Remembrance

I had a peaceful, non-eventful day. Bob spent the night in San Francisco at his friend's house so that they could attend a 11 pm movie at the film festival. Since he's retired, we spend a lot of time together so it was nice to have some time alone. I spent it reading The London Review of Books, cleaning out the fridge, and lazing about on the couch. I picked two perfect pink roses from the backyard bush and arranged them in a bud vase, which I then placed in the center of our dining room table. 

The roses reminded me of my friend Ralph McNeill, who died almost a decade ago. Once when I brought him two roses from our yard, he did a painting of them, which he then gave to me. (See above.) Ralph was generous in that way -- in all ways, really -- generous with jokes, laughter, friendship and advice. He was a gifted artist who worked hard at his art and he enthusiastically collaborated in any wild project that I came up with. He let me use his drawings for Samwich, my now defunct home-made "zine" and he designed a hilarious rabbit Tarot deck at my request. I wish I could link to a Ralph McNeill site on the Web to show you his work, but he lived in the pre-Internet world.  Actually, the Internet did exist back then, but Ralph wasn't very interested in it. He was too busy making art. 

Later in the evening, Bob, returned home, was sorting his wash and I was lying on the bed half-listening to the radio when the BBC reported that Osama Bin Laden was dead. We were surprised at the news, but not as surprised as we were back in 2001 when we heard that the Twin Towers had fallen. The pundits and news reporters kept saying that Bin Laden's death was "symbolic." Symbolic of what? The end of a nasty era, one would like to hope.