A Death in the Family

I started to work on the blog a couple of hours earlier than the first post went up… that’s because my daughter Cassandra called me from Connecticut to tell me that Penny, my daughter in nearby Williamsport, Maryland, was hysterical.

Her family’s dog, Moose, had been found dead in his little fenced yard this morning.

This had not been expected… Moose was a seemingly healthy, 6-year-old golden retriever that the whole family was fond of. I had just been playing with him on Easter Sunday, playing catch with a tennis ball. He was full of energy and loved playing.

Penny told me her two older sons (John – who had found Moose this morning – and Jason) went off to school crying this morning. Jacob, the youngest, made sure to tell me that “Moosie is dead” as soon as I got to Penny’s house.

Elly drove over from her shopping trip this morning and we all expressed our feelings for Moose, who would be sent to the Vet this afternoon for cremation.

It’s amazing how close you get to a dog. When I came home I spent some time petting Byron and Nestle – someday this will happen to them, too.

Happy Easter, Good Passover, Great Secular Week…

There, is everyone covered?

Here’s Fred Astaire and Judy Garland singing the great Easter song “Easter Parade” by composer Irving Berlin. Berlin, of course, is the great Jewish musician known for the greatest songs of Christian holidays: ‘Easter Parade’ and ‘White Christmas.’ I’ve always seen this as a sublime irony.

And tomorrow it all begins again.

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Easter… I’m over at my daughter’s house…

Both my daughters, Cassandra and Penny, are at Penny’s house for Easter with all my grandsons. So that’s where I am this morning.

I’m on Penny’s Mac and she uses Safari which I can never really get used to (I’m a Firefox guy)… I started on her iPad, but since I use a lot of  Adobe’s Flash on my blog, the Home

Page won’t even come up.  Anyway, here I am stumbling my way through.

We’re all going over to Blue Moon for lunch, then Cassandra, Matthew, and my grandson, Milo, are heading back on the 4-hour drive to Connecticut. Milo has school tomorrow and they need to get back early enough so he gets some sleep tonite.

Elly and I, of course, don’t really celebrate Easter, being certified non-believers, but seeing the kids ransack their Easter baskets is a treat. I grew up in the Easter season when mu father sold Easter baskets in his drugstore and we set up at home for about a month making them… filling them with candy and a big chocolate rabbit in the middle, then putting colored cellophane and a bow on them. What I remember most, heh heh, was sneaking into the dining room where we made the baskets, and taking candies from the stacks and stacks of boxes we got from the distributor. And there was a HUGE box of loose jellybeans… my favorite… to grab a handful from.

I look at that now from my position as an aging diabetic and realize that I’ve gotten my just reward.

I’ll be back later to update the blog.

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Gracie Slick interviews Frank Zappa…

… sometime in the early 80’s.

– and –

Frank Zappa on London’s Newsnight in 1983

… and for today’s Zappadan music, here’s Frank on lead guitar with full orchestra in 1988 doing Watermelon In Easter Hay

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