12 of 17 in These titles mean nothing.

Tuesday.

I’m sure some of you recognize me in my cremation garment. It’s the insulated hooded sweatshirt that my kids bought me for Christmas one year when they were both still in school. Since younger son John graduated from high school in 1988, that makes my cremation garment at least 26 yrs old.

It’s a very cozy and comforting garment and it has a sentimental value and that’s why I decided I wanted to take it with me when I leave this world.

~~~~~

Ah, the coyotes. I do not like hunting. Not liking hunting is in my family. My father would quote his mother who was born in the 1870s half a mile from where I type - I will check the date in a bit. She said that it was best to leave all the wild stuff for the Indians.

If we had left all the wild stuff to the Indians, we would not be talking about hunting coyotes. The Indians would be here right now and I would be somewhere else. Or I would not be at all.

I looked up coyotes to see if there was a bounty on them in Iowa and I got the impression it depends on the county. I will do some more research on that too. The people who hunt coyotes like to think by killing them, they protect cattle and deer and perhaps other animals that might be their prey. I found a theory that coyotes control the animals that prey on other animals and thus are good for the balance of nature - especially ground nesting birds whose eggs are very vulnerable to raccoons and possums and skunks.

We tease Gracie that the coyotes tease her and call her a house dog - which of course is what she is. But we are just teasing when we say that.

I guess back to what I was trying to say. We are not hunters but it is very hard not to allow other people who are hunters to hunt on our land. They come and ask and it seems important to them. They are like the snow mobilers. It’s possible to turn down a request to allow the trail on your land. It’s possible to say NO HUNTING and mean it. But it doesn’t make you any friends. It makes you look like someone who is trying to take someone elses fun away from them.

It’s funny how much we all want to be liked in life.

That is one of life’s bottom lines.

~~~

Today was pretty quiet. The weather has changed. It’s now cold and sunny.

I took the Black cat to town this morning to the vet’s. She’s staying overnight after spaying. I will pick her up tomorrow.

I took my library books back. They were overdue and the library wasn’t open yet so I put them in the slot. I bought some groceries and came home.

I read my Moe Berg book. It’s very good. Lots of information in it about a lot of things. The writer Nicholas Dawidoff did a really good job of research and he stuffed the book full of his own love of baseball, his interest and pride in being Jewish. I’ve learned a lot reading it. Berg of course was a fascinating subject. It would have been hard to write a bad book about him, though I don’t doubt it could have happened. I’m reading the WWII spying part now - and getting a good explanation of the American and
German efforts at developing the atomic bomb.

Last updated December 31, 2014