Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Also,

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #309 - Space - Hubble images



About This Image (above)
A brilliant white core is encircled by thick dust lanes in this spiral galaxy, seen edge-on. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light years from Earth.
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #309 - Space - Hubble images

Hi Mom, Short post today because I am hard at work on a second set of final grades for the week. I finished the first set yesterday. And then, back to my Calculus studies. But I want to take my writing time this morning to work on a longer entry I have been preparing, and so, I give you some pictures of space, other galaxies, other stars, as captured by the Hubble telescope.

There's a nifty "embed" feature.

I am not sharing them all, so to find your own... go here: HUBBLE SITE - WALLPAPER, WHICH IS BROKEN... UPDATED 2308.31.




About This Image (above)
Hubble's 20th anniversary image shows a mountain of dust and gas rising in the Carina Nebula. The top of a three-light-year tall pillar of cool hydrogen is being worn away by the radiation of nearby stars, while stars within the pillar unleash jets of gas that stream from the peaks.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)



About This Image (above)
Plumes of glowing hydrogen blast from the central nucleus of M82. The pale, star-like objects are clusters of tens to hundreds of thousands of stars.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI), and P. Puxley (National Science Foundation)



About This Image (above)
Bright knots of glowing gas light up the arms of spiral galaxy M74, indicating a rich environment of star formation. Messier 74, also called NGC 628, is slightly smaller than our Milky Way.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
Acknowledgment: R. Chandar (University of Toledo) and J. Miller (University of Michigan)


Source: Hubblesite.org




About This Image (above)
The Great Red Spot is a vast storm system on Jupiter. It spins like a cyclone, with speeds reaching 270 miles per hour (430 km/h). The storm, which is twice the size of the Earth, was first seen when 17th century astronomers turned their telescopes on the planet. More than 300 years later, it's still going strong.
Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA) and Amy Simon (Cornell U.)




About This Image (above)
Hubble's 25th anniversary image features a giant, sparkling cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2. The cluster resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina.
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team




About This Image (above)
Stars are being born in this close-up view of the center of NGC 1808. Yellow shows older stars, blue shows areas of star birth. NGC 1808 is called a barred spiral because of the straight lines of star formation on both sides of the bright nucleus.
Credit: Jim Flood (Amateur Astronomers Inc., Sperry Observatory), Max Mutchler (STScI)

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Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 311 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1605.11 - 8:13

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #308 - Batman vs. Superman vs. Deadpool



SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #308 - Batman vs. Superman vs. Deadpool

Hi Mom,

So, I had been gearing up to write this review of Batman vs. Superman, but it had not yet fully congealed into a substance in my head.

I was going to crib from this: SCALZI ON BATMAN vs. SUPERMAN, which I rather liked and agreed with much of.

And then, Sunday (Mother's Day), I watched Deadpool.


Congealed to substance.

I have never been a big Deadpool fan. I am not an avid reader of Deadpool solo comics, and I am still not 100% clear on Deadpool's origin. He showed up recently in Uncanny Avengers, and I remember asking in the comics shop: "so what is the deal with this guy again?"

Deadpool is a better comic book film than Superman v. Batman... oh wait, Batman vs. Superman. Because it has to be alphabetical?

WHY? Deadpool works in the same way The Guardians of the Galaxy works. It knows it's goofy, it embraces goofy, it twists the goofy, AND it delivers a clear and organic, SINGLE story.

There are things to like about Batman vs. Superman. There are many arresting visuals, especially for comic fans. There's the introduction of the Justice League heroes. There's Wonder Woman. Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor does not suck. Ben Affleck's Batman does not suck. Jeremy Irons as Alfred. I could do a longer list. The Batcave was cool.



But Batman vs. Superman suffers from two major problems: Blockbuster Syndrome and Story Fragmentation.

