Month: August 2021

This happens to me all the time. I pass a plaque laid in the honor of someone and I wish they said something about them. This is the plaque I saw in Central Park this summer.

This is what I learned from HonorStates. “He was a passenger on the B-24D Liberator #41-23707 when they departed from their base in England for Oran in Algeria. They were to play an important part in the operations to defeat Rommel and the German Armies in Africa. On December 7, 1942, at the end of the first leg of their journey their aircraft crashed into a mountain on the approach to Tafraoui. All on board were killed.”

This is his military registration card. There is some disagreement about his year of birth, but his registration card clearly says 1904. They got the place of birth wrong, however. Oh, and I just noticed they misspelled his name. They meant well.

Here is a picture of his gravestone from Find-A-Grave.

And here is Richard, from his Harvard yearbook picture from 1927, followed by a screenshot including his activities. A handsome young man. He had a son, Richard, who was born in 1939, and a wife, Caroline Ticknor Hunnewell, who (whom? I never know) he married in 1937. I didn’t really uncover a lot in my brief search, alas.

Last week someone buzzed my apartment saying they had a delivery. When I went down there was a package for me wrapped in plain brown paper and no return address. And, it didn’t come through the mail. So someone personally dropped it off.

My first thought was anthrax! But I couldn’t resist and removed the brown paper. Then there was a box saying there was food inside. Poisoned food! Again, I couldn’t resist. I looked back at the handwriting and thought I recognized it. So I opened it up to this.

A beautiful handmade bud vase made by an old friend, Scott Connor. I’ve always loved everything he’s made and this was stunning. I couldn’t get a picture that does it justice, but it has an amazing shape which is different at every angle, and I love the shades of blue, the weight of it, everything. In a just universe Scott Connor would have spent his life making nothing but art and he would be very wealthy by now.

Thank you so so much, Scott. I will cherish this. I’m keeping it in a spot on my desk where I can always see it but where the cats can’t easily knock it off. (They do so love to knock things off things.)

The title of the piece is AND NOW? (There’s a backstory to that name. They are the words of the main prompt on Echo, the social network I started decades ago with Scott and many other people’s help. Whenever you do anything on Echo the command is typed in at the AND NOW? prompt.)

We go through a lot of weewee pads at the animal hospital where I work, and we are always being asked to conserve them as much as we can because we spend a lot of them. So when I came across a street strewn with them, and unused as they appeared, I almost gasped. I guess I would have gasped even more had they been used, now that I think of it.

Because I would see things like this. A magical view, no? That building almost doesn’t look real.

But, then I also see things like this. You are the poison! I feel for people who are afraid to get the vaccine. Then stay home, and wear a mask if you must leave your house.