Quiet Corners of My Heart

               FINALE

Sleek sable Ozra, royal Dane
Small Jetsam, of strange pedigree,
Rolo, who crossed the Spanish main,
And shy, devoted Scotch Dundee,

And all that eager, trusting band
Who lived their lives as best the knew,
Who thrust wet muzzles ‘gainst my hand,
And gave me love eyond my due;

So gallantly each played his part
That no new friend usurps his place.
In quiet corners of my heart
Each owns, still warm, a bedding space.

I’ll not believe their jaunty tails
Are drooping in Death’s gloomy pound,
But one by one they found the trails
That lead to some far hunting ground.

I hope it breaks no holy laws
If ‘neath God’s table they are fed;
I like to think their spirit paws
My dig Elysium’s garden bed.

And He who fashioned grass and trees,
And cares for sparrows, beasts and men,
May let them press against His knees
And stoop to stroke them now and then.
                              - Burges Johnson

It’s not true that lightning never strikes the same place twice – actually, it does, as photography has repeatedly proved.  But it’s true metaphorically, too: We have received a second pair of tickets to Antiques Road Show!  We went to the Bismark taping last year – it was fun – and applied again this year.  We weren’t selected, but somehow, just a couple of weeks ago, a pair of tickets to the filming in Omaha on June 27 mysteriously appeared in our mailbox.  We suspect that some other ticket holders had to back out and we were chosen by Antiques Roadshow producers to replace them.  Now: What to bring?  I have an attractive occasional chair I bought in England back in the sixties I think I’ll bring.  And a friend has a five-gallon pottery water cooler jug that is probably 100 years old.  We had agreed that each of us would apply and she would take the chair and I the jug of only one of us got tickets.

The phone auction to buy the two medieval coins I wanted was amazingly brief.  I think I was on the phone less than ten minutes last week Wednesday.  I was outbid on the Cnut but won the Edward the Confessor.  Here’s a photo of the coin – isn’t that face sort of scary?

The coin was minted in York.  Edward became King of England in 1042, I think.

Still plugging away on Knit Your Own Murder.  Went back twenty pages yesterday and found Betsy asking to interview a man named Hud, and then writing a few days later that she is interviewing his brother Heck. (There are three brothers, Hamilton, Hudson, Hector – naming characters can be fun!)