" -- better him than me!). Terrible voice. Every clause inflected on the same two tones, up down, up down, up down. No variation in tempo. Twenty minutes.  

Given that Catholic deacons are cleared to preach nowadays, I might excuse him getting "tasked" with preaching if I figured he was just accepting in humility and trying to make the best of it. Like by trying to get it over with as quickly as possible. Like maybe seven minutes?  A brief and to-the-point  monotonous drone would not be as sleep- or headache-inducing. But twenty minutes? Twenty minutes speaks to a certain level of taking yourself too seriously combined with a certain lack of self-reflection. Rush Limbaugh used to call it the liberal combination of ignorance and arrogance. 

But really. From a scriptural point of view, why are we asking deacons go give homilies? Why do that to such a nice guy? 

Wetlands Tanka

On a morning run,

I have the marsh to myself.

That is -- not counting

The sparrows, wrens, and egrets,

The lizards and the ground squirrels...

...One young coyote

Decides I am not a threat,

And jogs on ahead.

A meadowlark rises up,

Spreads its wings and glides away.

Here's a Meme Instead of Something

Political Crony Busywork

This year my town spent an awful lot of time and money jackhammering corners and installing these ramp things with the yellow plastic dotty mats that make it more challenging for wheelchairs and baby strollers but signal to the visually impaired that they are at a corner ramp. 

Like most of its brethren, this one is covered in twigs, leaves, and dirt. When we had a bit of rain a while ago, most of these new installations also showed that drainage was not part of the specification. They literally showed new lows in civic design by holding water at the base of the dotty pads. Mud. Leaf mould. Well, city authorities are committed to composting. 

The terrain in this neighborhood is hilly. It's pretty easy to go for a walk of a mile and a half and rack up three or four hundred feet of elevation gain. Serious hills and grades. This may seem insensitive, but I have to ask: wheelchair ramps? Really? Here? 

It is not about access for the differently abled. It is not about safe sidewalks or mosquito abatement. 

It's paybacks to union cronies and kickbacks to the ruling enablers. It's money moving out and back. Out of our pockets and into theirs. That's sure what it looks like, anyway.