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 I am currently in a blogging slump with a touch of emotional flu. I will see you when I am more inspired.

Love, peace and groovy things,

Pagan Sphinx

Mona

Radio On - Mumford and Sons - Little Lion Man

 This type of drama just wrecks me in a song.   ;-)

Very good, indeed-y.

Father Commerce and Other Post-Holiday Ruminations

Did you cherish your holidays and your family this season? Me, I tried really hard and fell short of my expectations that I would be the perfect person for each and every individual in my life.  Any smart person would have given up trying by now to be perfect but I, alas, mistakenly harbor hope that one day I will not piss off a single person for even one moment.  Ha!

 Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

~Salvador Dali

There was lots of champagne and good food and beautiful daughters and a loving Old World mother. I decidedly did not receive an iphone from Father Commerce. I find those little gizmos highly distracting. People use their cell phones and other small electronic gadgets while they operate  motor vehicles. If I did that routinely, starting today, I would be dead in three days. Or less. Oh, but I did get a new Canon with a big zoom lens on it. It will be great to be able to photograph birds and the other wildlife around the river and lake. I'm excited.

I think I have a rare form of attention deficit disorder. This is admittedly a self-diagnosis and it may be wacky but I helps me keep my unruly brain in check. Unlike ADHD people, I am often distracted by too much thought - which is really the result of a very long attention span. I don't want to pay attention to too many things at once. I find it overwhelming.  Particularly when it involves driving or operating heavy machinery. For me, a blender constitutes such. I really have to be careful. I also don't understand why so many people don't get that real thinking takes a long time! I'm having this problem with my current instructor. He's way too zippy for me.

I am in a mood. It's not a bad mood, exactly. I just want to tell everyone I love that they should go away from me, please and let me blog. But then, a wonderful thing happens. My daughter SG2, recently turned 21, accepts my invitation to spend the day together yesterday and we click. I took a chance, not altogether sure we would. And we had a wonderful day.. We had a late lunch and then we got our eyebrows waxed. 
I have decided:  one can only eat sushi satisfactorily with another sushi lover.

I promise not to divulge all the eyebrow waxing details. Suffice it to say that I'm very aware of my eyebrows these days. I have been worried that I may frighten people with my shock of white Andy Warhol hair and my jet-black eyebrows. Don't worry. both the eyebrows and the hair remain, and in their respective natural colors. I have merely cleaned up my eyebrows a bit. My daughter approves.  My eyebrows are now more stylish than Warhol's and I hope I'm a tad bit cuter than Andy.

Oh, I got my mother this Christmas and the salt cod!  :-)  And The Runt got some, too!

Pagan Sphinx Warholized

Happy 2010

Be brave and be happy in the new year!

Sublime

In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublimis ([looking up from] under the lintel, high, lofty, elevated, exalted) is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation. rest of entry here

I'm glad I found this video today. It was such a blustery, ever-changing day with wet leaves blowing and a sky that changed from sun to clouds to heavy drizzle in the blink of an eye. My own moods were consistently rapid-cycling today. I think today I identified with what it must be like for people who deal with bipolar disorder everyday. For my own loved one who deals with it, I'm just so grateful that she learned the love lesson well. It's helped her as a cushion. Love builds resiliency. It's in all the books, no matter how many different ways they try to write it.  ;-)

Okay. Without further ado ~~~~~~you must listen.

All the love,
Pagan Sphinx

I Don Wanna Grow Up

My poor little head is really spinning off its axle now, folks! I just today (in fact, the call woke me up before 9:00 a.m. on my vacation week; which has not exactly been my idea of a vacation; but more on that another time) got the low-down on the graduate certificate program in special education that I'm about to enroll in...tah dah...this summer! I will have July 9 through August 10 off. Cramming two courses into approximately 20 days. Oh, Joy.

I really need to conjure up a positive attitude for this, because as for right this minute I'm dreading it. I'm being a resentful baby. I know I"m way too young to retire (even though there are only about four strands of dark hair on my silver head) and yet at almost 50, I want to. Not because I feel old but because I'm still young! I think you follow my logic.

I just need to get this off my chest in one post before I move forward and sink my teeth into this new experience. Maybe it will be interesting. Maybe it will lead to a more rewarding career. It will definitely lead to more money; which I need to earn more of. Most importantly it will lead to freedom from the current confines of the school that employs me. Perk! There we go, I'm on my way to a more positive attitude!

