Yet again this morning that purported Microsoft gentleman with
the pleasant foreign-sounding voice called me re problems with my computer which he said he would be more than happy to walk me through resolving. Knowing this for the scam that it is, I hung up, but only after notifying the caller that he was involved in a criminal activity and screaming my standard “Fuck You” into the receiver. I get 4 or 5 calls from this group every week.

After my “Falling Leaves” post on October 25 I drove up to
Tuscaloosa to pick up a new pair of glasses, do some necessary foraging at Walmart and Sam’s, and have lunch with my sister. Thinking back on my post and noticing that the narrow-leaf sunflowers that had lined the highways 14, 60, and 69 the last time I made the trip had all but vanished, I found myself musing about time and its passage. This is a mood that sweeps over me every October with melancholy pleasure, come to think about it.

This touching article in the New York Times this morning brought back memories from my childhood:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/world/europe/for-the-roma-fears-of-kidnapping-in-europe-only-mirror-their-own.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp

 Only once can I recall a Gypsy caravan passing through Sawyerville, Alabama. Best guess, I was 6 or 7. I’d heard tales of Gypsies, and I had been indoctrinated with the fact that they were congenital thieves and if they came in your store you had to watch every move they made or they’d steal you blind. (That last phrase seemed part of the myth. And yes, we were taught that they would steal unattended children.) I remember my father telling me, “Run get Mama and you and she come back and keep close watch. Tell her to lock the house!”

Tom would have been 91 yesterday. I guess that was part of what motivated me to add the photos to the entries for his books Boy at Sea, Baker's Daughter, Miller's Son, and A Fever of the Mad.
       How time flies.
       Today his youngest nephew, Joe, is undergoing heart valve repair (for the second time) in California. This time it may involve opening his chest instead of going in through the side because of the scar tissue from the procedure some five years ago. His family has gathered around. I wish him, and them, all the best. Joe is now 51. I can recall Joe as a little boy playing entire baseball games all by himself in the back yard in New Jersey when Tom and I would go out to visit. And now 51!
        How time flies.
        That gingko tree behind Tom has not started to turn yellow yet, and here it is almost November! Some years the leaves trickle down over several days. Some years they all let go on the same day, creating a beautiful golden rain that lasts for a couple of hours.
          There must be meaning in that. Or maybe not. Just nature taking its course.