Remembering a long-ago Saturday

The long-ago Saturday that is on my mind today was February 28, 1959.  Let's see, 2026 minus 1959 is 67 years ago.  That's the day I married.  I remember as we left the church, that car-loads of friends were lined up to follow us.  We got into our "getaway" car driven by a friend, but went straight through it to another friend's car going in the opposite direction.  Yep, we almost got away, except for those who happened to be parked going in that direction.  I no longer remember details, but I do remember divorcing him 14 years and three children later (also in February).  The three children, all married now, gave me seven grandchildren.  The first one made me a grandparent on grandparents day.  And now I have six GREAT-grandchildren).  This photo includes four generations (I'm wearing red):

A borrowed book ~ or two ~ or three ~ actually four

Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats ~ by Courtney Gustafson, 2025, memoir, 256 pages

When Courtney Gustafson moved into a rental house in the Poets Square neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, she didn’t know that the property came with thirty feral cats.  Focused only on her own survival — in a new relationship, during a pandemic, with poor mental health and a job that didn’t pay enough — Courtney was reluctant to spend any of her own time or money caring for the wayward animals.

But the cats — their pleading eyes, their ribs showing, the new kittens born in the driveway — didn’t give her a choice.

She had no idea about the grief and hardship of animal rescue, the staggering size of the problem in neighborhoods across the country.  And she couldn’t have imagined how that struggle — toward an ethics of care, of individuals trying their best amid spectacularly failing systems — would help pierce a personal darkness she’d wrestled with for much of her life.  She also didn’t expect that the TikTok and Instagram accounts she created to share the quirky personalities of the wild but lovable cats, like Monkey, Goldie, Francois, and Sad Boy, would end up saving her home.

Courtney writes toward a vision of connectedness, showing how taking care of the cats reshaped her understanding of empathy, resilience, and the healing power of wholly showing up for some-thing outside yourself.  She takes us from the dark alleys where she feeds feral cats to inside the tragically neglected homes where she climbs over piles of trash, and occasionally animals, and then into her own driveway with the cats she loves and must sometimes let go.  Compelling and tender, Poets Square is as much about cats as it is about the urgency of care, community, and a little bit of dumb hope.

Knowing my love of cats (and books), one of my neighbors called to invite me for a chat.  She wanted to "show" me something.  Actually, she wanted to let me borrow one of the library books she'd just gotten.  This is the book she handed me.  I started it immediately, since she would want to read it herself when she finished the other book (or books) she'd checked out.  That's why I opened it the minute I went back to my apartment.  Thanks, Madeleine.

Here's what I posted this week:

1. My Wednesday post, HERE, was about a book loaned to me by a neighbor who also loves cats.  Thanks, Larry.
2. On Thursday, I didn't mention HERE that a friend from the community met me for lunch in our Café and brought a book she'd just finished, thinking it is one I'd like to read.  Thanks, Sharon.
3. On Friday, I wrote HERE about a book another neighbor let me borrow, one her daughter had given her.  Thanks, Betty.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

I'm game ~ are you?

Have you ever played Bananagrams?  My friend Sharon texted me a photo, saying, "This is what happens when I have no internet and I'm bored."  I texted back:  "Words and more words."  It looked familiar and rather like Scrabble, so I texted back to her:  "Bananagrams?"  Her:  "Do you want to play?"  Me:  "I don't know the rules."  She assured me, "It's easy."  With nary a pause, I replied, "Shall we try?"  So ....... we ended up downstairs in our new community room with her Bananagrams bag, and she started teaching me.  I won't go through all the details, but Sharon began by saying there are four words to know:

1. SPLIT ~ begin by turning over all tiles
2. PEEL ~ pick one tile
3. DUMP ~ return one tile, and take three
4. BANANAS ~ end of game

Uh, I guess you'll have to take a look at the actual game to learn all about those words, but the winner of the game becomes the TOP BANANA.

Word of the Day

nar·y / adjective (informal, dialect) = nonstandard form of not.  Example:  "With nary a pause, I got up and went to play Bananagrams!"

As we neared the end of our first game, Alyssa came along while walking her dog, and we invited her to join us.  She didn't know how to play, either, but took her dog home and came back to join us.  Sharon was just as patient as she taught her the game, too.  After several games, we called it a night, with Sharon wondering how long we'd been playing.  I said, "I can tell you."  I grabbed my phone, checked the time we had texted earlier, and that's when we realized our total playing time had been nearly three hours!  WOW!!

