Scissors, please

A gruesome site greeted me when tending the garden after being gone for a week of family vacation.  Sure, there were the typical weeds and such, no big deal, just hands and knees stuff.  But what gave me a drop-shoulder-roll-eyes kind of pause was the leftover feathered carcass of a bird that had obviously been trying to pilfer my blackberries, but had gotten entangled in the netting.

Not a pretty site.  Not a happy ending.  (I will spare any readers a photo.)  I mean, he was, after all, just trying to get something to eat, doing what birds do naturally.  It’s not like I could put up a “No Trespassing” sign, although my dad suggested I could hang up some brightly colored ribbons.  That could help them at least see the netting, but the berries are just so inviting, I’m not sure it would divert them enough.

Is your religion a rabbit’s foot?

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, is a truly beautiful place, inside and out.  I love the antiquities area, as you can walk through ancient Egypt and gawk at the real-live (pardon the pun) mummy.  I especially appreciate the artwork from the days of the early church.  In one glassed-in case resides a “reliquary”, a silver ornate depository of some sainted person’s finger bone, or so they say.  Who “they” are, I’m not sure.  Evidently, there was supposedly something special about the bones of any saint so-and-so, and to have one was quite a boon back in the day, a bit higher on the scale than, say, a rabbit’s foot.

Mark Twain makes a point in one of his books that, in

Inquiring minds want to know…sometimes.

I like that truism from years past: “My mind’s made up; don’t confuse me with facts.”  It really is a great example of truth-seeking versus self-seeking, because let’s face it, truth can be downright painful! 

But then, so is a surgeon’s knife…

At this writing, I’m coming upon the one-year anniversary of my emergency appendectomy.  We were on vacation with Bob’s whole family (and ours!) in a house ten thousand feet up the mountain in another state.  Having “caught” a few of these cases through my office as a school nurse, I was certain that it was not my appendix, and I should know, right?

I have since adapted Tony Bennett’s immortal tune to read I Left My Appendix in Cedar City, Utah. (Doesn’t have quite the same crooner style to it.)

I was dumbfounded, completely