joe took this picture of Planet. 

and a clean face 

Short hair 

Short hair! 

RIP Jake. 

Shorter hair. 

Planet, 13 1/2 years old 

The Familiar Face

Planet and I stepped outside this afternoon, and I returned the smiles of two approaching runners, who slowed down at our sidewalk. Hey, it was Dave Horner with no beard, just as I remember him from years ago, tanned and beaming. Sharon had been running with him, and they weren't even out of breath. You said Dave had been running marathons.
He strongly recommended extremely short haircuts for all McJohns, tho I didn't pull my cap off to show him how short my own hair is shorn. They had a big day yesterday on Spring, with Anthony and Theresa present, and he was finishing his run before picking up pizzas for today.
When they began their run again, Planet followed but he didn't even try to keep up.

Thy Neighbor's Wi-Fi

I've had the most interesting time trying to get my cheap little dial-up service provider to keep providing. Evidently, sometime last week this computer was sitting here, hibernating quietly but not turned off, when a neighbor installed a wireless. And some new things appeared on the alert little computer, like a packet service and a modem it had never noticed before, and some things got wiped clean, like my usual username and password.

It takes a kinda long and tedious time to repair all this, and maybe I've done so, and maybe I won't be able to log on again tomorrow. Seriously, I'm considering using the new open wireless connection myself if it keeps blocking my dial-up this way.

What am I, just a client on a network that's overwhelming me? Well, Happy Holidays!

Maybe that Orchid is Budding

When I lived in Seattle, I engaged in long conversations at flower shows with orchid growers, who ship 'em in from Hawaii generally. Essentially, the back porch in Illinois sounded like a good place to grow orchids but I can't remember details particularly.

When I shopped last Spring or maybe longer ago in Illinois at Vaughan's, there was a potplant marked $5 , "will bloom again", and I took it, recognizing the orchid leaves. Now this winter that plant has decided to extrude five or six relatively ugly phallic-shaped bright green and healthy-looking snubs from the base where the leaves rise. I look at them and wonder, is this the rising stem of an orchid?

If only I could remember whether it really needs a cool climate, extra-bright light, or just negligence? Do you have any experience with orchids?

(I realize how often people go through this site now; that blog that mentioned Early Americans and the Mammoth Trumpet has elicited a rather glossy request for support funds, but not an offer to renew my subscription!)

Strength and Daring (continuing)

It's almost five pm in Illinois, and yesterday at five there was a very slim crescent moon high in the southwest sky although the sky's not fully black yet, just deep blue.

So for sure, this is December. But under the linden tree, a couple of hundred of little nigella seedlings have sprouted, and grown a little bit. They have their first little seedling leaves, narrow and green, and most have one or two of the fingered green leaves that come next. That nigella was another annual from the Fragrant Path, and the little annual seeds did produce well, but the plants weren't anything special. Since then, I've been setting myself up to sprinkle that flower bed next year, thinking that little guys like that needed more encouragement. I thought they were timid. But here they are, stepping out for next year.

We haven't had lasting snow here, they're in a bed of leaves. Tiny and happy.

The sweet peas in the annual garden have gotten stronger and grown more, covered more of their short fence and wave around looking for anything else to climb. The horned poppy greens that were in a vase in the house got pretty old, I tossed 'em, and cut another gray-green bouquet of the elegant oak-shaped leaves. The cyclamen leaves have continued to sprout on the north of the house where the summer cyclamen bloomed; I guess next spring, flowers will arise where these larger, well-marked leaves lie. How many of these other brave little green plants will survive all the months until May?

Remember Jim

When Jim was in St. John's, they had to wear the black toppers to go to every meal, even whenever they were riding a bike in town -- with the black thing sailing from their shoulders. Not the black tie, though; that was for a meal like the Chess Club.

Remember Jim. 

Cursing the Job Market

It can be awful, to be fifty and fighting in the job market. I vividly remember when I worked for AT&T Bell Labs; at the end of my first year, my group was mostly traded to a new supervisor, Doug Yano, and he called me into his office. He brusquely pointed out that it would cost the Labs (and his group) too much in pension benefits to keep me as an MTS long enough to be vested because I was too old and would reach retirement age too quickly, so I had to know that I would be forced out just before I vested, four more years.
Boy, did that sting. I think it was illegal too, but who's gonna sue Bell Labs?

Strength and Daring

What is more fragile and looks more vulnerable than a little leaf of a pea?

A month ago, in a mild November, I noticed that sweet pea seed sown last Spring had poked forth leaves in the little annual bed. I knew I was in Illinois, where the pea would soon be killed by frost, and I thought about the way the annual bed is changing. Narrow and about ten feet long, with a very short wire fence running down the middle of its length, it had accumulated a couple of mums three years ago that showed themselves very hardy and came up every year until some hungry rabbit pulled one up whole this spring. So it was an annual bed with one perennial.

And then the horned poppy seeds that I got from Nebraska's Fragrant Path showed beautiful shaggy gray-blue leaves but never bloomed. I looked up their description and found that they can choose to be annual, or biennial, or even perennial, depending on how they like their position. The gorgeous foliage is heaped under snow, now, and I guess that quarter of the annual bed has become biennial at least, and maybe they'll be there forever.

Now, altho it's December, it's pretty mild, running around forty in the daytime. And at the other end of the bed from the poppies, the sweet peas are gallantly climbing the little wire fence. Their fragile leaves are shining in the wintry sunshine, their tendrils are poking round for a hold that's not frozen. I've just looked up sweet peas and find that they could be perennial.

If I really intend to have an annual bed, maybe I'll have to plan a new one?