This was what my friend Donna came up with back in 2020.  I blogged about it HERE.  You can click to enlarge the photo.

A word and an idiom

One day, another resident here was trying to remember a name and asked me, "What's the name of that polyglot who lives on your floor?"  I turned to her in surprise that she used that word, which I think I've only seen in books and articles and never before heard in a conversation.  The look on my face must have made her think I hadn't a clue what she's just said, so she revised it by saying something like, "Who is that person on your floor who knows a bunch of different languages?"

pol·y·glot /ˈpälēˌɡlät / noun = a person who knows and is able to use several languages.  Example:  "My neighbor Sharon is a translator and is fluent in half a dozen languages besides English."

What does it mean when someone says, "It's all Greek to me"?  Basically, it means that "I don't understand it at all."  Dictionary.com gives this definition:

This expression was coined by Shakespeare, who used it literally in Julius Caesar (1:2), where Casca says of a speech by Seneca, deliberately given in Greek so that some would not understand it, "For mine own part, it was Greek to me."  It soon was transferred to anything unintelligible.

Kitty on a bookshelf ~ for Caturday

Cats explore.  My neighbor Sharon sent me this photo of a fuzzy explorer.

Looking at four generations

This family photo was taken in 2011.  I also posted it HERE.  I am standing next to my grandson; my daughter and my son (and his wife) are sitting in the chairs holding THEIR grandchildren.  My grandson's wife (mother of the youngest of my great-grandchildren at the time) is over there beside the Coke machine.  That's FOUR generations, and I'm the great-grandmother.  It's still hard to imagine myself the mother of grandparents.  I have seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren now.

This photo of me with my twin daughters was taken in 2016, when they visited me in St. Louis.  I also posted it HERE.  I enjoy sharing family photos with my friends, who also share pictures of their families.  We're proud grandparents and great-grandparents.

Here's the bulletin board on my floor for September

My neighbor Galina shared the three pictures on the left, and I found the dog picture on an old calendar.  All that was left was to flip the calendar on the right to September, and voilà!  That calendar was supplied by our neighbor Sharon, who also lives on our floor.  It's a community effort!

Language lovers, there's a blog for us!

Sharon, my neighbor, sent me a link to a blog for language lovers that is published by Collins Dictionary.  It includes help for people learning English.  That day, the latest blog post was about these three similar words:  cupboard, wardrobe, and closet.

1.  "Cupboards in American English are built-in shelves behind doors.  They are mainly found in kitchens."  My own example:  When the pandemic kept me from regular grocery shopping, I stocked my kitchen cupboard with canned goods, like soups, vegetables, chicken, tuna, and peanut butter.  But now we have another word dilemma — or at least, I do.  I know the word "cupboard" primarily from the nursery rhyme I learned as a child:

"Old Mother Hubbard

went to the cupboard 

to get her poor doggie a bone; 

but when she got there, 

the cupboard was bare, 

and so the poor doggie had none."

We always referred to the shelves in our kitchen as cabinets.  In other words, if I had told anyone that I'd collected those cans of food, I'd have said I put them in my kitchen cabinet.  I rarely use the word cupboard.

2.  "A wardrobe is a tall piece of furniture, usually in a bedroom, that has space for hanging clothes."  My example:  I remember having a wardrobe when I was growing up.  It looked sort of like this illustration I found online, but mine was light-colored and child-sized.  My cat Duchess had a litter of kittens on my underwear in one of the drawers.  It was probably the most comfortable place she could find, and I had most likely left the doors open.  I have no idea what happened to that wardrobe from my childhood.  Today, all my clothes are in my bedroom closet (see definition #3 below).

And to take this a bit further, what about the word chifforobe?  Actually, that's what we called that thing that held my clothes as a child.  Duchess had her kittens on top of my underwear in the chifforobe.  Wikipedia has information that I've edited for space:

A chifforobe (/ˈʃɪfəˌroʊb/), also chiffarobe or chifferobe, is a closet-like piece of furniture that combines a long space for hanging clothes (that is, a wardrobe or armoire) with a chest of drawers.  Typically the wardrobe section runs down one side of the piece, while the drawers occupy the other side.  [Mine had two doors, so we could open one side or the other or both.] ... Chifforobes were advertised in the 1908 Sears, Roebuck Catalog, which described them as "a modern invention." ... The word is used in the United States, primarily in the southern portion of the country...

