*Had planned a visit to the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s fish hatchery, on the Mokelumne River northeast of Stockton. But other stuff intervened. We got up late and indulged in our long Saturday morning dog-walk routine. We were due in Fair Oaks, out at the very edge of the foothills on the American River east of Sacramento, to read poetry with friends early in the evening (the picture: dinner before the reading began). So the hatchery never happened.
**And then yesterday, I thought I might make an early start to beat the heat of the day and get out to that hatchery early. But we slept in, did our Sunday dog-walk routine, which is different from Saturday’s, and found a football game on the tube (flat screen, actually) when we got home. We were due in the afternoon at a memorial for a friend who died this summer. I thought maybe I’d finish some take-home work from my Public Radio Job, too. Well, we made it to the memorial, anyway. Maybe the hatchery will happen next week. I’ll be taking the take-home work back to the office.
***Birthdays: Saturday, my brother John (who’s now reached the Double Nickel). (I meant to call.) Sunday, my niece Maddie. (I meant to send something out there, though belated gifts are good, too.) Today, Niko Danko, who I remember seeing the first weekend he was here on planet Earth. That was in 1999. Hard to believe the time has gone so fast. (See note about belated gifts.) Tomorrow — my late identical-twin uncles, Tom and Ed, born in 1934. Still missed.
****You have got to love a poem that starts:
“my grandmother had a serious gas
problem.”
It’s from Charles Bukowksi, here. We did not read this on Saturday night.
*****You also have to love a poem, also from The Writer’s Almanac, that compares the travails of modern office life with a Homeric bloodbath.
“…I too have come home in a bad mood.
Yesterday, for instance, after the department meeting,
when I ended up losing my choice parking spot
behind the library to the new provost.I slammed the door. I threw down my book bag
in this particular way I have perfected over the years
that lets my wife understand
the contempt I have for my enemies,
which is prodigious. And then with great skill
she built a gin and tonic
that would have pleased the very gods,
and with epic patience she listened
as I told her of my wrath, and of what I intended to do
to so-and-so, and also to what’s-his-name.