Go Outside!

We went out.  Then we parroted  the same command she often uses on a few friends who tend to keep working doggedly on nice days, "Go outside!"  We wanted her to see that the hollyhock had some new buds. She was indeed impressed.

Blank Books and Seeds

It was sunny today! Yes, we spent most of the day inside, wishing the keeper would come to her senses and come home while the sun was still out.  She did! We may have reached a new point in mind control. She was carrying a small brown bag full of new seeds which we will begin sowing indoors with heat mats. Then she opened her mail to find a box with the new journals she ordered in spring colors. She was gleeful with such potent little signs of life.  We shared her glee and then asked for treats and to go outside.

Neither Silver Nor Gold

Valentines Day is not a  big thing at the cottage, even for the felines. We think the keeper is a bit jaded. But she says it is too hard of a day for too many people, many of whom she works with, helping them heal painfully broken hearts. She says few people win on this day, and they are the jewelers and the florists and the other purveyors of that hope which can really not be purchased.

But today, we caught her in a less jaded moment. The mail came, carrying a battered, lumpy envelope from the Tacoma Detention Center. It was from the young man she has worked with for the last six years and whom she has been accompanying through his two months in detention. On a crumpled piece of paper was a thank you to her for having believed in him and a wish for a Happy Valentine's Day.  He enclosed a rosary he had made as a small token of gratitude and promised many prayers in the future.

Our feline intuition tells that this meant the world to her.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Love makes people believe in

immortality because there

seems not to be room 

enough in life

for so great 

a tenderness.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Immortal Diamond

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-

Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,

Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.

Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare

Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches

Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches

Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there

Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.

But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark

Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!

Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark

Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone

Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark

                            Is any of him at all so stark

But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,

A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.

                            Across my foundering deck shone

A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash

Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:

                            In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

                            Is immortal diamond.

                                                                                                   GMH

State of the Union

The keeper turned on the State of Union and we watched and listened to it through her experience of today at the Tacoma Detention Center. She would like to invite the President to spend just one Sunday with her  listening to families' tales of immigration woes; she would like the President to see what is happening in the ICE Detention Centers. We chanted with her, "Si, si puede!" as the President spoke about citizenship.  It is clear, even from our limited perspective that we need comprehensive immigration reform now! In some ways Alice and I have a better standard of living and more respect than many of the undocumented immigrants in this country. What's wrong with that picture?

Mardi Grey

 Today was Mardi Gras.  Alice and I had a lovely time.  We slept and ate cat treats. However, the keeper had a less festive day.  She left us for Tacoma where one of the young adults had a deportation hearing. She arrived to hear that they moved him up on the docket and that he had already received  his deportation order. The guard was kind and let them speak in the hallway as he was led to his cell. He will leave next week for a country he barely knows. The judge allowed him to accept new clothes so he could return to his native land with "some shred of dignity."  Now people are helping him find shelter in Tijuana when he arrives. He was not allowed to sign a voluntary departure form.  Most likely he will never be able to return legally to our country.  The keeper was quite upset to learn this. She is even readier for Lent than she was yesterday.