Occasional Jots and Tittles

It’s two days before Christmas, and this is usually the time of year, rather than Thanksgiving or New Year’s, that I take stock of the year and life. Thanksgiving is really a Yankee holiday, anyway, and New Year’s always has seemed too busy with other things – in recent years, getting ready for the Christmas Bird Count, but even before that, it seemed like something was always going on. But nobody does much in the days leading up to Christmas, anyway (except last minute shopping) so it’s a good time for reflection.

As much as most people I know and I like to complain about this, that, or the other, we are all incredibly lucky and have so much to be grateful for. By a chance of fate, we were all born in the (loosely defined) West, where (compared with where about 75% or so of the world lives) we have unparalleled freedom. Even in a country where several million of us are denied the right to legally marry our partners, we at least don’t have to worry about being taken away in the middle of the night for protesting injustice. Though most of us don’t have every single thing we want, most of do have the things we need – food, clean safe water, shelter, clothing… Some of us may lose our jobs temporarily, but the chances are, in the long haul, we’ll all be fine; millions around the world will never have a job doing more than providing subsistence for themselves and their families.

I grumble sometimes about the quirks Jonathan has, but at the same time I can’t imagine what my life would now be like without him. For every little problem that comes up from a quirk, there are at least a dozen moments of joy that more than compensate.

I have a good circle of friends who enjoy my company and whose company I enjoy as well. Whenever I gripe that I haven’t gotten to see people lately, I need to remember that at the same time there’s nobody (that I know of, at least) who really detests me and I don’t have to watch my back around others.

I have only minor health complaints, none of which seems that serious, and the same is true of everyone in my immediate family – including parents, sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces, and nephews. Having lost a first cousin (just three years older than me) a year ago to a heart condition and an aunt to complications of renal failure, cancer, diabetes, and too many other problems to list, that’s no small feat.

And it’s not that I live a charmed life. As I noted above, most everyone I know has plenty to be grateful for. Christmas is supposed to be about the arrival of hope, but that’s something I have in abundance; it’s still a good time to be reminded of that hope, and all that’s good in our lives, not the petty stuff that we can’t control anyway and usually isn’t worth getting worked up about.

For all my friends out there – not that many of you will find this message, since my blog readership is relatively small – I hope you have as joyous a Christmas holiday as I hope to.

I’d honestly thought finishing the legislative session would have freed me up to have more time for my blog. Instead, it seems like it’s been non-stop one project after another.

First was the anniversary party for my folks, which took us up to July, and I hit the ground running launching our new software company. It’s one of those specialized products that only a handful of companies are likely to need, but for those who do, it could be a no-brainer to buy, so I’ve got my fingers crossed. The preliminary modules and the framework for the system as a whole have been released.

That’s involved Jonathan going to Houston for a week to train staff at one of our first installations, and I’ll probably get to go over there myself soon. Hope to head west from there to pick up some west Texas birds this fall.

Then there was the Feliciana Hummingbird Celebration, at which I’ve helped as a banding assistant for the last four years. Numbers were up this year from last year, though not to what they once were; we banded 18 new birds and had one returnee female from two years ago. It was an interesting turnout and I got to answer a lot of questions for folks. A crew from the Rural Broadcasting Service (which provides regional content to small cable system operators) filmed a piece on the festival, including a nice section on us banding the birds.

I’ve also been mapping out travel plans for the rest of the year. Originally I thought I wouldn’t be able to travel much, but I’ll be making a short trip to San Francisco and the Wine Country with my friend Damon in September. While there I’ll get in a few days of birding with my friend Kevin, and hope to have dinner with the Woofpup boy. Later in November, I’m going back to south Texas with my friends Jeff and Jerry, and my brother-in-law Mark, for some border birding. So vacation is taken care of.

Lastly I’ve actually been using my Facebook page to keep up with what other people are doing, although I haven’t posted much to mine.

I’m done.

Not with the blog, mind you; just with my annual 3 months of grueling work when I actually have to be in the office every day, all day (and well into the evening or night). This year’s legislative session went well enough for us, with few major glitches (a few here and there, but nothing too serious), and a lot of prospects for future growth. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Additionally, my parents’ 50th anniversary has come and gone. My sisters and I started planning a party for them a year ago, and were able to get a good many of our living relatives into town for it. Sadly, four of my father’s six siblings are now deceased, as are all three of my mother’s, so there were few people of their age bracket left. But my dad’s brother and sister (and their spouses) made it, along with a great many nieces, nephews, and cousins.

