Notes

        The sun is roaring in your front door window and lights the hallway and stairs behind you enough that you actually noticed and thought Carol was up and had turned on the light.

         It is 6:36. I woke up early even though the cats are presently in Cleveland. Checked email  (newspaper cartoons and word of the day) and Facebook, early fun this time of day. Chores to do, finish the yard, trim, and rake. I woke up thinking I might have an Eureka moment today. Maybe the Eureka was just the waking up, which is as pleasant a way to begin the day as any. As the proverbial ‘they’ say, it beats the alternative.

         After noon and you and Carol walked in Pine Hill Park, then worked in the yard doing trimming, cleaning up, etc. You still have the north and back side yard to mow and a bit more trimming around the rocks surrounding the front trees.

         Rock surrounding tree islands are my cup of tea. We spent several years gathering rocks to line the back and side property as well as flower gardens and side house flower gardens on the south. I always secretly like to think of myself as a rock gatherer, a left over gene from those who built the great rock rings on the Isles some thousands of years ago. Gene heritage I call it whether it is or not. It is a part of who I am non-fiction or fiction. No one knows but my ancestors. Same for everyone as far as I can see. Acknowledging ancestors is not a believe system it is a sign of respect, so I tip my black beret their way once in a while, so to speak, and I trim around the rocks.

         As you were working you were thinking that you have to get all this done before the rains tonight and were reminded of how it was back in the late forties when your Great Uncle Doc and Auntie worked their hundred and some acre farm south of Freeman Road in Delaware County about five miles north of Westerville, about seeing those extra four to eight farm hands two or three times a year working hard to get things done before a change in the weather.

         I am reminded of those days when I work outside. Reminds me of how easy I have it, then I drop back into the thirties before I was around and those terrible times for people on the farms and Woody Guthrie and the writers and photographers of those days. Never far from my consciousness. I am blessed or cursed with such empathy, I don’t know which it is, but it is real enough in my memory. Steel workers too, after working in a foundry for a year and some summers during college. Hard, dusty and downright hot work at times. I wore out more than one set of heavy gloves even as summer help in a south Columbus one summer of college before I got a job with Blendon Township, and then eventually with the City of Westerville. When young people do lots of different kinds of work that ends up changing them one way or another. Little things, perspectives, changes that though small last the rest of one’s lifetime. We all go through these things.

        Thoughts are shaped by the vessels or molds in which they are placed. Thoughts are an alchemy of different molds or moods or streams of focus. Alchemist’s lab glassware. A philosopher’s stone to create the “Golden Rule”.

         You spent some time copying lab glassware photos and uses in the chemistry lab in case you want to do something analogous with alchemy and Merlyn.

         It is interesting. I forgot all about chemistry lab. What got me interested is an article in the July/August Discover, p.74; “Isaac Newton and the Philosopher’s Stone,” by Jane Bosveld.  I remember when Phil Crane and I used to play with our homemade chemistry sets in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades. Dad was working in a research chemistry lab at Ohio State at the time and Phillip’s dad taught chemistry at Otterbein. Later, I had him for class. Phillip died in a terrible car accident when he was in the eighth grade. The funeral was at Moreland’s on College, just a few steps from Emerson Junior High. Moreland had bought the house from my Grandfather, Henri Schick, who had built it. We saw inside the house just a week ago as it was being renovated for an insurance office. It was open while they were working and we stopped and had a look as Carol had never seen inside the house before.  I had chemistry in high school Doug Goss was my lab partner. He got me through with a C in the class. I liked the labs but I had terrible problems with the math (equation) solving methods of chemistry.

         You want to erase the above because, out of shear habit, you kept writing while you were thinking and remembering. Leave it. This is one of your problems, a glass mind. – Amorella.

         I was going to apologize but am thinking better of it.

         Glad to hear it. Post. – Amorella.

         You have spent the evening looking over materials for your new iPad (which you will not have for a few weeks), checking your email and Facebook accounts and responding to a few former students as well as Sandy H. who you will see at the reunion for the first time in fifty years.

         She was my first school aged friend who was a girl. We were in the fourth grade at Minerva Park School. I still think of her as a good friend since we have been emailing for a year or so now. I am nervous about the reunion as I have never been to one. I hope she will help me be more social, she and Jean. I was a kind of Woody Allen of angst when in high school. Somehow I think of myself as a sort of cave dweller as compared to many of the popular set in those days. I am excitedly looking forward to it while dreading the social aspects at the same time. I am so forgetful. I hope they have name tags. That will be a big help. I have forgotten my own name on such occasions and when I remember I have to really focus on that as I don’t want people to realize that I don’t know who I am at that moment.

         Nothing like keeping this to yourself, orndorff.

         Well, I have said it before at one time or another. Laney Bender-Slack used to help me out at social occasions at school. I forgot the superintendent’s name at one party. Very embarrassing. She said it aloud to him to help me out. It was just dreadful. I know these people but their names go away, go right down my spine and stay there. It is a terrible social affliction.

         Tomorrow, dude. – Amorella.