Batman vs. Superman does not really unify as a single, organic story. Sure, there's a through line for the narrative, sort of, but it's fractured by an episodic feel. If Batman vs. Superman was truly episode two of an ongoing saga and gave itself over completely to being an episode, then it might work better. But as a single story with a beginning, middle, and end, with rising action and denoument, it fails utterly and completely.

Batman vs. Superman also suffers from Blockbuster Syndrome. It knows its supposed to be a huge, blockbuster of a film, and so it tries to be too many things. Having Batman and Superman fight would have been enough for a film. Lex Luthor manipulating that to happen would have worked, but adding Wonder Woman and Doomsday is too much. Or maybe, just Doomsday because Wonder Woman could have worked, though with maybe a bit more prelude to her unveiling.

Also, either be serious or be funny, but you can't have both. Don't get me wrong. A serious comic book film is great and it's needed. And true, a serious comic book film needs some humor. But you can't pit Batman and Superman against each other, try to KILL EACH OTHER, and then have them joke around as if they're pals. That's bad writing.

Also, don't cut key scenes that we need to understand things. Sure, if you have a film that's pushing three hours, you have to cut somethings. I love super heroes but three hours is a bit much. Two and a half hours may be a bit much. So, trim that fat. But don't cut the scene in which Lex Luthor encounters something that will EXPLAIN why he knows someone is coming (Darkseid) at the end of the film. If you plan to END THE FILM with Lex Luthor's cryptic line, you cannot delete the set up. Your film's best Easter Eggs should not rely on me buying the DVD to watch deleted scenes. That's just obnoxious.

Doomsday was wasted. The whole story line about how the world regards Superman would have been a great through line if also not wasted. Lex Luthor manipulates behind the scenes to pit Batman and Superman against each other and then Wonder Woman ends it. But Luthor gets away and we see him making Doomsday for the next film. That's enough, especially if you don't waste the scene in which a vengeful cripple is used as a pawn to blow up a whole Senate hearing. This plot point was totally wasted. Lex Luthor engineers the murder of a dozen senators and over a hundred civilians and...NOTHING HAPPENS. Now it's time for Batman and Superman to fight. MORE bad writing.

Deadpool is a better film because it does not try to do too much. It knows it's a humor film and not a serious film, so it has humor throughout with some serious stuff, but it works because the story telling and the script works. A blockbuster film does not need three villains. It needs a good story. Sure, huge action scenes are cool and epic battles make a blockbuster busty, but without a good story, it's just a bunch of action scenes strung together with flimsy narrative bindings that don't clamp tightly.

Gal Gadot is a great Wonder Woman but I am still not buying Amy Adams as Lois Lane, and Morena Baccarin is still better than both of them.

I read somewhere (I think a Scalzi Twitter message) that Deadpool works because for once the douche Ryan Reynolds usually plays is his character in this film. This is a true thing. But the Green Lantern joke alone nails the essence of why this film is funny and RUDE. I also liked the breaking of the fourth wall throughout. Well done Deadpool crew.

But maybe it doesn't matter. If all you care about is the nerd audience, then nerds will see films no matter how terrible they are. I mean, come on. How many of us watched the Green Lantern, Daredevil, and Elektra movies? Superman IV anyone? Spider-Man III?? But is that all we care about now? The comic-con audience? Or are we striving for something more?

Still, I saw Batman vs. Superman  because I had to for my nerd cred. And I gave it to myself as a treat. I left my Calculus final exam ten minutes early to get to the theatre and watch it.

And still, I liked Deadpool better, even setting aside my adulation for Morena Baccarin.

So, are they really setting us up to make Morena Baccarin's character in to Copycat from the comics or Domino (see below)? Sequel is due. Will it be Deadpool and Cable or Deadpool and X-Force?





Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 310 days ago


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1605.10 - 9:30

Will Morena Baccarin's character Vanessa become Domino?
Instead of Copycat??


The Daily Bowie #68 - "Strangers When We Meet"


The Daily Bowie #68 - "Strangers When We Meet"

Might be a commercial failure.

Might not have suited its albums.

Might be "standard."

I liked it.

I like it.


