The Limits of False Advertising

Was listening to Elmo Hope and considering an album entitled “Last Sessions” recorded in 1966 and searched on Wiki to find that passed away the following year at the age of forty-three.  Hadn’t realized he had a daughter, Monica Hope, a singer, with his wife Bertha who is also a pianist.  And, I hadn’t realized that while he was out West he’d recorded with the tenor player, Harold Land, whom I also love.  I’m listening to a live session recorded a place called the Jazz Cellar, in Vancouver, in 1958, some nine years before Elmo’s untimely demise from pneumonia.

Squirrels are testing the limits of false advertising on my “squirrel-proof” bird feeder this morning.  If they pop cover on the elongated feeder, I’m annoyed but not surprised.  I just looked over and the squirrel tried to leap up and hold the both of the feeder that rest on an eye hook, so it swings if you hold it on the lip.  He didn’t manage to topple it but a whole lotta seeds spilled out and its’ now looking miserable at an odd angle.  The critter fell about fifteen feet to the ground after that failed attempt.  Can’t tell if that dissuaded him or not but either he or one of his chums has lined right up to try once again.     

     

Today isn’t warm enough to melt all this snow before Christmas, but at forty-one-degrees Fahrenheit it’s certainly softening up the part of the icy driveway I’d been brutalizing yesterday.  My hand, in particular, are sore.  It hurts to type.  But it’s that sore muscles, I’m-getting-stronger, sort of pain that is oddly satisfying.  I came home from dropping my daughters off at the train station with my mom and salted the driveway.  That was a few hours ago and I suspect it’s all softened up by now. 

The younger one and my mom are seeing “Frozen” on Broadway.  I’ve already received a photo or two of the journey’s progress.  The older one is meeting a friend and they’ll all be back by 6:30PM.  I note that they are both developing a teenage understanding of New York in a way that is ritualistic and yet very different from my own experience with that place.  I would never have been back my 6:30PM. 

Sunday, 12/22/19