Ozark Oddments: Happy birthday. . .

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Happy birthday. . .

Today is my birthday and I am nowold enough for the senior ciitizen discount. A few weeks ago, a woman I knew to speak to died of Alzheimers. She was my age. Her obituary was among the increasing number that I see of women in their 40s and 50s who are now no longer among the living. I am happy to be alive. The first birthday I can remember took place at my Aunt Betty's house (she gave me the nickname Lee Lee) in Pasadena when I was 3 years old. I got a fishing pole that came apart so that it would fit in a metal tubular carrying case. One of the most memorable birthdays was a few years ago when our son arranged for a local pilot to take us for a plane ride. The fall colors such as they are with the mainly oak forests here -- and certainly nothing like what one sees in pictures of New England in the fall -- were at their heighth. The rolling hills were covered in a blanket of gold and orange and brown, with an occasional scarlet blotch of a sugar maple in someone's yard. It was just stunning. It took my breath away. Now that I have figured out what I want to be when I grow up, I have to work on becoming the old woman I want to be. As my primer, I have a marvelous little essay by Leatrice Fountain called "I Like That Old Lady I'm Growing Into" (no URL though). A friend sent me a funny jokey thing at this URL: http://members.lycos.co.uk/duamutef/jokes23.html. Heard a Bobby Darin song on the way home from work yesterday on "The Music of Your Life." Such a smooth, cool and breezy style of singing -- what an amazing talent and what a loss.

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Thoughts to ponder

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course, we think that we do; indeed, we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them. so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?--Domenica Macdonald

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall
Smith

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Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering -- because you can't take it in all at once. --Audrey Hepburn

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I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.--Agatha Christie

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Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.--Katharine Hepburn

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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Two people... told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thoughness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another"?--Madeline L'Engle, "A Circle of Quiet"