Share Random (and not so random) Thoughts From Time To Time

^{image source}

It’s A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote. Our bookgroup read it this month, and everyone enjoyed it. Some had read it before, and some had not. The story was new to me.

One of our book group members brought a recorded version for us to listen to, and some fruitcake. (The making of fruitcakes is an important element in the story.)

...and find it very useful at times, but truth be told, I don’t use it that often. So, I’m gonna mark it as done. I can always come back and write entries here for any and all random, off-the-wall, miscellaneous posts that don’t seem to fit anywhere else, if I can just remember that I have such a goal.

I get ants coming into my kitchen all summer long. They are like the Mongol hoards—wave after wave of invaders. They tend to come in at the kitchen windowsill, although there are other entry points at times.

Today’s invasion is a race of Munchkin ants, little itty-bitty tiny miniature ones. Hundreds of them. Sigh

I love the movie Groundhog Day. It’s one of my all-time favorites. And it’s especially appropriate for me to think about it this morning as I try to write out my 3 daily goals here on 43-Things.

In 2003, a movie series from the Museum of Modern Art called “The Hidden God: Film and Faith” showed Groundhog Day as it’s opening feature (source). Buddhists, Jews, Christians, and secular psychoanalysts all see the movie as a parable of the human condition and psychological/spiritual growth.

A website called Spirituality & Practice, which reviews books and film, says that the Phil, self-centered weather forecaster played by Bill Murray, when he first realizes he is trapped in Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day, believes that “there is no tomorrow and no consequences”, and tries various means of escape, until he finally realizes “that the one thing he can change is himself”, and “tries to become a new person.”

I can soooo identify with this feeling of being trapped, this trying to escape from changes that I need to make in myself.

^{BTW, I just checked, and Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow. Looks like six more weeks of winter.}

My new favorite blogger, Faster Than Kudzu, reported today that she found the following message “Tucked among the cialis and enlargement ads” in her in-box:

Subject: REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully
Minister of Treasury Paulson

Check out this VERY BIG BUG. This is the same kind of bug that I found lying on his back on my garage floor a month ago, with his legs flailing around and his abdomen wiggling. It just about scared me to death that night, and I left him there, and by morning he’d disappeared.

A few days later I found another slightly smaller and less active one, and captured him in a jar, and found a bug expert to identify him. He’s a prionus californicus, a large tile-horned saw-toothed wood-boring beetle who normally lives on the west coast but is showing up in southeast and eating the roots of trees that have been weakened by the drought. Great.

Ah, the wonders of nature, right at my doorstep. Literally.

This is the title of a short story by Eudora Welty. I was reading it last night because my group is discussing the story tonight.

I usually like the short stories that we read, but didn’t like this story much at first. I’ve never read anything by Eudora Welty before. I just knew she was a “Southern writer.”

The story starts out with a crazy-sounding character named Lorenzo Dow, a preacher who’s galloping alone through the woods by horseback on the Old Natchez Trace. It sounds like the story is set back in frontier times.

Then another character meets up with him on the road, a mysterious and evil-sounding character named James Murrell, who apparently is a highway robber and murderer.

Then a third character appears, named Audubon. It sounds like the famous artist who painted Birds of America, and he appears to be wandering through the woods, entranced by nature.

The three characters’ paths intersect there on the Natchez Trace, and suddenly “In that quiet moment a solitary snowy heron flew down not far away and began to feed beside the marsh water.”

After finishing the story, and feeling confused about it, I suddenly had the idea that maybe, if Audubon were a real historical figure, then Lorenzo Dow and James Murrell were, too. Sure enough, a little googling turned up wikipedia articles on Lorenzo Dow, and James Murrell the Bandit, and John James Audubon, and the Natchez Trace, and all these things were parts of the history and myth of the area in Mississippi where Eudora Welty grew up. Somehow, the idea that this story was packed with the history of real people and places made it much more fascinating to me. Now I’m looking forward to our discussion group meeting tonight.

...that seems to be living in my garage. My automatic garage door opener, the control thing you keep in your car, is broken, so I’ve been leaving the door open from morning until night-time. I’ve found him twice now flying around in the garage in the evening when I’ve gone downstairs to close the garage door for the night.

I hope it’s only one bat and not a whole family. Or a whole colony.