Friday 22 November 2013

Saving Birds and Remembering

I wanted to show you this view from my living room bow window taken yesterday.  There are 2 cm of snow forecast for tomorrow and this is probably the last sight of the lawn till next spring.  Those foil twirly things (I'm not sure of their name) hanging in front of each pane are there to prevent the birds from bumping into the windows.  Last year I tried hanging old cd's on strings but keeping them in place was a problem and also they were very noisy banging around when there was any wind.  I spied these in the dollar store for $2 each and realized their potential; I now have a summer season done and they worked perfectly. They are very light so make little noise and best of all... not one bird lost from banging into a window.
If I told you the following...I was 12 years old and my friend and I had gone into the drug store on our way home after school.  There was an old fashioned hard ice cream counter there and she got a chocolate cone and I decided on a strawberry one.  We'd just gotten in our first licks when a man rushed into the store and shouted to everyone the most shocking news.  President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas. Everyone seemed stunned.  You know what?  We didn't believe him and all the rest of the walk home  we discussed if such a thing was even possible; no we firmly decided what with all those police for protection and how much President Kennedy was loved (certainly by us Canadians) so what that man had said couldn't be true just some form of hoax or misunderstanding.  It wasn't till I arrived home to find my mother in front of the t.v. crying that I knew; it was true.  Amazingly, horribly true.
So here we are all these years past that truly innocent time, when such an act was simple unbelievable. 
Cicero said the life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.  And we are still remembering ...as we should.

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