The Name Keeps Changing Because I Keep Changing

There is a new name on the banner: 

Well, That’s Interesting.

Peaceful Retirement Living didn't feel like me anymore.

I rarely write about retirement anymore. Somewhere along the way, retirement stopped being my story.

These days, I just go wherever my curiosity takes me.

Did I really need to change the name? No.

But it was making me clench my teeth.

It just felt wrong. And it didn't inspire me.

After all, I've become the one who ...

Notices things.

And wonders about them.

And looks up one thing, which leads to another thing, which leads to something I had absolutely no intention of learning about.

I began to notice how often I would come across something and think,

Well, that’s interesting.

And then off I'd go.

Eventually it occurred to me that, strange as it sounds, Well, That’s Interesting. might actually be the name of what I like to write about.

The subjects may be all over the place, but the reason I write about them isn't.

The garden is still here. I've just discovered there is a much bigger world outside my window.

From this: 

To something more like this: 

 Or this: 

Or this: 

Curiosity brings the world to my window.

More later ... 

Meme of the Day

 Dress for the job you want.

A Softness That Hugged Me

When I opened the curtains this morning, a tufted bluebird was in my birdbath.

He wasn't delicately dipping a wing into the water. He was splashing up a storm. What a hoot.

Naturally, I wanted a picture.

But by the time I got the blinds open, found the camera, and got myself situated, he was gone.

I did go outside and scatter some birdseed afterward, hoping he might come back. He did not, but a mourning dove eventually wandered down and strolled around. 

And then, of course, there are the squirrels.

They've become quite an institution around here.

There are now four of us who feed the squirrels and have sworn an oath to deny any knowledge should Management catch on. We've begun talking about the squirrels as though they were neighborhood pets. 

There's Little Girl, who has a habit of lying completely flat on her belly.

There was Skinny Tail, the teenager who did an astonishing amount of damage to my plants. I think he may have plumped up because I can't identify him anymore.

And there's another repeat beggar with a smashed, almost pug-like nose and more white on his feet. I haven't named him yet.

Give me time. 

And, yeah, we are all suckers. 

I was looking out at all of this this morning - the birdbath, the birds, the squirrels, my plants - and had one of those thoughts that sneaks up on you:

Would my life be nearly as contented without this garden?

It's not a grand garden. It's a little patch of green outside my window. But something is always going on out there. Something blooming. Something digging where it shouldn't. Something needing water. Something landing unexpectedly in the birdbath and making me scramble for a camera.

I didn't get that picture.

But I did get a glorious morning with a warmth and softness that hugged me.

Happy Sunday. 

Remembering the Violence

I saw today that Denise Brown, sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, has written a new book. And down the Rabbit Hole I went.

But this one turned out to be about remembrance.

My grandchildren will not remember Nicole Brown Simpson. They will not remember the handsome, smiling O.J. Simpson who was once an athletic hero, a television personality and one of the most recognizable men in America.

I remember both.

I believe O.J. killed Nicole. I’m no scholar of the case, and I didn’t follow every minute of the trial, but the horror of a woman being murdered by her husband and their two children being left without their mother still astounds me.

Maybe that is what sent my mind where it went next, because today is September 11.

I remember that day, too.

I remember watching the Twin Towers fall. Not topple. Not tip over. They seemed to sink straight down into the earth.

I can still imagine the dust and debris filling the air. I can still see the people running. I can still remember the almost impossible feeling of understanding that this was happening here, to us, right now.

My grandchildren will see those same images. They will probably see them for the rest of their lives.

But will they ever feel the shock?

I wonder because I know World War I and World War II only through books, movies, photographs and documentaries. I know what happened. I can be horrified by it. I can grieve for people who lived and died long before I was born.

But I don't remember it.

There is a difference.

I remember the Challenger exploding in the sky.

I remember September 11.

There are events we learn about, and there are events that become part of us because we were there—even if “there” was sitting in front of a television hundreds or thousands of miles away.

One informs us.

