June Babies Quotes

I know you know the tale of Baby June You know the way she could deliver a tune She was a killer in a petticoat A little bit of everyone you adore... And if your baby let you down at night, Well Baby June would make it up alright And I was never happier Than in the arms and charms of her

Men are trouble" "Amen to that." Peach said. "You were happily married for fifty years," Miz June said, "I don't understand why you are agreeing." "He Left Me." Peach said "He DIED." "Same thing.

He was breathing heavily. “I honestly don’t understand what’s wrong with you,” he said. “You’re telling me to pack my bags, to leave our house, knowing you’re going to have a baby?” “And this surprises you why? Have you seen what’s been happening in our house?” “Stop talking to me like this in our bed, Tatiana. My white flag is up,” said Alexander. “I have no more.” “My white flag is up, too, Shura,” she said. “You know when mine went up? June 22, 1941.

While we searched for you, the Bullets screamed your nickname over and over. It was the first time someone called you something that completely illustrated what it felt like to look at you. You’re Sunshine, Baby. You’re light. Warmth. Pure life illuminating those lucky enough to know you.

I love you,” he says gently, running his fingers along my hairline. “Never going to stop loving you, baby.” “Ev,” I breathe, feeling tears burn my throat. “I’ll wait for you to find it again. I’d wait forever for you.

This boy needed someone to love him. And she could do that. That would be a very easy thing for her to do. She pulled him close to her, as close as she could, as close as she’d held her own babies the days they were born. She held him tight and she put her cheek to his head and she could feel him start to calm. And then, even before he was silent, June had already made up her mind. “I will love you,” June told him. And she did.

Given that those sinning, raping plantation owners had both white babies and Black babies, everyone was six degrees from being one or the other. Which was what scared southern white people the most.

What’s wrong with your father? Huh? Can’t he do this? Or have you been reading Freud? WARD, have you been reading the baby Freud?

Baby, I wouldn’t settle for someone else if I couldn’t have you,

They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery / stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors / to jail and they cluster-bombed girls and boys / whose bodies / swelled purple and black into twice the original size / and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby / and then / they said this was brilliant

Was crazy for a while, baby. I also couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even fucking take a breath. Three days ago, I finally took a breath, and since then, I’ve been breathing easy. So no, baby, I’m not crazy.

Apples Ma's apple blossoms have turned to hard green balls. To eat them now, so tart, would turn my mouth inside out, would make my stomach groan. But in just a couple months, after the baby is born, those apples will be ready and we'll make pies and sauce and pudding and dumplings and cake and cobbler and have just plain apples to take to school and slice with my pocket knife and eat one juicy piece at a time until my mouth is clean and fresh and my breath is nothing but apple. June 1934

Oh great, we can skip past the awkward 'I'm probably going to put a baby in your best friend' conversation then," he said with a shrug. "By the way, I think I have a breeder kink.

I cut myself. He didn’t do it. And I’d been taking drugs—your drugs, or getting them from your boyfriends—my whole life. I wasn’t your innocent little baby.

NEW ORLEANS JAZZ: RECOMMENDED LISTENING Louis Armstrong, “Heebie Jeebies,” February 26, 1926 Louis Armstrong, “Potato Head Blues,” May 10, 1927 Louis Armstrong, “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue,” December 9, 1927 Louis Armstrong, “West End Blues,” June 28, 1928 Sidney Bechet, “I’ve Found a New Baby,” September 15, 1932 Sidney Bechet, “Wild Cat Blues,” June 30, 1923 Johnny Dodds, “Perdido Street Blues,” July 13, 1926 Freddie Keppard, “Stock Yards Strut,” September, 1926 Jelly Roll Morton, “Black Bottom Stomp,” September 15, 1926 Jelly Roll Morton, “Sidewalk Blues,” September 21, 1926 King Oliver, “Dipper Mouth Blues,” April 6, 1923 King Oliver, “Froggie Moore,” April 6, 1923

January? The month is dumb. It is fraudulent. It does not cleanse itself. The hens lay blood-stained eggs. Do not lend your bread to anyone lest it nevermore rise. Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out. Do not rely on February except when your cat has kittens, throbbing into the snow. Do not use knives and forks unless there is a thaw, like the yawn of a baby. The sun in this month begets a headache like an angel slapping you in the face. Earthquakes mean March. The dragon will move, and the earth will open like a wound. There will be great rain or snow so save some coal for your uncle. The sun of this month cures all. Therefore, old women say: Let the sun of March shine on my daughter, but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law. However, if you go to a party dressed as the anti-Christ you will be frozen to death by morning. During the rainstorms of April the oyster rises from the sea and opens its shell — rain enters it — when it sinks the raindrops become the pearl. So take a picnic, open your body, and give birth to pearls. June and July? These are the months we call Boiling Water. There is sweat on the cat but the grape marries herself to the sun. Hesitate in August. Be shy. Let your toes tremble in their sandals. However, pick the grape and eat with confidence. The grape is the blood of God. Watch out when holding a knife or you will behead St. John the Baptist. Touch the Cross in September, knock on it three times and say aloud the name of the Lord. Put seven bowls of salt on the roof overnight and the next morning the damp one will foretell the month of rain. Do not faint in September or you will wake up in a dead city. If someone dies in October do not sweep the house for three days or the rest of you will go. Also do not step on a boy's head for the devil will enter your ears like music. November? Shave, whether you have hair or not. Hair is not good, nothing is allowed to grow, all is allowed to die. Because nothing grows you may be tempted to count the stars but beware, in November counting the stars gives you boils. Beware of tall people, they will go mad. Don't harm the turtle dove because he is a great shoe that has swallowed Christ's blood. December? On December fourth water spurts out of the mouse. Put herbs in its eyes and boil corn and put the corn away for the night so that the Lord may trample on it and bring you luck. For many days the Lord has been shut up in the oven. After that He is boiled, but He never dies, never dies.

No matter how tall she grows or how many summers come and go, she will always be my sweet June bug, forever young, forever my baby sister.

