Old Kelsey had a blood test a few weeks ago as part of his annual check-up. The results came back with an ominous imbalance, which was confirmed in a re-test.
The most likely cause (but not the only possible cause) of the particular abnormalities is cancer of a variety of forms. His vet arranged for ultrasound testing in addition to full-body x-rays.
Waiting for results.
Those tests were carried out yesterday, and the results came back clean: no evidence of cancer, no tumors. We slept well for the first time in a while last night.
What is causing the abnormalities is still unknown, but the remaining possibilities are all imps to cancer's dragon. The imps are easier to deal with than the dragon if we know one's there this early, before it actually becomes visible.
Ultimately, of course, news will arrive that is not so good, for Kelsey, or for me, or for you. But not this time, not today.
We have been granted more good moments to live in, and we intend to take advantage of them as best we can. He knows how to do it.
We're busily committing our dollars to our summer's visit to the island.
Birr, in particular, in a county nobody's heard of -- Offaly -- to be visited by a guy from a county nobody's heard of, either -- Chenango, in New York state.
So, today we reserved our car for a month, and sent out e-mails to people we want to see and talk to again (after our short stay there four years ago).
As part of that, we checked into what little Edmund, son of the Enrights of Enrights' pub in Birr, was up to.
Seems to be doing okay, he does:
Most of my efforts concerning meeting folks in Ireland this coming August are now concerned with astronomy-type stuff, not necessarily interesting to SherWords readers (except Brian, maybe), but seeing "Mundy" is high on our list of hoped-fors!
SherWords almost never gets political. Lord knows, the blogosphere has plenty of outlets for that sort of stuff. This venue is for other things, usually.
But once in a while, political things become just too damn overwhelming to ignore, and today is one of those times.
We are squirming now in a time when our federal politicians are locked in a "partisan" (read: tribal) battle so polarized that a man of massively-verifiable patriotism and honor is called a "nigger" and is spat upon, that congressmen's relatives are targeted with threats of violence, and that a national political figure can "target" foes on her website with gunsight crosshairs without censure from those who might benefit from her excess.
We are, in short, in a political time of grade-school intellect armed with automatic weapons.
We are also in a time of blind hatred of those who have reasoned opinions that are different from ours. For those of us who have been alive for more than six decades, that mix of attitudes and approaches is frighteningly familiar.
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When I was in college in the 1960's, Eric Andersen was a musical icon right up there with Bob Dylan. I remember with sharp brilliance his "Today Is the Highway" wafting from dormitory windows in the spring of '66 -- but he sort of submerged after that spring of thirsty boots.
He went his way, and I went mine.
Three decades later, I re-discovered him. His career had been a middling one in the interim, but his life had proceeded in its own unscripted way, primarily in Europe. There, he had witnessed, with an American perspective, the insidious and virulent ways in which hatred can recapture its past triumphs. He wrote a number of songs that attempted to rip the masks of respect from hate.
And this is the most powerful of them, I think:
Lyrics:
The rain falls down in Amsterdam the streets are wet and black Midnights like November by the glow of a cigarette.
The girls on hash in station square looking stupid from the drugs. When Marlene heard the boots march there were reasons to be dumb. Shiny helmets in the shadows, Those trains that left at night, Those hiding in the cellars, those eyes afraid of light.
Something 'neath the border's poured poison in the well; The creature has uncoiled and is crawling up from hell.
Here comes 1914, 1932. Those cattle cars and yellow stars...
It's right back to the roots, It's movin' in the open with a snarl and a growl, The cages have been broken and the beast is on the prowl:
Fire bomb those houses, burn those refugees, Be the crowd and do your work Applauding silently.
Round up all the gypsies, Go sell them on the trains.
Can't you smell the smoke now, Drifting through the rain?
Jews, better draw your curtains, You better lock your doors up tight. They're snarling up in Rostock in the beer hall belly nights. The Fourth Reich's coming now baby, They're writing out the page in Rome, Berlin, and Stockholm...
The beast has left the cage.
Here comes 1932, here comes deja vu.