Meanwhile, this song just about sums up how I feel. Sorry, friends, I'm too old and jaded for the Disney version. ;-)

It's Friday and I'm out to create a mood...
Be good kids. ;-)

What's Goin' On / Christmas / Solstice

I'm very slow to recover from this plague, as Dianne calls it. At this point, it's a vicious circle of the physical and psychological; with the physical troubles coming first and going 'round and 'round.

The ear pain is gone but my ear is still fuzzy. I'm taking the damned antibiotics, even though I strongly suspect this is viral. I wonder if it's the medication that's making me feel so queezy and headachy and otherwise out of sorts. Today is the last day I take the stuff, as it appears not to be doing much to help me. I have very little appetite and I'm now facing a return to work tomorrow, which I would be looking forward to except that I still don't feel up to par.

I've tried today to shake off the psychological piece of this plague by getting dressed in something other than sleep clothes. I paid some bills; I'm contemplating a load of laundry.

I've yet to step outside since my visit to the doctor's on Thursday. The thought just makes me feel sicker. Some of this low-level depression is due to the weather's most devastating consequence: The Winter Blues or as the shrinks call it: SAD. There was a hint of sun when I awoke not-so-early this afternoon. Yes. I woke up at 2:30 p.m. after having been awake from 2:00 to 5:3o a.m. I feel totally useless and almost lifeless. But not hopeless. Just impatient for this thing to go away so that I can feel normal and get about the business of decorating the house for Solstice. Or Yule.

These terms for the holidays don't exactly roll off the tongue. I was raised with Christmas because of both my mother and my culture; the latter of which is highly Roman Catholic. When I was a little girl in Portugal; where I was born and lived for the first six years of my life, Christmas was exactly that: a religious holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. My father, being an atheist, was willing to go along with some of the traditions that my mother tried to uphold. I don't recall that we had a tree every year; I don't think we did. But I do remember one Christmas where my father found a bare tree branch and stuck it into a tin pail full of sand. We had these little clay knick-knacks around the house: little jugs with tiny hand-painted flowers (I have since bought a whole collection of these on visits to Portugal and we hang them on our family tree) and a few small, plastic toys that we strung with yarn and decorated the tree with.

This was in the early 60's when neither consumerism nor democracy had yet arrived in Portugal. Regular, working people went to church and prepared a slightly more special dinner and desserts than usual. I remember baked chicken, rice pudding in small saucers, with cinnamon designs sprinkled on top. My brother and I got to choose what type of design we wanted for our individual pudding and my mother would sprinkle a start or a spiral with cinnamon.

People went to church for midnight mass but we did not. My father didn't believe in it and though my mother was free to go if she wished, she chose to stay at home with us. One religious custom I recall is that my mother would have my brother and me each fetch one of our boots to leave out for the Baby Jesus to put something special into. It was always something very humble by American standards; even of the early to mid 60's: a couple of clementines, walnuts or a sweet treat. Purchased presents were largely unheard of in our family, though other relatives who were more affluent would get a few toys. We got sweaters that my mother hand-knitted for us or new winter boots, socks; practical things.

I'm not wanting to call the holiday Christmas anymore because I'm not a Christian, firstly. And if I were, why would I want to celebrate the birth of Jesus in December? What I'm really celebrating is The Winter Solstice. Let's face it, the darkest time of the year deserves some merriment; a celebration that the days will soon become a bit longer and we will gradually see the return of the sun and all the life and light it brings. This I can wrap my mind and soul around.

We've given up on the consumerism of the season almost altogether. We give very small, inexpensive gifts to one-another. Our children understand and appreciate that they're fortunate to have the gift of $2oo, 000 educations. At least that's what the full "retail" price of it is. The Girls have worked hard and benefited from much private merit and needs-based help. The government gives us very little, as we are not "poor" enough. That's okay. I don't think it's unfair that the uber-rich parents of their college mates are helping to foot the bill through endowment contributions. Thank you very much.