Thirty days have Salo, Niles, June, and September, Winston, Chrono, Kazak, and November, April, Rumfoord, Newport, and Infundibulum. All the rest, baby mine, have thirty-one. The

Baby Zeke 15   ​ ​​Friday, May 28, 2021 (tentative) Glitch Guardians 3    ​​Friday, June 18, 2021 (tentative) Surfer Villager 31 ​​TBA (Late June or early July)

Sign O' The Times Oh yeah In France a skinny man Died of a big disease with a little name By chance his girlfriend came across a needle And soon she did the same At home there are seventeen-year-old boys And their idea of fun Is being in a gang called The Disciples High on crack, totin' a machine gun Time, time Hurricane Annie ripped the ceiling of a church And killed everyone inside U turn on the telly and every other story Is tellin' U somebody died Sister killed her baby cuz she could afford 2 feed it And we're sending people 2 the moon In September my cousin tried reefer 4 the very first time Now he's doing horse, it's June Times, times It's silly, no? When a rocket ship explodes And everybody still wants 2 fly Some say a man ain't happy Unless a man truly dies Oh why Time, time Baby make a speech, Star Wars fly Neighbors just shine it on But if a night falls and a bomb falls Will anybody see the dawn Time, times It's silly, no? When a rocket blows And everybody still wants 2 fly Some say a man ain't happy, truly Until a man truly dies Oh why, oh why, Sign O the Times Time, time Sign O the Times mess with your mind Hurry before it's 2 late Let's fall in love, get married, have a baby We'll call him Nate... if it's a boy Time, time Time, time

home, it’s different. I mean yes, you want money and a job, but there’s a hundred other things you do for getting by, especially older people and farmers with the crops, tomato gardens and such. Hunting and fishing, plus all the woman things, making quilts and clothes. Whether big or small, you’ve always got the place you’re living on. I’ve known people to raise a beef in the yard behind their rented trailer. I was getting the picture now on why June’s doom castle had freaked me out. Having some ground to stand on, that’s our whole basis. It’s the bags of summer squash and shelly beans everybody gives you from their gardens, and on from there. The porch rockers where the mammaws get together and knit baby clothes for the pregnant high school girls. Sandwiches the church ladies pack for the hungrier kids to take home on weekends.

It was all a fine line in the South, she’d say. Given that those sinning, raping plantation owners had both white babies and Black babies, everyone was six degrees from being one or the other. Which was what scared southern white people the most.

Every month Una, the Uterus gnome, thoroughly searches for a baby in a woman's uterus. She uses her dagger to slash the area behind her as she looks, that way she knows where she's already looked. Her search is what causes the bleeding and cramps.

The story of June and Mick Riva seemed like a tragedy to their oldest child, Nina. It felt like a comedy of errors to their first son, Jay. It was an origin story for their second son, Hud. And a mystery to the baby of the family, Kit. To Mick himself it was just a chapter of his memoir. But to June, it was, always and forever, a romance.

That’s right. That was bad. Especially winters. You should have had more sense. That house made a prisoner of her. It must have been just dreary, washing and cooking, and to have to hush the baby, or you’d raise hell, she said. You couldn’t think when June was crying, and you’d rush from your room hollering.” “Yes, I was stupid—a blockhead.

The June roses over the porch were awake bright and early on that morning, rejoicing with all their hearts in the cloudless sunshine, like friendly little neighbors, as they were. Quite flushed with excitement were their ruddy faces, as they swung in the wind, whispering to one another what they had seen, for some peeped in at the dining room windows where the feast was spread, some climbed up to nod and smile at the sisters as they dressed the bride, others waved a welcome to those who came and went on various errands in garden, porch, and hall, and all, from the rosiest full-blown flower to the palest baby bud, offered their tribute of beauty and fragrance to the gentle mistress who had loved and tended them so long.

Lizette felt that since Belle Fleur was full of Black folks who looked white, numbers suggested that many whites could be Black. It was all a fine line in the South, she’d say. Given that those sinning, raping plantation owners had both white babies and Black babies, everyone was six degrees from being one or the other. Which was what scared southern white people the most.

LONDON. TRINITY TERM one week old. Implacable June weather. Fiona Maye, a High Court judge, at home on Sunday evening, supine on a chaise longue, staring past her stockinged feet toward the end of the room, toward a partial view of recessed bookshelves by the fireplace and, to one side, by a tall window, a tiny Renoir lithograph of a bather, bought by her thirty years ago for fifty pounds. Probably a fake. Below it, centered on a round walnut table, a blue vase. No memory of how she came by it. Nor when she last put flowers in it. The fireplace not lit in a year. Blackened raindrops falling irregularly into the grate with a ticking sound against balled-up yellowing newsprint. A Bokhara rug spread on wide polished floorboards. Looming at the edge of vision, a baby grand piano bearing silver-framed family photos on its deep black shine. On the floor by the chaise longue, within her reach, the draft of a judgment.

One Thanksgiving Porter and June were getting ready to leave, back when their children were small, and June was heading toward the door with the baby in her arms and Danny hanging onto her coat and this load of toys and supplies when Porter called out, ‘Halt!’ and started reading from one of those cash-register tapes that he always writes his lists on: blanket, bottles, diaper bag, formula out of the fridge … June just looked over at the other two and rolled her eyes.

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land into new dust that rising like a marvelous pollen will be fertile even as the first woman whispering imagination to the trees around her made for righteous fruit from such deliberate defense of life as no other still will claim inferior to any other safety in the world The whispers too they intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit now aroused they carousing in ferocious affirmation of all peaceable and loving amplitude sound a certainly unbounded heat from a baptismal smoke where yes there will be fire And the babies cease alarm as mothers raising arms and heart high as the stars so far unseen nevertheless hurl into the universe a moving force irreversible as light years traveling to the open eye And who will join this standing up and the ones who stood without sweet company will sing and sing back into the mountains and if necessary even under the sea we are the ones we have been waiting for

Thank you Doctor Gboco for your help because since i have been married to my husband about 6years now i have not be able to get my own kid and my mother in law wants me out of the house because she think i can't give bath to a baby but since you cast a spell for me and it been five months now since you cast a spell for me and i started seeing changes in me i and my husband are now happy now and we are expecting our baby by June i am very grateful for your help doctor Gboco Email: gbocotemple@yahoo.com you are more than just a father to me.

