WHere's a Thanksgiving story I wrote again today: Chapter Twenty Two Tuna Noodle Casserole Georgia and I had been emailing back and forth for two years, without phoning and never yet having met in person, when she emailed to suggest it would be convenient for her to drop by - rather than mailing - a bundle of the new Metaphysical Times with another of my articles in it. I was not suspicious, skeptical, or cynical about the innocence of her intentions. She may have put a spell on me, but …as I would eventually learn … she was semi-tragicaly afraid that I would be disgusted at first sight of her: an overweight, sixty-eight-year-old,virgin. Before leaving Syracuse, she had to pick up the papers from the printer,so she would not arrive until afternoon, plus there’s always weather and traffic… so I cleaned out the guest trailer, in case it was needed. Georgia almost never started. She would not have even tried to arrange it, if it were not for her friend Betty, on whose milk can dog-food containers Georgia was painting gnomes at the time. Betty knew Georgia’s whole story, and urged her on. Georgia made it half way here, then stopped and called Betty; who encouraged her to keep on going. Georgia did keep on …. but later needed further encouragement, pulled over and called again, which worked again. When she saw a vintage junk store, she stopped to pick out some sort of gift: and came out with a mini, multi-tool, suitable for gnomes, and now among the treasures of the Dogs Plot museum. As soon as I knew she was underway, I watched the weather radar on my computer, and I probably spent a lot of time looking out the kitchen door too, because I was standing there when her little Ford pulled in off the highway. I’d told her to park out by the mouth of the driveway and walk to the house … because of the chickens and cats wandering about. I was soon out the door, and it isn’t like we were running toward one another with hair streaming in the wind …. but we met in the driveway half way between the house and the road and as I seem to remember, passed through or into one another like two clouds …because most of the evening is hazy after that. There sure was a lot of talking … and it went on past most folks dinner time. Even given my addled brain, my smittenness, my enchantment or whatever you say, it’s hard to see how in the week or so I’d had to prepare, I had not given a thought to offering her lunch or dinner. It’s not so much that I don’t ordinarily cook, as it is that for me, living alone so long, cooking had become an impractical pass-time. . Tuna Noodle Casserole it would be. Easy with green Peas in it. One like my mother used to make would have been appropriate, but instead of using Muellers egg noodles, I mixed up my own, with whole wheat flour, egg from my hens, olive oil; kneaded the dough rolled ut out, cut up and boiled it…. all to Georgia’s complete amusement …. amusement to the degree that I now realize she was only a little short of the sort of laughing fit she was prone to that had gotten her kicked out of both Lillydale and a YokoOno exhibition. She might have thought that next thing, I would go down to the pond and catch a tuna. But I’d raised Bass in the pond, not tuna, the bass died in a five year drought, and anyway, I always used StarKist then because of the logo and I used Campbels soup like my Mom did, included slivered almonds, baked and browned it, and by the time we ate, it was well past bed time. I offered to light her way across the yard to the trailer where she could spend the night in reasonable comfort. As hesitant as she had been about coming here, Georgia was not at all bashful about saying she wanted to stay up in the loft with me. Somehow that was a surprise, but that was OK with me. So up we went, We cuddled all through the night … what was left of it; the most comfortable I had been since my dogs died. We didn’t have sex that night, nor did I realize then that she was a virgin. But she drove back to Syracuse the next day to handle business, and start packing clothing, portfolios, family photos, books and dolls, her father’s Buddhas and Pearl’s fiddle. It took several trips in the next days. I don’t know why I couldn’t have been more helpful, but it’s obvious to me NOW as it is to you, that we two were subconsciously acting out the historic event of her own parents’ first thanksgiving.

plasma balls

Return of the King

Letting it Go

Eating Order

Cats Have Two Ends

Monk of Mt. Eye Greets the Day

Zola not eating her puppies

Blossom River

Where have all the flowers gone?

