Tattered Blue Genes My chromosomes are jumbled up, but I still got twenty-three With genes a-plenty, all mixed up From Ma and Pa, and their Mas and Pas that somehow make up “Me.” Momma had blue eyes, So do I. Daddy had brown eyes; Their genes are why. Sister got the brown eyes, pretty impressive. I got the blue ones; I think they recessive. Talkin’ about brains, it was easy to see I was taller than than them, but uh, They was both smarter than me. I’ve managed to get old, Thru no virtue of my own, Ain’t no denyin’. Just the luck o’ the draw, And I ain’t afraid of dyin’ Just lucky to be here, Got to be this age, Tho’ my powers is declinin’ Natural thing at this stage, so uh, Ain’t no use whinin’.   These genes o’mine will go unsown, All o’ which, I don’t mind sayin’: Sweet bird o’ youth has flown. I’m the last o’ the line Which I find a bit dismayin’. Them other people’s genes will do just fine But my telomeres are frayin’.

  6/6/2023 Learn something every day.   That old saw proves ever more true as I advance in age (now 72).   Problem is that I forget things soon after I learn them.   That’s why I’m writing these little pieces on religion; I’m more likely to remember if I write them down. What I learned this morning at 8:00 mass at St. Al’s is that there is such a thing as the Book of Tobit (Tobias) in The Bible.   Actually, The Bible isn’t THE Bible.   There are many versions.   The approved Catholic Bible (from which this morning’s Old Testament reading was taken), has Tobit --and several other books as well.   Orthodox Bibles also have them.   Many Protestant Bibles, including the King James Version (which I own), do not.   Tobit 2:9-14 Anyway, here’s the reading: On the night of Pentecost, after I had buried the dead, I, Tobit, went into my courtyard to sleep next to the courtyard wall. My face was uncovered because of the heat. I did not know there were birds perched on the wall abov

  February 18, 2022 Something on the Internet recently reminded me that this month marks the Centennial of the publication of the much-celebrated and seldom-read novel Ulysses by James Joyce.   It may have been an article in the New Yorker : “Getting to Yes,” by Merve Emre, an Oxford scholar. [i]   I read the article with an interest that was mixed with a specific nostalgia for the times (twice) that I read Ulysses (lo these many years ago), and a more general nostalgia for the times I read fiction at all.   It seems I don’t read novels anymore and I wonder what happened. The last novel I read was A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.   According to my “Read (already been read)” [ii] list on Goodreads, I finished it in August, 2020, a year and a half ago. I’m fairly certain that’s the longest novel-free period of my life, at least since I started reading fiction while in junior high school, more than 55 years ago.   I’m wondering now whether to start at that point or work backw