Kentucky mom who helped search for missing persons has vanished (New York Post)

(Dedicated to Jackie Salo)

I have disappeared gradually since taking early retirement five years ago, until today I have vanished completely -- without a trace.
It started small, with a drop box installed in the lobby of my senior apartment building; instead of visiting the office to give them my check each month I dropped my rent into the box -- thus missing out on my monthly conversation with the lady behind the Plexiglas window at the office. I never knew her name but she was friendly and somewhat inquisitive. She'd ask me how I was doing and I'd usually say "Oh, fair to middling." She'd comment on the weather, and I'd agree with her most of the time -- but always in a tone that indicated I reserved the right to think independently about the weather anytime I wanted. So I fell off the face of the earth, as far as that lady behind the Plexiglas is concerned.
Then all my mail came addressed to 'Resident.' Even my bills; some kind of postal conspiracy there, I'm thinkin'. I wrote to my Congressman about it but never heard back. Why am I not surprised?
I get so sleepy nowadays that when I want to go out for game night in the community room or go visit a neighbor with some cornbread I just made I fall asleep in my recliner instead, and when I wake up it's the middle of the night. So I just go back to bed, and never go out anymore except for groceries and postage stamps. And I haven't really been hungry or wanted to write a letter in a long time.
When I call my children all I get is their voicemail. They never return my calls anymore. 
The finches have stopped coming to my thistle sock on the patio.
I saw my picture on a tattered piece of paper taped to a streetlight pole; it said I was missing and last seen wearing a Santa Claus suit back in November. I called the number on the poster to report myself as not missing at all, but the number was to an insurance agency that was only interested in selling me car insurance. And I don't drive anymore. 
This morning I looked in the mirror and the man looking back has no distinct features whatsoever. It could be anyone, or no one. Now I long to go live with owls and bats; people are a distasteful distraction. Somehow they have disappeared me, and I'm not that bitter about it. I don't even wonder whatever became of me. I am satisfied to be nothing more than a puddle of melted influence. 

Brazil rejects G-7 Amazon aid citing its lack of involvement in decision to grant it

People are always trying to give me money, and I just don't want it. Like the other day, I was just walking down the street, minding my own business, when this guy with a foreign accent accosts me, grabbing my shirt and shouting in my face "You must take zis million dollars in zee bag! I beg of you, do it!"
"Not for all the tea in China!" I replied hotly. "You've got your nerve, coming up to a complete stranger and threatening him with a bunch of money. This is America, pal -- we don't cotton to things like that!" I pushed him away and continued down the street, ignoring his howls of misery and rage.
Not a day goes by that I don't find stacks of rubles or rupees or renminbi on my front porch each morning. I've had caskets of jewels thrown through my living room window. Big black pearls dropped down my chimney. Gold Krugerrands stuck to my sidewalk with superglue. Sheesh! It's enough to make a guy go cuckoo. Naturally I burn it all in my backyard, in a bonfire. For which I always get a permit first. I'm no scofflaw. 
Now when these crazy people offer me FOOD, that's a different matter. I'm very open to that. No prejudice against it atoll. 
Fer instance a man came to my door last week with
 a savory steak and kidney pie. He was dressed all in tweed and wore one of those deerstalker caps Sherlock Holmes is always pictured with.
"Care for some steak and kidney pie, old boy?" he asked me in an impeccable Oxford accent.
"Cheerio, old bean!" I replied, taking the goodies from him and inviting him in for a piece.
"Thenk yew, no" he said. "I must toddle off to the Club, dontcha know. Rugby scrummage and all that rot."
"Tallyho!" I waved to his back as he tried not to step on the Krugerrands still glued on my sidewalk.
An old woman brings me a demijohn of birch beer once in a while. She just shows up out of the blue, knocks on my door, and leaves the jug, flying off on the stalk of a sunflower like a fairy tale witch.
The German ambassador drops off liverwurst and the Thai cultural attache brings me salted duck eggs with heaps of sticky rice.
I don't really know why they do this for me -- I'm just assuming it has something to do with my sparkling personality and artistic genius. 
But I give fair warning: The next person who tries to fob blue chip stock off on me is going to get a sock on the beezer . . .  

The poison of flattery

Therefore he did flatter them, and also Kishkumen, that if they would place him in the judgment-seat he would grant unto those who belonged to his band that they should be placed in power and authority among the people . . . 
Helaman 2:5

Beware the plaudits of the world,

of scheming men who dare

to flatter those they would exploit

with nothing but hot air.