Getting Familiar

Family Gang

Flower Bird Fly Over

The Sniff Test

Island getaway

Hickory Goes Up

Take off

The secret to unassisted human flight is in the vine-based launching system and one's willingness to suspend disbelief:

" I called to tell you that you forgot your phone ", and other archived ...

Primitive communications at Dogs Plot

Guest Post by an old pal from my tramp abroad: "One thinks Heidelberg by day—with its surroundings—is the last possibility of the beautiful; but when he sees Heidelberg by night, a fallen Milky Way, with that glittering railway constellation pinned to the border, he requires time to consider upon the verdict. One never tires of poking about in the dense woods that clothe all these lofty Neckar hills to their tops. The great deeps of a boundless forest have a beguiling and impressive charm in any country; but German legends and fairy tales have given these an added charm. They have peopled all that region with gnomes, and dwarfs, and all sorts of mysterious and uncanny creatures. At the time I am writing of, I had been reading so much of this literature that sometimes I was not sure but I was beginning to believe in the gnomes and fairies as realities. One afternoon I got lost in the woods about a mile from the hotel, and presently fell into a train of dreamy thought about animals which talk, and kobolds, and enchanted folk, and the rest of the pleasant legendary stuff; and so, by stimulating my fancy, I finally got to imagining I glimpsed small flitting shapes here and there down the columned aisles of the forest. It was a place which was peculiarly meet for the occasion. It was a pine wood, with so thick and soft a carpet of brown needles that one’s footfall made no more sound than if he were treading on wool; the tree-trunks were as round and straight and smooth as pillars, and stood close together; they were bare of branches to a point about twenty-five feet above-ground, and from there upward so thick with boughs that not a ray of sunlight could pierce through. The world was bright with sunshine outside, but a deep and mellow twilight reigned in there, and also a deep silence so profound that I seemed to hear my own breathings. When I had stood ten minutes, thinking and imagining, and getting my spirit in tune with the place, and in the right mood to enjoy the supernatural, a raven suddenly uttered a horse croak over my head. It made me start; and then I was angry because I started. I looked up, and the creature was sitting on a limb right over me, looking down at me. I felt something of the same sense of humiliation and injury which one feels when he finds that a human stranger has been clandestinely inspecting him in his privacy and mentally commenting upon him. I eyed the raven, and the raven eyed me. Nothing was said during some seconds. Then the bird stepped a little way along his limb to get a better point of observation, lifted his wings, stuck his head far down below his shoulders toward me and croaked again—a croak with a distinctly insulting expression about it. If he had spoken in English he could not have said any more plainly than he did say in raven, “Well, what do you want here?” I felt as foolish as if I had been caught in some mean act by a responsible being, and reproved for it. However, I made no reply; I would not bandy words with a raven. The adversary waited a while, with his shoulders still lifted, his head thrust down between them, and his keen bright eye fixed on me; then he threw out two or three more insults, which I could not understand, further than that I knew a portion of them consisted of language not used in church. I still made no reply. Now the adversary raised his head and called. There was an answering croak from a little distance in the wood—evidently a croak of inquiry. The adversary explained with enthusiasm, and the other raven dropped everything and came. The two sat side by side on the limb and discussed me as freely and offensively as two great naturalists might discuss a new kind of bug. The thing became more and more embarrassing. They called in another friend. This was too much. I saw that they had the advantage of me, and so I concluded to get out of the scrape by walking out of it. They enjoyed my defeat as much as any low white people could have done. They craned their necks and laughed at me (for a raven can laugh, just like a man), they squalled insulting remarks after me as long as they could see me. They were nothing but ravens—I knew that—what they thought of me could be a matter of no consequence—and yet when even a raven shouts after you, “What a hat!” “Oh, pull down your vest!” and that sort of thing, it hurts you and humiliates you, and there is no getting around it with fine reasoning and pretty arguments.

Pook Returns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HEENBLb-sM

Dangerous intersections over Dogs plot

you have to believe it to see it.

Coon For Dinner

Just as long as it's not a dog, Hickory is Okay with the Coon.

Cat can fly

Sumac Robber Crows

Feeding the Dogs plot Crows