Given that for several years now, most family gatherings of any size have all been for funerals, it was really nice for this one to be for a happy event. The food was good, the company was fun, everyone liked Jonathan (many of them had never met him before), and my folks really liked the gifts we got them.

The best part for me was that with the session on until two days before the party, I could avoid any major work requirements (other than idea-contributing) until the morning of the event. During which time I pulled off carving a watermelon basket for fruit, making three pasta salads, picking up the main dish chicken, sculpting and decorating a cheese ball, and a handful of other details. It’s great to have a queer in the family when it comes to parties.

Unfortunately for me, this doesn’t mean I can now relax for the next six months. I’ve got to capitalize on those contacts made during session, and I’ve also taken on another software development project that threatens to swallow all my free time for the next month. Can’t complain too much, though, since this one may help Jonathan’s career along a good bit too.

So, this morning, I met my parents and my sister at the funeral home where my aunt’s body will be cremated. Her three younger children were all there as well; the funeral home asked if we wanted some private time for the family to see her one last time before the cremation, since the funeral won’t be until Monday.

All in all, this funeral home has done a good job for us in the past, but I had a mild beef with them. Granted, we weren’t having a full-scale wake there, so I didn’t expect a big fuss. Because of the cremation, they didn’t have to buy a casket – so there wasn’t one. I can understand that. But the funeral home had laid out the body on a hospital-type gurney, with nothing draped over it to cover the chrome metal legs or the wheels or anything. And her body was just covered by a plain white hospital-type sheet. If it weren’t for the fact that the private viewing was held in one of the “parlors” in the funeral home, I’d have thought we were in a morgue.

Granted, my aunt was a simple woman who liked simple things. She wanted the cremation and she wanted no big fuss. But I honestly think the funeral home could invest in a simple black tailored drape to put over the stretcher for situations like this.

Afterwards, my parents and I went out to check on my mothers’ parents tombs and her other siblings’ graves nearby. All were in good condition although (naturally) flowers had been swiped from one of the graves. My aunt’s ashes will be buried in the grave with one of her nieces, who’s also in this group. My parents and I have graves across the cemetery.

You’d think, with a family like mine, we’d have a family vault or a big family plot somewhere. And we do. One of each, in fact. But the vault is across the river and down about 20 miles, where my great-grandfather was the last to be buried; after his death, the family picked up and moved to Baton Rouge, where they purchased a large family plot. Buried there are my great-grandmother and five of her 11 children. But the remainder of the plot is empty, due to a dispute between some of those children (when still alive) and my grandfather, their brother-in-law, as to the ownership. He and his oldest sister-in-law had pooled resources in 1945 to buy the plot, when Great-grandma died, so that there would be ample room for all the unmarried sisters as well as his wife (their sister) and their kids. Naturally, of course, the transaction was only recorded in my great-aunt’s name, and after her death, the sisters insisted that the plots all belonged to her.

My grandfather basically said, using far more polite language, “Fuck you” and bought their tombs in another cemetery. So to this day, the remainder of our family plot in the old cemetery here sits unused. No living member of the family really wants to be buried there. So I’ve suggested a solution dripping with poetic justice; the old aunts buried there were dear family, but also typical for their era – racial and ethnic bigots from day one, where no person of color could enter through their front door. The gravesites are now owned by my mother and some of her cousins, nieces and nephews as inherited property, so I suggest they donate them to the church for the burial of indigent black people, leaving them side-by-side for eternal rest. The churning should produce enough power to light a small city.

My mother’s last sister died this morning. She was six years younger, but with the slough of health problems she’s had over the last fifteen or so years, she looked at least ten years older. Worse, the last time I saw her, at my cousin’s funeral last fall, she had that look of death about her – she just looked gray all over.
She was my godmother, and when I was younger, she did several things for me that I still remember. As she got older, she weathered a late pregnancy, a divorce while raising a very young child, financial collapse, and then, as things were looking up for her with a new job and a new home, kidney failure and two bouts with cancer. I know she was in discomfort most of the time, and considerable pain sometimes, but she really didn’t complain very much.

