The Queen's Landing

 The Beatles thought she was a pretty nice girl, and not having a lot to say, is not such a bad thing when you are a symbolic monarch without the power to lop off anybody's head, and pretty well-behaved considering other members of her family who were often in the scandal sheets.

Her dad was that stuttering guy who overcame it and helped win WW II according to that movie, The King's Speech.  I don't remember him dying, but I do remember the hoopla when his daughter took the throne.  It didn't mean much to me, but my sisters got caught up in it with coloring books and maybe paper dolls, you know all that girl's stuff. (It suddenly comes to mind that all the great minds of The Institute grew up with sisters, we shall have to discuss that one of these days).

Princesses.  Back when I was subbing and the talk was all about what did the girls want to be for Halloween, they would say, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian chief, and I would lean down like the devil and whisper "Who wants to be a princess?" "Me, me, me, they would all answer all excited.

I never wanted to be a prince, it seemed like if you were one you would have to dress up all the fucking time.  And in the stories that we were told princes were never fighting wars or crimes, they were just the backdrop for drippy stories about yucky girls.

But the big story that I have been leading up to is that in 1959, she visited Chicago.  Not that surprising that the Queen of England would want to visit THE GREATEST CITY INNA WORLD is it?  I looked into it a little, and what she was doing was mostly visiting Canadian provinces along the Route of the St Lawrence Seaway, which as a kid, made me so happy because now ships would no longer have to drop off their goods in snooty New York, they could take them straight to Chicago, and who wouldn't want to do that, and it would just be a few years until Chicago took its rightful place as the biggest city in the USA.  I don't know why that never happened.

But anyway the royal yacht took a left not long after passing by The Freehold, and headed straight down Lake Michigan to the toddling town.  She dropped anchor just off Buckingham Fountain, took the Royal Rowboat ashore and crossed Lake Shore Drive to get to the fountain at what became forever known as The Queen's Landing. 

Some years ago some idiot, in the purpose of speeding up traffic on Lake Shore Drive, eliminated it, taking away the stoplight and putting up a fence.  But it turned out that pedestrians, to honor The Queen, or maybe just to save themselves a two block walk to the next light, kept braving the deadly stream of traffic, so after a few years they put it back the way it was.  There was talk at the time of putting up a bridge, stately, or cool modern, or whatever it would be a boon to the city.

The Queen is dead.  Long live The Landing.

Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery

When Roe v Wade was overturned, an old Michigan law passed in 1931 arose from the dead.  It seems they never bothered to repeal it, so it's still on the books.  A proposal on the ballot of the coming election seeks to remedy the problem by enshrining the right to abortion in the Michigan State Constitution.  I thought from the beginning that it would be sufficient to just repeal the 1931 law, but nobody cares what I think.  Now it comes out that more things than abortion are prohibited by the 1931 law, and the proposed amendment does not address most of them.  So, if the proposal passes, it will be legal to have an abortion in Michigan, but illegal to commit adultery, cohabitation, seduction, sodomy, blasphemy, and my personal favorite:  "The publication or sale within this state of any circular, pamphlet or book containing recipes or prescriptions in indecent or obscene language for the cure of chronic female complaints or private diseases....."

Michigan abortion law also bans cohabitation, adultery & blasphemy (cheboygannews.com) 

Ben Franklin, sex, drugs and rock and roll, and death to aphids

 Talman's was huge in the hood.  Benjamin F Bohac was a revered name in Gage Park, sort of a Benjamin Franklin, a penny saved is a penny earned.  Thrift, thrift, young man, that is a better way to go than west.  There may be gold in California but you will not find a solid brick bungalow in that land of earthquake and drought.  

I remember going up to the counter I could barely see over and pushing my account book to the imposing teller who looked something up and in perfect handwriting wrote in the interest that I had earned in the last quarter and then totalled it to give me like seventeen cents more than I had the last quarter.  I was getting rich.

Fridays it was jammed with folks with paychecks, more money to go into the account, maybe by January you would be able to pay for that new dormer to make the attic rooms more pleasant for the kids, so they could study harder and get into college and become a doctor or lawyer or whatever.  Moving on up.  The American dream.

But it was not a bank, it was a savings and loan, a kind of wheeler dealer form of bank, well not Talman's who was interested only in giving solid citizens mortgages to buy homes and loans to fix up those homes, but those other guys, they engaged in all sorts of money shenanigans, and when the blade came down on their necks it came down on Talman's too.

I've had bugs before, mostly spiders.  High rise buildings create updrafts and those carry bugs right into the webs of high living spiders who live the easy life up in the sky.  I've had dragon flies, and rarely a butterfly.  One nice thing about life in the sky is no house flies and no mosquitos.  I've had morning glories for years but I don't think bees are attracted to them.  They like to walk the prairies of the eye of the sunflower, and I believe this summer's bumper crop is what brought them here.

