RIGHT OR LEFT KIND OF DAY? Take Your Choice...

RIGHT OR LEFT KIND OF DAY? Take Your Choice...

Another new day to live, enjoy and remember. Life goes on, thankfully. It's great to be alive, awake and enjoying morning coffee and spring weather. What is scheduled for today that is a must do? Is there really anything that pressing? Not really pressing in an earth-shaking kind of way. Earth-shaking kind of way...?

Right away my mind is creating an image; it's not a positive image. I am suddenly viewing certain favorite areas of southern California falling into the ocean. Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Laguna Beach, the beach where the swallows remember to return to each year, San Juan Capistrano; then there's all of the beach areas around San Diego right on down the Baja to Ensenada, the last place I visited.

Inquiring about anything earth-shaking is not the right way to begin the day. Let me think of another silent question that will help find direction for this new day. A question my uncle Jim asked frequently when I was a boy came to mind. Immediately upon waking and making my youthful presence known, he would say, "Good morning, Robert." Then, he asked "...what's new today?" It was the kind of morning inquisition that confuses a five year old.

I recall how odd I thought his question was. After all, I was only five, or perhaps even four, I'm not sure. Does anyone remember when their mind began recording memories?

"I don't know," I probably employed to answer his question. After responding, I searched my mind for something new, something new I could use for composing a more intelligent reply. "Gooseberry pie," I said, remembering that my grandmother had baked a pie that was jam-packed and overfilled with those delicious berries in a thick, sweet and shining sauce the previous afternoon.

Asking me the whereabout of the pie, I confessed I had eaten it all. He wanted to say something. He said nothing at the time. I remember being veryuncomfortable and downright sick at the stomach shortly thereafter. So, that question, what's new? has a special place in my gastrointestinal memories. I have not eaten gooseberries since.

How does all of this fit into the title I selected for posting this first blog? It doesn't, but it's a more joyful subject than the news, the subject I had planned on using when I started. The right of it all was the Fox News Network while the left of it all was the CNN News. One is right and the other is left, but both are usually wrong about one thing or another.
The thought about my uncle and my grandmother surfaced and wiped out all of the world's misery for a short while. The memory in the mind is a valuable gift. I'm thankful for some great memories.

But don't let this first post cause you to assume future postings will be akin to watching home movies. For one thing, home movies were for the wealthy when I was a boy; a few black and white snapshots and a pennant collection substitute for squeaky celluloid film on a big spool creaking in a dark room called "back when I was a kid..." Nope, it won't happen here.

Did I just mention pennants? Those long and triangular felt memorablia kind of souveniers kids of the 50s thumb-tacked to the walls around the house or in their rooms to prove they had been everywhere in the world--almost. That reminds me of a summer vacation trip to Mt.Rushmore and the Black Hills in a 1953 Hudson Hornet with canvas water bags hanging on the chrome bumpers when we started out across the white-hot and baking kind of desert terrain called the Badlands....

For Today, Robert L. Huffstutter