APRIL THE TWELFTH

(Family photo 8 December 2012, taken by Win Farrell)

Only one feeder now still with seed on it, and a muscular young skwirl is standing on tippy-toe to rake small amounts out as breakfast. House sparrows queue on the railing with feathery irritation.

Scout insists a glowing screen viewed around an immovable feline silhouette is an enhanced experience, not a problem.

12 hours on Levaquin. Antibiotics have saved my ass more times than I can count.

Today a drunken soil conservationist named Edmund Ruffin was coaxed by his hothead South Carolina secessionist shithead friends to begin firing on Fort Sumter, and thus hostilities were begun which would kill 620,000 people. The good news is that brilliant African-Americans would be able to wrest an end to slavery from the ensuing years.

During the late 1970s, I worked intimately with a woman, in the Pleiades, to stop the legacy of child sexual abuse in this country, an effort which succeeded beyond what is generally credited or understood. We too, those of us in that group, worked in chaos against entrenched "reality". It turns out, she was the direct descendant of Edmund Ruffin. She said he died full of grief and bitterness over what he had done. Not all action is noble; male anger and fear seldom produces a positive result, and that's a fact.

According to the Writer's Almanac, it was also on this day in 1633 that Galileo Galilei was put on trial by the Inquisition, for supporting the theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. Yeah, there was white boy justice in action.

In quite different news: Happy third anniversary to the woman of my dreams, Margot. Still can't quite believe my luck in gaining your love.

Let's get this weekend rolling.