Every Sunday I start the day by reading the obits of notable people who have passed. I started this peculiar habit one Sunday morning after I spotted the obit of a lovely man who was the partner of someone I once worked with. I’d heard through the grapevine he had AIDS but the last time I’d seen him, he seemed in such a jolly mood that I allowed myself to believe the disease wouldn’t take him. The obit, lovingly written his partner, actually made me smile. The best obits will make you smile or at least, make you wonder how such a splendid person could have existed in this dysfunctional world.

It’s always sad to read the obit of someone I knew decades ago and lost touch with. But, at the same time, it allows me to remember them fondly.

Here are examples from obits in today’s paper that are meant to make you smile. Two were written by professionals. See if you can match the sentence to the men being honored (below):

1. As people walked by, he would greet each one in his high pitched voice with “Hey, mama!’ Or “Hey, young man!”
2. From his Ted speech: “It isn’t the value or the size of a gift that truly matters. It’s how you hold it in your heart.”
3. [He] loved cracking jokes and carried around a card in his pocket with the word “JOKE” written on it to emphasize to friends he was just having a fun time.

And the men honored were:

A. Dr. D. Henry Cheu, a surgeon and member of the El Capitan Eating Club whose father was the first person of Chinese descent to graduate from Stanford University. Eating Clubs accepted students who were ineligible for membership in college fraternities for racial or religious reasons, e.g. Asians, Mexicans and Jews.

B. Willie Ellis, a homeless peddler described as “the Beloved Mayor of Lake Merritt.”

C. Werner Reich, a holocaust survivor who learned the power of magic in Auschwitz. “Having a deck of cards in Auschwitz was like finding a gorilla in your bathroom.”

The answers are!

1. Willie Ellis, the Mayor
2. Dr. Cheu, the Jokester
3. Werner Reich, the Magician

Okay, I’m just gonna say it. If you’re a fan of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, you might want to avoid Netflix’s new adaptation. Whoever wrote it decided to have the main character (played by Dakota Johnson) speak directly into the camera. Even with an English accent, she just doesn’t capture the tortured inner life of Anne Elliot. She’s entirely too upbeat and bubbly.

For those of you who don’t know the story, here’s a brief synopsis:

• Boy and girl meet and fall in love
• Girl is “persuaded” not to accept boy’s proposal (usual reasons: lack of money, social status)
• Boy goes to sea, makes a fortune and returns

Girl, meanwhile, has been treated as person of little consequence by her vain and silly relatives and, at age twenty-seven, is considered a spinster with few prospects.

In her earlier novels, Austen’s protagonists snidely mocked the societal norms that forced women to marry or live a life dependent on the kindness of relatives. But the mocking was never in anger; just frustration. In Persuasion, Austen took the gloves off. Vain and silly characters are no longer also lovable. They’re just vain and silly people who cause pain to others.

In the book, when Anne Elliot feels sorry for herself, she takes a long walk. In the movie, she drinks. I’ll have to reread the books because I can’t remember an Austen heroine ever dragging a bottle upstairs to bed and getting snookered. But it has been a while. Do y’all recall any drunken Austen heroines?

And let’s discuss Captain Wentworth, the jilted lover, the man deemed not worthy to marry into the Elliot family. Having returned a wealthy sea captain, why would he ever settle for the aging spinster who’d already rejected him? In the book, he shows little sign of his true feelings. He’s a proper English gentleman. So we agonize with poor Anne. Will he forgive her and see that she is the only woman for him?

In the Netflix adaptation. Sigh. Have you seen Dakota Johnson, friends? Poor Captain Wentworth can’t help drooling all over himself every time he sees her. Stiff upper lip, hurt pride be damned. It’s only a matter of time, misunderstandings, and miscommunications until he finally admits, his goose is cooked.

Supposedly there are fifteen animals hidden in this picture.

But if you’re looking for a lighthearted though predictable romance, set in the beautiful countryside of Southern England, ignore me and enjoy the show!

On my walk over to the library, under murky skies, I noticed that all signs of the July Fourth celebrations are gone. Poof, like they never even happened. Many people were at the community center dropping off their kids for one of the various summer programs. I could see the stress on their faces. Will they be happy? Will they be well cared for? I can remember long summers when I had no choice but to put my children into those programs. Whether they wanted to go or not. And that was before all the school shootings.

The mural on the library and the whimsical utility boxes are only the first steps in an effort to “artify” the town. I can’t wait to see what they do to the service station! Dinosaurs, perhaps?

Here in my small town we celebrate the Fourth much the same as other small towns. People of all ages either watch from the sidewalks or march in groups down the middle of the street. Above is the local high school Latin club being watched from the sidelines by two unimpressed young girls. Latin? What’s that?

I heard about the shooting in Highland Park moments before we walked down to see the parade. I’ve been to that town and it’s much the same as mine. Tree-lined, lights out by ten. Too far from the big city to worry about crime. But it seems no place is safe.

Unlike other years, the parade lasted barely an hour and the mood was definitely not as festive. We didn’t walk over to the park and listen to the bands. We didn’t buy a beer from our sister city’s brewery. We came home where my husband watched Wimbledon and grumbled about the brutality of the games.

I watched a sad movie I’d seen before and cried.