The other becomes part of the ties that bind us together as a Nation through shared pain.

And maybe that is why remembering matters.

We are meant to feel.

We are meant to hold on to one another and take care of one another.

I don't believe this country was meant to be simply a place where each of us grabs whatever we can and worries only about our own progress. I don't believe America belongs more to the rich than the poor, or to one race, one religion, one birthplace or one kind of person.

We are people whose families came from every corner of the globe. Black and white. Rich and poor. Short and tall. People whose grandparents arrived on ships and people whose ancestors were already here. People who came willingly and people whose ancestors did not.

At our best, we stand tall and protect the weak. We gather the hurt and oppressed to our bosom. We pick up the pieces when violence invades our homes, our country, or the world we want to live in.

Maybe that is one of the responsibilities of those of us who remember.

Not just to tell younger generations what happened.

But to tell them what it felt like.

Because eventually memory becomes history.

And history alone cannot tell them everything.

The Guillotine - 1977

I just read one of those little historical facts that makes you stop and check the date.

France used the guillotine for the last time in 1977. 

This shocked me so much I had to Google the details. 

I think I had mentally stored the guillotine along with the French Revolution—Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, crowds in the streets, 18th-century France. 

Here is what I learned: 

The last man executed by guillotine in France was Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant who had been convicted of the torture and murder of a young woman named Élisabeth Bousquet. It was a terrible crime, and he is not a sympathetic character. 

It's the date that gets me.

September 10, 1977.

Jimmy Carter was president. Star Wars had been released a few months earlier. People were flying across the Atlantic on 747s. We had color television.

And in Marseille, France, a man was executed by guillotine.

Not a replica. Not a ceremonial holdover. The guillotine.

France had introduced the guillotine as its official method of execution during the French Revolution. The strange thing is that they simply kept using it. Methods of execution changed elsewhere, but the guillotine remained France's legal machinery for carrying out death sentences.

Djandoubi wasn't even some isolated case in which an ancient law was suddenly dusted off. Two other men had been guillotined in France during the fourteen months before him.

Then, after Djandoubi, it stopped.

French courts continued to impose death sentences for a few more years, but there were no more executions. François Mitterrand was elected president in 1981 after publicly opposing capital punishment, and his justice minister, Robert Badinter, led the effort to abolish it.

France abolished the death penalty in October 1981.

Four years later.

Oh, I Know All About That

I was reading a Substack article entitled History’s 5 Greatest Plays.

Why, you ask, of all the interesting subjects in the world did this catch my attention?

I guess because (1) I knew I wouldn’t know them all, and I hate for someone to know more than me, and (2) I knew I would forget them by the time I poured my next cup of coffee.

Do you have that problem?

I can research the hell out of something—say, a plant. What kind of soil. How much sunlight. How to propagate it. I can have a whole Pinterest board full of information.

Then a neighbor asks me the name of the plant.

Deer in the headlights.  

I knew that yesterday.

Be Her

 

I Underestimated the Squirrels

 I moved my airplane plant.

The squirrels had already destroyed half of it, so this time I was smart. I put it on top of a broken birdbath stand—far enough off the ground that they couldn’t jump up, and far enough from the tree that they couldn’t leap from tree to plant.

Or so I thought.

This morning I looked outside.

Apparently, I had underestimated the squirrels.

Again.

I Cracked One Eye Open

 I woke up this morning with a vibration around my head.

Not a noise exactly. A vibration.

It was strange and snuggly at the same time.

I cracked one eye open just a tiny bit.

There was a brown-and-white paw on my pillow.

Ah.

Bonnie Rae.

My little deer-head Chihuahua had wrapped her body, in full vibration, around my head. 

For the first time ever, we were sharing a pillow this morning.

Then I noticed the second odd thing.

Darkness.

In the morning?

I didn't need to check the weather app.

Dark skies. Rain. Thunder.

Of course.

Bonnie Rae wasn't being affectionate.

She was taking shelter.

Apparently, in a thunderstorm, Mom's head will do.