Her passing leaves my mother as the sole member of her generation in her immediate family, and the oldest in her generation across her extended family. What makes that hard to imagine, I suppose, is that being south Louisiana Catholics, she and my father both come from generations of big families. Her parents were each one of 11 children, and my dad’s mother was also one of 11 (his father was raised Baptist so there were only four in that family). My mom was one of four, my dad one of seven, and in my generation alone, I have 31 first cousins. I can’t begin to even count the first cousins once removed, the second cousins, and so forth.

My father’s also the oldest in his immediate family as well; his three older siblings and one younger sister have died, leaving him with only the two youngest, who are much younger than he is. Both my mother and father are in excellent health, and we have no reason to believe they won’t be around a lot longer – but they’ll be 75 and 74 soon, and at that age, “a lot longer” becomes a relative term.

Later this summer, in June, my parents will have been married fifty years – a first as far as we know in either line of the family, not because of divorces but because very few couples among our ancestors lived that long. We’d originally planned to have a big get-together with all our living relatives but we’re leaning now towards something with just us four kids, our families, and the cousins who are fairly close by, given how many closer relatives we’ve lost in recent years. It’s a sobering thought.

(with apologies to Norma Desmond)

Christmas, and the post-Christmas weeks, were incredibly busy this year, so apologies to my hordes of fans (all three or four of you) for the lack of updates recently.

Jonathan outdid himself again this year with the Christmas lights.

We spent most of the Christmas week driving back and forth to my sister’s and my parents’ houses, for one event after another. Between the driving and the overflow of children (whom I love, but really….), and the time demands, we’ve already decided to cut back on family events for next year.

In the midst of all that, I did two Christmas Bird Counts this year. I’m the compiler for the count in Baton Rouge, which is usually a well-attended but not particularly exciting count. However, this year, I found an Ash-throated Flycatcher, which was only the second of this species ever recorded on our count (another party had the third, in another section of our circle). Unfortunately, no pictures of this bird yet.

Jonathan is now off at MAL, assisting good friends at their vendor booth this year. I’m sitting here freezing, as Baton Rouge has finally had a couple of sub-freezing nights, which have largely frozen back most of the hummingbird plants. However, that’s driven what may be a new hummingbird to the feeders; I say “may” because she (a female Rufous Hummingbird) appears to be banded, and there’s a chance that she’s the bird I’ve had since Election Day, but having lost her color mark. Or she could be a returnee from some other point in the past. We won’t know unless we recapture her to check her band number.

The birthday’s over (43, in case anyone’s wondering) and it was nice, mostly quiet. As usual, there was a considerable clusterfuck about birthday meal(s)–it wouldn’t be my birthday without one. In this case, I was supposed to have a seafood lunch with my parents on Monday when I got in at the airport, but they had to skedaddle back home for a funeral, so that was postponed. Jonathan was going to take me to dinner on my actual birthday (Wednesday), but he had to swap his Wednesday off for Thursday.

So… the parents decided to take me out on Wednesday night instead, and Jonathan was going to take me to lunch today. Then his work called right at noon, and insisted he come in to drop something off right then–which took up basically the entire lunch period at all the places we’d talked about going. So post-birthday lunch today was Subway. Meatball Mariana. Yay.

Last night’s dinner, however, was at Fleming’s, a prissy steakhouse chain. I will say right off the top, the food was excellent, and the service was generally very good. A few things I’d have pointed out to the waitress about reaching across people’s dinner plates to reach the inside glasses, but still nothing to really complain about.

But still. $185 for three people? with no wine or liquor bill? in Baton Rouge? I’m aghast. It’s true, we ate well, the food was good, I even had enough left over to bring home for a quick lunch later, but… I’ve eaten food almost as good, and pretty much as well served, for more like $25 a head. That final 5% of food quality improvement shouldn’t have more than doubled the cost. And for $185, again, the waitress’s sleeve shouldn’t be dragging across a plate to reach another person’s glass.
Of course, I suppose we were paying for the prissy atmosphere. I keep using that word, because I can’t think of a better one. Fleming’s obviously aims to be a cut (okay, two cuts) above the noisy, active, “bar-centric” sort of Outback/Lone Star/Longhorn steak house. No peanut shells on the floor, for one thing. Tablecloths. You know the drill. But there are so many hard surfaces (dark wood walls, hard floors in some spots), and with the kitchen not completely and thoroughly closed away, there’s still a very perceptible level of background noise. If I’m paying $60 a plate for dinner, I expect enough quiet that I can hear a harpist playing across the room (which, of course, there wasn’t).