My contribution to The Season is to decorate the house with those Pagan touches: a tree with a lifetime's worth of two families' respective ornament collections, lots of table-top decorations and lots of indoor lights and real candles, greenery and touches of red everywhere. We also make a wonderful meal and stuff stockings with practical items and candy. We enjoy it. We don't make ourselves crazy and stressed.

Honestly, in preparing my gift list for WP, I came to the conclusion that I don't really want anything. Actually, that's not true. I want a new Imac to replace the ancient, heavy HP laptop that sits on my desk. But I don't need it. This one will do me for some time to come. SG1 will soon need a new computer to replace the one she's had since freshman year. That will be the priority before she starts graduate school in 2010. I want but don't need an Ipod. I had one briefly that WP found on the sidewalk in San Francisco but it only worked for a month before the battery went dead. Neither the battery nor the gadget will be replaced any time soon. I want but don't need a couple of gorgeous sweaters and tops that I've been ogling in online catalogs.

What I wanted most is almost finished: a new floor for a huge area of my house. It's replacing the oldest, ugliest linoleum you have ever seen; dating back to 1952. I kid you not. I'm grateful for the kindness and generosity of my loving partner who knows how much "home" matters to me. And even though the long process of this renovation project has been exasperating at times, it's taught me that our relationship is more important than the instant gratification of a new floor; presto. And so I've learned to be patient throughout the long ordeal of WP trying to fit in doing the floor work with his own job and other matters that come up routinely. If I'd had my druthers, I would have had someone install it in a day but WP is a thrifty man and he insisted on buying the flooring from the least expensive outlet he could find and putting it in himself, saving us about $2,000 in the process.

Oh and a few days ago, I knew even more certainly that I'd found the right man when he came home from the library with a John Lennon biography for me to read. Sometimes I think he's not paid attention to what floats my boat and it's only five years for us; but he is proving that he does indeed listen and care about what matters to me.

I think it was Betmo (sorry, Bet, but I can't find the exact post) who said in a recent post that the best gift is the gift of time. I can honestly say that I have that from WP. We are inseparable. We can spend an entire day going about our respective tasks, in the same house, hardly speak to each other until dinner and still feel connected. Of course, we do find each other frequently throughout the day and we give each other a squeeze or a kiss or a touch on the shoulder. This so works for me! And then there are other times when we spend an entire weekend day watching movies together; snuggling and feeling very lucky and contented.

Time is a gift indeed and I don't intend to miss out on it just because the rest of the world is going holiday-crazy. Time spent also brings the gifts of understanding, acceptance and unconditional love. You can't have those things if you don't invest the time in the people you love.

Namaste, my friends.

P.S. I want to thank my friend Bobbie at Almost There for this post, which inspired a few of my own Christmas (as it was then) memories.

Brazil Classics

Of the various attempts to ward off a bad mood with music; I've finally decided on this.

These three songs (I'm too lazy to name them) are from a compilation that you may have heard of called Brazil Classics; a collection of Brazilian pop songs compiled by David Byrne.

More random art and links later. Maybe.

Beauty Break

Rossetti

(I actually saw this live at The Tate. I believe WP had time to take a nap in Trafalgar Square while I stood riveted to this painting)

I'm feeling rather gloomy and grumpy. Firstly, WP has been in California for the last ten days (due home tomorrow). Then there is the matter of our sadness and dismay over Prop 8 passing, as well as very ill feelings toward Washington regarding the "bail- out".

I needed me a beauty break.

She Comes in Colors

Patrick Hughes

My Lovely First Girl: I dedicate this song to you. It is perhaps selfish of me to choose this song for you. You'd probably say that The Rolling Stones are a gang of old men with misogynistic fantasies woven through their music. But just listen, you may even like it. And it reminds me of you, what can I say? ;-)

And it's a happy song; meant to cheer you up yet as I type this, I'm almost about to cry again. We need to move forward. And keep moving. Even if it's just one step a day. We need to make ground and not stop fighting for what's right and just.

All my love. Always. Mommy

A Sad Day for Marriage Equality

I am, of course, deeply saddened by the probable defeat of marriage equality in California. Not only am I personally affected by this because my daughter was married in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, but also for all GLBT people who have married or wish to marry.

The fact that the religious community, predominantly the Catholic and Mormon Churches saw fit to pump so much cash into an effort to take away the civil rights of others only makes me more certain how bigoted and anti-humanity they really are.

