Yes, it's me, Tess again. My master (aka) Ron Crete, whom I refer to honorably as Wannabe Hemingway, has once again amazed me with his computer wizardry. He has been working like a fiend for the past day and a half to figure out how to get back to this page. You know the page where I can write to you and preview my work and then publish it to 'the circle'. Great that he figured out that 'signing in' is the key to this kingdom. So, on we go....
This morning we watched, "Meet the Press" on NBC. Mostly because it's Sunday and Ol' Wannabe is slow out of the chute on Sundays. I, of course want to go for our usual walk along the Bitterroot River, a mere 3/4 mile from our rented abode on Main Street. So, while he's over there working out today's, Ravalli Republic Crossword Puzzle (NEA puzzle, pretty easy it looks to me, yet Wannabe struggles as usual with matching tricky clues to the 13 words he has stored in his head. Another Post for another time) while I reconsider everything a second or third time.
There is much about Nelson Mandela on the TV these days. I guess he was a great guy, some kind of kind hero from what I hear. I also hear Wannabe mumbling about his years following Mandela's plight back in the late 60's and when Wannabe was a confused and afraid and well meaning reactionary youngster marching in the streets of St. Cloud, MN against the Viet Nam War. Boy, those must have been the days. Seems he also remembers when Mandela was let out of prison after so many years of pounding rocks off the coast of South Africa. This business of Apartheid and the Civil Rights Movement and Ghandi's non-violence freedom campaign were all a part of Wannabe's timeline and I suspect shaped many of his liberal political views. First he reminded me that Mandela was the only one of the three not to get assassinated. Then, he says the Cold War prevented conservatives from seeing the bigotry from their own fear of communism and taking immediate action, but eventually joining the bandwagon. Maybe he said "Republicans" had this issue, but then he remembered there were liberal, or Democrats who were bogged down too. I think Wannabe is a "conservative" when it comes to rationing my food. If he was a real liberal he'd just open the bag of dog food and let me decide how much is enough. Nope! Three little tiny scoops and a gob of plain non-fat Greek yogurt. What causes this dichotomous political mindset to completely confuse me?
So, later, as he continued watching NBC's program (it's sleepy-by time for me when that stuff is on) he gets all riled up when Dr. Angelou comes on and responds to her interviewer on Mandela: "Thank you for coming, thank you for teaching us, thank you for loving us" and old Wannabe just about comes out of his recliner. "Woof!" I chime in thinking someone is at the door. He goes on babbling about her speech-poem at President Clinton's inaugural event on the D.C. Mall and I keep trying to tell him, "Woof, woof, woof, woo, woo --I wasn't there, remember?", but he keeps on babbling and I go back to sleep.
So, Wannabe the Poet, Wannabe the Writer, whatever, is pretty lit up today. Guess he's trying to tell me everyone should be lit up today and as we go into the future because Mandela spent his life showing us "change". Change in the active sense of it and especially how he, Mandela, changed himself to meet the crisis of his people in South Africa and show the world how to get along in the stagnation of cultural disorder. I wonder if he thinks Washington DC politics is going to change just because Mandela got it right. Maybe, if the price is right.
Now Wannabe is off on a tangent about Ronald Reagan and Dick Chaney holding back on the Apartheid issue back then. I try again to tell him I wasn't there. He reacts like he heard me (doubtful) and starts in again saying; "The damned Cold War had everyone so anti-communist they couldn't see the forest for the trees." Well, "Daaa!", Wannabe I woof back, "we had only just built up our paranoia about communism since the Big One (you know WWII) cuz Russia was breathing down our necks with nukes and...." Well, my run along the river is not happening, I can see that now. I'm just trying not to be a pest by wandering around scratching myself in the usual places and shaking my hair-sheds all over this place. He'll be OK, don't worry about him. I'm just happy he was really moved by something this morning. Maybe he'll be more conciliatory toward me and others after this reminder that Mandela knew how to forgive his captors and how to get his country on the right path in spite of all those years of the Whites in South Africa keeping the Blacks in bigotry hell.
Let me drop a couple of pictures on your screen.
Those pictures were taken on the same day, this past Friday. I want to write about them in my, well Wannabe's, next post. As you can see the Bitterroot River is almost completely frozen on that day and yet that little bird in the lower shot, a "dipper" is out making lunch out of something in an old irrigation side channel. It's probably eating "midges" Wannabe reports that he and I can't even see from our perch above the ditch. I thought I was being helpful by chasing that little devil off so we could continue our walk. Geez, Wannabe must have watched that little turd about 10 minutes. See those rocks in the water? They are about the size of a...a potato (ooh, I like potatoes and never get them, Sam I Am). So that "dipper" is about the size of a half-a-potato. Wannabe said they are about chickadee sized, whatever that means. I wanted to know if we could hunt them. He doesn't even look at me when I do a mind veld with him and ask him such things. "Hello, is anybody home?"
OK, as Dr. Angelou would say, "Thanks for coming...". I'm getting to like her. When you come, let's go hunting.
Tess.
No comments:
Post a Comment