♫A time to build up, a time to Knox down....♫

[captainsblog]

That sums up the weekend, and to some extent other news we've gotten about the world.

Eleanor's been feeling much better physically of late. Some was getting her quarterly cortisone shot in her knee at the beginning of last week, and some is the cooperative weather, which was cool and gorgeous both weekend days.  About her only ailment from two straight gardening days was a condition that is essentially sunburn on the corneas- and, having had the cataracts removed a few years back, it's really noticeable. It was also much better by today, and just being sure to stay sunglassed the whole time outside ought to do it.

This was her Saturday project:



That effort went on before and while I was out running assorted errands; at some point, I heard a loud hum that turned out to be the chain saw, and down came Big Branch.  It's something she wouldn't have been able to even consider doing last summer, and I'm not sure if I would have had the expertise to help then. 

While she was doing that, I was trying to put Humpty the Mower back together again:



Our five-year-old electric has suffered some damage- most recently, the metal handle on the left side, which connects to the mower unit itself, snapped neatly in half right at the base of the thing. Now, understand: SHE's the one who knows how to Really Fix Things, if in fact they can be. I'm more of a "There, I Fixed It" kinda guy, inspired by my dear departed and totally clueless mother who once tried repairing a rip in a leather bicycle seat by putting scotch tape over it.  So naturally, my first choice was duct tape, which did precisely squat. Next, I engineered a simpler kludge, of merely sliding the broken part of the handle into a different place where tension would hold it in. This held up surprisingly well for a couple of weeks, but before I even got clear of the garage wall this time, it clearly had lost its tension and popped out three times in the first couple of minutes.

Ah, but that garage holds the other two elixirs of repair life in the world besides duct tape: WD-40, useless here, and bungee cords. A twist, a turn, a double over, and voila! I give it a bare-passing C-minus for holding the handle completely in place, but in terms of making the thing steerable even when it partially pops out, it's kicking a solid B-plus. I'm still gonna get the damn thing fixed, but props to me for figuring this out for the time being.

By Sunday morning, I was back in my usual mode of destroying stuff on purpose.  During the Saturday afternoon mow, I noticed assorted growths in need of death, cleverly marked by Eleanor in blue spray paint so I don't accidentally kill wanted things.  Most took merely a shovel to dig up, but one sapling resisted uprooting because of it being rooted by something about the circumference of a tank gun.  She asked me to take another crack at it, so I did: further shoveling confirmed, We're gonna need a bigger boat. Yet within half an hour, with the addition of a hand saw, two cutters and elbow grease added, it saps no more:



I presented that to my beloved as her Sunday afternoon bouquet. She couldn't have been more pleased.

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For the weekend's passive activity, Pepper and I joined our usual paw patrol, as well as a coworker who lives south of here, for a visit to a new-to-us dog park within a much larger state park:



That's Knox as in the Marine Midland Knoxes, the Buffalo Sabres Knoxes and the Albright-Knox Knoxes.  All of those institutions were founded squarely within the City of Buffalo, but this palatial estate sits about 20 miles to the southwest. You exit the 400 at Jamison Road, pass any number of MAGA monuments of the backwoods people, and there, just outside the village of East Aurora, is the former family manse, now a state park.



The gates awaited us; Lurch apparently got the day off.  A slow road took you to a small parking lot across from the Main House (mainly old money, from the look of it):



Now reserved for weddings and such events (or will be someday again), we merely walked by and met up with Michelle and her cockapoo, who I'd met once at the office but Pepper never had.  It was finally my chance to yell the essential greeting:



STELLLLLLAAAAAAA!!!!

Michelle had lost an older dog not long before we lost Ebony two years ago, and I even put her in touch with Pepper's foster before we made the decision to bring her home forever. But a bit over a year ago, Stella came to them; she's about full size now, full of energy and, like Pepper, intimidated to death by the two cats in her house.  They were the old pros in this park and they showed us to all the cool places: plenty of trails, barnyards to sniff around, and within the Big Park, a dedicated off-leash Parp!

In terms of square footage, it's not too different from where we usually went until the COVIDiocy of the previous weekend; the difference is that this dog park uses all of its area, whereas Ellicott Island essentially keeps you on or just off "the loop" path that goes a half mile or so round its outer rim.  There were more masked people here, and it was much easier to keep social-distanced from those choosing not to be. Most of the groups of people were four abreast and under.  And far as I know, nobody called me an asshole for taking a picture in their general vicinity.

Pepper was happy.



And leave it to Jake, who I pulled out of a drainage ditch last month, to find the only mud puddle on the whole 633 acre estate and roll in it up to his hips again:



Three guesses what Mommy spent the afternoon doing with HIM.

With the longer drive, it was a whole morning devoted, but we will likely be back there rather than our usual stop as long as this disease continues to haunt us.

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Other diseases seem to be fading, although not without a fight.

The Supreme Court today upheld the employment rights of LGBTQ people under existing discrimination statutes.  The usual four Democrats were joined in the ruling by 43 appointee Roberts and by 45's first appointee Gorsuch.  They also turned away a number of opportunities to gut various gun control laws.

Yet work remains to be done, as these weeks of protest and incremental change have constantly reminded us.  Today, that reminder became personal.  As I was getting ready for work today, Eleanor commented to me about something related to the current state of race relations in the Commonwealth of Virginia- a state now governed by Democrats in its Guv's mansion and Lej's halls, and one that, since 2018, has been home to our daughter and her long-time mixed-race boyfriend. I told her I was totally not surprised by the backwardness reflected in and about that state. Then I brought this out, to show her why I felt that way:

Sometimes I'll joke about some person or happening and say, "Come on, I've got underwear older than that!" Well. Pictured above is the cap I acquired at my first-ever Mets game in 1967. It's taken on some age and even a little paint, but I still have it. On the fair assumption that it sat on a Shea Stadium concession-stand shelf for at least a few months of the 1967 season, I can say this: that cap is older than Loving v. Virginia, the landmark SCOTUS decision that decriminalized interracial marriage in that very state 53 years ago last Friday. Without which, Emily and her BF would now be committing a crime. And the legacy of which was moved forward in today's SCOTUS decision on LGBTQ rights, but not to all areas of discrimination and not in nearly enough hearts and minds.

Someday, I pray, these sentiments will be even more "old hat" than this.