CHICAGO JAZZ RECOMMENDED LISTENING Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer, “I’m Coming Virginia,” May 13, 1927 Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer, “Singin’ the Blues,” February 4, 1927 Bing Crosby and Bix Beiderbecke, “Mississippi Mud,” January 20, 1928 Chicago Rhythm Kings, “I’ve Found a New Baby,” April 4, 1928 Eddie Condon and Frank Teschemacher, “Indiana,” July 28, 1928 Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti, “Stringin’ the Blues,” November 8, 1926 McKenzie and Condon Chicagoans, “Nobody’s Sweetheart,” December 16, 1927 Pee Wee Russell and Jack Teagarden, “Basin Street Blues,” June 11, 1929

Bankrupt" One midnight, deep in starlight still, I dreamed that I received this bill: (- - - - IN ACCOUNT WITH LIFE - - - -): Five thousand breathless dawns all new; Five thousand flowers fresh in dew; Five thousand sunsets wrapped in gold; One-million snow-flakes served ice-cold; Five quiet friends; one baby's love; One white-mad sea with clouds above; One hundred music-haunted dreams Of moon-drenched roads and hurrying streams; Of prophesying winds, and trees; Of silent stars and browsing bees; One June night in a fragrant wood; One heart that loved and understood. I wondered when I waked at day, How—how in God's name—I could pay!

But it wasn't all bad. Sometimes things wasn't all bad. He used to come home easing into bed sometimes, not too drunk. I make out like I'm asleep, 'casue it's late, and he taken three dollars out of my pocketbook that morning or something. I hear him breathing, but I don't look around. I can see in my mind's eye his black arms thrown back behind his head, the muscles like a great big peach stones sanded down, with veins running like little swollen rivers down his arms. Without touching him I be feeling those ridges on the tips of my fingers. I sees the palms of his hands calloused to granite, and the long fingers curled up and still. I think about the thick, knotty hair on his chest, and the two big swells his breast muscles make. I want to rub my face hard in his chest and feel the hair cut my skin. I know just where the hair growth slacks out-just above his navel- and how it picks up again and spreads out. Maybe he'll shift a little, and his leg will touch me, or I feel his flank just graze my behind. I don't move even yet. Then he lift his head, turn over, and put his hand on my waist. If I don't move, he'll move his hand over to pull and knead my stomach. Soft and slow-like. I still don't move, because I don't want him to stop. I want to pretend sleep and have him keep rubbing my stomach. Then he will lean his head down and bite my tit. Then I don't want him to rub my stomach anymore. I want him to put his hand between my legs. I pretend to wake up, and turn to him, but not opening my legs. I want him to open them for me. He does, and I be soft and wet where his fingers are strong and hard. I be softer than I ever been before. All my strength in his hand. My brain curls up like wilted leaves. A funny, empty feeling is in my hands. I want to grab holt of something, so I hold his head. His mouth is under my chin. Then I don't want his hands between my legs no more, because I think I am softening away. I stretch my legs open, and he is on top of me. Too heavy to hold, too light not to. He puts his thing in me. In me. In me. I wrap my feet around his back so he can't get away. His face is next to mine. The bed springs sounds like them crickets used to back home. He puts his fingers in mine, and we stretches our arms outwise like Jesus on the cross. I hold tight. My fingers and my feet hold on tight, because everything else is going, going. I know he wants me to come first. But I can't. Not until he does. Not until I feel him loving me. Just me. Sinking into me. Not until I know that my flesh is all that be on his mind. That he couldnt stop if he had to. That he would die rather than take his thing our of me. Of me. Not until he has let go of all he has, and give it to me. To me. To me. When he does, I feel a power. I be strong, I be pretty, I be young. And then I wait. He shivers and tosses his head. Now I be strong enough, pretty enough, and young enough to let him make me come. I take my fingers out of his and put my hands on his behind. My legs drop back onto the bed. I don't make a noise, because the chil'ren might hear. I begin to feel those little bits of color floating up into me-deep in me. That streak of green from the june-bug light, the purple from the berries trickling along my thighs, Mama's lemonade yellow runs sweet in me. Then I feel like I'm laughing between my legs, and the laughing gets all mixed up with the colors, and I'm afraid I'll come, and afraid I won't. But I know I will. And I do. And it be rainbow all inside. And it lasts ad lasts and lasts. I want to thank him, but dont know how, so I pat him like you do a baby. He asks me if I'm all right. I say yes. He gets off me and lies down to sleep. I want to say something, but I don't. I don't want to take my mind offen the rainbow. I should get up and go to the toilet, but I don't. Besides Cholly is asleep with his leg thrown over me. I can't move and I don't want to.

least.” “I don’t remember you complaining.” “Yes, well, I’d only been fantasizing about it for ages.” “See, there’s a thing,” Alex points out. “You just told me that. You can tell me other stuff.” “It’s hardly the same.” He rolls over onto his stomach, considers, and very deliberately says, “Baby.” It’s become a thing: baby. He knows it’s become a thing. He’s slipped up and accidentally said it a few times, and each time, Henry positively melts and Alex pretends not to notice, but he’s not above playing dirty here. There’s a slow hiss of an exhale across the line, like air escaping through a crack in a window. “It’s, ah. It’s not the best time,” he says. “How did you put it? Nutso family stuff.” Alex purses his lips, bites down on his cheek. There it is. He’s wondered when Henry would finally start talking about the royal family. He makes oblique references to Philip being wound so tight as to double as an atomic clock, or to his grandmother’s disapproval, and he mentions Bea as often as Alex mentions June, but Alex knows there’s more to it than that. He couldn’t tell you when he started noticing, though, just like he doesn’t know when he started ticking off the days of Henry’s moods. “Ah,” he says. “I see.” “I don’t suppose you keep up with any British tabloids, do you?” “Not if I can help it.” Henry offers the bitterest of laughs. “Well, the Daily Mail has always had a bit of an affinity for airing our dirty laundry. They, er, they gave my sister this nickname years ago. ‘The Powder Princess.’” A ding of recognition. “Because of the…” “Yes, the cocaine, Alex.” “Okay, that does sound familiar.” Henry sighs. “Well, someone’s managed to bypass security to spray paint ‘Powder Princess’ on the side of her car.” “Shit,” Alex says. “And she’s not taking it well?” “Bea?” Henry laughs, a little more genuinely this time. “No, she doesn’t usually care about those things. She’s fine. More shaken up that someone got past security than anything.