All your regrets
Ride roughshod over me

strangers

DAVID BOWIE

"STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET"

The Buddha of Suburbia

FROM PUSHING FOR THE DAME - "STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET":

“Strangers When We Meet” appears on two Bowie albums, neither of which it suited. On Buddha of Suburbia, its first, sparser incarnation stood out as the most “standard” track of the record, though it sounded undercooked when compared with the effulgence of “Untitled No. 1.” Realizing that he’d thrown away a possible hit on an album that wasn’t released in the US, Bowie reworked “Strangers” in the last sessions of Outside, for which it served as the closing track.

On Outside, the bright chorus melody of “Strangers” was a payoff for a listener who had endured a long, dark, claustrophobic album. Coming after a set of 18 “segues” and generally ominous tracks, “Strangers” felt like a boarded-up window being pried open to let in the sunlight. That said, “Strangers” also sounded like a bonus track, like something appended to the album after it was used in a film.

“Strangers” seems at heart one of Bowie’s transient songs, one more suited for the stateless company of “Holy Holy,” “John, I’m Only Dancing,” “Under Pressure” and “Alabama Song” than it was for any album. It was a pure single that Bowie instead netted and mounted in two different tableaux. And while it felt like a hit, “Strangers” wound up a relative obscurity. Released as Outside‘s second single, it was eclipsed by its B-side, a so-called “live” version (it wasn’t) of “Man Who Sold the World.” “Strangers” only reached #39 in the UK and didn’t chart anywhere else in the world but Sweden. Had it been Outside‘s lead-off single, or had Bowie put it out ahead of the album in, say, spring 1995, perhaps it could’ve had more space to thrive in.

Its commercial failure was a shame, as “Strangers” has one of Bowie’s sturdiest melodies and most haunting lyrics of his later years. It should have been ranked with “Absolute Beginners” and “Modern Love” as one of Bowie’s beloved “silver age” hits; “Strangers,” rather than “Jump They Say,” feels like it should have been the last big Bowie pop moment. Perhaps it was too somber for its time; the doomed, conflicted relationship that dominates its lyric denying any easy access for a listener.

"Strangers When We Meet" 
- BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA - 1993



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"Strangers When We Meet"

You hoo you hoo you hoo
You hoo you hoo you hoo

All our friends
Now seem so thin and frail
Slinky secrets
Hotter than the sun

No preachy friars
No trendy rechauffe
I'm with you
So I can't go wrong

All my violence
Raining tears upon the sheets
I'm bewildered
For we're strangers when we meet

Blank screen TV
Preening ourselves in the snow
Forget my name
But I'm over you

Blended sunrise
And it's a dying world
Humming Rhinegold
We scavenge up our clothes

All my violence
Raging tears upon the sheets
I'm resentful
For we're strangers when we meet

Cold tired fingers
Tapping out your memories
Halfway sadness
Dazzled by the new

Your embrace
It was all that I feared
That whirling room
We trade by vendue

Steely resolve
Is falling from me
My poor soul
All bruised passivity

All your regrets
Ride roughshod over me
I'm so glad
That we're strangers when we meet

I'm so thankful
That we're strangers when we meet
I'm in clover
For we're strangers when we meet
Heel head over
But we're strangers when we meet

(We're strangers)
Strangers when we meet
Strangers when we meet
Strangers when we meet
Strangers when we meet
Strangers when we meet
Strangers when we meet
Strangers when we meet
(Meet)
Strangers when we meet
Strangers when we meet

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Rest in peace, David. We miss you.

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1605.10 -  7:00

NOTE ON WHY THE DAILY BOWIE IS NO LONGER DAILY: For 53 days, I completed daily Bowie posts. My schedule is too demanding to make a post every day, so this will now be a feature that is called The Daily Bowie, but it will not be daily. I will post as I can. I will post often. But if I miss a day, I will skip it. Otherwise, I get in the position of making five Bowie posts all in one day, and that's a lot of Bowie for people to swallow all at once... (yeah, leaving that badly phrased, innuendo packed statement. I bet Bowie would have laughed at it).