Tis flummery that often sends

us on a wild goose chase,

looking for an easy fix

or for a cozy place.

Seek for power to do good,

to serve your fellow man.

And shun all snow jobs constantly,

which are the devil's plan.

Do Plants Have Something to Say? (NYT)

I am turning into a rutabaga. The process began three weeks ago, when I noticed tiny green leaves growing out of my ears. I tried cleaning them out with a cotton swab but it didn't help. When tiny rootlets began sprouting on the bottom of my feet, making it difficult to walk, I hobbled over to the clinic to let the medicos have a gander at me. 
The doctor told me that people turn into plants all the time, but it's hushed up because of the damn Chinese. I didn't really follow his reasoning, but I decided there was only one way to handle the situation: I would embrace my rutabaganess, not fear it.
I have given up my apartment for a large clay pot that gets plenty of sun on my daughter's patio. She waters me every day and we have pleasant conversations on the weather and the best way to cook beef heart; I always liked it fried with lots of onions, but she uses it to make beef stew. Somehow, that seems like cheating. 
I actually don't eat meat anymore -- or anything else, for that matter. I get all the nutrition I need from sunlight and from minerals in the soil. Miracle-Gro is really delicious!
And I have started dialogues with the sunflowers and sumac bushes in my daughter's yard. Their language is deep and mysterious, full of ambiguity and brazen inconsequence. It's never been written down, that I know of, and so they often speak of past deeds and like to repeat long convoluted genealogies by rote that frankly bore me to tears. But when I can get them away from their myths and family trees their talk can be quite interesting. 
Plants have no conception of death. None at all. And I find that as I settle more deeply into my clay pot I, too, no longer either fear death or even believe in it. After all, a plant has no soul, and so I am no longer concerned about what will happen to mine. Instead I warm myself on these cool fall nights by thinking of the time, in several more months, when my daughter will pluck me up, rinse me off, dice me, boil me, mash me, and serve me with plenty of butter to her family for Thanksgiving. I will have fulfilled my purpose and nourished my family -- and that is all there is to my existence. It's a beautiful concept I could wish more people would embrace. 

Environmentalists filmed Iran’s vanishing cheetahs. Now they could be executed for spying. (WaPo)

I always suspected that talking cheetahs were running things over at the legislature in Saint Paul. My suspicions were confirmed when I turned my place into an Airbnb last year and talking cheetahs started renting it on a monthly basis while the legislature was in session. They were lobbyists, for the most part.
"Hi, I'm Fred" said one talking cheetah as he held out a paw to me. "I'm working to help deer multiply so much that we can hunt them right here in the streets of the city."
His toothy grin and cheerful honesty almost won me over. But I noticed flakes of dried blood on his paw and remembered that all of his kind are cold blooded killers. Predators without mercy or conscience. And they are running things in the state capital. So I said nothing in return and coldly took his money.
I have to admit that these terrible creatures always paid their money in advance and never gave me a bit of trouble. Oh sure, I had to change their sheets all the time -- since none of them are housebroken -- but I'd raised eight children in my time and so I was used to that kind of thing. For breakfast they always wanted the same thing -- raw beef liver with great slabs of salt pork, washed down with tomato juice. They were always asking after my grandchildren, wanting to meet them and play with them. But I knew what they were up to -- first a smile; then a caress; then a snarl; and then a meal. So I claimed that they were all camping in Wyoming. That's the thing about talking cheetahs; you can divert their insatiable blood lust pretty easily. 
When the legislature finally went into recess (after the talking cheetahs had chased the last human survivors out of the building) my Airbnb business slacked off some. Until the dancing capybaras had a convention in town -- then I made a killing by renting out my place to them, and introducing them to my talking cheetah friends down at the country club. 

The corruptness of their law

For behold, Nephi had spoken unto them concerning the corruptness of their law . . . 

Helaman 8:3

The law of man is oft corrupt

and leads to 'justice' too abrupt.

And so the wise and humble seek

the law of God that prophets speak.

When man-made laws have gone berserk

the Gospel law clears off the murk.

Heaven's mandate cannot cease

until the world has come to peace.

“Did I put spice in here?” she whispered to herself in Spanish.

