Some pleasures in life are mostly reserved to those of mature years. Garrison Keillor is one of them.

The host of Prairie Home Companion came to Boston one Saturday in late February to stage one of his radio shows and, the next day, to perform at Sanders Theater across the Charles River.

At the latter site, I saw Keillor, my first sight of one of the greatest humorists America has produced. He came on stage hulking in a tux, his feet encased in red sox and sneakers. Listening to the radio, you would never know how tall he is, six-four or higher. Mop-like, a lock of hair descends over his forehead, threatening to obscure his right eye.

This native Minnesotan, at age 62, has a surprisingly small face. If I emphasizethe man’s looks, it comes from fascination at finally seeing someone after years of only hearing him. Some 65 years ago I had a similar epiphany when I was taken to New York for a live broadcast of the hit show “Information Please.”

My surmise about Keillor’s humor being largely accessible to people of a certain age finds support in a panoramic sweep I made of the Sanders Theater audience. Most people, it seemed, had white or gray hair, with some of the guys having precious little at all.

Garrison Keillor’s view of old age, however, would delight few of its boosters. Here’s some of what he wrote for Time Magazine on the occasion of his 60th birthday: “Even if you're positive-thinking, hopped up on Viagra, and your face has been lifted and stapled to make you look like a feral lemur, nonetheless one day you'll look like something from the lost lagoon and have the sex drive of a potted plant. Nature doesn't care about your golden years, it's aiming for turnover.”

If I wrote like that, I might get high marks for clever style, but would I keep any readers?

Most of the time Keillor restrains such somber thoughts, however. His view of life also has more of the ironic about it than the pessimistic, and he often goes for the sentimental.

Nostalgia, of course, is his chief stock in trade. On the air since 1974, Prairie Home Companion itself is a sophisticated tribute to the old days, the time when he, along with the rest of us, grew up and blundered into knowledge of life.

I remember first listening to it, wondering what kind of show it could be. Who was this fellow from the upper Midwest regaling us with often corny jokes and country music? At times the program sounded as if it was on the level, the real life product of small town America, but one had to wonder.

His characters, like Pastor Ingkvist and Dorothy Myrtle, are convincing types of an earlier society filled with home-grown stereotypes and personal eccentricities. Keillor gets mileage galore out of the mythic population of Lake Wobegone “where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children above average.”

Where would we be in later life without humor like his?  As one of my favorite spiritual writers, Kathleen Fischer, says: “Humor reveals that there is a more in the midst of human life.” It gives us a perspective enabling us to make fun of the ridiculous enterprise that our lives so often appear to be.

Keillor shows himself especially adept at holding up to gentle ridicule the ways of grassroots religion. Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility hits off the Catholic parish nicely, and the Lutheran code of behavior that keeps citizens, both young and old, within the confines of decency gives an entertaining edge to small-town community tales.

What Keillor does best is spin stories. Who can match his timing, his ability to build suspense, the way he can bring out the pathos in a situation without direct statement of it? With his genius for narrative, he reminds us how storytelling is the best way of learning, the ancient art that has most enriched the history of the world.

With the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the visiting entertainer did a riff on some of his favorite poems, including bits and pieces of them in an ongoing monologue accompanied by music. The lines all shared the theme of “gather rosebuds while ye may,” a subversive motif that pervaded poems once innocently recited in junior high school.

Later, he fitted poetic passages between the sections of Ottorino Respighi’s suite “The Birds.” Some doves perched on a telephone wire the poet imagined witnessing his own burial. “Please don’t take him away,” the birds cried, “please don’t take our daddy away.”  

On my way out the door after the Pro Arte concert, I spotted Garrison Keillor standing, head above the crowd, and edged close enough to shake his hand. “Thank you for coming,” I said to this man I consider a cultural icon. “My pleasure, my pleasure,” he rejoindered, these words entirely without trace of his signature irony.

Richard Griffin

Entering my favorite book store, a few weeks ago, whom did I see standing in front of me but George McGovern? He was in town for the Democratic National Convention and had just finished giving a talk about his new book The Essential America. Before leaving the store, he was at that moment free for conversation.

This former senator, now 82, looked natty in a well-tailored suit and seemed in vigorous physical condition. His engaging personality emerged quickly as I introduced myself and told him of my disappointment that my vote for him as president in 1972 had not proven contagious, at least outside of Massachusetts.