The June roses over the porch were awake bright and early on that morning, rejoicing with all their hearts in the cloudless sunshine, like friendly little neighbors, as they were. Quite flushed with excitement were their ruddy faces, as they swung in the wind, whispering to one another what they had seen; for some peeped in at the dining-room windows, where the feast was spread, some climbed up to nod and smile at the sisters as they dressed the bride, others waved a welcome to those who came and went on various errands in garden, porch, and hall, and all, from the rosiest full-blown flower to the palest baby-bud, offered their tribute of beauty and fragrance to the gentle mistress who had loved and tended them for so long.

June 28, 1983 Mianus River Bridge Greenwich, Connecticut   George Tesla was drunk. This wasn’t new for him, but the reason was. He was going to be a father. Fifty years old, and he’d knocked up a thirty-year-old carnie. Someone careful enough to live through a trapeze act ought to be careful enough to not get pregnant. But she hadn’t been. Tatiana flat-out refused to talk about abortion or adoption or any sensible solution to the problem. She was perfectly willing to talk about leaving him to raise the baby alone, but nothing else. Her mind was set. He leaned against the cold side of the bridge and took a long sip of Jack Daniel’s from his silver hip flask. He’d bought the flask when he was first made professor of mathematics at New York University. Another thing that would have to change, since Tatiana had told him she had no intention of giving up performing to move to New York

For many years, a family of ospreys lived in a large nest near my summer home in Maine. Each season, I carefully observed their rituals and habits. In mid-April, the parents would arrive, having spent the winter in South America, and lay eggs. In early June, the eggs hatched. The babies slowly grew, as the father brought fish back to the nest, and in early to mid August were large enough to make their first flight. My wife and I recorded all of these comings and goings with cameras and in a notebook. We wrote down the number of chicks each year, usually one or two but sometimes three. We noted when the chicks first began flapping their wings, usually a couple of weeks before flying from the nest. We memorized the different chirps the parents made for danger, for hunger, for the arrival of food. After several years of cataloguing such data, we felt that we knew these ospreys. We could predict the sounds the birds would make in different situations, their flight patterns, their behavior when a storm was brewing. Reading our “osprey journals” on a winter’s night, we felt a sense of pride and satisfaction. We had carefully studied and documented a small part of the universe. Then, one August afternoon, the two baby ospreys of that season took flight for the first time as I stood on the circular deck of my house watching the nest. All summer long, they had watched me on that deck as I watched them. To them, it must have looked like I was in my nest just as they were in theirs. On this particular afternoon, their maiden flight, they did a loop of my house and then headed straight at me with tremendous speed. My immediate impulse was to run for cover, since they could have ripped me apart with their powerful talons. But something held me to my ground. When they were within twenty feet of me, they suddenly veered upward and away. But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact. Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant. It was a look of connectedness, of mutual respect, of recognition that we shared the same land. After they were gone, I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I do not understand what happened in that half second. But it was one of the most profound moments of my life.

She cupped my face. “Wilbur, you are so sexy when you’re not pretending to be an eighties butt-rocker.” “You know what’s not sexy?” “What?” she said on a breath between laying kisses on my cheek. “June pooping on the floor.” Mia jumped off my lap and darted over to the kitchen, screeching in her highest voice. “No, no, no, Juney.” She caught our little puppy mid-poop and picked her up, held her arms out and screamed, “What do I do?” There was no way Mia would be able to get June outside without leaving a trail of poop in her wake. “Put her over the toilet!” I followed her as she ran down the hallway and into our tiny bathroom at the end. She held the squirming puppy over the toilet until the doggie business was complete. Setting June on the ground, she glanced up at me, frowned, and then mumbled, “I’m gonna be a terrible mother.” I helped her up and then stood behind her at the sink as she washed her hands. “No, you’re going to be perfect.” I smirked when she looked at me in the mirror. “You did exactly the right thing. First you screamed and charged at her with your arms flailing around, and then you basically held her by the neck while you ran around in a circle yelling. That is exactly what you will probably do if the same situation happens to play out with one of our babies.” “Thanks a lot.

Above the list of children she read: Mister Jackson Henry Clark married Miss Julienne Maria Jacques, June 12, 1933. Not until that moment had she known her parents’ proper names. She sat there for a few minutes with the Bible open on the table. Her family before her. Time ensures children never know their parents young. Kya would never see the handsome Jake swagger into an Asheville soda fountain in early 1930, where he spotted Maria Jacques, a beauty with black curls and red lips, visiting from New Orleans. Over a milkshake he told her his family owned a plantation and that after high school he’d study to be a lawyer and live in a columned mansion. But when the Depression deepened, the bank auctioned the land out from under the Clarks’ feet, and his father took Jake from school. They moved down the road to a small pine cabin that once, not so long ago really, had been occupied by slaves. Jake worked the tobacco fields, stacking leaves with black men and women, babies strapped on their backs with colorful shawls. One night two years later, without saying good-bye, Jake left before dawn, taking with him as many fine clothes and family treasures—including his great-grandfather’s gold pocket watch and his grandmother’s diamond ring—as he could carry. He hitchhiked to New Orleans and found Maria living with her family in an elegant home near the waterfront. They were descendants of a French merchant, owners of a shoe factory. Jake pawned the heirlooms and entertained her in fine restaurants hung with red velvet curtains, telling her that he would buy her that columned mansion. As he knelt under a magnolia tree, she agreed to marry him, and they wed in 1933 in a small church ceremony, her family standing silent.

