Talk of Many Things

It is, in the States, Memorial Day weekend. We went to the cemeteries when I was a kid, and usually attended some Memorial of War victims event. Now, it's a capitalist holiday. The tourist traffic started on Friday morning. As I sat in my wheelchair waiting for the taxi to go see my doctor, many New Yorkers gawked at me. People do tend to gawk at people in wheelchairs, but NYers seem utterly surprised at seeing wheelies when they're here for a vacation. As though Vermont is a place where noone has troubles; as if we're all purple- and- turquoise- wearing, secretly rich, well-educated and perfectly healthy Kennedy clones! Little do they know I'm a transplanted Brooklyn girl. Though I sit there in a khaki dress with LLBean topsiders and no makeup, I am, and always will be, a New Yorker. You don't qualify as a Vermonter until you have at least 4 gens whose family stories are known by everyone else who's been born here. So much and sorry for blowing their snowglobe illusions.

Anyway, traffic is hell in town with all the added SUVs from the cities and will get worse as next weekend is the annual Strolling of the Heifers. I worked on the first one; it was a simple and fun Dairy festival with children leading heifers from their family farms and 4H projects up Main St to the Commons where cheeses and other lactose products were eaten. Now it's grown to a huge 5 day marathon of politics, commercialism and exhibitionism and I don't even go downstairs to watch it. The sidewalks are crowded as 5th Ave on St Pat's Day and I never loved those kinds of crowds. Why does everything have to turn into a big hairy deal?

In other events, there were 2 huge volcanic eruptions in Central and South America on Friday, but no news service is reporting. Friday night I logged online when a friend was here and that was the leading news story online- and we surfed thru all the 24 hour TV news channels and found nothing. Not to be deterred, and smelling a rat, I looked up all the volcanic eruptions around the equatorial area since BP's fuck up, and saw these just from the last week:

May 20th Costa Rica- Turrialba volcano rumbles
May 22nd West Indies- 3 volcanic, tectonic earthquakes in 1 week
May 26th Costa Rica-Arenal volcano rumbles, weak emissions
May 27th Colombia- Nevado del Huila volcano SO2 emissions & 3.8 earthquake
May 28th Mexico- 8 exhalations in 24 hours
Ecuador- 2 volcanoes erupt, spewing ash and rocks, some lava
Guatemala- Fuego volcano, 8 weak and moderate explosions
Santa Maria volcano, 14 explosions

Is it related? I don't know. But with all that oil spewing out, it's emptying something underneath, and every effect has a cause.

Today is my mom's best friend's birthday. Rosa Belfiore Albicocco is a young 70-something and I'm very glad she's still with us. I've known her since I was 13 and she's a surrogate mom to me, a mom and grandma and greatgrandma to many, and a truly lovely human. So Happy Birthday, Rosa.

It's also my Nana's 138th birthday; though we can't give her her favorite ice cream cake, we still remember.

And finally, it's been 6+ months since I got rid of wireless phones in my life. Though I now have a tracphone to take with when I'm in the wheelchair & outside, I don't use it. All the nodes on the left side of my neck are flat, the swelling on my clavicle has receded and now moved closer to the base of my neck. I don't miss wireless; my old rotary phone makes me smile, and has made changes that rippled. Being tethered has restored some manners, and I'm glad for that.

Here's a nice Memorial Day tribute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcbaDEjfL_E

And for cemetery fans, here's a video of the Greenwood Cemetery, where my family reposes:
http://www.thirteen.org/thecityconcealed/video/tombs-catacombs-of-green-wood-cemetery