It’s been a big week. After re-testing, the town water turns out fine and perhaps always was. No one got sick and no babies or old people died. (I read too much about E.Coli outbreaks this week, as you can see.)
I also said yes when Nelle called to ask if I’d help at the plate and bun table at the Friends of the Library 4th of July Picnic.
I had several interviews about Find the Good, too. One was with Ingrid Bergman’s daughter Pia Lindstrom on a radio show called Pia Lindstrom Presents, another was with John Fuglesang on Sirius XM’s “Tell Me Everything.” His other guest was David Crosby, of Crosby,Stills, Nash & Young. I didn’t get to meet him, as David (or is it Dave?) was in the studio and I was on the phone in my bedroom closet, because I was taking care of a friend’s large Labrador, and he and Pearl were barking at Wyatt from next door.
Right after that, my hairdresser called and said she had seven day-old chicks in the salon and I could come and pick them up. (Tammy cuts and colors, but also incubates wonderfully diverse and healthy chicks from her flock out at Mosquito Lake.) I set them up in a clean box in the coop with water, food and a warming light (it was hard to find an old-fashioned hot light bulb. I had to unscrew the one in the lamp on the guest room night stand). I like hearing the peeps from the mud room,but it’s warm out and the coop is safest, because of the dogs, guest and residents– although I’m pretty sure Pearl is fine– I had the extra dog because Buddy’s owner had an engine crisis on his commercial fishing boat, and he couldn’t worry about his dog who is recovering from stomach surgery, and I wanted to help, and am not a mechanic– and anyway–
After tucking the chicks in, I got cleaned up and walked onto a cruise ship, and read from my own book and cried in front of all those tourists. I was thinking of the 4th and fishermen, and the good that sometimes comes from bad– like what’s happening in Charleston– and just crumbled in the middle of one of the chapters about a fisherman– a friend, a good man– who drowned on the 4th of July.
And that’s a long way of saying why, when Nelle called again wearing her Volunteer Fire Department apron rather then the Friends of the Library one– and asked me to make a potato salad for the Fire Department’s annual Texas barbecue on July 3rd, I said I’d be happy to. Right now I need to do something good, to say thank you, to be part of this place that’s home– and luckily that’s as easy, and gratifying, as carrying my tub of potato salad and setting it on the long table in the fire hall with all the others.
