Columns

May is almost over, marking another month that will soon be finished and gone.

Summer’s here. The passing solstice a week ago made it official—though given the sweltering weather which preceded this invisible astronomical milestone, many of us would argue the season had already arrived early.

Decades ago, an elderly hill-country stream fisherman named Raleigh Cantrell shared something which has proven more insightful with each passing year.

On a recent morning, I happened to be checking out a certain pool on Greenville Creek when I came across a pair of mulberry trees loaded with ripe fruits.

Fifty years ago, in January of 1971, the Marvin Gaye song “What’s Going On” was released as a single. In May of that year, the album with the same name came out.

Excitement reigns high these days and the questions are endless:

Hello from Gloria’s mom’s front porch. It’s a beautiful day to relax at my little patio table, with a cup of coffee in my favorite mug. It’s a “sisters “mug, and yes, of course, it comes from one of my two sisters. They both live 400 miles from here. Daniel, Gloria, and their flock of six children are spending a week in Danville, Ohio, with “Ohio Dawdys” (grandpas)

I put Hosanna and Joshua in our single stroller, and I headed out the lane. We were going to the neighbors for a quilting. I’ll stop at the mailbox and grab the mail on my way, I told myself. Opening the mailbox, I was delighted to see a letter from a very dear friend and reader, Mrs. Weber from Cincinnati, Ohio.”

A very experienced traveler whose advice I cherish once let loose with this pearl…”Under no circumstances go through Chicago.” Apparently I needed not only to cherish the advice but to heed it because I went through Chicago and it ate my iPad. In the never-ending search for the fine balance between an airline with cheap fares and an airline that has a reasonable maintenance reputation, I ended up in the very windy city. To rationalize my decision, I went to Midway airport, not O’Hare. It’s possible Amelia Earhart isn’t really lost. She’s still in a holding pattern over O’Hare waiting for a gate to open up.

My computer, which still isn’t speaking to my phone, is more reluctant to obey than ever. I feel like the parent who brought a sinless babe into the world, nurtured it, loved it, cared for it, attended to its every need only to see the kid end up a serial killer. While my computer has not, technically, murdered many people, it is on the cusp of killing me from sheer frustration. It performs most tasks acceptably well. Not really stellar, you understand, and certainly at its own snail-like pace, but I harbor a smidgeon of hopefulness that it will eventually do what I want it to do. Except retain all five hundred eighty songs on iTunes. I fully realize that by even using the phrase iTunes I am hopelessly dating myself. It is also of note that my computer, a PC, refuses to autocorrect iTunes to iTunes. Can’t we all just get along?