Sunday May 18th.
The day after my mother’s 112th birthday.
Four days before my 60th wedding anniversary.
Two days before my pre-surgery appointments.
Nine days before my big surgery.
The orioles came home.
As did the hummingbirds.
And the barn swallows.
There are red-winged blackbirds in the ditches on higher ground.
Eagles and vultures.
The spring bulbs I paid a lot of money for and fairly carefully planted last fall with some help from Jim, haven’t come up. I’m kind of angry about that. I have half a dozen puny daffodils from maybe $100 and 100 bulbs. Oh well. I suppose it’s a safe thing to feel anger toward.
We still need rain.
John and Deb and Will were down from Friday night to Saturday nights. Will seems even taller. Inevitable kindness and hugs and Mabe’s pizza.
I’ve been ferrying Jim from farming site to farming site. The dental inspired delay in my BIG surgery let me be available for his errands. I went to John Deere the other day for a spring for the corn planter. Larry had two of them in a sack for me - one big, one little - one to be returned after the right one was put on the planter. I looked at lawn mowers and even briefly talked to a salesman. As if that will happen. I had introduced myself as Jim’s mother come to get two springs from Larry. He appeared with the sack immediately. There were three stations in action at the parts counter that day.
Corn in in. Beans will be in soon. We still need rain. Maybe even more than when I last mentioned it.
I found a link to Anne Carson’s New Yorker poem. And I have the magazine marked for preservation. “What Happened to New York”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/12/what-happened-to-new-york-anne-carson-poem
It might be the best thing I’ve read in ages.
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This is a selfish little piece of prose.
I’ve been reading my biography of John Updike by Adam Begley. I bought it at Garrison Keillor’s Common Good book store in St. Paul.
It’ all comes together, New Yorker, Updike, Keillor and me. Links in a chain.
Minnesota, I hardly knew you.
I hardly loved you.
Remember us.
Oh and Click and Clack giving the commencement address at MIT in 1999.
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