(Dedicated to James Wagner)

Both my grandmothers died a long time ago; they went mad in shoddy nursing homes after they had thrown away their glasses and lost their dentures. They basically starved themselves to death, stubbornly and silently and myopically. As did my mother and father, in their turn, twenty some odd years ago.
 They cooked and ate their food, even during their prime, in a heavy and cheerless manner; at times parsimoniously out of necessity, and at other times simply out of dullness or exhaustion.
And so I grew into a man who also plodded through most meals as a gluttonous chore. 
This morning, for instance, I was prepared to eat leftover vegetable soup from last Friday with a bit of leftover fruit cobbler that is mostly zucchini subsidized with too much brown sugar. While I read a book -- Fred Kaplan's 'Dickens: A Biography.' But I read an online story in the New York Times first, about an 'abuela,' a grandmother, who cooks for her grandsons who play on MLB teams. She cooks red beans in sofrito with shredded goat meat in adobe sauce, along with piles of saffron rice. Suddenly I wanted a grandma meal like that, not the congealed remains of last week. So I threw out my stale fruit cobbler and watery soup, and began a pot of black beans with tomatoes, full of tenderly fried bits of salt pork and chopped scallions and seasoned with cayenne pepper, brown sugar, and cumin. I put a cup of rice in the rice cooker, along with a diced red potato and a tablespoon of butter. Of course I'm making too much of it for just myself, so when I am finished eating -- which I will do out on my patio admiring the volunteer sunflowers the birds have planted for me among the rocks -- I will fill a plastic container to the brim with the leftovers and go door to door here in my senior citizens apartment building offering it to the first old lady who wants it. They are all old ladies on my floor -- there are no men at all. And I'll flirt with them, just a bit. 
This is no longer going to be a meal -- it's a celebration. 

Troubled by the generosity of words . . .

. . . for I have been somewhat troubled in mind because of the generosity and the greatness of the words of thy brother Ammon . . . 
Alma 22:3

Words of idle, hollow boast

do not have the Holy Ghost.

Trite and shameless is the speech

of those who think that they can preach

with swelling words, all multiplied,

when their sick souls are filled with pride.

The great words spoke by prophets true

are generous, and noble too.

O may my mouth take Sabbath rest

until with inspiration blessed! 

In the days of yore a king decided to restrict

In the days of yore a king decided to restrict

trading with all nations that with his will did conflict.

He sent his regal word to merchants who had set up shop

in foreign nations that their trading had to really stop.

Not only that, but then the king commanded that a wall

be built around his kingdom -- to be sixty-five feet tall.

He built it out of concrete and he capped it with rough slate,

but somehow he forgot to have them put in one small gate.

Now the king sits all alone; his subjects all have gone

to countries where they're free to work and not feel like a pawn.

O monarchs of the modern world, let this a lesson be:

Allegiance that may be well bought still shuns stupidity.

Federal judges received a link to an anti-Semitic blog post. It came from the Justice Department. (WaPo)

I was eating a toasted bagel with cream cheese when the SWAT team smashed down the front door, threw me on the floor, and put some kind of plastic binders around my wrists.
This has been happening so often lately that I wasn't really surprised or upset. The best way to handle these things is to stay calm and go along with the gag.
"What is it this time?" I asked quietly.
The leader, in a black balaclava mask, who I'm pretty sure has been the one leading the raids on my house for the past year, replied in a not unfriendly tone "We just need to round up all the scallions you're harboring in your refrigerator. Won't take but a minute."
"Sure thing" I said. "I just bought some so they're actually still in the sink -- I haven't rinsed them off yet."
"Got it" he said. "Thanks for being so cooperative."
"Always glad to oblige" I replied, with as much sincerity as I could muster. 
They were gone a few minutes later and outside of some chaffing on my wrists from the plastic bands I was none the worse for wear. Well, there's the busted front door of course -- but my homeowners insurance covers that.
My neighbor, an old lady who crochets tea cozies, was not so fortunate. The SWAT team broke down her door next and instead of submitting tamely she began yelling at the top of her lungs that her rights were being trampled on and that they would have to pry her scallions out of her cold dead hands. They hustled her off in a black SUV and then set fire to her house. I'm pretty sure the old lady had some kind of death wish -- maybe she was tired of living in a house crammed with unwanted tea cozies. 
The next day my scallions were actually returned to me by the same guy in the black balaclava mask who led the raid on my house.
"These aren't the kind of scallions we're looking for" he told me as he handed them back to me in a plastic bag. They were pretty wilted, but I didn't complain. "Sorry for the inconvenience" he continued. "There's a new strain of scallions out there that have infiltrated grocery stores all over the country -- we can't take any chances. Better safe than sorry. They're the ones giving good scallions a bad name."
"No need to explain to me" I assured him. "Some of my best friends are scallions."