CONSIDERING THINGS BRIEFLY
Mom and I do not watch TV or listen to the radio, which I think I have mentioned before, so we are often unaware of many “news worthy” events and are very grateful for this. Mrs. Torres, mother of six alumni and a current Seton senior (Justin, Jason, Josh, Dan, Jessica, Amy and Jennifer), periodically sends me, well, periodicals and Catholic newspapers. This catches me up on some things. I just learned that Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska, for example. The magazine said that she was going to resign – and I just asked Mrs. Carroll yesterday if she had in fact resigned. She said, “That happened a long time ago.” So, despite my knowledge being of late late breaking news, I am going to mention some things I learned from the Torres materials, some things I have learned from family and some things I have learned from experience. Some you may find interesting.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi is perhaps the only person to have survived both atomic bombs. He was a resident of Nagasaki and went to Hiroshima on business the day the 1st bomb was dropped. He was two miles from the epicenter. Burned badly, he managed to get on a train back to Nagasaki where he was treated. He returned to work on August 9th, heavily bandaged, but his boss did not believe his story and was in the act of berating him for missing work when the 2nd bomb fell on Hiroshima, two miles from his place of work. He is now 93 years old. Croagh Patrick is a holy hill in Ireland where St. Patrick fasted and prayed during the 40 days of Lent, and it is now a frequent place of pilgrimage. A mining company recently determined that there is “gold in that thar hill” and applied to mine it. Fortunately, the County of Mayo said the gold is fine where it is. Mr. P, Miss Pennefather (Laura), Shelly (Sister Rose Marie) and I climbed the hill on our Marian Year pilgrimage to Europe. On the way down the mountain, Mr. P got a good sized gash in his knee and lost a lot of blood. He got stitched up by a doctor, and when Mr. P asked about getting the stitches removed, the doc told him to take them out himself. And so he did. Is “snuck” now ok? In one edition of a newspaper, two different writers used the word “snuck” in their columns. Past tense of “sneak” is still “sneaked” or did I miss the change? Points of interest in Ohio. I had always thought Ohio was somewhat dull, but that might be because my primary experiences of the Buckeye State are of its bus stations. I can tell you that Toledo and Cleveland’s Greyhound terminals are nothing to write home about. However, it was in Cleveland while I was waiting for my bus that a man in a trench coat approached me and opened his coat to show me hundreds of watches and assured me that they were very cheap. My nephew has been working in Zanesville for the past couple months. (I went to Mass in Zanesville when I drove rather than took the bus from Virginia to Colorado and thought the people were so friendly waving and honking to me as I drove down the street – then I realized I was going the wrong way on a one way) Brent texted me that he had crossed the World Famous Y Bridge in Zanesville. I knew not of its fame, but you can see an aerial view of it by googling. It’s the only bridge you can cross and stay on the same side of the river or receive the direction of “Go half way across the bridge and turn right.” Then he sent me a phone picture of a building that looks like a giant picnic basket – this is near Columbus. It is worth a google. Has anyone reading this been on the Y Bridge and/or seen the Picnic Basket Building? First Frost. I like folklore and the folklore around here according to my sister Barb is that the first frost is six weeks after one hears the first locust. Our local locust says that the first frost will be October 1st this year. I’ll let you know on the 5th of October if our locust was accurate. California Smoke. The smoke form the fires in California was very visible here for two days – I mistook it for an early morning fog rolling in and then for a haze later in the day. It wasn’t until a dove hunter stopped in and told us that it was California’s smoke that I knew what it was. Tax $$’s at work. A man came to our house to ask if he could count and classify birds. A couple weeks later, a couple women came to the house to ask if they could count and classify trees because an aerial view of our farm indicated that it could be considered forested land. The bird man was here roaming around for quite a while. We do have lots of birds. The tree women roamed around for a while before returning to the house to say that our farm did not meet the qualifications for a forested area and they were not going to count trees after all. We have fewer trees than birds. The bird man said he would send the results of his count, so when we get that, I’ll let you know the official government summary of the type and # of birds on our farm. One of the tree women looked a lot like alumna Tess Kelly. 2nd Year Seeds. Learned this year that plants grown from seeds saved from the previous year’s crop will often cross with related plants in the garden. I can attest that pumpkins and gourds cross with zucchini and produce some strange looking vegetables. Not saving seeds anymore. Peach Pits. If you want to try to grow a peach tree from saved pits, about now is the time to plant. Wash and dry the pits, then plant. The success rate for germination is not high. Peach pits must get cold before they will germinate, so to start them in the house, one must chill them first. I am going to try planting five pits. Three years from now we may be eating homegrown peaches. Since we talked about the birds, we had better talk about the bees. For a really long time we have had a hive of bees on our roof or in the wall just below the roof. (Our house has a flat roof.) We recently had a new roof put on, and I had not thought about the bees. I called a bee man to find out what would happen to the bees with the new roof. He said that if they couldn’t get back to their hive, they would die and when the weather gets really hot their honey will probably start coming through the roof or wall. I think, maybe more hope, that the bees are getting back to their hive through a crack in the stucco. Year of the Priest. Father Vander Woude, you were great on EWTN. I don’t think your dad was embarrassed having you talk about him – I think he is even prouder to call you his son than we are to call you our priest and friend. When you said that your dad wasn’t perfect, I thought about his missing finger. How did he lose that?
Jesu, ufam Tobie.