The time has come once again to note the anniversary of my brother’s birth. On this day in 1987, he was cut from our mother’s body, having somehow gotten his umbilical cord wrapped around himself in such a way as might well have killed him had he proceeded along the traditional route into this world. As his older brother, I want to make some quip–and there are a lot of them that suggest themselves to me–about having set a precedent that he has followed for thirty-eight years since, but that would be more of a jerk move than I really ought to make. So I’ll not do that.

What I will do, instead, is wish my little brother another happy birthday and note my hopes that he’s got a lot more of them coming. So, Happy Birthday!

The echoes of old acquaintances ring in
The hollows left behind by their absence
My absence
And the insuperable Planck gap between
What we were
And what we now are

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I‘ve not made a secret of volunteering with the band programs at my local school district. Even before my daughter, Ms. 8, enrolled in them, I started doing what I could to help them out, announcing their halftime shows, hauling pit equipment, and performing occasional patch-work on instruments so that they could be taken out onto the field one more time. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to get to do so for a couple of years now, and I hope to be able to continue to do so for at least a few more years.

Volunteering with the bands this year has taken me to an awful lot of football games, at home and away–and away games are generally away, two hours and more of drive time for me and up to half again as much for the students as they ride their wholly unmagical yellow school buses from our small town to that against which they play on any given week. (There have been more away games than home ones, too, given some ongoing construction concerns.) Last week was not an exception, even if, due to the threat of heavy inclement weather, the schools opted to swap game dates, so that the varsity teams played Thursday and their junior-varsity counterparts played Friday.

The irony was lost on few when, a few minutes into the first quarter of the game, the heavens opened and dumped something like an inch and a half of rain before the quarter ended.

I helped the students get things packed up that would not take the rain well: woodwind instruments, whose pads would swell and deform from too much wet, and pit equipment, some of which relies on circuits and power sources that don’t react well with water. And so I was, like them, soaked to the skin, and soon started to feel the creeping chill of a darkened evening after a front rolled through. Unlike them, I had had experience with such things, and I was able to help them gain experience with how to deal with them.

We were all wet, yes, and there was no sense denying it. And the woodwinds and pit needed to be put away. But the brass and the battery remained, and they played. At first, it was a scant handful of them. A baritone player whose plume drooped damply but whose spirits stood strong, blasting out a fanfare he’d been working on for weeks when the football team managed to make a good play on an unexpectedly muddied field. A sousaphone player blasting out the horn-call a departed friend had figured out. A drummer beating out a tattoo in time with the cheerleaders’ ongoing efforts. Each doing something against the shock of sudden water since passed, and each encouraged by a clap on the shoulder or a smile.

Seeing such, others soon joined. Sections stood to sound their songs. Drum majors, freed to call their cadences, queued up pieces and had the band play them. Clarinetists and flautists and saxophonists, hands without horns, lifted their voices to yell their pride and hope. Drummers hammered out cadences, and the band danced with them as they had hardly done before, those with horns swinging them as cued, those without feeling the rhythm and responding nonetheless.

The band that night was a band, moving as one in many parts and feeling, clearly, the exaltation of pouring themselves into a performance. And I was proud to be even so small a part of it as I was.

I look forward to seeing them do it again, though I’ll hope for a little drier a seat next time around.

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It has been a while since I’ve made much comment on one of the day’s observances–a little over five years, in fact. I’m not sure what, if anything, I have to add to my earlier comments; I still find things…fraught, perhaps more so now than then, although I think that’s not an uncommon thing, either. That is, I find a lot of things more fraught now than before, and I think other people have similar perspectives on them to a greater degree than previously. Or it seems so from where I’m sitting.

Where I’m sitting does remain much as it has been. That is, the Texas Hill Country is very much like it used to be, at least in the small towns, and much of that is deliberate. There is a sense of hanging onto how things were, for certain values of how they were and for whom. There is a sense of what things ought to be, for certain values of ought and for whom. And neither of those senses have much changed in the last many years, not that I can see.

It makes for some frustration, to be sure. After all, things cannot get better if they do not change, and I and others in the local community are trying to make things better. The way they used to be done might have worked when things used to be done that way–I was not here, so I cannot say much on that score–but they have not been working so well where I can see them. It may be that things get worse, admittedly; there’s always a danger that changes will not improve things. But it is certain that they will if things do not otherwise change, and, again, they cannot improve if they remain as they are.

Just because things have always been done a certain way is not a reason, in itself, to keep doing them that way (even as the fact of newness does not make something worthwhile). I want things to get better; I work to make things get better. I could stand to have an easier time of it than I hitherto have, and I think I am not alone in that. How that works with all of the other stuff going on…I don’t know, but I’ll try to figure it out.

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Not too terribly long ago, I remarked on some of what my darling daughter, Ms. 8, was leaving behind. In the months since, she’s gotten to have a concert (that I had thought was cancelled; I’m pleased to have been made wrong) and gotten to have a closing ceremony for her elementary school years. She’s also gotten to go to a series of camps (that is not done yet as I write this, nor will it be done when this piece emerges into the world), having enriching and uplifting experiences that I have every expectation will help her as she moves ahead into the next school year and the world outside the classroom.

