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Flashback Friday

Housekeeping chores:

1.  Comments for posts can be made by clicking on the "Comments" word after each post.


2.  Send your pics, comments, videos or other neat stuff you see or do to bfereporter@yahoo.com.  I'll do the rest of the week, Mondays depend on you.  


3.  Thanks again for sending your Christmas trees.  I've never seen a bad tree yet.  


Probably more than any other post in a long time I really struggled with this one.  It started out as a post on any other day, but then the subject matter seemed to point to  Flashback Friday.  When I stated to write it seemed like a light throw-away subject until I started to really think about it.  I wrote stuff, erased some and you end up with this.  I still don't think I got it where it needs to be, and am a little bothered, but here it is anyway.  Hope everyone has a great weekend.

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."  Bob Mason, the teacher at MDH for a long time always used that phrase. I never knew what that phrase meant. I suppose it had something to do with the construction of the sentence and its relative ambiguity, but darned if I was just too thick to get what the Hell it meant in that form. I'm not sure I get it yet. The one constant is change, so what does this mean, things never change?  Can't have it both ways can you?  Oh well, just one of those things I guess. But that doesn't mean I can't use it it for this post.  Here is what I mean.



A long time ago I painted this for my daughter Mackenzie.  She had this Teddy Bear that was pink and she slept in her crib with her tail end sticking up.  It was one of those cutesy things that parents really like to talk about with their in-laws and friends.  The painting survives and is in protective custody with her.  It pretty much looks the same, a little bleeding of oil medium has formed in various places most likely due to artist ignorance regarding fat-over-lean/lean-over-fat.  The colors are pretty much the same, too, and, well, it seems to have survived much better than the artist.  I suffer from a little fat-over-lean myself.      



And the years go by and the daughter has a baby of her own.  And the other day, when that baby arrived to my place for another day of babysitting, I saw something I hadn't seen in a long long time. The universal face of a baby sleeping with its tail end in the air.  Not just that day, but the next day, too.  Where had I seen that before?   Now I'm sure all babies sleep this way, not just Norah.  I'm taking that on mere supposition, of course.  Surely its not just Blythe babies that stick their asses to the wind.  But when I saw that butt in the air in conjunction with the passing of another year, I was struck with a pang of mortality. 



I'm no starry-eyed romantic.  I know how things work.  I know my youth has grown to middle age and beyond.  Death doesn't worry me, the process does.  I know railing against age is wasted motion,  and nature has a way of burning off the Fall for a Spring of New.  But when I see the timeless form of a sleeping twenty-month old baby I am reminded of Red's words to his audience in The Shawshank Redemption, "...get busy livin' or get busy dyin'."   We all need to get busy livin'. 




And here is that same Bear taken a couple days ago, still providing warmth, hugs and childhood happiness to a new generation of kid(s).  Yeah, a little grungy in places,  not as pristine as it was 28 years ago, but still there,  Still proud, and in its own Toy Story way, still wanting only one thing in return, the love of a child.  I saw that the other morning when I was at their house early to sit.  She woke up and grabbed two Bears, one this tired pink Bear that has seen so much.  When I tried to pry it from Norah's clutches to change the diaper and find some breakfast, she told me in no uncertain terms that she wanted that soft bundle of pink a little while longer.



Here she is with the Pink Bear, her Mother's Bear many years ago.  Yeah, makes me feel old, that and another New Year's Eve.  But that dang old Pink Bear, that gave my daughter comfort and comforts her daughter today shows me that even us seniors have smoothing to offer, something to provide.  Me and old Pinky, we're gonna be around a while yet.   The more things change...I may understand that old phrase better now.

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Class, Or Lack Thereof The Dwight Vice gravestone in Oquawka, Illinois. I bring this old chestnut out every so often just to remind me that class is classless.  Dwight Vice was killed in his home near Oquawka in 2001.  It was one of those things that can generate crime:  two guys thought Dwight had a lot of money stashed at home because of his pot-selling sideline to supplement his fishing job.   Not really one of those big drug deals gone-bad things.  Marijuana was, according to the trial, about the only stuff Dwight sold.   But these two guys barge into the house and killed Dwight and attempted to kill his 11 year old kid, Darryl, before they took off with what money they could find.   His son, now 23, was stabbed in the back and left for dead.  He survived and is wheelchair bound and has undergone several surgeries to repair his wounds.  He will be paralyzed for life.   None of this is pleasant.  Reading the facts of the murder and attempted murder are most unpleasant