Friday’s Odds and Ends

So Herman Cain is out, and now Newt Gingrich is taking the lead in the list of candidates for the Republican nomination for president. Some pundits consider him the strongest candidate, despite his past with Freddie Mac and the fact that he is less than honorable when it comes to bedding women. He has been divorced twice, leaving his first wife after her treatment for cancer, and leaving his second wife for a woman on his staff. I doubt they waited until after the divorce to jump into bed.

Other than the color of his skin, I don’t see a whole lot of difference between these two men. They both make terrible choices in their personal lives, yet Cain seems to be paying a higher price for his indiscretions. Could it be because he is black?

Just asking….

I just read a review of a new gardening book, Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older by Sydney Eddison,  and I loved the fact that is is geared toward those of us of a certain age who find the heavy work of slogging manure and compost in a wheelbarrow and digging rows and rows for planting a bit daunting of late. It was only a few years ago I could do all that with no sweat… well, actually a lot of sweat, but minimal pain and exhaustion. Now as arthritis and years progress, the chores are getting harder and harder.

According to the review, the book is part memoir, with “beautiful vignettes of life, with story arcs and graceful prose…”  I think I’d like to read it just for that. There’s nothing I love more than graceful prose.

This is the last weekend of our Christmas show, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” with performances tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday. As a show winds down there is always a mix of relief and sadness. Relief that the intense schedule of rehearsals and all the other demands is all ending, yet sadness that this little family is breaking up. Anyone who does theatre knows how the cast and crew bonds as they all work to make the story come alive, and it is hard to just have it all stop.

The good thing for this troupe is that most of us have worked together on past productions and will work again on our spring show. So it is not like we are losing friends forever.

Starting next week and through the end of December, I will be resurrecting some older blog posts as I plan to take a couple of weeks off to enjoy my company that is coming for Christmas. I’ll pick some from the earliest years of this blog – hard to believe I’ve been writing this blog for almost six years – and hope you will find the look back worth your time.