Those cattle cars and yellow stars --
Was there someone that you knew?
It's right there in the open -- somethings smelling bad -- The cages have been broken and the beast is a running mad -- Those canals and cozy houses, Those reflections in the light, You can almost feel it moving, The monster in the night.
It's looking with its yellow eyes; It's out to settle scores in the dim medieval distance. Feel it breathing down your pores.
In Salt Lake City and in Rio The beast can smell the flames. It's faxing hate out in Marseilles, typing out your name -- You can hear the windows shatter as the time is drawing near:
Kristall Nacht come to town, Welcome back to the house of mirrors! The fire and the armbands and the iron arm salutes Pointing to the scapegoat: Was it me or was it you?
It's right there in the open -- Don't just stand there hoping -- The leashes have been broken And the dogs are on the loose.
Now I have been here thinking how lucky I have been: I never touched the barbed wire, never saw the money grin, No rifle ever smashed my face, no bare electric shock...
But I'll confess up All I know who I am and who I'm not. To see retired killers is to see the lion yawn. The skinheads do their dirty work for the cloak and dagger pawns, The dark eyes will be waiting there When the borders they are crossed.
So keep your filthy swastikas and shove your iron cross.
Here comes 1914, 1932,
Those cattle cars and yellow stars, It's right back to the roots, It's out there in the open, It's crawling on the move, The cages have been broken and the beast is on the loose.
Can't you smell the blood now, Can't you smell the truth?
Q: What's Irish and gets jumped over by reckless teenagers?
A: Paddy O'Furniture
These photos were taken by my Dad, Lynn Harrington, in the summer of 1962, when I turned 15. The little Gunnison pre-fab house was the box I grew up in, but, to me then, it was a mansion. In the upper-left of the second photo is what I'm sure was Chenango County's finest treehouse at the time.
I'd have a hard time jumping over a thumb drive now.
My son, Adam, is represented in his career as a voice actor by a major talent agency. The agency has a website that, for reasons that I might discuss later in this blog, appears to have been designed to drive visitors, clients, fans, or anybody else far, far away.
Adam @ work.
But they want photos of him now. Of course, they won't pony up for an actual photographer, so they get me instead. (This is a national, big-time agency, folks. You wouldn't know it.)
Part of the reason for wanting photos is that they want to market him for on-screen gigs. He has had a few of those before -- in-house training videos for large companies, mostly -- always as a "heavy," a bad guy.
Heavy heavy. Yes, those arms are real, inherited in part from Art Harrington.
So, last weekend, we got together for some amateur glam-snapping. Here are some out-snaps:
Looks like he's auditioning to fill a vacancy in U2, doesn't he?
Pony tail liberated. Adam says of this shot, "I liked this one at first, but the more I look at it the more I look like a serial killer trying not to look like a serial killer. 'Could you help me move this couch into my van? Mind going in first?'"
The photographer, setting up framing. The camera's remote control is in my right hand, just offscreen.
Tracks of our 2006 Ireland journey -- please click to see larger and legibly.
It's real now.
Today we went down to our local bank branch and had a "foreign bank draft" made out in euros for our summer's stay in the Bothy.
We sent it off to Lady Rosse from the little post office here in Boulder Creek, Santa Cruz Mountains, rural USA, to Birr, County Offaly, rural Ireland.
Right now, that check is probably waiting to be put in the belly of an airplane. Our gleeful anticipations, defying our six-decades' ages, hover around it wherever it is.
We're gonna go, we really, actually, honestly, unbelievably, are gonna go again, really. We never thought we would, but here we go. It's half a year away, but now it would cost more to cancel the journey than it would to complete it. We have now paid for our travel, our boarding, our home's caretaking (God bless you, Adam, from here to purgatory and back again for that last one.) We have also reserved our car.
This trip will be very, very different from the last: I will spend far more time in the archives, for example, and we will sortie around Northern Ireland (especially Armagh), but our home will be, as it would inevitably be, Birr Castle Demesne. This time, unlike 2006, we know what to expect from the Demesne, and we have a history of others' experiences to bolster us, especially those whose creativity has been bolstered as well, as superbly exemplified by Margaret Ryall.