Over the course of two years, from June 2004 to June 2006, two separate deaths did nothing to ease my overall anxiety. Steve’s beloved Staffordshire bull terrier Sui died of cancer in June 2004. He had set up his swag and slept beside her all night, talking to her, recalling old times in the bush catching crocodiles, and comforting her. Losing Sui brought up memories of losing Chilli a decade and a half earlier. “I am not getting another dog,” Steve said. “It is just too painful.” Wes, the most loyal friend anyone could have, was there for Steve while Sui passed from this life to the next. Wes shared in Steve’s grief. They had known Sui longer than Steve and I had been together. Two years after Sui’s death, in June 2006, we lost Harriet. At 175, Harriet was the oldest living creature on earth. She had met Charles Darwin and sailed on the Beagle. She was our link to the past at the zoo, and beyond that, our link to the great scientist himself. She was a living museum and an icon of our zoo. The kids and I were headed to Fraser Island, along the southern coast of Queensland, with Joy, Steve’s sister, and her husband, Frank, our zoo manager, when I heard the news. An ultrasound had confirmed that Harriet had suffered a massive heart attack. Steve called me. “I think you’d better come home.” “I should talk to the kids about this,” I said. Bindi was horrified. “How long is Harriet going to live?” she asked. “Maybe hours, maybe days, but not long.” “I don’t want to see Harriet die,” she said resolutely. She wanted to remember her as the healthy, happy tortoise with whom she’d grown up. From the time Bindi was a tiny baby, she would enter Harriet’s enclosure, put her arms around the tortoise’s massive shell, and rest her face against her carapace, which was always warm from the sun. Harriet’s favorite food was hibiscus flowers, and Bindi would collect them by the dozen to feed her dear friend. I was worried about Steve but told him that Bindi couldn’t bear to see Harriet dying. “It’s okay,” he said. “Wes is here with me.” Once again, it fell to Wes to share his best mate’s grief.

You know, there’s nothing you could tell me that would change my mind about you.” “That’s ‘cause you know me now, June. You don’t ever want to know about me then. I don’t want to know about me then.” “Think I would have ever ripped my back open on barbed wire to get away from you?” “No—no, Jesus, June. Are you crazy? I could never, I could never—” “Then I’m okay knowing you, whenever. I don’t care what you say—you’re a good guy. You’re the best kind of guy. The things you’ve done for me, I—” She couldn’t speak, then. The glow was almost completely gone—it would never return if she started bawling. “Hey, hey—okay. Okay, baby. It’s okay.

America today is not the same nation as when you were born. Depending on your age, if you were born in America, your home nation was a significantly different land than it is today:   ·                    America didn’t allow aborting babies in the womb; ·                     Same sex marriage was not only illegal, no one ever talked about it, or even seriously considered the possibility; (“The speed and breadth of change (in the gay movement) has just been breathtaking.”, New York Times, June 21, 2009) ·                    Mass media was clean and non-offensive. Think of The I Love Lucy Show or The Walton Family, compared with what is aired today; ·                    The United States government did not take $500 million dollars every year from the taxpayers and give it to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. ·                    Videogames that glorify violence, cop killing and allow gamesters who have bought millions of copies, to have virtual sex with women before killing them, did not exist. ·                    Americans’ tax dollars did not fund Title X grants to Planned Parenthood who fund a website which features videos that show a “creepy guidance counselor who gives advice to teens on how to have (safe) sex and depict teens engaged in sex.” ·                    Americans didn’t owe $483,000 per household for unfunded retirement and health care obligations (Peter G. Peterson Foundation). ·                    The phrase “sound as a dollar” meant something. ·                    The Federal government’s debt was manageable.            American Christian missionaries who have been abroad for relatively short times say they find it hard to believe how far this nation has declined morally since they were last in the country. In just a two week period, not long ago, these events all occurred: the Iowa Supreme Court declared that same sex marriage was legal in the State; the President on a foreign tour declared that “we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation…” and a day later bowed before the King of the nation that supplied most of the 9/11 terrorists; Vermont became the first State to authorize same sex marriage by legislative action, as opposed to judicial dictate; the CEO of General Motors was fired by the federal government; an American ship was boarded and its crew captured by pirates for the first time in over 200 years; and a major Christian leader/author apologized on Larry King Live for supporting California’s Proposition 8 in defense of traditional marriage, reversing his earlier position. The pace of societal change is rapidly accelerating.

Well, shit.” “Oh, brother,” John’s wife said. “That doesn’t happen very often,” June said. “What?” Jack said. “What?” “But I have all these pink things! From Christmas!” Mel shrieked. “What?” Jack said. “What the hell is it? Is the baby all right?” “Baby’s fine,” John said. “It isn’t Emma, that’s for sure. Look—femur, femur, penis. I blew it. And I’m so damn good, I can’t imagine how that happened.” “It was probably just on the early side,” June said. “We should’ve done another one at twenty weeks to be sure.” “Yeah, but I’m so damn good,” John insisted. “Penis?” Jack asked. Mel looked up into his eyes and said, “We’re going to have to come up with another name.” Jack had a dumb look on his face. Mel didn’t recall having seen that look before. “Man,” he said in a breath. “I might not know what to do with a boy.” “Well, we got that news just in time,” June said, leaving the exam room. “Yeah, right before the shower,” Susan added, following her. “I really thought I had it nailed,” John said. “I feel betrayed, in a way.” Mel looked up into her husband’s eyes and watched as a slow, powerful grin appeared. “What are you thinking, Jack?” she asked him. “That I can’t wait to call my brothers-in-law, the slackers.” *

Richard. Gran did write to me once, before she died, but though I wrote back to her I never heard from her again. I’m not really sure why I’m writing to you now, except that I’m going to have a baby in June, and I thought about you and thought you might like to know you are going to be a grandmother. Perhaps you are one already, but anyway, I thought you’d like to know. My husband, David, wasn’t very keen on me writing to you, but I felt I had to do it, just this once. If you don’t answer you’ll never hear

Then the heavy lifting began. For the next six months, our employees rarely saw their families. We worked deep into the night, seven days a week. Despite two hit movies, we were conscious of the need to prove ourselves, and everyone gave everything they had. With several months still to go, the staff was exhausted and starting to fray. One morning in June, an overtired artist drove to work with his infant child strapped into the backseat, intending to deliver the baby to day care on the way. Some time later, after he’d been at work for a few hours, his wife (also a Pixar employee) happened to ask him how drop-off had gone—which is when he realized that he’d left their child in the car in the broiling Pixar parking lot. They rushed out to find the baby unconscious and poured cold water over him immediately. Thankfully, the child was okay, but the trauma of this moment—the what-could-have-been—was imprinted deeply on my brain. Asking this much of our people, even when they wanted to give it, was not acceptable. I had expected the road to be rough, but I had to admit that we were coming apart. By the time the film was complete, a full third of the staff would have some kind of repetitive stress injury. In the end, we would meet our deadline—and release our third hit film. Critics raved that Toy Story 2 was one of the only sequels ever to outshine the original, and the total box office would eventually top $500 million. Everyone was fried to the core, yet there was also a feeling that despite all the pain, we had pulled off something important, something that would define Pixar for years to come. As Lee Unkrich says, “We had done the impossible. We had done the thing that everyone told us we couldn’t do. And we had done it spectacularly well. It was the fuel that has continued to burn in all of us.” T

