Miscellany

So many things have happened in the last couple of weeks—major and minor—all of which I’d intended to write about here. But didn’t. So little energy, so little time. But here’s a little bit on each one, enough that I won’t feel guilty any longer.

• Novelist Larry McMurtry died last week—it was all over the news, somewhat on Facebook. I first became aware of him when the film The Last Picture Show hit American screens in October 1971; it’s based on McMurtry’s 1966 novel. I loved the film, and I subsequently read that novel  and all of McMurtry’s others, most of which I loved. Even got to review a couple for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I wasn’t crazy about his last few—but oh did I love those early and middle ones! (Link to film trailer.)
• Writer Beverly Cleary also died last week. My clear memory of her is this: Early in high school I read her YA novel Fifteen, 1956. It’s a teen love story with complications that a cell phone would have solved. I kept my reading of it fiercely concealed from my (male) friends. I knew what they would say; I didn’t want to hear any of it. A few years ago I bought a used copy of it and re-read it for something I was writing—and found myself again moved more than I should have been. 
  
  
  
• My book-a-day calendar the other day featured The Three Musketeers, which, in boyhood, I’d read multiple times in its Classics Illustrated (comic book) format. But I didn’t read the actual book until a few years ago. I loved it. But its recent calendar appearance made me remember a number of B Westerns that were popular when I was a boy: The Three Mesquiteers, a series about a group of cowboys (good guys), who fought the bad guys. Watched the films over and over on TV. 
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• In recent months I’ve returned to baking, an activity I could not manage without Joyce’s help. She helps me assemble the ingredients, brings devices to me when I need them, does most of the cleaning up. I could not be baking without her: All that movement would cause such dizziness that I would hit the floor like a toppled statue. Oh, do I need her now—in so many ways.
• Yesterday we had a semi-normal social encounter with our son and his family—the first time in a year. I had tears in my eyes. And when the departure hugs commenced (we’ve all been vaccinated), my eyes were more than merely damp.
• And—finally—a weird one. The other morning, a dark one, standing at our kitchen sink at the back of the house, waiting for the Keurig to finish, I noticed, out by our back fence, what appeared to be luminescent butterflies darting along in a straight line along that fence. I thought I was seeing things (not uncommon these days). Then I figured out the phenomenon: As I said, it was still dark, our back fence runs parallel to nearby OH 303, and the flickering images were merely headlights passing through the spaces between the boards of that new back fence.