Recently I watched Martha Raddatz interview the governor of South Dakota, a state which has now effectively banned abortion. The governor claimed that her state planned to ramp up services for women with unwanted pregnancies (presumably so that they will all want to have and care for their children and all will be wonderful in the great state of South Dakota). When Raddatz pointed out that South Dakota ranks among the least supportive states when it comes to financing family services, the governor said they are calling on non profits and churches to pick up the slack.

Just what a woman with an unwanted pregnancy needs: To be stigmatized by a church! Folks, we are not living in the days of Little House on the Prairie when the townsfolk are all charitable and kind and all the children are raised equally in a loving community. (Not that those days ever existed, except in some writer’s imagination.) Here is the real story of my great aunt Mary Ness whose unwanted pregnancy at the age of fourteen made her an outcast from a small farming community in the Dakotas. Her story is the reality of the situation. Unmarried pregnant women and girls are often outcasts in their communities. Often seen at fault for their condition. Often made to feel shame for not wanting to be mothers. And what do you suppose happens to many of their stigmatized children? Adopted by the non-profits? Welcomed into the churches?

For anyone who has worked with children in foster care, hearing this kind of idiocy from an elected official is nauseating. It doesn’t matter how many perks they get, there’s only one thing a foster child wants: not to be a “ward of the state.” Thus their high rates of suicide, mental illness, drug dependency and incarceration. I’ve spent time in Dependency Court and the laws of most states favor family reunification. If a child has any relative willing to take care of them, the state would rather “reunite” the family than make it easy for a loving foster parent to adopt them. Often those relatives only show up if promised a salary for being “kinship caretakers.” And, let me tell you, they rarely spend any part of their salary on those children.

It’s a tragic mess that will only be made worse by this sort of unimaginably heartless and uninformed rhetoric.

I am attempting to organize our book collection and finding all sorts of things shoved into the nooks and crannies of the bookshelves.

My grandmother received two baby books when my mother was born. They were nicely illustrated and provided a way for parents to track their baby’s progress but, in this day of Instagram and Facebook, this custom has fallen by the wayside. Thank goodness. Can you imagine stumbling upon your baby book and finding it empty? Or worse …

My grandmother was a nurse and so Mother’s baby books are not empty. They’re not exactly full either. Things like weight and height were carefully noted. as were all illnesses and medical procedures. The rest, well it evidently didn’t interest Gram too much.

Poor kid, for sure. However, will my children want to know the date when their now deceased grandmother had her tonsils removed?

I guess Mother had no important events. To be fair, my grandmother was trying to raise three children during the Depression, and, serve as District Nurse. A district nurse’s main duty was to manage healthcare for people in small communities, for example: assign nurses, recommend treatments, delivery babies, and often provide end of life care. She’d seen it all and had little time to update the baby book with cute anecdotes.

I doubt this entry would ever show up in a baby book today:

I have no idea what to do with these books so I’ll just shove them into the box of things for my children to deal with. Curiosities from a different time.

My maternal grandmother wasn’t what you’d call a lover of the great outdoors. When she and Grandpa camped, it was always someplace with picnic tables, brick barbecues, and indoor “facilities.” She firmly believed yard work was for men and enjoying the outdoors was something you only did after chores were complete. But she did love birds.

Sometime in the late 1950s she began collecting Arthur Singer ornithological prints. She bought them at “The K-Mart” thirty or so miles from her house; probably as part of K-Mart’s weekly “blue light” specials. The sole grocery in their tiny town stocked only the essentials and so once a month my Crazy Auntie Dottie and Gram would hop in Grandpa’s Galaxy and hit the road. Their big adventure to the big city of Springfield Mass.

For those of you who’ve never heard of K-Mart, they were granddaddies of Costco, Target, Marks and Spencer – places where you could easily get lost in mile after mile of discounted products of all sorts: Clothing, towels, sheets, pots and pans — you name it. Heaven for housewives from small impoverished towns. I even thought it was a big deal as there were no large discount stores in Reno Nevada back then. And they sold big bags of buttered popcorn at prices even a child like me could afford.

Auntie Dottie went to The K-Mart to buy do-it-yourself hair dye and perm kits —- not for herself, mind you. But for her “clients.” Women willing to pay for a dirt cheap perm or dye job from someone who’d never set foot in a beauty school. One month she got a good deal on “Golden Highlights” and half the women in town were suddenly red heads. Their husbands were thrilled but the Vicar accused Dottie of tempting the Devil. Being Catholic, she just went to Confession and was absolved.

Gram probably bought wash clothes. She was of the opinion that you could never have enough wash clothes. And she might pick up a bottle of Old Spice for Grandpa. That’s what he always smelt like. Old Spice. While they drove, she probably snuck in a bit of unwanted parenting advice or a reminder that it was not exactly legal to pretend to be a beautician. Which Dottie would ignore.

Supposedly Arthur Singer created eight of these so-called ornithological prints. Each contains the male and female of a species and the flora and fauna typical for their environs. I don’t know if Gram collected all eight; only five survived life with Mother. Anyway, I have taken them out of the cheap plastic frames they were in and reframed them for the next generation. They may not be worth much, but I can’t look at them without thinking of Gram and Crazy Auntie Dottie and the excitement of those trips to The K-Mart.