These are the same people who want to take away our reproductive rights and re-write the science curricula in our schools to exclude evolution as well as deny our young people the information and resources they need to make decisions about their sexuality.


But Equality California is not ready to concede defeat:


“Roughly 400,000 votes separate yes from no on Prop 8 – out of 10 million votes tallied.Based on turnout estimates reported yesterday, we expect that there are more than 3 million and possibly as many as 4 million absentee and provisional ballots yet to be counted.Given that fundamental rights are at stake, we must wait to hear from the Secretary of State tomorrow about how many votes are yet to be counted as well as where they are from.It is clearly a very close election and we monitored the results all evening and this morning.As of this point, the election is too close to call.Because Prop 8 involves the sensitive matter of individual rights, we believe it is important to wait until we receive further information about the outcome.”

Further, there is a lawsuit in the works:

Legal Groups File Lawsuit Challenging Proposition 8, Should It Pass

I'm still holding out hope that Prop 8 will be defeated once all the votes are counted but it's doubful. I'd also love to hope that the lawsuit described in the article link above results in fairness for the GLBT community but the massive amounts of money put into the Prop 8 effort will likely also be pumped into contesting any lawsuit that comes along as well.

We're terribly dispondent in the Pagan Sphinx family right now. While we celebrate the monumental victory of Barack Obama, there is also this sadness which reflects our awareness of just far we have to go before all people are treated equally and given the same civil rights.

Sky Watch Friday & The Ramones

Click on Sky Watch to see other photo entries

I'm probably entry number 999, but here is my Sky Watch post.

(If I sound a tad like Eyeore, it's because I had a very bad day. All I wanna do is go back to Nova Scotia).

Cape Breton
Summer, 2008

These were taken at the same place and on the same day, over the course of a couple of hours.

So is it a fucking crime to rebel against being an adult at the age of 49? ;-) Work sucked today, so there ya go - The Ramones, I don't Wanna Grow Up

Love you guys!

Many thanks to Tom, Sandy, IMAC , Klaus & Ivar for hosting Skywatch Friday

On Anger

I used to have a lot of anger problems. A lot of it had to do with depression, which for me, caused irritability and angry outbursts. I'm not so prone to anger any more but I continue to think about anger and its potential to creep up on me and interfere with my new-found (relative) freedom from it.

I think one reason for the abatement of anger in my life is that I'm in a very good relationship: one where I can be myself and still feel I deserve the love and attention I get, even when I'm far from perfect. Another reason is the maturation process. In terms of feeling peace and acceptance, getting older agrees with me.

Where I continue to struggle is in my reactions to people when they express anger, especially when it seems misplaced and misguided. To me. If I see little reason in the anger and negativity beyond that which I can change; even in myself, I then feel a strong need to eschew that person and cut them out of my life; at least to an extent that is possible. I've done that with a relative; with whom I have to stay somewhat in touch but with whom I no longer engage in bitter struggles with myself over. The other came more recently. I decided that what I'd gained from the relationship was so old and stagnant, that it didn't merit the time and attention I would need to give the person to try to understand their anger and negativity. I've asked myself if this was selfish. And I'm still trying to answer that question.

One of the things I've discovered in attempting to answer that question is that the anger displayed toward me personally by others, which goes beyond what I can do myself to turn it around, just causes me to become angry back. It's all too much a reminder of how angry and defensive I can become in the face of what I consider to be unfounded anger on the part of others. That isn't to say that anger hasn't been directed at me personally in the recent past which has gone ignored. It has and sometimes with just cause. In those cases, where I value and love the person, I'm working on seeing their point of view on what makes them angry at me and I try to change that, if I can. Sometimes it takes several conversations and strong emotions and a lot of work. But it's worth it, for the other person and for me.

But I have to admit that otherwise, I avoid angry, negative, defensive people whenever possible. I wonder if I'm depriving myself of lessons potentially learned or if I'm preserving my energies for those struggles that are really worth it.

