A Sad Day For The United States

A Gift For Evie, A Topper Of Our Woodlawn Neighborhood, Hand Made By The Leonard Family

6:06

6:26

I went to sleep last night as snipers were killing police in Dallas, during a peaceful protest of the seemingly senseless shooting of black men in Minnesota and Baton Rouge.  Today's world reminds me of William Butler Yeats  'The Second Coming.'  Written in 1919, here are a few prescient lines:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.


Don't those lines sum up today's world, of police shootings of black men, terrorist attacks all over the world, of distrust between cultures, races, religions and even political parties?  Can the center hold, tolerance reign, compromise and common sense triumph?  I hope so.

And here I sit, fat and not so happy this morning, as the rain pelts the roof, peppers the gray lake on another warm July morning. I have yet to turn on the TV or radio, preferring the quiet of the morning rain to the no doubt tragic news and the bombastic coverage by the media.

Yesterday was about as warm and humid a day as I can remember here at the lake, the high near 88º, the humidity right up there around 96%.   From the moment we got up, it seemed like there was a mist of warmth surrounding us, taking away whatever energy we had.  Fortunately, both of us toughed it out if you could call it that.  Evie made up a grocery list for the weekend, and I was off to make five different stops, bank, can man, coffee shop, Wegman's and wine store.  While I was gone, our carpenters, Jerry and Scott, moved the external panel three inches, making it look normal, so that we can fit in our new refrigerator which arrives next Wednesday.  We were lucky enough to have a wall that could be moved without having to cut a counter or cupboard.  And now not only are they going to make new pantry doors (which we need), but they are going to remove our dishwasher, which we never use as it never worked well, and put in pull out shelves, so the space will be useful.  I told the guys the next time Evie asks if something can be done, they should say no, it's impossible.

I did not get home till 1:00 and the guys were already gone and Evie was busy rearranging the pots and pans in the cupboards since they had to be removed briefly for the work.  I bought a Danny's sub from Wegman's, enough for two days of lunch for both Evie and me.  I watched some of the tennis before taking a too brief nap.  It was so warm in the house that I decided the only cool place would be wading in the water, cutting weeds.  So that's what I did for an hour and Evie joined me.  We relaxed some on the dock in between cuttings, until we were hot and jumped back in to cool off.  A good way to spend most of the afternoon.

Dinner With Our Neighbors

Our neighbors, the Leonards, were having us over for pizza and a salad around 6:00, so we came in from swimming, cleaned up and got dressed and Evie heated up some hanky pankies and endamame for appetizers. Two of their three daughters and their kids are here for a couple of weeks, but we have not had time to really talk with them, so it was fun to have a glass of wine, catch up and of course, play bean bag.  We have gotten to be good friends with all of the family over the past 35 years which is nice.  We are lucky to have such good neighbors, in fact, most of Woodlawn gets along quite well, a real summer neighborhood.

A Competitive Game Of Bean Bag

We had pizza and salad and corn on the cob and just as we were getting up, the girls made Evie sit back down.  They, then, went into the house and brought out a present for Evie, what they call a topper, a wood panel, with cut out replicas of the five house in our neighborhood, all painted with the neighbors painted in, doing their thing, Evie cutting the lawn, I'm swimming, our granddaughters playing on the lawn, Joyce watering her garden, Kathy practicing yoga on the dock, Elaine feeding the ducks, and Pat walking her Westies.  It brought Evie to tears as she has always admired their topper, hanging in their kitchen.  Joyce started it back in 2005. Bill cut out the pieces for the houses on his jig saw and Kathy, their daughter, finished it this past year.  It's an amazing piece of work, one we both will treasure. Now we have to find a perfect place to hang it.

Original And New Woodlawn Toppers