I’m going to start back the Top 10 list with a list of Top 10 restaurants I like, here in Baton Rouge or in New Orleans. I’ll probably follow it up with a Top 10 list of places to avoid (with reasons, in case they’re things you don’t mind).

Five years ago, my parents and I were in the middle of a road trip vacation. We’d left Baton Rouge on Monday, September 3 and driven to Atlanta. We stayed near my sister’s house and visited with her family until Wednesday morning, when we left and headed north. We stopped in North Carolina at the Replacements Ltd. warehouse and customer center, trying to identify my mother’s wedding crystal (no luck) and gawking at warehouses of old china and crystal covering, I think, about 5 football fields’ worth of land. We made it as far north as Petersburg, Virginia.

Thursday, we toured the Petersburg Civil War battlefield site, including the Battle of the Crater, where one of my mother’s relatives was injured and later died of his wounds. We also toured the historic cemetery where he’s buried, probably in an unmarked grave. That afternoon, we toured the “ancestral home” (what a quaint term) of the Harrison family, which gave us two presidents, and then drove as far as Colonial Williamsburg. Friday morning, I caught a train for DC, where I was going to compete in the gay rodeo over the weekend, while my parents did the Williamsburg thing. They drove up to Arlington, Virginia, where we planned to stay for a week touring D.C.

I joined them on Monday morning as we drove over to the National Cathedral, which is to this day one of my favorite spots in Washington. I remember the docent pointing out the pew where the President sits during services held at the Cathedral, and the pulpit from which he speaks when he addresses the crowd in the church. We saw a few other things that day, but then headed back to the hotel.

Tuesday morning, we were eating breakfast in our room while watching the news. Then came the cutaway to New York, with the pictures of the smoke billowing from the first tower. Like everyone else watching, we were engrossed in the story, and saw the sudden passing of a second plane and it striking the second tower. We knew then that this was no accident, but at the same time, it felt so far away and remote.

We headed downstairs to the lobby, which had a set of glass doors facing the parking lot and the highway beyond. Although there was a grove of trees near the highway, blocking the view, we were just across the road from Arlington National Cemetery, facing southeast. And directly beyond the cemetery, in the same direction, is a large, five-sided government office building. You can see the relative layouts of the buildings below.

My dad had gone to retrieve the car for the day’s touring when we heard a plane overhead. My mom looked up to see it, commenting that it was awfully low. I reminded her we weren’t far from National Airport, although I didn’t recall there being any approach paths in that direction. A moment later, we heard and felt an enormous blast. I was facing the hotel doors and noticed the entire glass facade shook, as though it were about to shatter. 30 seconds later, we heard the first sirens.

We returned to the room and made a quick decision to head west, towards Tennessee. We figured that if there were additional attacks, DC and New York were more likely targets, and we could at least continue our vacation, to the extent things would be open, in that region. We drove through the Great Smokeys that day, taking pictures and making it to the Sevierville/Pigeon Forge area. Wednesday, we toured Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, and then headed west to Nashville. Over the next few days, we toured downtown Nashville, including the Ryman Auditorium (great) and the Country Music Hall of Fame (so-so); we saw Rock City & Lookout Mountain. East Tennessee is beautiful in September and the weather was gorgeous, but there was always the reminder, everywhere we went, of what had happened just a few days earlier.
There was a national prayer service on Friday at the National Cathedral, televised, of course, and I couldn’t shake the spooky feeling of how, just 24 hours before the planes struck, I was standing where the president was now speaking. At the time the guide told us which pew was used by the president, I never dreamed I’d see proof of his words just a few days later.

My mom to this day doesn’t like to talk about seeing that plane go by overhead. She’ll talk about it within the family, but not for long, and then we move on to other topics. And she still won’t return to Washington.