Monday, May 9, 2016

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #307 - Musical Monday for 1605.09

wedding rings together
me and Liesel - 0910.03
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #307 - Musical Monday for 1605.09

Hi Mom, first a song. Our family listened to this song yesterday. It's a favorite of ours, introduced to me by Liesel.

PLUS, hello, SCOTTISH connection. Though Fairground Attraction is a British band, here they are playing at a Scottish festival, plus the lead singer, Eddi Reader, is Acottish and from Glasgow.

FAIRGROUND ATTRACTION - "Find My Love"



Hi Mom, Lots of stuff today in this edition of Musical Monday.

I had already saved this this article transmitted by Brain Pickings on how music helps us grieve.

I like what my wife said to me this morning. She said that I did well yesterday, Mother's Day, by not having a break down because I grieve in healthy ways throughout the year whereas she represses it all and lets it out a couple of times a year (usually Mother's Day and the anniversary of her mother's death).

These comments made me feel good. I need affirmation that I am working on my grief process because sometimes I think I am avoiding it and this blog helps me avoid rather than set to work on it.

But the blog helps as do my other little tributes, such as the daily alarm and giving an object daily kisses, as a stand-in for you, Mom.

I decided to copy in this Brain Pickings article. I tried to find a library copy of the Aldous Huxley essay she references, and my university does not own a copy. I may check at K. Indeed!! K-College owns it (of course). I will soon see if I have alumnus privileges otherwise I may have Sam or Lanny check it out for me.

Once again, in this article, Popova returns to this idea that music expresses what cannot be expressed in words. Toward this end, I have one song in particular, "Glósóli" by Sigur Rós. It's an ineffable song.

I like that the book Popova is featuring here is called Room for Doubt, like my blog, which is called "Sense of Doubt" from the song by David Bowie.

Popova paraphrasing Lesser accounts for essentially one of my favorite quotes from The Big Chill: "Sometimes, you have to art flow over you."

And after years of promoting EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY, apparently Thoreau had an idea about the transcendent humility of not knowing.


HOW MUSIC HELPS US GRIEVE

How Music Helps Us Grieve

“The springs of our reaction to music lie deeper than thought.”

How Music Helps Us Grieve
Scientists now believe that language and music co-evolved to simulate the most abiding truths of nature. Indeed, for as long as we’ve been able to articulate the human experience, we’ve made music about the most inarticulable parts of it and then used language to extol music’s power — nowhere more beautifully than in Aldous Huxley’s 1931 meditation on how music stirs the soul, in which he asserted that music’s greatest potency lies in expressing the inexpressible.
This, perhaps, is why music is so sublime a solace when it comes to the most inexpressible of human emotions: grief.
Wendy Lesser articulates this peculiar power of music in a passage from Room for Doubt (public library) — a miraculously beautiful book I discovered through Oliver Sacks’s reading list.
music
Lesser, who doesn’t consider herself “a particularly musical person,” contemplates the way in which music bypasses the intellect and speaks straight to the unguarded heart:
The springs of our reaction to music lie deeper than thought… Part of what music allows me is the freedom to drift off into a reverie of my own, stimulated but not constrained by the inventions of the composer. And part of what I love about music is the way it relaxes the usual need to understand. Sometimes the pleasure of an artwork comes from not knowing, not understanding, notrecognizing.
Nothing befuddles our elemental need for understanding more effectively than death, the great unknown and ultimate unknowable. Music, Lesser suggests, offers a gateway not to understanding death in an intellectual way but to befriending its mystery in that Rilkean sense — something she realized in a surprising encounter with music shortly after her dear friend Leonard’s death, which she hadn’t let herself mourn.
Lesser, who had traveled to Germany for research on a book about David Hume but had somehow found herself at the auditory oasis of the Berlin philharmonic, recounts:
I had been carrying around Lenny’s death in a locked package up till then, a locked, frozen package that I couldn’t get at but couldn’t throw away, either. As long as I was afraid to look inside the package, it maintained its terrifying hold over me: it frightened and depressed me, or would have done, if I had allowed myself to have even those feelings instead of their shadowy half-versions. It wasn’t just Lenny that had been frozen; I had, too. But as I sat in the Berlin Philharmonic hall and listened to the choral voices singing their incomprehensible words, something warmed and softened in me. I became, for the first time in months, able to feel strongly again.