When I was speaking of fun in the sense of it being less fun the older you get, I was speaking of things like sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and all the discomfort that comes along with pursuing them.  I certainly didn't mean stuff like gentleman scientist fun where you are basically just fiddling with stuff in the privacy and comfort of your own home.  Fiddling with a fiddle seems more like comfort to me, but not skateboarding and unicycling which seem a lot more like sex, drugs, and rock and roll.  I remember the subject of unicycles coming up during our Friday night seminars, and I remember a little juggling experiment that left The Owner's oranges the worst for wear.

Well you all know that I am a good liberal and like to spread my kumbaya to all god's creatures, but I have to admit that I had a little thrill thinking of all that hornet poison coursing through the highways and byways of the Kingdom of Hornets, remembering the morning when I woke to find aphids (horrible insects who are born fertile) covering the green expanse of my garden.

Helping Mother Nature

 My neighbor used to keep honeybees, but I don't think he does anymore because I haven't seen any around the house in years.  There have always been a few wild bumblebees around, and then there's those hornets, aka yellow jackets or ground bees.  You can tell them from the honeybees because they don't have that rusty orange tinge, they're just yellow and black, but by the time you identify them by sight, it's usually too late.  

Hornets are the most aggressive of all the bee species around here.  If you get near one of their nests, they will try to kill you.  This is not an exaggeration.  My daughter unknowingly staked one of her dogs next to a hornet's nest one time, and it died a horrible death.  Their nests are not easy to spot, usually just a small hole in the ground or sometimes in a pile of lumber or firewood.  Once you are stung, however, you know that you're near a nest.  Back off a bit, they won't follow you very far, and try to see where they came from.  Then get a can of wasp and hornet spray, approach the nest cautiously, and empty the contents of the can right into the hole.  I know it's not their fault, they're just doing what comes naturally, but I think it's necessary to take them out lest a child or small animal stumble into their circle of death.  The fact that the spot they stung you is still swollen and throbbing has nothing to do with it. 

I recently read that monarch butterflies have made the list of threatened species.  They said the way you can help them is to plant milkweed.  No need to plant it around here, it grows wild in the ditch.  We used to only have a little of it, but it has spread prolifically since we moved here.  I like to think my laid-back mowing schedule is responsible for that.  I only mow once a year in September or October to keep the land I have cleared from reverting to forest.  I have found that, if I mow much earlier than that, it just grows back, and I have to mow it again.  By the time I get to hacking down the milkweed, the seed pods are ripe and ready to burst, scattering their contents to the four winds.  I do mow the marsh in August because that's the only time it gets dry enough, and the wild irises that grow there have proliferated just like the milkweeds have on the dry land.  

We walked the Mackinac Bridge several times in our younger days.  We quit when it started taking longer to get over there on the bus than it took to walk back.  Now they don't allow busses or any other motor vehicles on the bridge while the walk is in progress from 6:00 AM to 12:00 PM.  You can start from either end, walk all the way, part way, or both ways, as long as you're off the bridge by noon.  Too late for me, I sure can't walk like I used to.

 

Fiddling around

But the next day when they took off the bandages I could see for miles and it knocked my socks off.  Did Old Dog's socks remain on his feet?

My experience was different than Uncle Ken's; the socks remained on my feet, or they would have if I was wearing any.  No bandages, instead they taped a clear plastic shield over my eye, kind of like a sneeze guard and removed it the next day.  I had to wear it while sleeping for a few days, though.  I was expecting a pleasant drug induced haze from the anesthesia but no dice; I told them they need a new dealer for better drugs.  Not much waiting around after the surgery, only about 45 minutes and I was outta there.  Walking was a little tricky because the right eye now had very good vision but the left eye was still crappy.  Less than two weeks from now I'll have the other eye worked on and then it's just a matter of time before I get used to my new eyeballs.  Maybe I won't need glasses at all, but we'll see, ha, ha.  I'll be glad when I can't stop with all the post-surgery eye drops.

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Labor Day already, how tempus fugit.  A big deal in the Beaglesonia area, the walk across the bridge.  That's something that I just learned about, and something that I wish I would have done earlier in my life.  Maybe it's not too late but five miles is quite a hike and then you have to go back.  Has Mr. Beagles ever taken the trek?

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After Uncle Ken posted the images from his visit to the old 'hood I couldn't help but go to Google Earth and try to get a better sense of the area.  I'd forgotten that you Sout' Siders went to different grade schools so it took a while for me to get my bearings.  I had no idea what Talman's was but I learned it was a bank and quite a major institution unless Google is lying to me.  The building was razed in 2013 so that Starbucks is newer construction.  And it's a good trick to go south of Cicero, don't you think?  

