Home again, home again... and May is here

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After being gone for two weeks with only 24 hours at home between trips, I have settled in to my previous routine. Not having seen but a few Arkansas Democrat-Gazette North Arkansas editions while in Eureka Springs, I did not hold a newspaper in my hand during the Louisiana week.

So, one morning after returning, I spent five hours in the porch swing reading the Sunday paper. Only coffee refills and hunger pangs took me away, but not for long.

 

Then there was two weeks’ mail to go through and set aside for later or tend to immediately—like the credit card bill payment due in two days! Personal, stamped mail included a note of reply from a California haikuist whose book I’d re-read, a brochure from the Southern Literary Alliance meeting in Chattanooga that my cousin sent, thinking I might be interested in the next one, and a hand-written submission for the poetry column of Calliope.

 

There was junk mail from several credit card and insurance companies, three weeks of the Standard newspaper, three copies of the latest issue of Calliope, with a short story of mine inside plus an anthology I’d ordered from Amazon: Old Broads Waxing Poetic.

 

A manila envelope sent from my BFF held a requested section of newspaper that contained the obituary of a dear and great man, Joel Cooper, pastor of Conway’s First UMC during my years at Hendrix. In fact, I was organist there my final year (1958).

 

When it was published, I ordered his book, No Price I Bring, and reviewed it in the denomination’s state newspaper. We corresponded for a while and he sent me his booklet of “Poms.” (poems)

 

Other items included three tax returns: two for Kid Billy, and one for me. Because I counted KB as a dependent, and because the online form asked if anyone in my family was uninsured, I had to admit that, yes, there was. So, even though I had insurance, they charged me with his nearly $400 penalty, while he got a hefty refund. Guess who got her money back from him?

 

Only after returning home, did I get the full account about Baltimore. It was on TV in the UMCOR “family” room, but I couldn’t make it out. Reading about it later, I jotted down a stark sentence. “A riot is the language of the unheard.”—Martin Luther King, cited by D. Brazile in the Saline Courier.

 

Another quote about discontented persons: “Graffiti art is an honest voice of a dissatisfied soul—it’s a political act.” – K. Ockerman, 43, Los Angeles graffiti artist, in an article about such artists defacing national parks.

 

Jazzman B.B. King (“The Thrill is Gone”), 89, is in hospice care at his home.

 

More than 43 million subsidized [meals] are served [in schools] daily. The feeding program began in 1946 by a Congress alarmed that vast numbers of young men were malnourished, ergo ineligible to serve in WW II. Today, nearly 25% of recruits are too obese to serve, according to Mission: Readiness, made up of 500 retired military officials. – E. Halper, Tribune News Service, AD-G.

As always, there’s good news and bad news in the world: Nepal, Nigeria, Baltimore, Syria, et al. And in the words of Pete Seeger, “When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?”