We all become angry, frustrated, irritable and defensive at times. Mostly toward the ones we love and care about the most. I understand that and I'm trying to learn from it. Is it selfish of me to avoid those other, peripheral angry people? Or is this protective mechanism a good thing for me.? I have tended to conclude the latter most of the time. But I go back and forth. Avoiding the angry has worked for me. I admit that it's worked for me because I honestly lack the emotional energy to take it on. If it's one thing about depression that has stayed with me and no amount of peace or happiness or medication can take away, it's a limited amount of emotional energy. I don't mean the happy kind, as I'm sure you might guess. I mean the negative, complex, exhausting kind. Again, it's the people I love I try to save this emotional energy for. Even then, sometimes it's difficult to rise to the occasion as well as I'd like to. Sometimes I even fail miserably. I'm working on it.

I'm mostly concerned about how unavoidable, peripheral people affect my attitude toward anger and toward myself. For example, at work. I work with one person on my team who presents a lot of challenges for me. I can't avoid her, so how do I deal, right? She doesn't overtly express anger but instead engages in what some would and have called passive-aggresive actions. I have tried to ignore them, I have tried to talk to her about it (without referring to her as such) and have gotten nowhere. It causes me to worry about my own responses,which are mostly directed inward. I have so little to go on as to why I cause this person to be so angry with me, as she refuses to be forthcoming about anything that I can change. I can only guess and say it's her problem but it doesn't make the situation any easier on a day-to-day basis. It sucks so much energy out of me to deal with her. And deal I must - as in, next week when school starts again.

What role does anger play in the quest for self-awareness and inner peace? What do my reactions to anger say about me? How do I avoid defining my life as a series of emotional struggles? Or should I just accept it as such; both personally and as part of the human condition?

I have more questions than answers, as usual. Though I have far more of a clue than I did years ago in even asking these questions. For that I'm grateful.

Still Life With Book

I started a post which featured a lot of profanity and decided I'm just too angry with McBush to attempt at writing about it. I think I'll go read.

But first, a nice picture. There. I feel
better.



Henri Matisse Still Life With Book

While I'm awaiting my librarian's call that Life of Pi has arrived, I started another book by Yann Martel. It has an interesting title: The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios.

Summertime

It's sizzling. 90 degrees in the shade. Literally. W.P., Supergirl Two and I are gonna head out to go fishin' and swimmin'. Nothin' else can be done on a day like today. Summer has arrived.

My perfect summer song is Summertime by Janis Joplin. I have a brother who is five years older than I, so I grew up with a lot of rock and roll that was "before my time", so to speak. I remember thinking what passion Janis had and that there was a sadness there that fueled it but instead of making me sad, it made me want to live, love and above all else, feel. Those feelings have remained with me throughout my life. For this and so much more, I am grateful.

Namaste.

The Horseflies

Gravity Dance, 1991

Horseflies

Arriving at the right kind of music for the mood today was a bit of a trial. My first five tries were as follows: Edith Piaff, The Byrds, The I Am Sam soundtrack, Suzanne Vega and The Smiths. I then did a search for the poet, Anne Sexton (and found some great clips!) but that was a bit too morose and I'm not at all in that type of mood. I'm happy it's summer, actually. It was up to the mid-80's today, hot and breezy. A perfect summer day and I'm feelin' groovy, but in a pagan sphinx sort of way. ;-)

Finally, I went through a pile of CDs I haven't listened to in a very long time and found this - Gravity Dance by The Horseflies. Plugged myself in and - perfect. And when I opened the CD brochure I found this inscription:

WE CHEW IN ROWS
-Anne Sexton

There is other serendipity as well. A blogging acquaintance recently sent to me an MP3 file of a Natalie Merchant CD that features a cover of the second song on The Horseflies CD - Sally Ann.
Natalie Merchant (don't recall the title, exactly, but she's somebody's daughter) seems to often choose songs that she is especially well-suited to portray. I love her version of this song.

And I love how it all connects. My blog friend poetryman has reminded me of this a couple of times, calling it the butterfly effect.

Then I decided to look up horseflies.

Not the band this time, but real horseflies.

Shouldn't have done that...ugh. Aren't horseflies the kind of nasty, biting flies on the North Shore of Boston? Anyone familiar with Plum Island? Or are those beach flies a similar type of flesh-consuming, flying gnawers? (blogger has a not very good spell check program).


Happy Dreams.

