Labor Day

The End of Summer is here. These days, the arbitrary days of demarcation -- today is summer, tomorrow is not -- always seem a bit awkward and western to me.

It true that one day things do change, but to have it set it up years in advance with some alegbraic equation dating back to Julius Caeser, just seems arbitrary.

This week things obviously changed for the people on the Gulf Coast. Homes and the personal history we invest in building and artifacts have been wiped away. Almost proving the ancient philosophers right that nothing is worth writing down, you only truly posses your mind and your memory.

On a smaller scale, yesterday also marked the beginning of the end of my grandparent's lives. They moved into a retirement home/assisted living facility. It's a good place with three square meals a day, and people are treated with dignity. But it's a place no one really wants to go.

My grandfather, Charlie, whom I've only known as Papa, is a brilliant man. He worked on Radar instillations in WWII. Went on to work with the first computers after the war. I've always had great respect for him. And his wife Dorothy, Nana to me. SO funny such a delight. She's the source of the entire family's sense of humor.

But you don't move into one of "those" places unless you can't get around much anymore. Driving's hard, walking's harder. And recently Papa's been existential.

"How you doing Papa?" I'd ask when it was just he and I after a family gathering.

"I'm not doing well at all, the pain is always there."

(Okay this isn't what he actually said. I don't have a transcript, so please just insert a heartbreaking and terse line of dialogue for the one I just wrote. Trust me at the time when he said it I was very moved and I swore that the line would be burned into my memory forever. Forever to me apparently means less than two years.)

On an even smaller scale Kinzai Ninjas got the tenative nod to move into the "next phase" of production. Still a little cryptic, but it's a good thing. We should have a theme song soon, and we've practically written the entire Season. It's a good thing. More announcements to come.

Let's wrap this up. Summer ending this weekend is kinda arbitrary, and hurricane changed lives concretely. Nana and Papa are moving into the sunset of their lives, and Kinzai Ninjas heading into a bright new phase.