One Tiny Corner of the Immigration Flap

There, of late, has been a lot of negative noise made about immigration, immigrants, and illegal immigrants. I’ve had a spell of less that sparkling health lately and I got thinking about the team of doctors that have pulled me through. My cardiologist is from Israel. My oncologist has two unpronounceable names that I have never explored the origin of. My rheumatologist came from the United Kingdom. His wife is from Iran and he makes frequent visits to Iran to give medical assistance to the poor. My vascular surgeon was born and raised in Cuba. It is amazing to hear him switch from English to Spanish without a pause as he changes patients. My urologist is plain old All-American Jewish. Finally, I suspect that our family doctor and the heart surgeon who fixed me up are both preceded my enough generations in this country to have dropped any racial or nationality hypens from just American.

Where would I be without immigration? (Buried back in jolly old England).

The Golden Years

GOLDEN YEARS, my A**! Ooops! Sorry, every once in a while that thought just bubbles up and out. We just went to the super market and it hurt going, there, and back. The driver that takes us is very nice. He lets everyone else out at the entrance, then drives me the 75 feet to the exit where the electric carts with the big baskets are parked. We get there at twenty to the hour and the bus is back for us at fifteen after the hour. That is less than forty five minutes to get a week’s worth of shopping done. Rush, rush. I admit we can stay for two or even three runs of the bus, but our choice seems to be to do the one-run rush.

We had a lot of fun over the last couple of weeks. It doesn’t seem to hurt as much when pure pleasure is the objective. We went out to dinner innumerable times with all kinds of excuses and several times with a real purpose, ie., birthdays, Mothers’Day, graduation celebrations, and a bunch of times just because we felt like it. Last Saturday, Sally rode up to Orlando with daughter Mary to attend Ann’s graduation ceremony (two more Masters’ degrees). For the last week we rented a car and did the accumulated chores and errands. You know, important stuff like replacing some dead fish and getting fresh batteries in wrist watches. You can’t do that sort of thing on scheduled transportation.

O. K. now we return to our normal social life – doctor visits and physical therapy sessions. The GoldenYears.

For those of you that don't recognize this fellow, he is a purple gallinule. This particular one had quite a sense of humor. He used to jump (fly) up on to the dock when I rode my bicycle out onto it. Believe it or not, in this picture he is on his way to untie my shoe laces. (He may have thought they were food, but I like the sense of humor premise.)

I seldom get down to the dock any more, but I doubt that the gallinules are still around, there has been a lot of development since this picture. But I am sure that they are still building nests somewhere in the wetlands of Florida. I just wanted to post the picture to remind us how many beautiful creatures we will lose if the Oil Spill gets caught in the Gulf stream and makes its way onto the coast of Florida and seeps a little further in-land. Man shouldn't really have the right to destroy such peace loving beauty.