Mad Hatters Tea Party II

I’m mad about hats.  Love ‘em.  I have a LOT of them.  I wear them to book signings, to church, and on special occasions.  A friend said I should share my interest, so I did, by planning, with her help, a tea.  June 2 she and I threw the Mad Hatters Tea Party at Aquilla Commons, the co-op we live in.  I had put out a sign-up sheet, thinking maybe twenty people would want to come – and had to cut it off at forty!  I brought all my hats to the Party Room and several other women went into their storage room and brought out hats they’d put away.  We covered six tables with hats, and allowed everyone to try them on and pick one they liked.  Some of the women wore gloves to really show they knew how to dress up properly for a tea.  Looking down the rows of tables at these ladies in their hats was like stepping back into the fifties.  Halfway through, I asked everyone to change hats, to try a new look, and they did, to smiles and laughter.  Judy and I served cucumber sandwiches, lemon, raspberry, and almond bars, tea and lemonade.  We had a super time.  Lots of photos were taken.  The photo accompanying today’s blog is of Marge Frier.  It’s my favorite photo; she looks so elegant and sophisticated, and the hat suits her so well I’m tempted to make a gift of it to her.  Problem is, it’s one of my favorites – though now I think about it, that could be said of all my hats.  I knew hats are making a big-time comeback in England; I think it would be fun if the new-old custom spreads to here.

My web mistress has set up a hat show on my web site.  To see more of the fun, go here: http://monica-ferris.com/mad-hatters-tea-party-june-2-2012.

Now for a far more distressing story.  You may not wish to read further, seriously.

At water aerobics yesterday, a friend told me she was up at her cabin over the weekend and took a last kayak ride before starting home.  As she came back to her little dock, a fawn was standing on it, as if waiting for her, and it was crying.  It was very thin and wobbly.  As she landed her craft, it walked away, still crying.  It looked sick and she was afraid to touch it.  She brought it a pan of milk, but it didn’t drink.  It would walk around a bit, then lie down, then get up and walk a little more.  She says she approached it, and saw what she describes as a single big tear rolled down its face.  We speculated that the fawn’s mother might have been killed by a car, or that the fawn was ill and the mother abandoned it.  She didn’t know who to call, and she had to start for home, so at last she just left it.  Her story so disturbed me, I cried during my shower.  I wanted to tell her she should have called the sheriff.  I wanted to tell her a trick farmers use to wean calves is to put their fingers into the bucket of milk, let the calf suck them, then lower their fingers into the milk again until the calf gets the idea.  But what good would telling her that on Monday have done, except to make her feel worse?  I felt sad and angry about the fawn and it must have shown, because she said she was sorry to tell me but she just had to unburden herself.  (And now I’m unburdening myself on you!)  I told her it was all right, that I understood – and it was and I do, but what a distressing thing to happen!  Not all of nature is sweet and pretty.