nancymclelland0

"Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars." Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary "La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des mélodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles."

Then everything in my world would make sense, the Bernie bros and the friends of Mike Pence. AOC, Ivanka Trump, and Cardi B would fit into one # hashtag mystery, The Q-Anon boys would have a spot in my dysfunctional Camelot. The Antifa guys would have their place. I would understand Outer Space! Bitcoin carnivores, vegans in pleather, RINO and Soros, even Big Pharma– in my delusional drama, we’d be one Big Bird of a paranoid feather.

How many good stories do we have? This is one of my best. It’s about finding a beautiful turquoise and silver necklace in a box of hand-me-downs. Probably 1954 or ‘55. That would make me thirteen or fourteen. Not yet in high school. The box came to us in Elko, Nevada from Mom’s aunt, Irene Stanworth, Canoga Park, California. The exotic necklace stayed in Mom’s top dresser drawer for the next fifteen years. In 1972, Mom and Dad made their first visit to Albuquerque. My husband, Doug,...