Revisiting the question of not understanding, or what Thoreau celebrated as the transcendent humility of not-knowing, she adds:
Later, when I looked at the words in the program, I saw that the choral voices had been singing about the triumph of God over death. This is what I mean about the importance of not understanding. If I had known this at the time, I might have stiffened my atheist spine and resisted. But instead of taking in what the German words meant, I just allowed them to echo through my body: I felt them, quite literally, instead of understanding them. And the reverie I fell into as I listened to Brahms’s music was not about God triumphing over death, but about music and death grappling with each other. Death was chasing me, and I was fleeing from it, and it was pounding toward me; it was pounding in the music, but the music was also what was helping me to flee. And, as in a myth or a fairy tale, I sensed that what would enable me to escape — not forever, because all such escapes are temporary, but to escape just this once — would be if I looked death, Lenny’s death, in the face: if I turned back and looked at it as clearly and sustainedly as I could bear.
Complement this particular portion of the wholly magnificent Room for Doubt with beloved writers’ reflections on the power of music, these unusual children’s books about making sense of loss, and psychologist Irvin D. Yalom on the role of not-knowing in our search for meaning.
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This search for meaning through the not knowing will continue. But now, some music.

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Prince, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne and others -- "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - 2004

Forward to 3 mins 20 seconds, as Dhani Harrison looks off to the right and smiles. And then Prince appears from nowhere, spends a little under three minutes murdering every guitarist in the world, throws his guitar away and walks off.




"Glósóli" by Sigur Rós

Transcendent, ineffable majesty.

AWE.




"The Satellites" by Brian Eno and Karl Hyde - 2014




And this song has something to do with motherhood...

Tracey Thorn - "Nowhere Near" from Out of the Woods - 2007



Had to use  the Deadpool soundtrack version after watching it yesterday.

Chicago - "You're my Inspiration"




"Careless Whisper" WHAM! UK



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Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 309 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1605.09 - 10:10

NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.

The Daily Bowie #67 - "A Better Future"

The Daily Bowie #67 - "A Better Future"

Maybe I should rename this feature the weekly Bowie.

Found a great remix by Air.

This is a happy thing for a Monday that is not clear in its emotional state.

I DEMAND A BETTER FUTURE.

And I have a very big wolf to help me get it.

Bowie, 2002, GQ cover.

DAVID BOWIE

HEATHEN

PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME: "A BETTER FUTURE"







What bred this irritation? Fatherhood and terrorism, it seemed. “I had rosy expectations for the 21st Century, I really did,” Bowie told the Observer in 2002. “The whole idea was lifting my spirits quite a lot during 1998 and 1999. But it has become something other that what I expected it to be. And it’s obviously a pretty typical parental concern to wonder what type of a world you have brought your child into.”

So “A Better Future” was meant as a plea “to whoever that higher spirit is…because I want a place where my daughter can grow up safely, walking open-eyed into her ambitions—not having to dodge bullets” (from PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME).

"A Better Future" - HEATHEN - 2002



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"A Better Future"

Please don't tear this world asunder
Please take back
this fear we're under
I demand a better future
Or I might just stop wanting you
I might just stop wanting you
Please make sure we get tomorrow
All this pain and all the sorrow
I demand a better future
Or I might just stop needing you
I might just stop needing you
Give my children sunny smile
Give them moon and cloudless sky
I demand a better future
Or I might just stop loving you,
loving you, loving you
When we talk, we talk to you
When we walk, we walk to you
From factory to field
How many tears must fall
Down there below
Nothing is moving
Oo-o
I might just stop wanting you
I might just stop needing you
I might just stop loving you
I demand a better future
I demand a better future
I demand a better future
For I might just stop loving you,
loving you, loving you
I demand a better future
I demand a better future
I demand a better future
For I might just stop loving you, loving you, loving you
I demand a better future

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Rest in peace, David. We miss you.

