PRISMS AND POLKA DOTS

A morning lullaby of thunder and lightning about 4 o'clock this morning.

We made the trip up to Rochester to bring our friend home from St. Mary's Hospital.  It's interesting how hospital protocol has changed as a result of our violent society.  Twenty years ago we could walk in the hospital and go to whichever floor and section of the complex.  Today we enter, are told to walk through a metal detector, ushered to a desk.  At that desk is a person with a computer.  The patient in the hospital has to tell the staff who they are expecting to visit them.  We were asked our names, and if they were in the computer, we were issued a day visitor tag to affix to our clothing.  There are people stationed in different places in the admissions area to watch that the process goes smoothly.  It gives one a feeling of security, but it also screams of a new and less congenial society.  I'm one to err on the side of caution, so it's fine with me.  I couldn't help wonder what it would be like if a shooter would barge into the admissions area.  Thoughts like that weren't part of visiting the sick twenty years ago.

This morning is a general meeting out here at 10 o'clock.  Council members are elected at this meeting, and the boyfriend's second 2-year stint expires.  I served on the council before he did, for two years.  He did four.  After the meeting, we're going to the grocery store to shop for some necessities.  Seems there's always something or other that we need.

A sparrow just landed on our deck railing with a long skinny twig in its beak.  She's obviously out and about collecting materials to build her nest.  Such tiny beings are born with basket-weaving skill.  We humans must attend classes to learn the weaving technique.  They are wee miracles that can fly and weave baskets.  I can do neither.

A Sparrow

A little bird, with plumage brown,

Beside my window flutters down,

A moment chirps its little strain,

Then taps upon my window pane,

And chirps again, and hope along,

To call my notice to its song;

But I work on, nor heed its lay,

Till, in neglect, it flies away.

So birds of peace and hope and love

Come fluttering earthward from above,

To settle on life's window sills,

And ease our load of earthly ills;

But we, in traffic's rush and din

Too deep engaged to let them in,

With deadened heart and sense plod on

Nor know our loss till they are gone.

(from Oak and Ivy, 1893)