Around Here

...and sometimes it's good to be the photographer. I netted this one last weekend. Once in a while the angels lay one on me... but they don't hang around too long. You say either yes or no. You don't often get away with saying maybe.

The day before Gillian touched down at RSW, a young mockingbird claimed a branch in my back yard outside my bedroom lanai. A talented juvenile, he forthwith began testing his oratory skills and developing the first flourishes in what will no doubt be a formidable bag of vocal tricks. He sang us to sleep last Sunday night . The mockingbird is Florida's state bird, a songster nonpareil. The troubadors have no fixed, traditional song. Instead they make it up as they go along, picking up inspiration from everything they hear, a string of endless variations, rarely the same phrase twice, exuberant and gorgeous. The mockingbird figures memorably into southern literature, To Kill A Mockingbird, of course, and Ambrose Bierce's haunting civil war short story The Mocking-bird. I wrote a poem about one. Here's a sample of the youngster's stuff. He's getting better all the time. He'll soon be spouting the long, arching arias for which they're renowned and loved, and ta...

It was kinda surreal, that first glimpse across Concourse B at the airport, when I saw her standing there... We recognized each other immediately, of course, live and in person, not very different from the blog buddies we had come to know, only... more so. Gillian had flown down for the day, or so we had thought, on what would turn out to be, in every way, one of the nicest days of this new-born year. Laughter and hugs and incredulous glimpses, stolen and swapped. Then a quick pony ride home to chez somewhere , to Buble blasting Come Fly With Me and the rolled-down wind in our hair. The rest of the day was something of a blur... the kind of smile-smeared blur you see in travel commercials. I had big plans. Which, once we hit chez somewhere , quickly dissolved in our Cuba Libres and conversation and the flickering palms. When you've got Gillian and a perfect summerlike day, you don't need no stinking big plans. Then as if to salt our long and sweetly memorable day, a touch of...