Handbill Handout

I'd like an everything bagel with butter please. Not toasted. Everything bagel? Yes. (Slicing). Everything bagel toasted? No, not toasted. Not toasted. Whaddaya wantonit? Butter please. Butter. Butter. Butter both sides? Yes please. Not toasted. Right. Thank you.

Cool and intermittently rainy.  Times Square glowing in the gray below my office. My parents were married 69 years ago today.  I've written about it before on this thing, most likely those were better than this because at my age my ability to express myself is eroding just like pretty much everything else. They lived long enough to celebrate 50 years of marriage but not 51.  Still a pretty good run, most people don't get that long.   I suspect most people don't want to, but I think my parents were glad that they did.  I've long suspected that I missed the good part for them.  Being the late in life accident that I am by the time I got to an age where I could begin to appreciate them as people and not just parents they were already in the long decline that leads to the six foot hole in the ground, even further along than I am now and the way I feel some days, well, I can understand them even better now. Not that it does them any good. One thin...

Part 10 J decided to leave the cemetery for the day.   A bank of grey (or was it gray? J couldn’t tell) clouds were looming in that particular way that clouds do when they aren’t scudding or floating.   J wondered what else it was that clouds did besides loom, scud or float but he wasn’t well-read enough to come up with anything quickly and thinking about cloud movement wasn’t getting him home any quicker.   Thunder murmured faintly in the distance and J took this as a sign to get in the car and start driving home. As J drove through the gates the sky opened up into a very, very ordinary summer rainstorm.   There was nothing noteworthy about the rainstorm.   There were no lessons in it or metaphors, no lightning of particular beauty, no actors blinking into the drops while slowly looking upward and being redeemed in some way or having something revealed to them for the first time. It was just rain. J turned on the windshield wipers ...