At 9.03 pm on June 21, 1982 Diana produced the son and heir which was cause for national rejoicing. When the Queen came to visit her grandchild the following day her comment was typical. As she looked at the tiny bundle she said drily: “Thank goodness he hasn’t got ears like his father.” The second in line to the throne was still known officially as “Baby Wales” and it took the couple several days of discussion before they arrived at a name. Prince Charles admitted as much: “We’ve thought of one or two. There’s a bit of an argument about it, but we’ll find one eventually.” Charles wanted to call his first son “Arthur” and his second “Albert”, after Queen Victoria’s consort. William and Harry were Diana’s choices while her husband’s preferences were taken into account in their children’s middle names.

Seven Days In Sunny June" The pebbles you've arranged In the sand, they're strange They speak to me like constellations As we lie here There's a magic I can hold Your smile of honey gold And that you never seem to be in short supply of [Chorus:] Oooh, so baby let's get it on Drinking wine and killing time Sitting in the summer sun You know I've wanted you so long Why do you have to Drop that bomb on me? Lazy days, crazy dolls You said we've been friends too long Seven days in sunny June Were long enough to bloom The flowers on the summer dress you wore in spring The way we laughed as one And then you dropped the bomb That I've known you too long For us to have a thing [Chorus x2] Could it be this? The stories in your eyes The silent wings You'll fly away on Seven days in sunny June Were long enough to bloom The flowers on the sunbeam dress you wore in spring Yeah, yeah, the way we laughed as one Why did you drop the bomb on me? [Chorus] Could it be this? The honeysuckle blessings you seem to show me Could it be this? For seven days in June I wasn't lonely Could it be this? You never gave me time to say I love you Could it be this? I know you don't believe me but it's so true Don't walk away from me, girl I read the sories in your eyes Don't you walk away from me, girl I read the sories in your eyes Don't you walk away from me, girl I read the sories in your eyes Don't you walk away I read the sories in your eyes And you've been telling me We've been friends for too long Why do you want to drop the bomb? Telling me We've been friends for too long Why do you want to drop the bomb? You tell me we've been friends for too long, yeah I think I love you I think I love you Why do you want to drop that bomb?

Why Can’t I Have You" oh i can’t see your face now if i let you go, will you come back another time? so i can look forward oh we’re never done, are we babe? so you say that i’m never fooled by the depth of your eyes i don’t agree but i see i’m not what you want babe well we waste our time on things we want why can’t I have you baby? why can’t I get you baby? waste our love on things that will never give it back why can’t I have you baby? why can’t I get you baby? so you need help? well i’ve got you covered i’m here when you need a sunny day something good cause i never had that don’t bend your rules if you don’t want to but I think you do so i sit back and let things go how you play them well we waste our time on things we want why can’t I have you baby? why can’t I get you baby? waste our love on things that won’t ever give it back why can’t I have you baby? oh why can’t I get you baby? oh (June 5, 2019)

baby Wretch. . . . -Baby Wretch!-

Racist can never see themselves as wrong. They consider their opinions and actions to be part of the natural order of life. But we know better. No Black man has ever brought and sold a white person, seperated their families, raped their women, men and children. made them work in fields under terrible conditions for no pay. We breast feed their babies and been beat into submission with whips and chained outdoors like an animal. No Black man ever committed a hate crime based solely on a person race. We never came to your home in the night and burned a cross on your front lawn, dragged you out of your house and lynched you right before the eyes of your wife and children. We never stopped you from achieving a education, never made it against the law for you to learn to read, or to vote or to even get married without permission. We built this country with our hands, our sweat and yes, OUR BOOD and you never thought once about the wealth you accumulated from our forced labor was a crime. You never cionsidered when you broke a family apart by selling them into slavery that it was hurting us and you thought of us only like cattle in a stock yard. Your atrocities have been too numerous and horrific to name and regardless of how educated we became or what we accumulate, we are ALWAYS less then dirt in your eyes. NO ONE WHO IS HUMAN WANTS TO BE YOU! Share with everyone you know. Levon Peter Poe © June 18, 2020

ADELAIDE (English) Nobel and quiet.

A week before my due date, Marlboro Man had to preg-test a hundred cows. Preg-testing cows, I would learn in horror that warm June morning, does not involve the cow urinating on a test stick and waiting at least three minutes to read the result. Instead, a large animal vet inserts his entire arm into a long disposable glove, then inserts the gloved arm high into the rectum of a pregnant cow until the vet’s arm is no longer visible. Once his arm is deep inside the cow’s nether regions, the vet can feel the size and angle of the cow’s cervix and determine two things: 1. Whether or not she is pregnant. 2. How far along she is. With this information, Marlboro Man decides whether to rebreed the nonpregnant cows, and in which pasture to place the pregnant cows; cows that became bred at the same time will stay in the same pasture so that they’ll all give birth in approximately the same time frame. Of course, I understood none of this as I watched the doctor insert the entire length of his arm into a hundred different cows’ bottoms. All I knew is that he’d insert his arm, the cow would moo, he would pull out his arm, and the cow would poop. Unintentionally, each time a new cow would pass through the chute, I’d instinctively bear down. I was just as pregnant as many of the cows. My nether regions were uncomfortable enough as it was. The thought of someone inserting their… It was more than I probably should have signed up for that morning. “God help me!” I yelped as Marlboro Man and I pulled away from the working area after the last cow was tested. “What in the name of all that is holy did I just witness?” “How’d you like that?” Marlboro Man asked, smiling a satisfied smile. He loved introducing me to new ranching activities. The more shocking I found them, the better. “Seriously,” I mumbled, grasping my enormous belly as if to protect my baby from the reality of this bizarre, disturbing world. “That was just…that was like nothing I’ve ever seen before!” It made the rectal thermometer episode I’d endured many months earlier seem like a garden party. Marlboro Man laughed and rested his hand on my knee. It stayed there the rest of the drive home. At eleven that night, I woke up feeling strange. Marlboro Man and I had just drifted off to sleep, and my abdomen felt tight and weird. I stared at the ceiling, breathing deeply in an effort to will it away. But then I put two and two together: the whole trauma of what I’d seen earlier in the day must have finally caught up with me. In my sympathy for the preg-tested cows, I must have borne down a few too many times. I sat up in bed. I was definitely in labor.

