Morning Coffee and Birds~~~~

Oh sweet things, I have awaken early this morning, enjoying my morning coffee, looking at the play of sunshine on the trees and water outside my window, viewing the city as it’s hills and canyons are outlined in light and shadow.

My attention is grabbed by movement closer to me and I find myself watching the small birds quickly pecking and nibbling at the emerging blossoms on my neighbors fruit tree, looking for tiny insects, hopping from branch to branch, each chirping to the other in their ‘bird gossip’ way.

I found myself thinking about these birds’ life. We make the mistake of thinking that birds have it so easy, but they don’t when one thinks upon it. Their lives are focused on the basic needs of life, food, shelter, procreation and survival. Yes, my sweet things, those are the four basic needs of life.

And it is not easy for them, yet they do survive, some sacrificing their lives so other can continue the species; mating, raising their “children”, giving them the basic tools for their lives, pushing them out of the nest, and doing it all over again. Are we so much different? Not really, the only difference is we are more complicated, we clutter our lives up with material things, thinking that material things are important when they are not.

Lillian told me last night about the Oakland Firestorm that occurred in October 1992; she said that she had strangely been prepared. “More for Earthquakes than a fire, but it’s all the same”. Her home was up in the hills, where she had lived with her late husband for almost 50 years, he had died 5 years before and she continued to live there, but when she saw the fire, her sense of premonition took over and she quickly gathered all the albums, important papers, her purse, pills and her small suitcase and threw them into her car and drove before anyone even thought of evacuating.

She wasn’t sure where to go, but thought that Alameda would be best since it was separated by the estuary from the rest of the bay area. And there was a ‘back door’ escape route towards the Oakland airport, eventually she stayed at one of the hotels that was near the airport, and contacted her family that she was safe and where she was.

“I watched it from the T.V., I knew that my house was gone. 25 people died in that fire, a miracle it wasn’t more.” And this was only a few years after the Loma Prieta earthquake, her house had come through fine in that earthquake, but the fire “melted everything, reduced it to ashes, ash was floating everywhere, even a burn page from a cookbook found its way to San Francisco, the wind carried it, that was the problem, the winds and everything so dry.”

And now watching the birds I find myself reminded about the basics of life and its resilience.

Lillian said that I should bring everyone up to date on my “Web log” (that is how we got the word ‘blog’—computer speak) she said that everyone would wonder what it was that I said in that church, what was the aftermath how do I feel now that I had done it. And she is right; a chapter, all of life is chapters, like Shakespeare’s 7 ages of man.

All the worlds a stage and all the men and women upon it merely players---to paraphrase him.

I will do it this evening, I’ve nothing special planned, and more rain is coming, it will be purrrrfect.

To Fram---it is wonderful to have remarkable neighbors to admire and to be amused by, such an energetic woman, good for her, and those boys, how enterprising, maybe Daddy has too much stuff in the garage and needs to have a serious garage sale. (Merowl)

To BLUEx PRiiNTZ---as I said in response to your comment earlier, it is difficult for me to engage in a “talk” on line, I am busy and have demands upon my life and time, but feel free to ask me questions and I will respond here. (mew)

About “pistol whipping” some of the characters---I have found that, with only a few exceptions, it’s better to laugh at them, with how their minds work, laughter seems to disorient them, it is not what they expect. With those exceptions, I call the police, although I most likely would prefer to “blow away” those 51/50’s, less DNA in the gene pool and less stress on the budget, but that would not be “politically correct”.

And speaking about the ‘gene pool” the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, is expecting a baby, not him, his wife. Oh bother! (Growl) just what we need another PC weenie idiot, who thinks we should eat grass and not defend ourselves.(Snarl)

I need to get into my car and drive to the range and release my anger----Hmmmm I think I’ll do that, it’s been a while.

Until this evening, my sweet, luscious, yummy things, until this evening. (Growl)