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Good to see a honeybee on your balcony, Uncle Ken.  Is this the first time you've seen any?

My own little indoor garden is moving along, albeit slowly.  Some seeds have germinated but they haven't gotten any further after I put them in potting soil.  Maybe I'm re-potting them too early, or too late.  Plants can be fussy that way.  The date palms have really slowed down, only 8" tall so far.  I have some honeydew melons creeping along the windowsill; their leaves don't look as green as I think they should be but at least they're growing.  The mangos are looking very good, and I think I have a good Valencia orange growing, finally.  Other plants are still in process but until they poke through the soil and show good signs of growth I'm not going to mention them.

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The way I always looked at aging is that the older you get fun becomes less important and comfort becomes more important.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one, I think.  It could be that I am hard-wired to be contrary and like to do things the hard way, just to see what happens.  Comfort is fine but it's not a big priority for me; no padded furniture and I'm still sleeping on the floor.

And "fun" is more important to me now that the clock is ticking down and the days are numbered, but maybe I have a weird notion of "fun."  Fiddling with my plants is fun, experimenting in the kitchen is fun, learning new stuff is fun.  I don't know if I'll be picking up the old accordion but I have some new harmonicas, so that's fun too.  My sister and her husband are moving into a new home, not far from their current place, and in the process of going through old crap she found my maternal grandfather's fiddle.  He was quite a character and scared me as a little kid but now I can appreciate what he was doing.  I've already got a new set of strings and I figure, it's never too late to learn how to play a fiddle.  Why not?  Sounds like fun to me.  The skateboard and unicycle will have to wait until next summer, I think.

bees knees two

 He was a veteran of WW II, though not on our side I think.  But not a very bad guy because they allowed him to come here after the war where he was a waiter at the Bergoff from which he retired.  He was one of those toymaker Germans and not a storm trooper, and he grew sunflowers out of tall elegant white pots.

When he died I got possession of those pots, probably because it was easier than hauling them down to wherever one hauls big tall pots.  In honor of him I grew sunflowers in them, and in the ensuing ten years they have self sown themselves all along that part of the balcony. Which is fine with me, everybody is welcome at the summer party which is Ken's garden.  They don't seem to get in the way of the tomatoes and their stalks give those manic morning glories a stairway to heaven.  

And then maybe three weeks ago I was sitting on the balcony reading my newspaper and caught a dark spot out of the corner of my eye which I first thought was a floater but closer focusing revealed that it was a bee, a honeybee, hovering right in front of the brown expanse of the big eye of the sunflower like one of those little pod ships trying to dock on the space station.

And dock she did and then she was rooting through the tall grass for nectar making a mess of the pollen.  

This is a big deal.  The dying off of honeybees has been all over the media and yet here in THE GREATEST CITY INNA WORLD, here is an amateur gardener who is providing succor to that very beast facing extinction.  I know that there is, or was, an aviary on the roof of City Hall.  If you are some visiting mucky muck of sufficient stature upon leaving our mayor, Lori Lightfoot (who will probably not get a second term, but whoever takes her place will be roundly hated in a few months as much as Lori is now), will gift you with a jar of City Hall honey.  You can't buy it in a store.

That's where I think my honeybees come from because I can't think of any closer apiary.

Well I guess that is the end of my story.  What have youse guys been up to?

the bees knees part one

 Sometime early in my youth a big box of comics hit the frontroom floor of the bungalow.  I don't remember where they came from, my guess is some older cousin or whatever outgrew them.  As if anybody could ever outgrow comic books.  Maybe he got run over by a truck, who cares, because here was a great big box full of Donald Duck and Little Lulu and Superman and Batman.  I suppose if we had sealed the box then and there to keep our greasy fingers away from them why it would be worth big bucks now, but life is for the living is it not?

And sure playing baseball on the corner in the summer is living but lying on your bed all afternoon with a stack of comics is living too.  Comics, comics, comics.  There were those hard bound books for kids, but they were so staid, so morally upright, and even when they had pictures, there weren't that many and none of them had those balloons by their mouths so you could tell what the guy was saying.  Why would anybody ever read anything that was not a comic book?

And then one Christmas when I was maybe twelve years old, I discovered a book under the tree for me.  A book???  But it was about The Ant Men!!!

Pretty cool. I took it for a spin.  Not bad at all.  I had graduated to hard bound books.  I went through all the Winston Science Fiction books.

I also developed an interest in ants.  Really cool little guys, actually gals, they are all around you and they are all around the world, and they have all these different tribes that do all these clever things that you would never imagine bugs would be able to do. 

Much cleverer if you asked me, then bees who can fly and all but never seemed all that clever to me.  And then maybe ten years ago my neighbor, the German, died.