The Ball Keeps Bouncing Friday Round-Up

I went on street outreach last night and it seemed to me that the homeless people we encountered were thinner and more desperate than I remembered. After a year cloistered in my house and the dog park, I ventured out last night to ride along on the Street Angels outreach bus. We would pull up to places where the leaders knew homeless to be and people would appear, sometimes one or two, sometimes a line of folks, needing food or socks or batteries or someone to tease them about what size jeans they wear. We passed out hot meals, bag lunches, and bottles of water along with survival supplies. I wanted to hand people huge chunks of fresh bread drenched in butter, I wanted to pass a bowl of mashed potatoes, and pressure each person to take another slice, another leg, more dressing, here, try the green beans, they’re special. Food is my ASL. But what we offered was plenty. They expected us and we showed up.

It strikes me that there is a diminishing number of people thinking that a great evening involves watching The Maltese Falcon for the fiftieth time. Humphrey Bogart, with his impossibly narrow shoulders and pants cinched up right under his rib cage, had charms foreign to this time. I am grateful he lives in this film, Mary Astor at her tense best, her pleading so earnest and Bogart’s coolness so crisp. Even his name – Sam Spade. Could there be a better name?

Now I know why President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats packed such a punch. President Biden’s speech last night was of that caliber. Heartfelt and honest, exhorting us to be better Americans, better people, lyrical and plain, sculpted as if his audience was deserving of poetry. Speak to me, not just with words, but with beautiful words. “Finding light in the darkness is a very American thing to do.” If you ask me to rise to a grand, common purpose, rise is what I will do. I am glad, so glad, for the millions who stood in line for hours, who suffered through the questions and tests of election officials, who claimed what was rightfully theirs and voted. Because of them and us, we have a president who loves us more than himself.

Swirl is still not well. Mostly this means he is laying about, taking his meds and being quiet. But sometimes it means that he hunches up and yelps in pain,say, when he comes up the porch stairs or he gets up after a long time resting. If I know this is going to happen, I take off all my hearing equipment so I can’t hear his cries. That’s how distressing it is, but also how indulgent my partner is. “Take off your receiver, he’s coming upstairs.” We have two more weeks of antibiotics and then we will have a cure or more tests to find what is wrong. I love this dog a ridiculous amount. That is a good thing and a bad thing.

We shot baskets today. After long searching, we found the pump for the basketball. More to the point, we found the tiny attachment that makes a pump work on a ball. And then I backed up my car, away from the garage where the basketball hoop is attached, and we bounced that ball and shot baskets, one getting stuck in the net so I had to go retrieve a rack to knock it down, and I remembered all the times we played H-O-R-S-E with our kids except we called it S-N-Y-D-E-R and it was the most fun ever. That’s how it was today, only different.