It's only castles burning

Don't let it bring you down,
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning,
And you will come around.
(Neil Young, "After the Gold Rush")

On the fourth, the thirty-second anniversary of our meeting, Gven Golly and I went out for pizza. Half veggie and half spicy chicken and not bad. I think our first pizza was from the Mellow Mushroom that weekend in Atlanta, and it had sliced fresh tomatoes. We were both helping my sister Jo Jo move when the forces of the universe - and my conniving brother in law - brought us together.

Anni-versary (year-turning) 32 times around, and this one was fairly spontaneous. It was raining on and off, so I did some laundry, pulled some weeds, transplanted some vegetables that had planted themselves from compost. Other people celebrated the signing of an important historical document by lining State Street in their rain ponchos and umbrella watching other people parade through Methodistville on behalf of the Rotary or whatever club they want to promote by waving the colors.

While it rained, I played with the remote and stumbled across an old movie worth watching, quickly becoming hypnotized by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo - the architecture of posh San Francisco, the clothes, all blue suits in dark red rooms, and the strange interplay between a crazed James Stewart and a crazed Kim Novak in her big green car.

When it was time, I tore myself away and we went out for pizza, but no real restaurants were open; I guess all the right-thinking people were doing barbecue or blowing things up, so we ended up at Donato's, which, I'm sorry to say, does not have the vibe of the Mellow Mushroom. By the time we got home, the fireworks had started, so we walked across the street and joined several little groups of neighbors in the little park on Park Street with oak trees for all eight of Ohio's presidents (we stood by McKinley) and watched the rockets red glare and the bombs bursting in air.

It was barely past the twilight's last gleaming and nowhere near the dawn's early light, and there happened to be another decent movie on TV, so we watched 1776, the film version of a Broadway musical that I saw with my Mom many years ago at the Fisher Theater in Detroit. I remember it being very good on stage - unpretentious, insightful, and funny - and the movie actually did the play justice. The characters of Franklin, Adams, Dickinson, and Rutledge were especially revealing of their regional, intellectual, and class differences, all of which shaped the great compromises that followed.

On the fifth, Gven and I made it to a friendly gathering at Julie's house for drinks and dessert. I was so immersed in a project that I didn't know if I would go, but I was pleasantly surprised to complete enough of it to call it a day and energized enough (by the work or by the party, I don't know) to have a really good time.

What project? After about four years of contemplating, speculating, and ruminating, I finally got around to setting the first two posts of a pergola on the brick patio. Various design ideas have been pergolating all that time - sorry, that just had to be said - finally culminating in decisions about dimensions, materials, and placement.

On the sixth, the weather held, so I added a horizontal piece to the two posts and strung the electrical line from the house to the garage that has been disconnected for about a year, looping it through a screw-eye on top of one of the nine-foot posts. For me, this is a major engineering feat. The fun part was finding out that the circuit breaker I thought was for the garage was not, and I have a melted tip of a Swiss Army knife to show for it. So I threw the main breaker just to be on the safe side.

No, the really fun part was Zelda helping me connect the (cold) wires, the two of us standing nine feet up on stepladders, one pulling the wires together and the other twisting wires with needle-nose pliers and taping them tight. The moment of truth: Captain, we have power! Next weekend maybe I can get the garage door opener to work.