When Derek Sivers first built his business CDbaby.com, he set up a standard confirmation email to let customers know their order had been shipped. After a few months, Derek felt that this email wasn’t aligned with his mission—to make people smile. So he sat down and wrote a better one. Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed on a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th. I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!! —Derek Sivers, Anything You Want The result wasn’t just delighted customers. That one email brought thousands of new customers to CD Baby. The people who got it couldn’t help sharing it with their friends. Try Googling “private CD Baby jet”; you’ll find over 900,000 search results to date. Derek’s email has been cited by business blogs the world over as an example of how to authentically put your words to work for your business.

She grew flowers in it. As I wash my mother’s face, I tell her how beautiful she is, how brave, how her beauty and bravery live on in her grandchildren. Her face is relaxed, peaceful. Her earth memory body has not left yet, but when I see her the next day, embalmed and in the casket in the funeral home, it will be gone. Where does it go? It is heavier than the spirit who lifted up and flew. I think of it making the rounds to every place it has loved to say goodbye. Goodbye to the house where I brought my babies home, she sings. Goodbye to June’s Bar where I was the shuffleboard queen. I cannot say goodbye yet. I will never say goodbye.

The shape of who you are is an image of heaven and earth," I whispered to the baby, Sun Simiao's words quoted in a book Nurse Jeongsu had gifted me with, an encyclopedia I still perused every year.

June nodded. “Oh, now we know that. But then? The net was supposed to be their baby. Their tool! It would replace big banks as an instrument of control, above nations and governments. Above even money.

June would not have us driving the winding roads to get our drinking on. Do it here and sleep it off, was her policy, and she meant it. Start slurring or tripping and she’d take your keys, ordering you to sleep on whatever floor you could find, and please not on your back. Live to see another day. She was convinced the population of Lee County was headed for zero, because in any given year she saw more people dead of DWI-wrecks and vomit-choke than babies born.

A housefly lives for a month, a mosquito for one to three months, and a cockroach for up to six months. Unfortunately, most insects live only for a brief period. There is one notable exception, though. Three species of periodical cicadas found in the United States can live for up to seventeen years. After hatching, baby cicadas, called nymphs, spend seventeen years underground feeding on the roots of plants and trees. After that time, the adults emerge together in billions (some say even trillions) beginning in the second week of May, get into a mating frenzy, lay their eggs on trees, and are dead by the end of June. The eggs hatch in about six weeks, the nymphs drop down from the trees and burrow underground, and the seventeen-year cycle begins again. This evolutionary strategy, called prey satiation, has been supremely successful for eons because no predator can consume such a large number of cicadas in just a few weeks.20

help. •  Struggling to breathe – being bunged up and snuffly is normal and nothing to worry about, but if your baby seems to

To recover an intuitive sense of what will be in season throughout the year, picture a season of foods unfolding as if from one single plant. Take a minute to study this creation—an imaginary plant that bears over the course of one growing season a cornucopia of all the different vegetable products we can harvest. We’ll call it a vegetannual. Picture its life passing before your eyes like a time-lapse film: first, in the cool early spring, shoots poke up out of the ground. Small leaves appear, then bigger leaves. As the plant grows up into the sunshine and the days grow longer, flower buds will appear, followed by small green fruits. Under midsummer’s warm sun, the fruits grow larger, riper, and more colorful. As days shorten into the autumn, these mature into hard-shelled fruits with appreciable seeds inside. Finally, as the days grow cool, the vegetannual may hoard the sugars its leaves have made, pulling them down into a storage unit of some kind: a tuber, bulb, or root. So goes the year. First the leaves: spinach, kale, lettuce, and chard (here, that’s April and May). Then more mature heads of leaves and flower heads cabbage, romaine, broccoli, and cauliflower (May–June). Then tender young fruit-set: snow peas, baby squash, cucumbers (June), followed by green beans, green peppers, and small tomatoes (July). Then more mature, colorfully ripened fruits: beefsteak tomatoes, eggplants, red and yellow peppers (late July–August). Then the large, hard-shelled fruits with developed seeds inside: cantaloupes, honeydews, watermelons, pumpkins, winter squash (August–September). Last come the root crops, and so ends the produce parade. Plainly these don’t all come from the same plant, but each comes from a plant, that’s the point—a plant predestined to begin its life in the spring and die in the fall. (A few, like onions and carrots, are attempting to be biennials, but we’ll ignore that for now.) Each plant part we eat must come in its turn—leaves, buds, flowers, green fruits, ripe fruits, hard fruits—because that is the necessary order of things for an annual plant. For the life of them, they can’t do it differently. Some minor deviations and a bit of overlap are allowed, but in general, picturing an imaginary vegetannual plant is a pretty reliable guide to what will be in season, wherever you live. If you find yourself eating a watermelon in April, you can count back three months and imagine a place warm enough in January for this plant to have launched its destiny.

