Arlene and I went to New Jersey for a baby naming last weekend. On the way, just past the TZ, we took a short detour to visit my uncle Irving. He’s really my mother’s first cousin, so my cousin once removed. You can probably find a web page about his ninetieth birthday party (over four years ago!) somewhere on this domain, if you look from the top — oh, maybe here.
Evelyn —
and Irv —
— look just about the same as always. There weren’t as many political posters up in the living/dining room as I remembered, but maybe I was thinking of the cellar. There are lots of pictures of major leftist heros, from Mother Jones and Eugene Debs through Che and Fidel to I don’t know who, hanging on the wall of the carport. Irv moved his car so we could see them all.
Evelyn showed us her iPhoto collection of pictures of the paintings she had had in a one-woman show a couple of months ago. We chatted about various relatives, had lunch, and watched all the birds — quantities of mourning doves, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and a couple of fox sparrows — outside their dining room window. They have a string of about five big bird feeders, the kind with a hopper between two sheets of glass or plexiglas that take two pounds of seed each, with a tray below each that holds whatever spills from the top ones, all on a big squirrel-proofed pole. Irv says they go through several hundred pounds of bird food every winter.