Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets . . . PTD Edition

My experience last year made me think about death in a different way. I briefly blacked out and collapsed in a shopping center hallway where nice people helped me. When I looked back at the episode as a near-death experience, I thought it would be embarrassing to have my obit say, “He collapsed and died in the Atlantic Street mall outside a Marshall’s.” I did not know where I wanted to die, but it wasn’t there. Since then the spouse and I have looked at many continuing care retirement communities, or as I call each of them, a Place To Die. Both the spouse and I have posted about these travels on this blog, but our search has now ended. We have signed a contract and put a down payment to enter a CCRC in suburban New York. I have a PTD. Of course, we must now downsize and sell our Brooklyn house where we have lived for 45 years. But, I am confident that the move will come by the end of the year. I hope that it gives some interesting, perhaps amusing, blog fare.

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” Mel Brooks.

“Only the young die good.” Ethel Watts Mumford.

“Dying’s not so bad. At least I won’t have to answer the telephone.” Rita Mae Brown.

“The type of man who will end up dying in his own arms.” Mamie van Doren on Warren Beatty.

“My grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands. Two of them were just napping.” Rita Rudner.

“God was very good to the world. He took her from us.” Bette Davis on Miriam Hopkins.

“If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.” Erma Bombeck.

“It is fine to speak well of the dead, but what shall we do with those who are dead and don’t know it?” Unknown.

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” Anonymous.

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.” Mark Twain.

I told the spouse that I wanted to be cremated. She said, “When?”

“In the words of a Fula proverb: ‘Until a man is dead, he is not yet done being created.’” David Diop, At Night All Blood is Black.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Whenever I watched the right wing “news” channel during Hunter Biden’s trial, I heard hosts and commentators state that this was a Delaware jury that, in essence, had been captured by the Bidens. The jury would “nullify” and acquit Hunter. This was said again and again, not as a possibility but as a certitude. When I watched Fox News after the verdict, I only heard that the evidence against the defendant was overwhelming and the verdict a slam dunk. I heard no one confess error for any previous statements.

“Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think creation’s.” E.M. Forster.

Kristin Hannah’s bestselling The Women is a powerful novel. In 1965, Frankie serves as a nurse in the Vietnam War. She makes strong friendships but also experiences the horrors of battlefield wounds, napalm, and Agent Orange. She returns to a divided America where no one wants to hear about her military service. With no outlet to process what she has experienced, she suffers flashbacks and spirals out of control. And that made me think about one of my friendships. My closest high school friend served in Vietnam. In 1968 I took a road trip with him from Chicago to Georgia where he was going to report for duty to be sent to Vietnam. We did not talk about the correctness of the war. We knew that he was going; we knew that I opposed the war. That reticence continued after he returned when antiwar activities had increased. Although we have spent much time together over the years, we have never talked about his experiences in country. The Women made me realize that I have not been the friend I might have been.

“It isn’t the man who controls events but events that control the man.” David Diop, At Night All Blood is Black.

I don’t understand airport security. For example, why do I have to take a computer or iPad out of my carryon at one airport and not at another? And what’s the deal with shoes? TSA is a national agency, so why do the rules vary?

In one of those surveys, which I am sure is highly scientific, Finland ranked first with the highest percentage of happy people. It has been at the top for the last six or seven years. When I hear these results, I think of my friend who worked for Nokia. She liked the work except for her frequent trips to the headquarters in Finland.  It amused her, though, that Helsinki was the only place where she saw women with blonde roots.

I grew up in a small Wisconsin town, but I grew up hearing the roar of a lion. There was a zoo. It had Japanese macaques, which I liked watching, and other animals I don’t remember — except for Sadie the lion. She was kept in a small cage. Not regularly, but often enough, she roared, which was sufficiently loud to be heard at our house. It never sounded fierce, only lonely and sad.

 “Silence is a virtue in those who are deficient in understanding.” Dominique Bouhours.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“On the night of May 28, 1988, my dad took me to a baseball game.” Russell A. Carleton, The New Ballgame: The Not-So-Hidden Forces Shaping Modern Baseball.

“Trey comes over the mountain carrying a broken chair.” Tana French, The Hunter.

“When white-sheeted nightriders first appeared in the dark Southern night, many people thought they were ghosts.” Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.

“. . . I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have done it.” David Diop, At Night All Blood is Black.

“In winter, when the green earth lies resting beneath a blanket of snow, this is the time for storytelling.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

“He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson and no one could bear to listen to him.” Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

“On January 25, 2011, on the first day of the Egyptian Arab Spring, nothing happened in Abydos.” Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution.

“You will notice in just a second that this book actually begins on page 145.” Paul Reiser, Couplehood.

“He was like the hero in an action movie: cool under pressure, always ready with a quip.” Reid Mitenbuler, Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age.

“They had come to the spot in the freshness of June, chased from the village by its people, following deer path through the forest, the valleys, the fern groves, and the quaking bogs.” Daniel Mason, North Woods.

“Probably the strangest way anyone celebrated the accession of King James I of England was when a gentlewoman in the far north of Lancashire organised a mock wedding in a country church, between two male servants.” Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689.

“Mas Arai didn’t think much of slot machines, not to mention one with a fake can of Spam mounted on top of it.” Naomi Hirahara, Snakeskin Shamisen: A Mas Arai Mystery.

“I stood on the ship’s deck in my long underwear and fireproof jumpsuit, watching a pale silver sunrise and gauging the wind.” Susan Casey, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.