Yes, I'm from the South, so what can I say?  And I was a child in the 1940s and 1950s.  It's complicated, isn't it?  So was half of my chifforobe a wardrobe and the other half a closet?  Okay, it's time for that third definition.

3.  The language lovers blog says:  "In American English, a built-in wardrobe is called a closet."  My example:  Clawdia, the cat I have now, is so intelligent that she gets bored all alone in our apartment when I go out.  So she has taught herself how to open my coat closet by pulling in the center where it folds to open.  It took me years to catch her doing it when I happened to have a camera handy.

I did finally get a photo of her walking into the closet, just to prove she can.  I leave part of the floor in there cleared out, just for her.  She never stays inside the closet, just goes in and right back out.  But she knows how and likes to remind herself that she can easily do it.  (Hmm, does posting about Clawdia make this a Caturday post?  Sure, why not?  We now have a Caturday in the middle of the week.)

So after all this word study, what did I do?  I subscribed to the newsletter from Collins Dictionary and discovered it's from HarperCollins UK.  That "UK" explains a lot, right there.  If you are interested, I think you can sign up at the bottom of any page on the blog.  And it has free online dictionary, thesaurus, and reference materials.  Maybe I should also mention their Wordle helper.

A delightful children's book

All You Need ~ by Howard Schwartz, illustrated by Jasu Hu, 2022, children's picture book, 32 pages, 10/10

A little girl grows up to be an accomplished artist in this sumptuously illustrated book about the small things that lead to a rich and fulfilling life.

All you need

Is a planet to live on,

A sun to give you light,

And warmth. . .

In All You Need, poet Howard Schwartz’s graceful, deceptively simple text describes a handful of things anyone needs to live a rich and fulfilling life, made all the more potent by the illustrations of debut picture book artist Jasu Hu, who uses her talents to create a rich and powerful narrative describing her own journey, creative and otherwise, from a childhood in China to her arrival to study art in New York.  Ultimately, she creates her own book, this book, a gift to her distant parents.

Thanks to Sharon, my friend who is translating this book into several languages, for reading her copy of the book to me this afternoon before she left town to visit her grandchildren.

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Addendum (June 13, 2022):  When I had a chance to study the illustrations, I saw a swallow on nearly every page that I had not noticed on that cursory* first reading.  The "Note from the Artist" on the last page says:

"In Chinese culture, the swallow is a messenger that brings happiness and is a symbol of homecoming."

When travel restrictions because of Covid-19 kept the artist from coming home to the United States in 2020, she was able instead to visit her parents in Nanjing, which she says "became a real homecoming."

*Word of the Day

cur·so·ry /ˈkərs(ə)rē/ adjective = hasty and therefore not thorough or detailed.

Sept. 25 is National Daughters Day

Today is National Daughters Day.  I have two daughters, who are identical twins.  This photo was taken when my twins visited me in St. Louis in 2016.  Can you see the family resemblance?  Actually, I do have another daughter (hyphenated, that is):  my daughter-in-law, who just had a birthday this week. Happy, Happy Birthday to you!  (Yes, I sang to her on her actual birthday.)

Flowers I texted to two Sharons

I texted these purple and white flowers to my daughter-in-law Sharon last week.  She has a green thumb, and I hope she liked this arrangement that I found online.

I watered plants and collected mail last week for my neighbor Sharon, who was out of town.  I texted her this photo of her own orchids.  Aren't they beautiful?

Thursday thoughts

Sharon bought a mountain bike and brought it out into the hall tonight so I could see it.  She's excited, and I think she'll have a great time riding it around here.

We got another gift bag today, this one from the Occupational Therapy students at Washington University.  Thanks for the goodies and for being so thoughtful.

Donna finished another Bananagrams layout this evening.  Click to enlarge the picture.  I learned a new word from this, which is why I'm sharing it.  I thought "spiegel" was a name, which I don't think is allowed.  But no, Donna got it right.  A spiegel is (1) a mirror, or (2) the level of a liquid, or (3) the white (or light-colored) mark on an animal — like this deer, for example.  This information and the picture are both from Wikipedia.

Sharon's kipa is not a toboggan

Sharon crocheted this kipa she's wearing.  I looked up the word last night and learned it can be spelled several ways, but "kipa" is what Sharon texted back when I asked what she calls it.  She's a translator of several languages, so I'll definitely go with her spelling.  Isn't her kipa beautiful?

