Summer is approaching. Daytime temperatures indoors are now consistently over 80. So begins our five months of blistering hot days.
Bell Road & 19th Avenue
This photo was the safest to take in a neighborhood, giving way to squalor, without me intruding on someone’s temporary roadside home. I had walked down the block while getting a flat tire replaced, to a branch of my bank to make a deposit, to the only branch I have been to that has bulletproof glass between the tellers and customers. The teller helping me laughed at my apprehension of the people sleeping next door around an abandoned building and told me I should see the Friday night drive-through hookers if I wanted to see a sight – nice.
Lani
This is Lani Randall, a dear friend for more than ten years. This evening, we joined Lani for dinner at a favorite place of hers, The Tonto Bar & Grill in Cave Creek, Arizona. Lani is the lady who supplied Caroline and me with our beautiful Navajo-designed intertwining feather wedding bands. Her company is called Rocking Horse Ranch, and her website can be found at www.indianjewelry.com. Caroline has recently been working on her website, making some improvements and ensuring that Lani’s site stays up to date.
Thanks for everything, Lani – Caroline and I are so very happy to know you.
May Day
Today is May Day, and more than 5.9 Billion other people on the planet know that, but here in America, May Day means nothing. May 1st is the day of the working class. American workers do not consider themselves working class; if, in fact, they are, they latch onto being middle class, even when poor, unemployed, or disaffected.
This day is celebrated as the day the working class won the struggle for the eight-hour day. While this day was born through labor disputes, the end of slavery, and the Civil War here in America when in 1872 workers won the right to work only eight hours, it is the empowerment of labor that smacks of Communism, and so May Day in the United States is more a Socialist event than a reason for any type of celebration.
Instead, America is waiting for the now more famous Cinco De Mayo or May 5th when it’s time to hit the Mexican restaurants to get drunk like on St Patrick’s Day. The day could just as well be referred to as Margarita Day. That this upcoming Mexican day of observance for the conquest of Mexican forces over the French in a battle on May 5th, 1862, is of no consequence to us party people.
Oh, and St Patrick’s Day, or “Get Smashed While Wearing Green Day,” is a Roman Catholic feast day celebrating Saint Patrick of Ireland who lived from 387 to 461 – what are we drinking for here?