Stella and I often shop together for presents for our respective birthdays. This is easier in several ways: our birthdays are close (July and August); we both know the "rules" (books are the preferred gifts, used books are just fine, nothing excessively expensive, etc.) and we tend to prefer the same bookstores; we can always ask about a particular item because the intended recipient is there to see it; our memories are both ancient enough to have forgotten the specific gift by the time the birthday arrives, allowing some element of surprise; there's hardly ever an unsuitable gift; etc. It's almost foolproof. Almost.

E. Roosevelt

When I began unwrapping my gift yesterday, I had a pretty good idea that it was Eleanor Roosevelt's autobiography: I had seen it, held it in my hands at the bookstore, read a few paragraphs, and thoroughly approved of Stella's choice (yes, she found it; yes, she knows my tastes that well).

H. W. Brands

But that's not what it was. When the last of the tissue and ribbon headed for the floor, I found to my surprise that I held in my hands H. W. Brands's Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With due respect to Mr. Brands, a UT history professor who has a couple dozen books to his credit and a following in his field, and notwithstanding my acknowledgment that many of "his [Roosevelt's] class" really did think FDR a traitor to it and a radical, I have to say it was not a book I'd have bought for myself. Hey, it's a free country (or so I'm told); you have to allow me my own approach to political hagiography... and this book doesn't appear to fill the bill. Now please, no lectures about reading challenging books; life is short and getting shorter birthday by birthday.

So, there are two questions. First, how did this happen? Stella admits she paid to have it gift-wrapped at the bookstore; the swap might have been accomplished there, though that still doesn't explain why the substitution was made. Second, and harder to answer, what do I do about it?

Part of me feels I should want to read the book, even if I don't really want to read it. This copy is a signed first edition, which may appeal to the collector in you, but that collector is absent in me. And it's visibly (gently) used, giving credibility to the notion that its previous owner read and appreciated the book. But part of me just wants my E.R. autobiography that I so briefly held that day a few months ago. What to do?

Which birthday? This birthday! [YouTube video]

Stella, Steve, Kemah Jazz Festival, 2011

I could spend a whole graf listing Stella's virtues (compassion, intelligence, talent as a painter and writer, etc. etc.), but the daily reality of living with Stella, the one I couldn't ignore if I tried, is that this now 64-year-old woman looks about 32. Or younger. And it's a great-looking 32 she looks... her facial features, complexion, figure and the rest all contribute to my distraction. When asked how she manages to keep her, um, stellar appearance, she invariably replies, "It's all those young male virgins I sacrifice." I have no idea where she finds them in this day and age. Or why, having found them, she continues to hang around with me. My good fortune!

"Yesterday was my birthday; I hung one more year on the line..." (Paul Simon) The year and the birthday were my 66^th, and it was a helluva beginning to the new year of being me:

• I received a dumbphone I ordered through Amazon, a used Samsung Propel functionally identical to the one I was using until four buttons quit on it about a week ago. I'd have considered a smartphone, but peripheral neuropathy renders all those finger gestures for scrolling, paging and zooming very nearly impossible for me. Friend Catherine, by accident or by design, gave me an Amazon gift certificate of just about the amount I paid for the "historical instrument" from one of Amazon's many affiliate cell phone vendors. Then, because I hadn't recently backed up the old phone's memory to the SIM card and because that old phone's buttons weren't working, I had the privilege of staying up most of the night entering my personal contact list into the new one. It surely seems as if I end up doing that a lot...
  

• At the crack of dawn, I picked up a few groceries for Stella, who can drive OK now but still has to get around on a rolling walker. When I got home and was easing a few inches at a time into my parking space, my foot slipped off the brake, jammed itself between brake and accelerator and rammed my car into the closed garage door, crunching it pretty thoroughly. That not being enough of Dog's little joke for the day, I found I was unable to remove my foot from where it was wedged between the pedals, sending the engine racing like crazy. I reached for the shift to put it in neutral. The cranky old transmission promptly reversed my action, putting itself right back into drive, ramming the garage door again at full power. I suppose I should have reached for the ignition key, but the whole thing took under 3 seconds, and my brain doesn't work at its best at 6:30AM... Now I have a crunched garage door (for which I will owe the landlord) and a thoroughly battered and scraped left front fender (which may be something I can live with; I haven't tried it yet).
  

• Once I stopped shaking and determined that I personally was not injured at all (not even a scratch or a bruise), the rest of the birthday was pleasant enough. Stella and I went to Star Pizza, my usual choice for a birthday meal. Then we went to one of the Half Price Books™ stores which Stella was able to navigate even on her walker. I came home with two used CDs (yes, I still keep most of my music on those damned old things) and an assortment of fiction already found, bought and wrapped by the ever‑amazing Stella (every one was perfectly suited to my taste). At night I entered the aforementioned contact list. Somehow I felt really old...
  

• One last detail, a perfect ending to an imperfect day: I received word from SSA that an award has been decided upon and I should receive notification by snail mail very soon. Whew!
  

As Eubie Blake, who died at age 96 (not age 100 as he claimed), said, "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself." Well, maybe. I wouldn't have passed up that wild youth for any amount of longevity. Seriously, when I was 30, if you'd asked me how long I expected to live, I would have truthfully answered that I thought I would flame out around 50. Happily (or so I think today; ask me tomorrow), I did not.

I've seen a lot of avoidable loss in my life, and have experienced relatively little of it myself. But when I look around, I cannot honestly say the world is improved over its state in my youth. More people are being killed, and for worse reasons, than ever before. More people are incarcerated in America beyond the reach of the law, for crimes that are essentially thoughtcrimes. And finally, humanity is nailing its own coffin shut by refusing even to consider diminishing our use of fossil fuels. Of course, we could still end it all in the way we all thought likely 50 years ago, a massive nuclear war; the same technology that landed a rover on Mars could place a bomb in a major city. We have plenty of ways to inflict misery, and we're developing more of them every day.

So what keeps me going, in the face of those realizations? Stella, the cats, my other friends, and... very low on the list... political activism, which no longer works as well as it did in the days before all politicians, from all parties, were bought and paid for under the terms of Citizens United. Maybe I'll live to see the end of the empire, but I can't say I like the view of the future beyond it.

For my birthday, this year only, to Stella:


Stella is giving me David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity, both of us feeling that the library copy should at least occasionally go to someone else.

But there's an arguably even better present in the works: at 12:31AM CDT Aug. 6, Mars Rover Curiosity of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory is scheduled to land, and it's to be broadcast on NASA-TV public channel! If you're reading this at midnight, if you hurry, you might catch the last of the pre-landing commentary.

This is the first use of a new landing technique involving a winch; the rover is the largest, heaviest ever; and the radio delay to Mars at the moment is 14 minutes... so the landing has to be fully automatic, and we won't know for 14 minutes whether the rover is safely on the surface. Succeed or fail (so far, NASA's Mars landing record is 15 successes, 24 failures), could you possibly ask for more suspense?  

ASIDE: Happy Birthday to NTodd as well!

UPDATE: Too cool! Curiosity is on the ground! A few images have come back! Even just as a technological feat, this is impressive. Every one of you who has ever participated in a large technology-based project has some idea how those people in the control room feel. A toast to Curiosity... and to curiosity!

ADDENDUM: Does the Mars Science Laboratory pique your, um, curiosity? Read the wiki!