About Senator McGovern we were right, of course, as the famous Massachusetts bumper sticker later reminded people from less enlightened states (all 49 of them). “We Told You So” said our boast, as we rubbed it in the face of those who had chosen Nixon.

In doing so, they passed up a man of sterling virtue for one whose vulgarity of brain and heart continues to find expression in the release of further Oval Office tapes. While recently reading some transcripts, I felt renewed dismay. Talking to a fawning Henry Kissinger about the State Department’s policy toward Uganda, President Nixon says: “Screw State! State’s always on the side of the blacks. The hell with them.”

And admonishing Kissinger about receiving the presidents of the Ivy League schools, he uses typical profanity: “SOBs (he did not employ this euphemism) − I wouldn’t have seen them.” Sentiments like these found Nixon’s tongue a familiar launching pad.

Recalling one of the substantive issues on which he made little headway during his campaign for the presidency, I told George McGovern of my appreciation for his having alerted the nation to Watergate. Had Americans taken his warning seriously, we would have saved ourselves from a serious threat to the Constitution− though, of course, such a move would have deprived the nation of some great television.

In a season when candidates’ military service has become an issue, I expressed admiration for McGovern because of his record during World War II. At age 23, he served as pilot of a B-24 bomber that flew 35 missions over Germany in those horrific days. Fortunately he escaped the fate of one of my friends, Ned Handy, who was shot down and did austere time in Stalag 17, the notorious German prison camp.

Incidentally, during his campaign McGovern made no mention of his outstanding military record. In fact, he told Stephen Ambrose, the late historian who wrote about him years after the campaign, that he had never discussed his war experiences at any length while involved in electoral politics. A natural modesty about his accomplishments seems to fit his character.  

This encounter with the man who ran in 1972 made me think above all of the Vietnam War. One of my strongest reasons for hoping against hope for his election to the presidency was confidence that he would stop the tragically ill-conceived United States participation in it. Nixon promised the same thing, but he escalated the conflict and it dragged on for years more, accounting for a total of 40 percent of U.S. casualties.

He preserves his place on my honor roll of fine candidates−Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Al Gore−all of whom were well equipped for the White House, if not perhaps for Mount Rushmore. In voting for each of them (Adlai twice), I managed to amass an inglorious streak of losses, although I am quite prepared to defend my choices, especially that of George McGovern.

George McGovern has worn remarkably well, proving himself a man of character and learning who continues to hold strongly to the solid traditions of this country. The country’s betrayal of such values causes him ongoing regret.

In an interview given to a web agency called BuzzFlash he says about the Iraq war: “It makes me furious to see people like that [Bush, Cheney, Richard Perle] beating their chests on how patriotic they are, waving the flag, glorifying God while young Americans are needlessly being sacrificed in wars that they have devised.”

I cringe at the possibility that the electorate of our nation will once again buy a mess of pottage and entitle the current administration to preside over us for the next four years. Massachusetts already knows better than to vote that way, thus losing for us the chance to see those dubiously entertaining ads that fill the television screens of living rooms in those states judged swingable.

The unexpected personal encounter with McGovern reinforced my view of our current need of leaders who bring to public life high ideals and respect for the best traditions of our country. It takes wisdom to steer a nation through the complexities of modern life and that wisdom is currently in painfully short supply.

Richard Griffin

When Ned Handy heard about the allied invasion of Normandy, 60 years ago this week, it was thanks to a wireless radio that a fellow prisoner had built without the guards catching on. The news produced backslaps and quiet laughter among the captured Americans as half-suppressed joy spread through their barracks.

This happened in the third month of Ned’s captivity in the notorious German prisoner-of-war camp called Stalag 17. A top-turret gunner and engineer on a B-24 bomber, he had been shot down on April 11, 1944 on a raid over northern Germany. Luftwaffe fighter planes knocked out three of the engines, forcing the pilot to limp along with only one rapidly failing engine.

Forced to bail out along with other crew members, Ned landed in a field and was soon captured by farmers and several soldiers. The farmers beat him with tool handles and pieces of wood and might have killed him had it not been for the women who yelled at them to desist. “I’ll remember always the yell of those women,” says Ned now.

Then he was transported, by forced march and by railroad, to Austria where the grim prison camp was located, not far from the Danube River and Vienna.