The Raconteurs

Consolers of the Lonely, 2008

Jack Lawrence
Brendan Benson
Jack White
Patrick Keeler

Tracks:

1) Salute Your Solution
2) You Don't Understand Me
3) Consolers of the Lonely

Duration: 11 min, 20 sec

If you like rock and roll and you have ten minutes to spare, you'll like this. These tracks are from Consolers of the Lonely, one of my favorite CDs of the year.

What's goin' On

Supergirl One found a summer job. She starts work next week at what I call a Storybook Farm just over the river from my house. It's a strawberry farm, mostly but they also have cows and sell organic milk and cheese. When SG2 visited, her new boss was making cheese and already giving her pointers. She felt very comfortable with the gentleman farmer and when he told her that the whole family is into literature and writing, that was it. She'd found her niche for the summer!

Me, I'm lacking motivation. I thought that Spring and all her glory would help me lighten my step and begin all the household projects that need doing. Not a chance. I just want to play and blog and read and eat and sleep and hang out with W.P. and SG2.

Supergirl One is still at college. Today is the last day of her campus job and it's the day where I go down to Mount Holyoke and help her pack her stuff to move into the massive UMass campus for summer session. She's determined to graduate with her class of 2009, despite massive setbacks in her freshman and sophmore years due to bipolar illness and frequent hospitilizations. She'd also battled drug reactions, a severe skin rash from a virus and low blood pressure that caused her to pass out on several occasions. I'm continuously amazed, impressed and otherwise blown away by this girl's determination and intellect. Is this my kid? It's what you get when you cross a pagan sphinx with a cunning runt! hehehehe

As an aside, I know I'm boasting and that my English friends rather look down upon we Americans for it, but....SG1's semester GPA was a 3.9. No easy feat at that overly demanding elitist school. We're thrilled and proud and in the hopes of sounding humble, it has little to do with us at this point. Hell, I wanted her to go the easy route because I was concerned her illness would drain the life out of her and she wouldn't be able to do academics at that level. That girl has proven me wrong and that's what makes me so in awe of her.

I'm gearing myself up emotionally, if not in regard to cleaning and organizing my house, for my mother's visit at the end of June. My mother, for those of you who may not know, lives in Portugal. My family (including CR) who read this blog, know and understand fully how much I adore my mother; what a good relationship we now have and how much The Supergirls look forward to basking in her unconditional love - because she is good at that. There are complications, of course.

This is a case where Love can't be everything. Supergirl One, whom my regular readers know is gay and engaged to be married to a lovely young woman, is intent on telling her grandmother that she's a lesbian. SG1 wrote to me an eloquent email explaining her reasons for this. Below is an excerpt from that email:

The choice is between upsetting her [where, honestly, the onus is on her, because she is potentially the party to be behaving negatively] and acting against my own sense of dignity and pride by lying about one of the most fundamental and important aspects of my life. The latter choice also has repercussions for my relationship and the trust I share with my partner.

My own personal worry is not that my mother will be rude or angry but that she will consider this another form of Tragedy. I grew up with the various forms of Tragedy. Besides death, illness and suffering, and natural disasters, Tragedy as defined by my Portuguese family comes in the form of Alcoholism, Adultry and anything else that disgraces one's family. She will doubless be heartbroken by the news that her lovely grandaughter is a lesbian and plans on shacking up with a girl. My mother understands that gays get married. But "gays" are those other people over there somewhere in a world she doesn't understand.

My mother is 77 years old and has been through a tremendous lot. I don't want this news to put her over the top. Honestly, I have no clue as to how she will come to grips with this. Especially without my father, who died almost three years ago. Who will help her to understand? It will have to be me, of course. When SG1 gives her grandmother the news, she'll then go back to her dorm for summer session, while I sit with my mother and help her to contemplate this. I'm worried and sad and frustrated that I have to be burdened by this! My mother will doubtless blame this tragedy on either my divorce from The Supergirls' father or the bipolar disorder, or both.

To complicate things, my Portuguese is not what it used to be and certain things are just so hard to labor into translation. I have this upstanding, proud family where I am the only member of the immediate family who has divorced. It confuses me, really. We have so many nutcases in the family - depression and bipolar illness have touched the lives of several family members. But something like a same-sex relationship can put everyone over the top! WTF?

I'm projecting but with a very good scope consisting of 48 years of experience being a part of my family. We'll see what happens, but Happen it must.