Legacy

(Photo by the bleeding-heart Liberal.)

“Okay, what are they?” I asked my blog-readers. “Someone told me a while ago, but now I forget.”
I don’t have many blog-readers. Maybe 20 or so. Two or three are out there in the blogosphere, unknown followers.
The others I e-mail links to; 36 or more.
So I e-mailed ‘em all, attaching the above picture.
This became a test of who is in love with their computer.
The winner was AnMari Linardi, down in Oneonta, NY.
She answered perhaps 10 minutes after I sent the e-mail.
She is attached to her computer much as I am to mine — even more so.
In fact, this here laptop, an Apple MacBook Pro, was suggested by AnMari.
AnMari and I used to work at the Mighty Mezz, she as a photographer.
My laptop goes wherever I go. I wonder if AnMari does that?
Every time I go to Altoona, PA to chase trains I take this laptop so I can process photos.
I took it to FL for my wife’s mother’s 100th birthday, mainly to avoid boredom.
I also took it to my recent 50-year college reunion, although I never got it out.
Blogs have been posted via hospital wi-fi, since I took this rig to the hospital.
About 7-8 years ago my wife and I installed a shed to store our garden equipment.
My wife is gone, but I still use the shed to store my 48-inch zero-turn lawnmower, among other things.
The shed is a Home-Depot thingy, but not a blow-away.
It’s anchored to a concrete floor-slab. We wanted to avoid critters, and having it blow away in a windstorm.
It’s not completely to my architectural approval, appearance-wise, but my wife liked it. It had pretty side-windows she could view from our house.
No electricity. I run a long extension-cord out to it when I hafta, mainly to run a battery-charger, and my snowblower electric-start. My house has outside sockets.
Shed finished, my wife started planting things around it. That included the bleeding hearts.
There were also wild-flowers — “I keep a-plantin’ that bird seed, but it keeps comin’ up flowers.”
(That’s a BobbaLew original.)
As I say, my wife died four years ago, but her legacies keep poppin’ up.
And me being a pants-wearer, I never knew what most flowers were.
People at a church-sponsored grief-share told me they were bleeding hearts, but I forgot again when they reappeared a week ago.
A while after AnMari the deluge began. First my wife’s brother and his wife in south FL. Then some of my bus buddies.
Then the next day a guy I went to college with, plus another girl I worked with at the Mighty Mezz.
My wife’s brother and his wife are computer-savvy. Her brother is always monitoring his iPhone, which like mine can get e-mail.
His wife has an iPad, and she always carries it.
They’re not AnMari, but I can expect an answer fairly quickly.
Both Transit buddies are computer-savvy. One monitors his Smartphone, an Android. The other hits his MAC fairly often.
The guy I went to college with is extremely ‘pyooter-savvy, but I don’t think he plays with his computer like me. He drives a Windows PC; AnMari and I drive MACs.
Various family-members also weighed in, like my brother-in-Boston, and my brother-in-DE’s wife. My brother-in-Boston gets my e-mails at work, so can respond right away.
Maybe 10 responses to my e-mail over two days, with AnMari being first. That e-mail went to 36 people. The non-responders are nowhere near as attached to their computers as me or AnMari.
Of course AnMari responded right away. She was drivin’ her ‘pyooter.
And my wife’s legacies keep a-flowerin’, to remind me how much I miss her.
Last year it was daffy-dills.

• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over ten years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]). (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)
• RE: “to chase trains......” —I’m a railfan, and have been since age-2.
• RE: “to the hospital......” —I’ve had two operations during the past year: the first was August 26th to remove my prostate-gland; the second was December 7th to replace my left knee.
• My “zero-turn” is my riding-mower; “zero-turn” because it’s a special design with separate drives to each drive-wheel, so can be spun on a dime. “Zero-turns” are becoming the norm, because they cut mowing time compared to a lawn-tractor, which has to be set up for each mowing-pass.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her immensely. Best friend I ever had, and after my childhood I sure needed one.
• RE: “bus buddies.....” —For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. I made many friends.