These harrowing adventures and many others are recounted in Ned’s just- published book, “The Flame Keepers: the True Story of an American Soldier’s Survival Inside Stalag 17.” I found the book fascinating to read and recommend it to everyone interested in World War II and stories of human courage in the face of mortal danger.

I admit having the advantage of friendship with Ned, as a result of frequent workplace contacts when we both worked in the Cambridge city government almost 30 years ago. Strangely enough, I never knew anything about Ned’s wartime experiences at that time and I feel deprived for not having discovered them till now.

My friend will be 82 years old next September, yet this is the first book he has written. For this project, he had the advantage of significant help from his wife, an excellent listener and editor, of whom he says “She has a terrific blue pencil.”

He also benefited much from his co-author, Kemp Battle, a former publisher who has an intense interest in military history. “Kemp’s input on how to tell a story was invaluable,” says Ned. Seeing the book through 12 drafts over a three year period was no easy task, the writers freely admit.

Ned recalls that life in camp was grueling, with food scarce and continual threats from the guards a menace. Until the latter months, Ned’s main activity each day was digging a tunnel under the fence toward the outside. Of course he did not work alone but was the crew chief of a team of other prisoners. Keeping their project secret from the guards required constant vigilance, with the risk of discovery carrying mortal danger.

In general, the treatment given the American prisoners was influenced by the requirements of the Geneva Convention. Ned and his fellow airmen also benefited from the organizing skills of the Americans who had been imprisoned before his group arrived. Acting democratically, they had chosen leaders for barracks, group, and compound, all of whom reported to a senior manager.  Still, the prisoners had to suffer constant deprivation, brutal cold in winter, relentless pressure, and fear of an unknown fate.

About the effect of Stalag 17 on his fellow prisoners of war, Ned says: “If they went in iron, they came out steel.”  That would seem to be the transformation in Ned himself. On entering the prison he was only 21 years old; on his release 13 months later, he himself had been transformed.

The first steps toward that release came in April of 1945 when the guards led the prisoners on a 120-mile hike away from Stalag 17 and the advancing Russian armies. Before linking up with American forces, the group took refuge in a forest and the guards gradually disappeared. One day Ned was able to get away for a long walk in the countryside.

Coming to a beautiful meadow, he sat down and described in a small blue notebook how the prison experience had transformed him interiorly. He did not know how he had survived, by contrast with all the American warriors who had not. “I resolved to try from then on to live, in their honor, a life that would serve others rather than me,” he wrote.

In his early 80s, Ned shows remarkable vigor, his health flourishing and his personal intensity apparently unflagging. Only the hearing in his left ear is diminished, this the result of a pistol whipping by a malevolent Stalag 17 guard.

Of his present life Ned says, “I never think of myself as a senior.” His good health allows him to pass as considerably younger, even to some doctors. He feels ready to take on further responsibility, the next chapter in a life marked, not only by heroism but by dedication and service to others.

Richard Griffin

When friends asked earlier this summer where two other family members and I were going for vacation, I took some glee in answering: Des Moines. Not bothering to disguise, much less suppress, East Coast snobbery, they would almost invariably guffaw and sputter incredulously: Why?

At the risk of violating the unspoken rules governing attitudes of regional superiority, let me confess ─ I like Des Moines. Beyond that, I like the state of Iowa which that city serves as capital.

This I affirm without even being a candidate for president. When I behold prominent Democrats and ambitious Republicans swarming around the cornfields, I reflect on how transient and forced their feelings for Iowa are. Unlike me, they will soon shift their affections to New Hampshire and other early-primary states.

But my enjoyment of Iowa will continue. Vacation days there will continue to provide entertainment of a high order. Every time the sight of this land appears in the airplane window, I feel thankful to be back among the welcoming people who live in middle America.

If this approach seems irrational, let me ground it in two realities. Friendship and fine art are what primarily attract me to Des Moines.

Nick, my friend of some four decades, is a native of that city. As a gracious host, he has the know-how to give his guests an insider’s appreciation of the place. He can tell you all about the city squares and their chief buildings, and escort you to the hidden enclaves where the local nabobs live.

As a former priest of the Catholic diocese there, Nick can also provide the lowdown on the local ecclesiastical situation. Of course, you would have to share my weird tastes to be interested in this kind of news. But, you still might find human interest in some of his tales of local clergy.

