Flowers and Sweat

This will be short. I'm scheduled to get a haircut in 20 minutes. Ernie at Ernie's Barber Shop and Self-storage place has become a good friend and he does it for half price for SOOPers. I said to Agnes that I'm missing the most homey of things, for instance, getting a haircut in Sharryl's kitchen on a Saturday morning. I also miss morning coffee at the Hotel. Well, in two weeks we should be in Northern Arizona on our way home, scheduled to arrive on or about April 1.

I did 18 holes with D. and E. yesterday and given the hilly nature of the course, the temperature (+25C) and the extremely dry air, I was exhausted after we were done. E. and I are both 65 and he and his wife have bicycled across the USA and are preparing to bicycle the entire freedom trail from Mobile, Alabama to Owen Sound, Ontario in a few months. D. is ten years older than I and he carries his clubs! All of this to tell myself and others that although I thought I was in pretty good shape, it all depends on whom you compare yourself to. (Pardon the sentence-ending preposition.) At any rate, we have plenty of incentive to walk here in the desert, and we've been doing as much of it as we can.

In the NM news, an 11 year-old boy appeared in an Albuquerque school a few days ago with a motorcycle gang symbol cut into his hair at the back. Big news. The principal said he would have to study in a room by himself - until he had removed the offending symbol- for his own safety. The principal thought someone less tolerant than he might take exception and do the boy some harm. The boy's mother was not impressed with the principal and said her son would probably remove the symbol, but she had no idea what he would substitute for it. Can child rearing and educating get any wimpier than that? I thought. It was, however, a break from the usual news here in the deep south. Murders, kidnappings and abuse seem to be regular lead items, and one gets tired of that.

An update on something I wrote about earlier: The legislature in NM has approved the bill to ban cock fighting and it only remains for Governor Bill Richardson to sign it. All indications are that he will do this. That leaves only Mississippi as a state that seems happily to remain esconced in the dark ages as regards this despicable "sport."

We're well and enjoying a weekend off. Hope you're all doing likewise, and God bless you all.