This blog's readership is so small that I can comfortably offer the following: if there is anywere on the island of Ireland that you want a photo from, please let me know right away, so I can fold that in to our itinerary. Mike and Ronnie Peterson, I think I remember that some of your roots are in County Clare -- Lahinch? That would be an easy half-day drive from Birr.
It's been a year today, and still I will often reach for vanilla ice cream at the store before I remember with a sting that he's not here for it. We still, and probably always will, see him in a shadowed corner at the edge of vision, or on the other side of a window.
Oolie, shantih, shantih, shantih.
(With apologies to T. S. Eliot who, at least as Old Possum, would probably understand.)
Over on The Fies Files, Brian Fies recently re-posted an article about the technique of "tilt-shifting" a photograph to make its subject look like a table-top miniature. His re-post was triggered by a current insurance commercial that makes use of that process in video form, and his re-post triggered me to try my hand at it. I'll supply a link to his article at the bottom -- I'd far rather have you see his stuff after you see mine so you're not spoiled before you even start looking at these.
Brian's examples are really superb -- I especially like his one of an amphitheater in Athens -- in part because he takes exquisite care to custom "mask" (designate) the areas of a photo that are to be in focus or not in focus in the end product. For the most part, while fooling around with the process in Photoshop yesterday and today, I used the less-convincing but easier and quicker method that online tutorials (such as this one from "Photo Infos") instruct. Only one of the following tilt-shifted images involved custom masking; can you tell which one it is? Please click on the images to see larger views -- the effect might not even be noticeable at the sizes on this page.
Rambler Marlin, 1965
Seattle Mariners at Oakland Athletics, 2007
Central Park from the Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Center), 1945, from one of my Dad's slides.
Southwestward view from the Top of the Rock, 1945, from another Lynn Harrington slide. The brown building at lower-left is the Paramount building, which is dwarfed by a crowd of bigger buildings from this vantage point today. The blue building at center -- the original McGraw Hill building, an art deco icon built at the same time as the Empire State Building -- is not even visible from the Top of the Rock now!
Early this morning: Ft. Harrington's front walkway as a waterfall.
We've been having a little bit of rain around here.
One of the first things I do most mornings is to trudge up the walkway and steps, through the gate at the top, and retrieve the newspaper from the side of the road.
I didn't have to do that this morning.
The storm drain (mentioned in this recent installment of SherWords) up there had become clogged, turning that part of the road into a pool, which emptied under our gate into the pretty waterfall shown above. When I peeked out the kitchen window this morning -- after the shock of seeing a waterfall where there should have been a static walkway -- I noticed that the stream of water had washed the newspaper (snug and dry in its blue plastic baggie) under the gate, down the stairs, and had deposited it near our front door.
Along with a bunch of other junk.
The convenience of such a delivery was sadly negated by the necessity to dress up in my water-gear, grab a trenching tool, and wade into the road-lake to unclog the drain.
While I was mucking at the drain, one of my neighbors (who will remain nameless here) came out and started chatting with me -- standing, of course, at the edge of the pool. He mentioned that he had seen the situation earlier, and would have unclogged the drain himself, but he didn't have any rubber boots.
Mull that over for a second or two.
He doesn't have any rubber boots.
He lives in the Santa-freakin'-Cruz Mountains, where we get about five feet of rain every winter, and he DOESN'T HAVE ANY RUBBER BOOTS.
Sometimes I think there should be a qualifying test of some kind that people have to take before they live around here -- but then I come to my senses and recognize that the most sensible thing to do is not live here at all. Evidently the Native Americans never lived anywhere along the San Lorenzo Valley. That probably should have told us pale folk something a hundred and fifty years ago.
"Woody" is the cat's name. Make sure to have the sound turned up enough so you can hear the music playing in the background -- it seems to go along perfectly with his expression.
Thanks to Deborah Young-Kroeger for bringing this to my attention via Facebook.