While still a seminarian, Nick looked to be in line for some form of preferment. For a time, it looked, for all the world, as if he could be sent to Rome for theological study and later to become a monsignor, or even a bishop. At least, I tell him this.

That situation resulted from him having worked for the then reigning bishop, Edward Daly. When still a schoolboy, Nick worked on the episcopal grounds, ran errands, and served as the bishop’s chauffeur.

That preferment, however, came to a tragic end in 1964 on the tarmac of Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome. There Bishop Daly sat in a Boeing 707 with a priest assistant when it veered off the runway and crashed into an earthmover, killing the two clerics and dozens of the other passengers.

A year later, Nick recalls, the diocese of Des Moines received in the mail a glass eye, a grisly relic of the bishop’s companion.

Besides friendship, opera also attracts me to Des Moines. Again, friends show themselves aghast at my choice of musical venue. My obvious addiction to this art-form seems to them a weak excuse for traveling over almost half the country to hear people sing.

But they do not know about the pleasures provided by the Des Moines Metro Opera Company. After many hearings, I consider it one of the finest regional opera companies in America, well worth the trip.

This year’s performances on three weekend days included Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bizet’s Carmen, and Verdi’s Otello. The company likes to program each summer a contemporary work, a warhorse, and a challenging classic. This season’s trio admirably filled that scheme.

A characteristic feature of DMMO performances is their intimacy. The theater seats only some 500 people, and virtually every seat affords you a fine view of the players. That makes it easy to identify with the action, even when you read the supertitles above the stage.

And after each performance, the singers come to the lobby where they are available for conversation and photo taking. To me, it’s a rare pleasure to talk with people, many of them young and aspiring talents, about their work. We asked Desdemona, for example, about the challenges of singing with her head forced back from the bed almost to the floor while her husband Otello strangled her. Not easy!

By now, Nick has taken me to some twenty operas, all of them worth attending. This guy from Boston has become almost an annual fixture as I absorb the pleasures of seeing a wide array of heroes, heroines, and villains. In imagination, these figures people my inner world as I recall the moments of ecstasy and awe-full tragedy.

No, I have not been to Paris this summer, nor Rome. Admittedly, the cuisine is usually better in both sites than in Des Moines. Friendship and opera, however, make Iowa rank high for me. Yes, I have lost points from the literati back home. But what’s wrong with appearing naïve and simple-minded?

Richard Griffin

At a dinner party this August, someone raised a question that surprised me. “What do you think about the restoration of the Latin Mass?”

As I recall, the questioner was not Catholic. However, I discovered long ago that what the pope says and does often attracts attention from huge numbers of people who do not belong to his church. In fact, sometimes the latter seem to attach more importance to him than do we Catholics.

In July, Benedict XVI, announced a change in the conditions under which priests are allowed to say the so-called Latin Mass. As of mid-September, they will no longer require the permission of their bishop to celebrate this liturgy in the Latin language.

This change, initiated by the pope, will presumably be welcome to people who long for the language and ritual of an earlier day. To have this older Mass close at hand will please those Catholics who are dissatisfied with the liturgy in use since 1965.

You might possibly expect me to be among those who welcome this revival. I do not. For me, it strikes a blow against the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

What that council accomplished in the years 1962 to 1965 transformed my inner and outer world. I felt overjoyed at the actions of the more than two thousand bishops who came to Rome from all over the world. With the positions they took on both church teaching and practical life, they brought the Catholic Church into the modern world.

Hearing Mass in English especially pleased me because it made the sacred words and actions more accessible to a far greater number of people. Like others around the world who now heard Mass in their own languages, we Americans could more easily grasp the meaning of what was said and done.

Mind you, I am not badmouthing what went before. The old liturgy also brought Catholics like me into vital contact with the beauty and mystery of our faith. And I had the advantage of having studied Latin for four years of high school so, from adolescence on, I could understand at least many of the words spoken ritually by the priest.

But I welcomed having the priest face the people instead of turning his back to us. I was glad to hear passages from the Hebrew Bible read aloud, along with a greater variety of selections from the New Testament. And it pleased me to see some basic parts of the Mass restored in keeping with what scholars had discovered about the liturgy of the early church.

Some critics of the Vatican II liturgy, then and now, make it seem a violation of tradition. However, they fail to recognize how it embodies parts of an earlier tradition, far older than the Latin Masses of my youth.

