Daily News: Today Is The Anniversary Of My Sudden Appearance On This Planet

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Today is my 56th orbit around the sun. I live on the planet called 'Earth'. It is a beautiful specimen of a satellite. According to the out of date horoscopes used by ill-informed astrologers, I am a Libra but if one uses updated data, I am really a Virgo only I wasn't a virgin for very long so this is all very annoying.

It is very beautiful outside: a dry, crisp, sunny autumn day. Every day, one should rise out of bed and greet the sun, thank the rain and bless the earth as St. Francis liked to say.

The forest is in full color yet the grass is still bright green. Our first hard freeze is coming tonight. Often, on my birthday, we get really foul weather here in New York. One year, we just bought our first brownstone in New York City. It had no heat and only a few light outlets, I called it 'the cave' and our only heat was the Victorian fireplaces. We moved the day before my birthday and the next afternoon, it was freezing cold and sleet was slapping the sheets of plastic that covered the missing windows on the first floor. We had only one habitable room in the entire building which had a fire previously.

My in-laws told me they were bringing over a birthday cake so my daughter was very happily looking forward to this treat when in walked Joe carrying an icecream cake! We were all wearing our heavy winter coats inside! Not only was it a cold cake, it was frozen hard as a rock!

Joe said, 'Maybe it will warm up and I can cut it.'

I said, 'This is Antarctica.'

We decided to leave the cake out since it didn't need a freezer and go somewhere warm to eat.

It seems nearly all my moves happen on my birthday. Coincidence? Heh. When I moved up to this mountain, I spent much of September leveling a spot for the tent and assembling materials and building a road. We moved up here on my birthday. As per usual, it snowed. Chris got me a pair of kittens, one of which we still have, Cream. Her son and her sister's two sons still live with us. On my birthday back then, I had to go down to New Jersey on business.

So Chris spent it alone with the new kittens and our sled dog, Duke, in a freezing cold tent. When I came home two days later, we installed our first woodstove there. I learned a lot about installing wood stoves in tents. One has to be VERY careful where one sets it up and how it is set up or poof!

I hope this coming year is better than the last six years. And I hope everyone's birthdays are happy days. Peace and Love.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Click on image to enlarge

TO READ MORE CLICK HERE

Comments

Happy birthday!!!

Posted by: sin | October 14, 2006 at 10:42 AM

Happy Birthday!!!

I hope you have a great day!

(I am also glad you missed Friday the 13th.)

Posted by: DeVaul | October 14, 2006 at 11:16 AM

Happy Birthday!

Posted by: Dianna | October 14, 2006 at 11:39 AM

Happy B-day, many more trips around the sun.

Posted by: larry | October 14, 2006 at 03:05 PM

My daughter just celebrated her 40th. Here's hoping (and praying -- I still do that now and then), for all our sakes, and especially for our grandchildren, that we're still riding a habitable satelite ten, twenty, fifty trips around Sol from now.

Posted by: Andrew Smith | October 14, 2006 at 03:13 PM

It's just going around in circles. Circles are cool!!!

Posted by: blues | October 14, 2006 at 04:11 PM

Many, many happy returns of the day.

You share a birthday with e. e. cummings, and you are exactly one-half the age he would have been today. So as a birthday greeting, I'll paste in the poem he would never, never have written for you:

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church's protestant blessings
daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things—
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
.... the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

Posted by: DaliWood | October 14, 2006 at 05:28 PM

Happy Birthday Elaine. I'm also a Libra,though I don't believe in that astrology b.s..Here in Kingman,Az, we're having some nasty thunderstorms. Unusual this late in the fall.

Posted by: Jim | October 14, 2006 at 06:06 PM

Thunderstorms in October! We do get them up here.

Thank you, everyone, for the wishes. We had a nice dinner cooked by my daughter and her new husband. Drank Oktoberfest bier. Storm squalls moved through and now a starry night.

One thing is certain: nothing beats living. Hope everyone lives and this is why I want peace and diplomacy as well as good jobs and plenty to eat and a warm fire.

Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | October 14, 2006 at 06:45 PM

So again this year I am still 3 years and 2 day older than thou. May you have many more happy trips around.

Luv, Griz

Posted by: Grizzled Adams | October 14, 2006 at 06:53 PM

Happy Birthday.
Keep up the good work, too.

Posted by: Pete the Piscean | October 14, 2006 at 08:52 PM

I have 9 more orbits around the Sun than you. Happy Orbiting!
Eddie Hunter

Posted by: Eddie Hunter | October 14, 2006 at 09:28 PM

Happy Birthday Elaine!

Hope you are all warm and toasty on the mountain and not slogging through snowstorms like Buffalo or hail like Watertown.

Here's a link about China from a Canadian newspaper. Not the type of present I'd normally give, but you may find it interesting. I'd recommend viewing it on a day when you aren't having good birthday wishes; it's not a fun story. I thought it sounded a bit outrageous, but you can judge for yourself.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=6a97d044-615a-496b-b7d6-e79e36636592

Posted by: Judah | October 14, 2006 at 09:56 PM