Yard work and beer. It's summer in Florida and that's the name of my game. I was enjoying some Sunday night while the steaks cooked on the grill. I heard a whiny buzz off to my right and noticed a bee had gotten himself trapped inside the nightlamp outside Bern's old room. He kept bouncing off the glass, avoiding the light itself. All he had to do was fly downward to escape, but he kept bouncing off the glass. I went inside to get another beer. When I came back he was outside the lamp, but still bouncing off the glass. Couldn't help himself. He had to fly toward the light, even though he didn't know why. He dipped and went up inside and started all over again. This wasn't discipline, but compulsion, a biological fanaticism. A pure Darwinist, he knows only what nature tells him. He can't see the big picture. Bugs are stupid.

A little earlier, as I was putting away the lawnmower, a bird started singing from the roof of the garage. Really singing. No pattern to it. I've never heard such a variety of sounds from a single bird. I didn't see any cats around, just me'n him. "What?" I said. He stopped singing and cocked his head, looking right at me. He started again and flew over to the guava hedge and sat on top of it, still singing up a storm. Then he crawled down inside the hedge, where I'll bet he (or she) has a nest. I'm pretty sure he was a mocking bird. These are the guys that follow me around when I'm mowing to scoop up the insects in my wake. Looks like this:










I still haven't figured out what all the singing was about.

Anyway, somewhat freaked by all the e. coli in the news, I ended up overcooking the steaks, much to the wife's disappointment. She likes them bloody. I told her I'd do better next time. She said the baked potatoes with sour cream were good, though, which was just another cut because anybody can cook a potato.

I ought to get out of this habit of posting when I don't have anything to say, but it hasn't stopped anyone else. Isn't that the definition of blog? A place to say what doesn't need saying? Maybe that needed saying.

I'm linking to this woman because she sent me a nice email. She's a college English prof who liked my Bauer essay, and said she uses the Schiavo piece I did for Touchstone in her rhetoric classes. She's that rarest of phenomena, the out-of-the-closet Christian college teacher. She's fighting the good fight and I get to be part of it without having to show up.

Old Culbreath tagged me for a meme he made up, one of those my-memes I guess. Thirty things that don't bother him. Everything bothers me even when it shouldn't, so I can't do it. Besides, he tags me then disappears on one of those fasts in which he refuses to eat blogs for a while.

It's good to see Dylan getting back in the game, just as I'm leaving. In early June he posted an Emily Dickinson thing, which served to remind me of one of his own (it's the first one you see), which I re-read occasionally, having always thought it ran close with genius.

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I know what we need - some pictures. Some are enlargeable.

The space shuttle's scheduled to come home on Thursday. I got a picture of it taking off over a neighbor's tree:




Yep, he launched it from his backyard.











I've been missing the girls more than usual lately. Elizabeth had to go to New York recently. This is New York:

















And this is Elizabeth in it:

















And this is Lady Liberty (enlarge, so that you can see the itty bitty people walking around her):

















And this is Elizabeth:

















I took a long drive and visited Bern last weekend. A friend's sister got married and I was invited to the wedding. Because I know Bern. Knowing her has gotten me into a lot of events from which I'd otherwise be excluded. This is she pretending to be barefoot and happy in the kitchen:
















And this is she, pre-ceremony, allowing one of the ushers to get lucky for a moment:















And here she is with some buddies at the reception. The one on the right, also a former golfer, is due in August:
















Oh, I missed the dog, too. We hadn't seen each other in a long time, but as soon as he heard my voice he remembered. He knocked me to the ground (I cooperated) and jumped all over me like old times. His eyes are really quite beautiful (as can be seen here. The red-eye thing in the software didn't work too well, so in this one he appears to be going blind).










For the rest of the summer I'll be working in the yard, on the house, and teaching classes. I might pick up the golf clubs again, and maybe try a couple of paintings, and maybe do some reading. All to be washed down with generous drafts of beer and ale. Wherever I am, it most likely won't be here, and I can't honestly say that I'll miss it.