As happens, my daughter has sent some letters as a result of her camp experiences, trying to retain connections to some of the people she met while away, trying to maintain a network of people that extends beyond the small town where we live and across the state, perhaps to grow larger yet as people move and take on new things. It’s something she has done for years, as she’s been going to camps for a while, and when she gets a letter back, it’s typically a source of delight.

When one returns to her, as happened, that has a postmark from 2023 and was addressed to people she last saw some two years ago, though, it’s not a happy thing.

I know it’s likely that the envelope had fallen into some crack or crevice when it was originally received, lost to sight and thought until some change in administration or furniture moving brought it back to light. I know it’s likely that those to whom the letter was addressed have moved on with their lives, no longer part of the part of the world they shared with my daughter briefly a while back. I know it’s likely that some office-dweller saw a piece of mail meant for someone else and didn’t note the date of the postmark. But I also know the look I saw on my daughter’s face as she saw the letter, saw her handwriting addressing it to friends she thought she had reached out to, saw the “Return to Sender” emblazoned by another’s pen upon it, and it was hard for me to think kindly of circumstances.

I know, too, that it is a small sadness, indeed. There have been and are greater ones about, and not too far from here or too long ago. I am not unmindful of the relative scales of things, not at all. And if it is the case that this is the most that touches my daughter at the moment, I am a grateful man for it. But I can be aware that things could be much worse, appreciating that they are not, and still wish that not even so much had touched my daughter as that.

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They said something about
Both hands and a flashlight, but
I’m still not sure what it is I’m looking for, and
If I don’t even know that,
How can I hope such tools will help?

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There is so much more to do
And I fear I can’t carry through
All my tasks–but it is true
That I am working on them.

I lift my pen; I wield no sword.
I rise from bed and go to board
And thence to add more to my hoard–
My tasks, I’m working on them.

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To those of you who have been reading, first, my thanks. I see you, and I appreciate that you take the time from your day to read a bit about what I do with my days. I do hope you’ll keep doing it, and I hope it will be because I continue to give you something worth reading.

Second, as I think I might have mentioned once or twice, I started working in a tax preparation and bookkeeping office at the start of the year. Tax Day in the United States is 15 April this year (with some exceptions for folks who’ve been impacted by natural disasters of one kind or another, for whom, my sympathies). Consequently, I have been busy, and when I have not been, I have been tired. That’ll ease up soon, but, until then, I don’t know that I’ll be able to add to things that I’ve been doing here (notably the Hobb Reread). I’m not abandoning any projects, and I hope that I won’t have to put anything on pause, but I might have to do so.

I suppose, then, that this is to let folks (and I might be one of those folks) know that I’m okay and that I will be okay. I just might have to put my head down a little more than usual for a little bit, is all. So if you don’t hear from me, that’s why.

Once again, and always, thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Geoffrey B. Elliott

Tomorrow is Tax Day in the US, something about which I have opined once or twice before. This year, I’ve been a bit closer to such things than in the past; while in previous years, I was working for Liberty Tax Service in Kerrville in a support capacity, this year saw me add tax preparation to my repertoire. Admittedly, I was still primarily working in support, maintaining the social media presence and addressing administrative tasks a-plenty, but I did prepare a few returns through the season. So that much has been different.

It’d been a while since I was in quite so client-facing a position; the freelance work with which I had sought to support myself and my family, and then the accounting work I’ve been doing, may have some interactions, but there’s a difference between an occasional email or phone call and having someone, usually not a happy someone, sitting right across the desk and staring as information gets hammered in and equations calculated. And things were made more challenging by changes to tax laws that made many people’s refunds lower–including into the negatives. I, myself, got hit for over $500.00 in taxes owed, and I’d been paying throughout the year. (I’ve since upped my withholding, and when I made my estimated quarterly payment, I put in at a slightly higher rate.) But I got through (I only work weekends at the tax-prep office, having a regular day-job for the rest of it), even if I was reminded that I am vastly out of practice.

Still, it was a good experience for me. The pay was decent, and the re/development of specific skills was to the good. Whether I will do it again next time around, I do not yet know; it will depend on a number of things, appropriately enough, and I know I am not good enough to know the future with any certainty. I’m not averse to it, certainly. In the meantime, however, I have other work to do, and I had probably better get to it.

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It was a finely tuned machine
Built in a union factory from Midwestern parts
Serviced regularly and maintained well
Enhanced by the careful attentions of master mechanics
Filled with the highest-octane fuels
And driven hard but with care and attention
Racing down the roads well paved
And venturing off of them into parts hitherto unknown
Marking off a trail that others could follow at greater leisure and
Not having to navigate
They might look at the surrounding scenery
And see something small and beautiful
Somewhere, though, it hit a rock
Larger than had been expected or understood
Perhaps placed there by someone who didn’t want to see the sights
But more likely unhappy happenstance
A stone in the street that might come to be
And it did something to the drive
Threw the wheels out of alignment
Messed up the timing
Damaged the transmission
So that it handles sluggishly
Accelerates slowly and not to as high a speed
And seems to hiccup as it goes along
I have no other car
And I cannot trade this one in
There is no dealer that would take it
But I miss driving what it was
So much

I could still use your support, particularly as another holiday approaches.