The Family Dines With Friends

Post the (US) holiday food coma (for those so fortunate. it’s a pity people don’t realize two-thirds of what they consume could go to the orphan, the widow, the hungry, the weak, the infirmed…
…but this isn’t the time for preaching…) it’s good to remember the joy we had with good friends gathered around the table.

In my case, that was at the Campbell’s in Middleton, Mass. My family would gather there every year for good food and great stories, a game of Chinese Checkers or Scrabble, perhaps Mrs. Stockton would play the piano and play for us.

I didn’t know at the time that Al Campbell and my dad met working in Boston and became friends. It never seemed odd to me that this New Brunswick, Canadian immigrant and my first-generation Italian-American father would hit it off.

Years later Al, who was heavy for as long as I knew him, lost an amazing amount of weight. I didn’t know if it was health or something else. Blanche, his wife, was also a large woman and lost some but not all of her weight.

Mrs. Stockton, Al’s mother, once confided that Al and Blanche would never have children because they were cousins.

My mother understood. I, somewhere between five and nine years old at the time, didn’t.

One day Blanche called us to let us know Al had left her for some woman in northern Maine. How he met her, I don’t know.

Blanche received a letter (handwritten. ah, those were the days) from Al asking her to box up some of his things and to leave them somewhere he could get them.

She did. Being Blanche, she also included an apple pie. Al loved apple pie.

Years later she received another letter from Al telling her how much he treasured that pie. It was one of the kindest things anyone’d done for him in years, he wrote.

My mother made sure we – especially my father – knew the woman Al “shacked up with” beat him regularly, as did her two sons, and that he had to eat that pie in the outhouse because the woman, if she’d known he got it, would’ve taken it from him and beat him all the more.

My mother made sure my father knew this because (as I found out much later) what brought Al and my father together wasn’t work, it was whoring.

Al, according to mom, even hit on her once. While she was pregnant, too! Oh my!

Such are family stories.

Blanche and Mrs. Stockton were good Christian women. Years later I studied biblical matters and they invited me over for dinner. I hadn’t seen them in years.

They were still Blanche and Mrs. Stockton, still knew how to cook, still gracious and kind people.

I would like to say I stayed in touch with them, but I didn’t. My path took me elsewhere.

Way elsewhere.

I hope their Christian belief brought them peace.

And meanwhile, the family dines with friends.

Enjoy.

 

Hey, Sailor! Want to Get Lucky?

Following up on last week’s closing line of “Actions speak louder than words”, we have an…umm…display.

Yeah, that’s right.

A display.

A display of…how to get things done.

I don’t often catch The Wild offering such demonstrations. I definitely don’t go looking for it.

And in some cases, being around when it occurs in The Wild can be downright dangerous.

But how dangerous can bunnies be?

And any who answer “None at all” have never ventured to Caerbannog

 

Once Best of Friends

Keeping up my credos in cultural anthro/folklore/myth society, I note I anthropomorphize The Wild.

Well Excu-use me!

(extra points for any readers who know that reference)

Folklore and Myth anthropomorphize The Wild to teach lessons, offer morality plays, share spiritual meaning, et cetera.

It’s much safer to do so using The Old Ones than to blatantly attribute bad behaviors – idiocy, greed, malice, avarice, and so on – to the individuals still living and still in power.

Doing so often results in a shortened tenure upon the planet.

Interestingly, the only individual who could safely (okay, somewhat safely) get away with doing so is what many cultures recognize as the Sacred Clown.

The Sacred Clown’s primary role was to speak truth to power and they often did so with humor. Many of today’s comedians share that they told jokes as children because they rapidly learned the bullies couldn’t hit you if they were laughing hard.

Sacred Clowns exist throughout history. George Carlin was one. Mort Sahl was another. Down through time they were Jesters, circus performers, thespians, and interestingly they tended to be people either intentionally or by self-design on the outskirts of society.

Better to observe from such positions, don’t you think?

So here we have two Rabbits, perhaps once best of friends, now not talking to each other.

Who know who slighted who, either real or imaginary.

And as that’s an anthropomorphization, I suspect imaginary.

How about you? What do you think?

 

Sylvester and Sylvestet

It’s been a while since we shared the lives, loves, and liberties of our backyard Rabbits.

Not for lack of rabbits, I assure you.

My home state…did an interesting thing a while back.

They brought in several tens of thousands of rabbits and let them loose. Estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000.

Sometimes I wonder if they let them loose in our backyard. A friend woke up to find twenty in his front yard merrily munching on his grass.

I offered, “At least you don’t have to mow now.”

He didn’t smile.

I wonder if my home state understood bringing that many rabbits into the state would cause predators to come in, as well.

Because that’s happened. Bear, bobcat, wolf, hawk, owl, and eagle are definitely aloft more often than before.

We see their signs even if we don’t see them.

And whenever we see their signs, we are amazed because, having no social media accounts, they get their messages out.

Two-Legs had that ability, too.

But that was long ago.

 

Bunnies

What goes around comes around.

In this case, a video made in April 2022 of bunnies.

Sorry, didn’t mean to offend…

Rabbits.

I wonder if there’s a woke community among The Wild.

Do Rabbits take offense if they’re called Bunnies?

I can understand any creature’s umbrage at being called vermin, nuisance, pest, …

I also understand the tone one says such things in plays a role.

For example, I often call our dog, Boo, “You scurvy creathure.” (spelling intentional).

I always reference him thus to his face and often when giving him a treat or petting him or brushing him.

Or drying him if we walk in the rain.

Sometimes he responds with, “You, Two-Legs. You got hands? Scratch here.” or “You, with the hands, rub me here.”

I take no offense.

There doesn’t seem to be prejudice or bigotry in The Wild, either.

There’s territory, true, but even so usually only around minimal resources – food, for example.

And in a world where the US alone produces enough grain to feed the world seven times over, should anything like that exist?