Coloring

After a drab and soggy first couple weeks of October, a truly New England autumn has sprung up about us over the past few days. I am once again reminded of one of the compelling factors embedded in my psyche which made sure I returned to New England after my time running around with well-armed friends for Uncle Sammy was finished. It was that time in the Army in so many sandy, sunny, and usually flat places that educated me how lucky I was to have grown up in a place of so much native beauty. I promised I would never take it for granted again. Just driving down the street is a genuine pleasure with the trees exploding in color. I was walking out of the Y this morning after my swim and just stopped in my tracks to take in the beauty of nearby Indian Lake with its colorful shores. Predictably my Favorite Panamanian’s Garden is in full flower, autumnal phase. It’s rare that I’m outside and someone walking by doesn’t compliment me on the garden (happened today). I am quick to point in the general direction of my Favorite Panamanian when this happens and confess I am just responsible for the brute force and ignorance aspects of the gardening effort.

End of the Street

I’ve watched baseball the last couple nights as both league championship series ended up in game 7. I was happy to see the underdogs win in both, since I didn’t have a dog in the fight after the appalling Red Sox season. It didn’t hurt that the cities of Houston and Philadelphia lost. I think of Philly as a kindred spirit to Boston in sports culture, giving their heart to their teams, sometimes to a fault. Speaking of faults, what the hell is up with the Facebook spell check?! I depend on spell check more than I will ever admit (although I guess I just did). If you could see what this blog post looks like now before undergoing spell check; let’s just say there’s a lot of red underlining showing. Something happened to Facebook a few weeks ago and now even my various misspelling of “the” can’t be automatically fixed. I seriously don’t know how I got through college without spell check, much less a computer. To be absolutely clear – I do not miss typewriters.

Wife's Gardens

The Republicans have finally elected a speaker of the house after three weeks of chaos. It’s an object lesson when they make the democrats looked like the unified ones. The specter of that benighted New York huckster still looms over the party I used to be proud to be a member of. These past couple weeks are an indication of what life would be like if that boneheaded egomaniac is ever allowed anywhere near Washington again (well except for sentencing maybe). There’s a couple of Republican presidential candidates I could get behind if he went away but at this point that seems to be a pipe dream.

We snuck out for a date night and saw Killers of the Flower Moon. This is an absolutely great two hour film shoehorned into a ponderous 3 and a half hour ordeal. It’s an important story that needs to be told and I wish they had invested more in the Native American characters instead of using them as a back drop for the scenery DeNiro and DiCaprio chew up. The plot involves the true story of evil white men marrying Osage women to gain control of their oil rights in the 1920s. I liked the actress, Lily Gladstone, portraying DiCaprio’s Osage wife as her eyes seemed to embody the pain of her entire people but at the same time there wasn’t any true connection with DiCaprio to make us understand why she would subject herself to him. I guess this was a passion project for Scorsese because he feels the need to pummel you with the same point over and over again. I mean, I get it, this was a truly evil episode of neglected American history, but getting on with the story would have helped make this more watchable and made the lesson more compelling.

Three movies fell in my A-Z watch, all 5 keepers and classics: Goodbye Columbus, that time I fell madly in love with Aly McGraw; The Goodbye Girl, Dreyfuss is so funny in this; and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, still holds up, a masterpiece

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RECURRING CHARACTERS:                                     

ABFA – Amazing Best Family Athlete - my daughter in law; BR3 – Blog Reader #3 – granddaughter #3; BRS - Blog Reader the Sequel - second granddaughter; Cantankerous Friend – friend since grade school who likes to argue about everything, poses as radical leftist to attract women; CRC - Connecticut Riverboat Captain – another close friend from high school, renowned sailor of the big river; Curbside Girls – close friends of my daughter acquired during him her single days in Brooklyn; Deckzilla – our backyard deck which grew to monstrous dimensions once my wife got involved in planning; Favorite Panamanian - the wife (of course); FBR - First Blog Reader - first granddaughter; First Friday – celebrations to mark the First Friday of the Week; Great Aunt - my elder sister; Keene Friends 1 & 2 – friends since high school from my home town of Keene, NH; Kindergarten Friend – friend since kindergarten whom I reunited with after many years; Maine and Virginia Musqueteras – two close friends of my wife – her US sisters, my wife is the 3^rd Musquetera (musketeer); Namesake Nephew – son of Great Aunt and Soxfather named after me; Neighborhood Mafioso - wife's close friend and Panamanian mafia member; PanaGals – female relatives /friends of my wife from Panama; Panamanian/Latin Mafia – inevitable group of Latino friends my wife accumulates wherever we have lived & their spouses; PCR - Pittsburgh College Roommate– high school friend, also a “Minor Celebrity” in Pittsburgh; PCR+1 - Pittsburgh College Roommate’s wife; Riggins - also known as the Grandpuppy, son's dog; Soxfather - my brother in law; Tia Loca – wife’s younger sister; Wingman – my son in law; Wingmom – Wingman’s mom, of course