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1605.09 -  7:00

NOTE ON WHY THE DAILY BOWIE IS NO LONGER DAILY: For 53 days, I completed daily Bowie posts. My schedule is too demanding to make a post every day, so this will now be a feature that is called The Daily Bowie, but it will not be daily. I will post as I can. I will post often. But if I miss a day, I will skip it. Otherwise, I get in the position of making five Bowie posts all in one day, and that's a lot of Bowie for people to swallow all at once... (yeah, leaving that badly phrased, innuendo packed statement. I bet Bowie would have laughed at it).


Sunday, May 8, 2016

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #306 - Mother's Day Trilogy Part Three

Mother's Day - mid-1990s? 1994? 1995?
 Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #306 - Mother's Day Trilogy Part Three

Hi Mom,

We did not get around to labeling and organizing all the photos before you started to decline with your palsy, which made communication difficult, and then before you passed away.

For instance, I am not sure when this was taken. I am pretty sure we're in the Gull Lake Country Club, but the year? I am trying to remember how long I wore that belt before I had to switch. Lori may be able to date it better by her hair style. I could probably also go through old gift lists an identify when you gave me that tartan tie, though it may have been a post trip gift and not a holiday gift. I am thinking that probably means 1998, which is my best guess. The record keeping is important to both of us, Mom. I know.

I am writing from the future again. It's Monday, so I already know that Mother's Day went by all right. I did not "lose my shit" as Liesel described it. And neither did she. We had brunch at Old Dog Tavern, presents, cake, and watched Deadpool. I also took a nap, finished the Ta-Nehisi Coates book, and watched episode three of Games of Thrones season six.

It was a good day in most respects. I did not cry, but I was sad, and at times, on the verge,

It helped that the day was filled with good things: love, family, a nap, reading, some sports watching, the puppy, good food, my wife's happiness. And Deadpool, which was a pretty good movie.

I know the best thing I can do to pay tribute to you, Mom, is to make Liesel as happy as possible on Mother's Day and every day because every day is "I love my wife so much" day.

Here's an article about loss of a mother. The one thing that connected for me is that missing element. The pain wears down but flares up from time to time. But the really weird thing is going so long not seeing you, Mom. And then I visit, and you're not there, and that's.... just not right.

THE UNMOTHERED

Here's a kind comment from my dear friend Elaine that helped my heart today.


Here's some more pictures as I was going to feature mostly just pictures today, and they're new ones, Mom!

Lori and Mom - Memorial Day - 1976
Easter Prep - 1973
You look really tired, Mom

I like these next pictures because one is kind of a stolen moment before the pose.


Mother's Day - 1998


Mother's Day 1998

Figured we needed one post meningitis photo...

Mother's Day 2012


Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 308 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1605.08 - 10:10


NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #305 - Mother's Day Trilogy Part Two

Easter - Gull Lake Country Club - 1996
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #305 - Mother's Day Trilogy Part Two

Hi Mom,

You know how you are, so this is more for the readers who read as I write to you. Finding this tomorrow (Mother's Day) as I am still writing from the future, I laughed and cried.

So, the above picture is from Easter in 1996 when I was dating Molly Roberts. And then when you labeled the back of the photo with  identifying information (see below), you included the start and end of my relationship with Molly. This is such a great example of your record keeping and thoughtfulness, Mom.

I did reach out to Molly when you died, Mom, as I know you liked her, even though Molly and I are not Facebook friends. She has not responded, which is probably for the best.




Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = #307 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1605.07 - 10:10

NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.