Many features of the Mass with which I grew up came from the Council of Trent. This 16th century gathering of bishops legislated a Mass that contained some features not as faithful to the older tradition as is the current post-1965 liturgy.

As a Catholic who has traveled widely since the middle sixties, I have taken part in the Mass in many different places. My impression is how well it usually works. Attenders answer the prayers much more actively than they did in the past.

I like to think my reaction to the Vatican’s recent action is representative of my age peers. No one knows for sure, of course, but I suspect that surveys would show Catholics of my age to be highly in favor of the Vatican II liturgy.

You will not find many of us elders wanting to return to the Mass as it was when we were growing up. Unlike some younger enthusiasts for the liturgy in use from the 16th century to the 1960s, we remember only too well how badly priests often carried out those rites.

The priests in my parish, in Belmont MA, admirable as they were in many other ways, used to mumble the Latin words. This made them unintelligible even if you knew that ancient language. I remember their liturgical style as an obstacle to full appreciation of the sacred actions.

In not clamoring for the Latin Mass, my Catholic age peers show how well they have adapted to social change. For the last 40 years we have felt comfortable in worshipping using liturgical forms different from what we knew before 1965. Only a statistically minute number of us have lobbied for the old approach.

Acceptance of this change, among many others, gives the lie to the widespread stereotype of people advanced in years being resistant to change of all sorts. Whether research supports this view I have been unable to discover, but I consider older Americans’ flexibility and adaptability to change quite remarkable.

Richard Griffin

Lunch with two favorite cousins has stirred in me recollections of family history that we all share.

Patricia, the older of the two was born in 1920. Though she does not think of herself as the family matriarch, her longevity clearly qualifies her as such.

For me, she holds special authority: she is the only person left in this world who can tell me about my mother in the days before her marriage to my father.

For her first five years, Patricia lived next door to my mother, her aunt, in Peabody, Massachusetts. Even when her family moved to the western part of the state, she stayed in touch with her.

The other cousin, Jean, had just celebrated her 79th birthday, a month before I will take note of mine. The two of us thus rank as other prime authorities on the history of our extended family. We are especially qualified to talk about Aunt Mary, a woman of loveable eccentricities, who doted on us both when we were children.

Like other relatives who come together too rarely, we began by exchanging photos. This proved an effective and enjoyable way of catching up with weddings, births, careers, deaths, and other sadder but significant events.

Among the photos, one merits special mention. Dating from the early 1990s, it shows Patricia’s mother who, at a great age, posed with her daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, and great-great grandaughter. This image of five generations of women, old and young, will bear witness to gifts of longevity and fecundity bestowed on this family branch.

Another image that will linger with me was a photo of Patricia’s late husband Dick. Taken from an old-fashioned college yearbook page, it shows him in his Rutgers’ football uniform and listed his abundant accomplishments. He seemed to be All-Everything in his undergraduate days, before he became an officer in the U.S. Army during World War II. I came to know him well and always admired his robust good looks and engaging personality.

Some members of the next generation to ours have proven fabulously successful in highly lucrative careers. No one has ever accused me of success similar to that enjoyed by these nieces and nephews and second cousins. I rejoice in their good fortune while  hoping that it will not spoil them nor harm their personal relationships.

(If this last sentiment seems a bit moralistic and even patronizing, please attribute it to a genetic inheritance often attributed to my success-fearing Irish ancestors.)

The generation that comes next after mine and that of my two cousins has, of course, inherited many of our own traits. These younger relatives are sometimes easily recognizable as descendents of our parents.

However, we agreed on at least two major differences. First, marital break-ups are much more common in the younger generation than in our own. Patricia, Jean, and I attribute the difference to the power that the Catholic tradition of our family had over us. In this instance, that power produced mixed results.

When I was growing up, it was hard to find fellow Catholics who were divorced. Of course, there were not a few whose marriages had broken up, but they were regarded as exceptional. Both my cousins consider that to have been a dubious blessing because, in many instances, it kept together partners who should have split.

The other phenomenon that virtually every extended family now knows is gay and lesbian sexuality. My two cousins and I had similar experience growing up: we did not even know what homosexuality was. Until I reached my early 20s, I was unaware of its existence.

Now, I’m glad to report, members of my generation have accepted this fact of life readily. Those younger than we are find full acceptance much more gracefully than could have been imagined in the past.