(Note: If you're not family, then this is probably too many snapshots to be of much interest. If you are family, it's probably not enough.)
Guinness observes the tree. Mrs. Fort did her annual wonderful job decorating the living room and kitchen with all manner of warmth for the season. (Speaking of Mrs. Fort, she doesn't much like the way I doctored this image in Photoshop, and you might agree with her if you look at this comparison of the pre- and post-alteration versions.)
Like last year, this year's big gathering was on Christmas Eve at Adrianne and Grace's (and now Adrianne's new fella Ryan's) home. Many more photos from that fete will show up in the album, but I particularly like this one (taken by Adam) because it shows her dad Pat and her brother Corey in the background. Wish you could taste the hors d'oeuvres on the tray.
Grace (left) and her friend Danielle serenaded us with Christmas carols...
... and Grace unintentionally channeled her father, who was also known to do the hair thing while performing:
Doug, performing with Defiance about a quarter of a century ago, complete with flying V and flying hair. (Photos of Grace and Danielle by Adam; photos of Doug courtesy of Jim Adams and Defiance.)
Adams: Jim A. at left, A. Harrington at right. Jim, Mike Kaufmann, and a renewed Defiance recently released their first new album in a while, The Prophecy, which includes a number of tracks written by Doug in his last months.
Diane and I had a leisurely Christmas morning to ourselves -- or as "to ourselves" as anyone ever is in a house with five cats and three dogs. Old Kelsey, a veteran now of a dozen Christmases, waited patiently by the tree for us to use our opposable thumbs to liberate the colorful paper and bows from whatever boring things they were wrapped around.
Fonzie and Cooper spy a brand-new cat-teaser being opened.
Sometimes you play with the toy...
...and sometimes the toy plays with you. Cooper's big, but not especially quick.
Emma asks us to please notice that the floor next to her has no toys or snacks on it because...
... her bratty brother stole them all. Notice that he has also filched a catnip mouse, even. There's a reason he's called "The Prince of All-Mine" around here. (It's actually not such a wonderful personality trait, resource hoarding, and one we have to continually discourage.)
Cooper, in the process of recovering his dignity.
Hope you had a marvelous few days, too! See you in 2010.
Ft. Harrington on Christmas Eve, 2009. Kelsey and Guinness are in the picture because, well... YOU just try taking a picture around here that doesn't include at least one or two furballs.
One of the very few advantages that blogs have over newspapers is that blogs like this can wish their entire readership "Merry Christmas" -- individually! So, here goes, alphabetically:
Adam, Brenda, Brian, Carolyn, Chris, Dann, Demitria, Fred, Jessamyn, Linda, Lucile, Lynda, Margaret, Mary Ellen, Mike, Ronnie, ronniecat, Ruth, and Vicki:
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
ps - if your name is not there, please help me to get over my embarassment by letting me know right away, and I'll fix it.
Everybody's got a family somewhere. Everybody's family is a hiccup in the flow of ordinality. There's normal, and then there's "us", and that dichotomy applies to all of us, always, especially here in the blogosphere.
Here's the most recent salvo in the "we're weirder than you are" contest: another short, masterful video clip from Adam's Uncle Bob:
The above video clip is another in Adam's Uncle Bob's continuing series of alternate-sensibility visuals, some of which have been highlighted here on SherWords before. What makes this one notable for SherWords is the collection of talent: Adam's faux-lingo background, cousin Bill's growling guitar, and, especially, Reva's smooth voice make this a multi-generational and cross-lineage collection that should help braid disparate genetic threads together.
A Satchel of Ordinary Treasure contains accounts of day-to-day life in the early 20th century in Upstate New York. Posts will be taken mostly from family members' reminiscences.
PicShers contains one post and picture for each day of the year from the Harrington images archive. More images from the archive (and current ones) can be found on my Flickr photostream.
Blogs of People (Mostly) Who Have Said Nice Things About Me but are Worth Reading Anyway:
Worried.
Waiting for results.
2002
2004
2005
2009
