b4 midday

I am asking myself if I have the two looms of round fruit to make an anonymous phone call. Get out in under 30 seconds, you know, can't trace it. Maybe use a cloned phone and dump it in a pond and pray it freezes or flick it - with its dialpad - among five gallon buckets and clip-on tape measures scattered across the bed of a truck. It'd be worth $.25 on a standing pay phone. "Collect call from ... will you accept the charges brought against you?"

PBS' Frontline is airing "The Undertaking" beginning at 4 a.m. tonight. "...how Americans cope with death, grief and life." This would be great for out-of-work research for interested people. Thought it would be me watching a documentary like this to prepare me for my first pre-need or at-need burial. Thought material like this would compliment local and regional visits I would make to funeral homes or in the offices of religious leaders. Maybe even professional squares of estate attorneys. "Well, I watched this documentary a couple weeks ago..."

The contact us tab on their lousy web site has added "Barbvara" as their development director, but the big box beside "Foxfield Preserve Cemetery" remains blank. I have to wait at least two more weeks for the January newsletter to be published to see if they hired anyone or - if as I suspect - came to a consensus to all pitch in and rotate responsibilities.

The steward is on-call 24/7, but who would answer? The once full-time, now staying on as part-time steward or the newly hired steward?

As I reread Frontline's program description I only wanted the show to be something I could have watched ... something intended for a steward of burials in a green cemetery. Hold your horses, let the living make arrangements in a funeral home before they make peace at a final resting place. Let the undertaker take over to wash and dress the body.

Someone has a lot of explaining to do.

after the post office

Since then, since seeing who I think it was, Teresa offered a gift bag with gift card inside and an engraved pen maybe she bought the afternoon I ran into her at P. Graham Dunn. I thought the cause of Christmas or volunteer appreciation but that usually comes from the main branch. No, a belated "Congratulations" "Bravo" for graduating card. A folded and packaged bulletin board to say how great you'll do.

See, I think I saw Erica and her sister between the bank and the post office, near an empty wheelchair in blue sticker parking space. I'd turned the corner from Mill to Main minding any cars withdrawing onto the street or people crossing. In a half huddle, three people stood above a dark colored sleeping-not-sitting kind of stroller.

I'd said, "Love on your new one" as a gesture of I have nieces and nephews. You met Micah, remember?