Hearing of relatives who died young always brings special sadness. Why, one must ask, were they singled out for short lives when the family has produced so many who lived to be old? I continue to mourn those who departed prematurely and the parents who lost them.

When Patricia greeted me on this occasion, she immediately remarked on my white hair. She claimed it becomes me but one has to wonder if that is what she really thought. Instead, she might have felt the shock that nearly everyone experiences when they encounter someone they have not seen for a while.

“My word, you do look old,” she may have said to herself. This sentiment readily comes to mind when the person you see is someone that you have always thought much younger than yourself, ─ even he or she, if they last long enough, seems at a far remove from the youthfulness you remember.

When lunch was over, we lingered longer, reluctant to give up talk about family matters. However, the time came to leave and we departed, not without the customary assurances of doing this more often.

Richard Griffin

The cardinal has perched on our fence post, cocking his head as if to take the measure of this new site. The click of his claws on the wooden platform can be heard as he twists his body around too.

Then this splendid bird hops down the walk leading to our front porch before stopping to admire our minimal garden. Apparently, no worms or other delicacies are at beak, so he soon flies back to a branch on the other side of our small street.

There he can resume the call that so characterizes his stay in the neighborhood. Almost every spring and summer morning has begun with his distinctive song, a signal that he is very much there.

This call begins with two piercing whistles and then, in rapid succession, come ten other short bursts, almost too fast to count. The bird then repeats this formula over and over so long as he remains on one perch.

How he gets such volume and resonance from his narrow throat amazes me. Apparently this bird has taken seriously the standard advice of voice teachers, who will tell you to use your diaphragm to unlock the power of your speaking and singing potential. As one who has failed to internalize this advice, I stand in envy of what the cardinal achieves over and over.

What made his foray on to our walkway notable was its uniqueness. Never before, in my experience, had this bird, or any other members of the cardinal family, ventured to come so close to humanity. I was sitting on our small front porch all the while, enjoying this unprecedented opportunity to observe him up close.

Of course, the brilliance of his plumage was his most striking feature. That red, so resplendent and magnetic to the onlooker, fascinates me at every sighting. From my own perch on the porch, I gazed on this cardinal while wondering what life for him feels like to him.

What must it be to outshine in brilliance almost all others of his ilk? The cardinal makes the other neighborhood birds seem awfully dull. How can they tolerate being so dominated in color?

Perhaps those of us who are ecclesiastically involved can judge by encounters with cardinals of the church. You may  think it foolish to walk around swathed in red robes or, alternatively, you can perhaps envy those who look so much more splendid rather than the rest of us.

But back to our bird. Long ago I learned that what most animals do most of the time is think about how to get food. A daily existence that looks glamorous to us, flying around the place at will and singing their hearts out, is most likely not romantic but highly pragmatic. They have mouths to feed, their own and others’, and they have to stay in contact with family members.

And those songs they sing, though pleasing to us, are probably not a matter of pleasure to them. Instead, like an ambitious human soprano or tenor who is trying to make the big time, birds are undoubtedly singing out of need rather than fun.

But I prefer to focus on their beauty and grace. To me, their inner lives are material for fantasy and contemplation.

The cardinal who approached me seemed to be striking up a friendship. Tentatively, he was trying out what it might be like to spend time near a human being. Without the security of the high wire and the tree branches on which he had been resting, he was now exploring new territory.

Though I regard myself as rather reliable, the cardinal had no assurance of that fact. He was taking a chance on this one human that I would welcome his foray into my territory. His silence during this adventure counts as a clear sign of his inner anxiety. That was not a situation that merited music.

My hope is that he will make a habit out of visiting our yard. If we can convince him of a safe and welcoming reception every time he comes, the visit could become a neighborhood amenity.

Yes, I want to see and hear him perched high on our telephone wires and amid the branches of our tall trees. But I crave more frequent intimacy with this dazzling creature of the skies. Is a close personal relationship in our future?

Today, I don’t hear my favorite bird. Perhaps he has gone in search of a more lively neighborhood than ours. But I don’t believe he will forsake us for long. He must know by now how much he assures us of the lasting beauty of the world despite the damages constantly inflicted on it.

Ah, the simple pleasures of an aging guy who loves sitting on his porch while persisting in contemplating the world and its wonders, especially when those wonders come to his doorstep.

Richard Griffin