astonished

So, I drove into the African-American section of town yesterday and met with the wife of the husband and wife owners of a coffee shop there, to discuss hanging a few pieces of my art. January.

On the drive back I decided to stop at the Logan Heights library, pick up the last book I’ll have on hold there, and say hello to folks, including Briana, though she happened to have left before I arrived.

But, this is mostly what I want to tell you. When I parked at the library I walked over to the house of Bobbie the feral cat’s caretaker. Bobbie was there, asleep in the shade under the rear bumper of her car. He woke when I walked up to the fence, and for the first time ever (in over a year), he meowed to me, and walked over to me. And for the first time ever, four or five or six visits a week in that year, Bobbie leaned forward and, after a moment’s hesitation, let me reach through the fence and scratch his head.

The book waiting for me on the ‘Holds’ shelf in the library was “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes, and I checked it out. Home, sitting in the lop-sided recliner, I read this description of New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford — “Rutherford’s ultimate distinction was his ‘genius to be astonished.'”

Hot fun in the summertime.