it's a jungle out there

Wild animal alert: As if it's not strange enough to hear raccoons fighting and screaming in my backyard at night, and that coyotes are attacking pets in the suburbs, last night my friend Suzette and I saw a white-faced OPOSSUM scurrying across the street in front of my house.

Suzette was driving me home after a wonderful evening of wine, food, nostalgia, gossip and intense talk. Isobel, Jessica, Suzette and I have been friends since our first year at Carleton University in 1967, and we gather twice a year or so, with another great friend Elke, to get caught up. We did spent a bit of time, yes, talking about miracle creams, aging and health, but mostly - books, movies, travel, friends, love, art, sex, how to live with men. And work.

Continuing my dive into boxes of the family past stored in my basement, I had taken hundreds of slides to be made into prints, and brought a few to the dinner - the ones that show my 21st birthday in August 1971, which Suzette attended. What joy to have old friends. Especially such young old friends.

P.S. An article from last year's "New Yorker" quotes Charles Dickens on what he saw during a visit to Washington, D.C., where he watched a congressional budget debate. He speaks with disdain of "coarse and brutal threatenings exchanged between Senators under the very Senate's roof - the intrusion of the most pitiful, mean, malicious, creeping, crawling, sneaking party spirit into all transactions of life."

Little did he know he was describing American political life in 2012, as well as in 1842.