6 • August 2016 • UPBEAT TIMES, INC. Upbeat in Reno, Nevada! Who is Sirius? ... continued from page 5


Without Kids by Gabriel A. Fraire ~ gafraire@comcast.net


An Evening


Healdsburg, CA. ~ Once when we tried to plan an eve- ning without children, we set up the dinner reservations ten days in advance. We cor- ralled a good friend to watch the kids. My wife even arranged to take the following day off work. We were all set when our youngest came down with the chicken pox. A decision to go out means after a long day at work, from two differ- ent offices, we have to begin calling different adolescents trying to coax one into ex- changing some of their pre- cious time for a much less important commodity (to them) our money.


Once we have a sitter we have to coordinate schedules. If I picked up the little one from daycare and my wife stopped for the older one at school while I picked up the baby’s blanket we had left at the other sitter’s and my


wife went to the bank ma- chine while I stopped by the post office, we could all meet back at home by 6 p.m. (or 7 p.m.).


While my wife prepared the kids supper, I run them through the bath. Then while she fed them I ironed our clothes. After all that, we alternated getting dressed ourselves and dressing the girls for bed. When it’s time for me to go for


the sitter I am trying real hard not to mention I am exhaust- ed.


My wife said, do you really


want to go out? And I said, not really.


Tese columns are excerpts


from the book Daddy I Need to Go Potty by Gabriel A. Fraire. Fraire has been a writer more


than 40 years and is the current Literary Laureate of


Healdsburg. He can be reached through his


website: gabrielfraire.com


are far too quick, swiſtly darting away unharmed. Happy Birthday Russell Baker, who on August 15th will celebrate his 91st! A treasure of a humor- ist, his dry wit and 30 plus years of writing columns, are very special. All of his books are available on Amazon and in many bookshops. He once wrote “August is the silly month”—and provided plenty evi- dence in wonderfully funny anec- dotes. In one, he complained as older parents oſten do about their grown children: “Who are these tall, bearded men who invade my liquor cabinet during their visits here?” Many do not agree that August “Te dog days” expres-


is silly.


sion these days refers to hot, sul- try summer days.


Forest, The Guy in the White Hat, took a fun weekend trip to Reno and brought along his favorite reading. - Ari from Sun Pacific Mortgage


“Courage is the most


important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”


Maya Angelou So to answer


“who is Sirius” doesn’t mean the opposite of silly, by golly. It refers to Orion’s dog star: Sirius, which appears in the constellation Canis Major.


Since the ancient Greek


Homer’s time, the coincidence of the appearance of that bright star each year, when the hottest days of summer take over, also meant foreboding evil for humanity. Scientists have long proven that


Sirius rising does not really affect the weather. Nor does that bright star in the “dark, liquid sky” of a summer night—as Homer wrote in the Iliad—signify, as it did, to the high strung writers of the 19th Century who dreamed up all sorts of evil: “the Sea can boil, Wine turn sour, dogs grow mad, and all creatures become languid.”


... continued on page 20 6 • August 2016 • UPBEAT TIMES, INC. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” ~ Winston S. Churchill


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