Word of the Day #1

kipa / ki·pa / kēˌpä / noun = another term for yarmulke.  To know more about kipas worn in Israel, take a look at this tour group site.

Word of the Day #2

yarmulke / yar·mul·ke / ˈyämə(l)kə / noun = a skullcap worn in public by Orthodox Jewish men or during prayer by other Jewish men.

I texted Sharon last night to ask what she calls her creation, "Do you call this a knitted cap or toboggan or something else."  She was confused, telling me she crocheted it.  Then she said, "A toboggan is like a luge in my mind."  So I need to add more definitions.

Word of the Day #3

toboggan / to·bog·gan / təˈbäɡən / noun = a long narrow sled used for the sport of coasting downhill over snow or ice, which typically is made of a lightweight board that is curved upward and backward at the front; verb = to slide downhill over snow on a toboggan.  Example:  "This dog is having fun riding his toboggan down the hill."  Click the link to watch the dog do it all by herself.

Word of the Day #4

luge / lo͞oZH / noun = a light toboggan for one or two people, ridden in a sitting or supine position.  So a luge and a toboggan are the same thing.

A toboggan, to New Englanders and a majority of people who live in the northern part of the United States, is a wooden sled.  And that's why Sharon was confused when I used the word "toboggan" to ask about her "kipa" — a sled has nothing to do with what she wore on her head.  But wait!  There's another meaning for the word toboggan.

In the southern part of the United States, a toboggan is a winter hat.  Specifically, it has to be a knit hat.  Because of the freezing conditions, toboggan riders often wore knit hats to keep warm. These hats soon became known as “toboggan hats,” but since at least 1929, that second word has been dropped.  So a toboggan is a hat to Southerners, which may also include specific regions of Oklahoma, Missouri, Florida, Maryland, West Virginia, southern Indiana, and New Mexico.  If you're in the American South, your toboggan is your hat!  And the girl in this photo is wearing a toboggan while riding her toboggan down a hill.  And now you know that I'm from the South, and Sharon isn't.

Another Caturday, another door

It's Caturday again, and here's Clawdia at the door of another of her friends.  Last week, she waited hopefully at a different door on our floor, only to be disappointed.  She waited at this door without any luck, too.  Yesterday, as a special Christmas treat to Clawdia, we went for a walk early enough that her friends were still awake, and I texted Sharon we were "walking."  When Sharon opened her door, Clawdia was startled and so surprised that she started running home until I called after her, "It's Sharon!"  Clawdia stopped, turned to look at Sharon, and hurried back down the hall to be petted.  If you ask Clawdia, Christmas this year turned out to be a very special day, indeed.

Clawdia on Caturday

Last night, when I took Clawdia on a walk to the other end of our hall and back, she stopped at this door.  She knows where her friends live.

• She nearly always leans her head down to sniff or listen under Sharon's door to determine whether she's home or not.
• She always enjoyed getting invited into Gail's apartment to look around and explore while Gail and I talked.
• And she used to insist that I knock on Tiny's door, until she finally figured out that Tiny no longer lives in the apartment just a few steps from our own door.

I sent this photo, saying, "Clawdia misses visiting you."  Unfortunately, her caregiver is allergic to cats, so we probably couldn't go inside her apartment to visit, even if we didn't have this pandemic lockdown with social distancing.

Another friend named Sharon emailed me a musical Christmas card of cats on a player piano.  I love the lively tune and the antics of the cats.

A Christmas tree and a cartoon (with analysis)

This Christmas tree is in Sharon's room at Vanderbilt Hospital.  She's been there more than two weeks, this time.  Look closely, and what do you see?  I see little signs on the tree.  I see HOPE.  I see JOY.  I see PEACE.  I see NOEL.  I see MERRY and BRIGHT.  And under the tree I see a paper airplane with wings, the paper folded and ready to fly.  I also see a round flying machine, paper folded the way I showed my children when they were young.  Yes, it can fly, too.  Thanks, David, I'd forgotten we could do it that way.  (Click on the photo to enlarge it.)

 

My English-teacher friend Donna wrote on Facebook:  "And we wonder why so many grow up hating to read."

Exercising, banana bread, and a scam

10/29/2019

2/5/2020

Exercising

Ziggy was letting his mind wander at the end of October last year, but by early February (before our pandemic lockdown) Ziggy had advanced to mental gymnastics.  Is that progress?