Third Week of June 2012 The questionnaire arrived via email from Dr. Arius. It read: Good Day, Young! Thank you for agreeing to be a candidate in my survey. As I mentioned previously, let’s conduct this research like our regular correspondence. There is no pressure on your part to answer or not to answer my questions; it’s entirely up to your discretion on the way you like to channel this analysis. There are no fixed rules or regulations on how you answer my queries. Be yourself and treat this study like you are talking with a confidant. Let’s get started and begin from the beginning; * In “Initiation” you said that as far as you can remember; as a baby you disliked your father. What was it that you didn’t like about the man? Did he have a certain smell that repelled you or something conscious or subconscious that repulsed your connection towards him? * Do you think your overly protective mother had an influence on you disliking your father? * When you were wearing pretty frocks and playing with dolls, did you feel less than a boy? How did you feel or react when you saw other boys playing with ‘boyish’ toys; like miniature toy soldiers or train sets, etc.? * Did your mom try distancing you away from your dad? * What did your brothers think of your parent’s relationship? * Did you have any boy pals or friends when you were growing up? If not, why is that? Would you have grown up differently if you had had guy friends? Let’s start with these questions and we’ll proceed further with others, as we continue along in our future correspondence. Now that you, Andy and Oscar have reconnected, I hope your newfound friendships are progressing well with both your ex ‘big brothers and lovers. Keep me posted, as I’m interested to know the outcome. Kind regards, A.S.

End June 2012 In response to Dr. Arius’ questions for his research, I wrote: Dr. A.S., As always it is a delight to receive your emails. I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions. I’ll respond to them one at a time. Please bear with me if my answers are lengthy at times. If I veer off into a tangent, please feel free to eliminate or edit my response. I’m eager to find out the results your research will yield when you are done with the survey. I’m ready to begin. Question one: * In “Initiation,” you said that as far as you can remember, even as a baby, you disliked your father. What was it that you didn’t like about the man? Did he have a certain smell that repelled you or something conscious or subconscious that blocked your connection towards him? Answers: Although I cannot provide you with definitive answers, I’ll do my best to remember how I felt when I was with my dad. a) Mr. S.S. Foong was a heavy smoker since the day I was born. I presume as a baby, the cigarette smell on his person repelled me. His aggressively loud booming voice did nothing to my gentle ears, either. Although he never shouted at me when I was a child, his stern demeanor deterred me from wanting to be near him. Moreover, his angry reprimands toward his subordinates when they had done nothing wrong challenged my respect for the man I called Father. b) Maybe unconsciously I was imbued with a glamorized portrayal of the “ideal” family from western magazines, movies, and periodicals of the mid-20th century. I wanted a father whom I could look up to: a strong, kind man who understands the needs of his family and children. But this was a Hollywood invention. It doesn’t exist, or it exists empirically in a small sector of the global population. c) Since my dad was seldom at home (he was with his mistress and their children), it was difficult to have a loving relationship with the man, especially when he roared and rebuked me for my effeminate behavior over which I had no control. I was simply being who I was. His negative criticisms damaged my ego badly. d) I could not relate to his air of superiority toward my mother. I resented that aspect of my father. I swore to myself that I would not grow up to be like my old man.

Just down the street from Gildersleeve, in the next block, lived the widow Leila Ransom. In the second full year she became a pivotal character who on June 27, 1943, got Gildersleeve to the altar and to the last line of the wedding ceremony. The show had much of the appeal of a serial, a 30-minute sitcom whose episodes were connected—sometimes into storylines that ran for months—but were also complete in themselves. Gildersleeve’s romances were often at the crux of it: he was sued for breach of promise, got fired from his job, and ran for mayor—situations that each took up many shows. In a memorable sequence beginning Sept. 8, 1948, a baby was left in Gildersleeve’s car. This played out through the entire fall season, the baby becoming such a part of the family that Kraft ran a contest offering major prizes to the listener who could coin the child’s name. But in a teary finale, Dec. 22, the real father turned up and took the baby away.

One morning in June, an overtired artist drove to work with his infant child strapped into the backseat, intending to deliver the baby to day care on the way. Some time later, after he’d been at work for a few hours, his wife (also a Pixar employee) happened to ask him how drop-off had gone—which is when he realized that he’d left their child in the car in the broiling Pixar parking lot. They rushed out to find the baby unconscious and poured cold water over him immediately. Thankfully, the child was okay, but the trauma of this moment—the what-could-have-been—was imprinted deeply on my brain. Asking this much of our people, even when they wanted to give it, was not acceptable.

In developmental psychology we talk breezily about the big differences between nine-month-olds’ and twelve-month-olds’ conceptions of objects, or three-year-olds’ and four-year-olds’ understanding of minds. But what this means is that in just a few months, these children have completely changed their minds about what the world is like. Imagine that your world-view in September was totally different from what it was in June, and then completely changed again by Christmas. Or imagine that your most basic beliefs would be entirely transformed between 2009 and 2010, and then again by 2012. Really flexible and innovative adults might change their minds this way two or three times in a lifetime.

Over the city, under the Hollywood sign City lights are flickering, like a million fireflies He turns up the radio and says to me Remember this old melody? Hot Cali sunshine, radiating late June Driving up the coastline, top down, me and you Seashells, sand angels, taking in the sunset Baby I’m dreaming of when we first met

Fifth grade,” I began. “That year Kristy, Mary Anne, Alan, and I were all in the same class. Kristy really got Alan. He’d been tormenting us—all the girls, really—for the entire year, and by June we had had it. So one day, Kristy comes to school and all morning she brags about this fantastic lunch her mother has packed: a chocolate cupcake, Fritos, fruit salad, a ham and cheese sandwich, two Hershey’s Kisses—really great stuff. Kristy says it’s a reward for something or other. And she says the lunch is so great she’s got to protect it by keeping it in her desk instead of in the coat room. So, of course, Alan steals the bag out of her desk during the morning. Then at noontime in the cafeteria, he makes this big production out of opening it. He’s sitting at the boys’ table, and they’re all crowded around, and us girls are looking on from the next table. Alan is the center of attention, which is just what he wants.” “And just what I wanted,” added Kristy. “Right. So Alan carefully takes all the packages and containers out of the bag and spreads them in front of him. Then he begins to open them. In one he finds dead spiders, in another he finds a mud pie.” “David Michael had made it for me,” said Kristy. (David Michael is Kristy’s little brother. He was four then.) “She’d even wrapped up a sandwich with fake flies stuck on it.” Stacey began to giggle. “It was great,” said Mary Anne. “Everyone was laughing. And Kristy had packed a real lunch for herself, which she’d kept in the coat room. All afternoon, the kids kept telling her how terrific her trick had been.

The baby Peter, four weeks old, was christened on June 29, the holy day of St. Peter