Banana bread

Sharon, who lives at the other end of my hall, sent me a text saying there was "hot banana bread" in the box beside my door.  I had already cut a bite off the end before I thought to take a picture so I could share it with the world (the way young folks do these days).  Sharon has shared some great food with me, like this warm cornbread Clawdia wanted to taste, which was delicious with that carton of cold milk in the photo.  Thanks, Sharon.

Scam

This comment left on one of my FB posts is what's wrong with Facebook.

Travis Norrebro
Hello how are you doing I am sorry for intruding into your privacy I'm very sure that nobody is going to see that beautiful smile of yours and skip your profile without sending a message..you have interesting profile that caught my heart and attention it would be rude sending you friend request without your consent I'd love to know you more and let's talk and see what the future holds for us why don't you send me friend request and we can go from there and thank you ..

"What the future holds for us"?  Yuck!  Here's the cartoon this scammer chose to "hit on."  I posted it September 25th, but he didn't leave the comment until yesterday.  The person supposedly lives in Burlington, Vermont, is from Copenhagen, and is widowed.  And he has NO friends listed on Facebook.  Not a single one.  I deleted his comment.

Hmmm.  My Facebook link shows my name; here's his link (is this his REAL name?):  https://www.facebook.com/hamisu.usman.581

A book, a window, a cat, and a word

I got my dictionary off the shelf yesterday to look up a couple of words, which became three before I finished writing my blog post.  When I opened the book, I noticed I had put my name in it, along with the date when I bought it.  I grinned when I realized I'd gotten this much-used book 25 years ago this month.  The date was 11/2/95, and I paid $19.95 for it, making it a rather expensive book for the time.

I also noticed it has a presentation page.  "Presented to __________ By _______ Date ______."  Who presents dictionaries to people?  And why?  Have you ever "presented" a dictionary to someone?  If so, tell me, what was the occasion?

View from My Window

My friend Sharon invited me to join a new Facebook group called View from My Window.  It's kind of like WindowSwap, but we put up our own recent view from a window, saying where we're from.  Only one post a day per person.  Next time I may show them this picture of Clawdia in her window with fall-colored trees between me and the tall buildings of Clayton.  The sun was setting from the west (off to the right), casting shadows across our street when I snapped this view yesterday.

Being helpful

If you've ever had a cat, you realize how "helpful" they can be.  Here's a photo of Clawdia, for example, napping on my clipboard while I was trying to take notes during a Zoom meeting.  It couldn't have been the least bit comfortable, sleeping on that hard surface.  But she did it, by golly!  Just to be helpful, ya know.  Okay, I know that sounds rather catty.

Word of the Day

cat·ty / ˈkadē / adjective = deliberately hurtful in one's remarks; spiteful.  Example:  "That catty remark was uncalled for."  Similar:  snide.  Opposite:  kind, complimentary.

Bloggers gather in The Sunday Salon — at separate computers in different time zones — to talk about our lives and our reading.

National Senior Citizens Day

Everything on here is likely to happen in my world today, except I doubt if anyone in my family knows it's National Senior Citizens Day.  Since I live among seniors in a retirement center, I already had plans when I learned this is supposed to be our day.  Donna invited me to have lunch with her.  Lest you think we ladies are dining out, think again.  We'll find a place outside where we can eat socially distanced, and have the food delivered to us.  I like this part of today's world, that eating "out" can mean simply "out back" in our gazebo without having to mingle in a restaurant with strangers, some of whom may not have been diligent about wearing masks, socially distancing, and avoiding crowds.

Masks and windows

Masks by Sarah

Donna's new mask

Masks

Donna got a Golden Girls mask with "Thank you for being a friend" on it.  Too bad her friend Clawdia can't read it.  Speaking of masks, my friend Sarah has a video about masks she's been making and giving away.  I admire her and Laurie and Linda, who also made and gave away masks.  Looking at the masked people around you these days, have you ever asked yourself, "Who is that masked person?"

Windows

It was night time in Dubai, UAE, when I looked out Hijaz's window today, using WindowSwap.  Click to read where I "went" the first time I looked out of random windows around the world.


One mask at one window

On her Gotcha Day yesterday, Clawdia DID get to visit Donna through the window and Sharon in the hallway, as I had hoped.  Both friends were masked.  Clawdia walked down the hall three times, ate her favorite gourmet food, and also got treats TWICE.  So it was a very event-filled day for Ms. Clawdia.