Dorrier Underwood

My first week with a "bad back" is over, and looking back, things will never be the same. I will never (probably) reach down quickly to pick something off the floor without bending my knees. Used to be easy before Wednesday, September 5th at about two in the afternoon. On the floor, staring up at the rough hewn beams of the floor above that makes the ceiling at Atherton Lofts, hearing Ginny typing, catching my breath that won't come normally because of this sudden catch in my back, I wondered what had happened to me. But I have to go to the bathroom! Worse, I have to go see the President! Both Presidents came to town the day I threw my back out.  I had been eagerly expecting to see Obama in person at his acceptance speech, but found out that same afternoon that I wouldn't be able to go after all. When they moved the speech inside about 60,000 of us had our dreams crushed. But I wouldn't have been able to go anyway! Not with my "bad back....

We walked into Marguerite’s, the quaint, if-I-hadn’t been in central Florida-almost Southern-like café near the bay in Dunedin, ready for the kind of meal you can only get in such a place – the “famous” homemade chicken salad on lettuce or in a sandwich, fresh coconut cake on a cake stand on the counter, beside a jar of homemade cookies. Evie wanted to sit under the butterflies that floated over the tables in the back, but those tables were all filled by “snow birds,” the older people who flock to Florida in the winter, or go there to retire. So we took the table by the window, across from two older women deep in a loud, hard-of-hearing conversation. Our waiter, a wiry, obviously stressed young man with a bit of a rush swirling about him, smiled, walking towards us, and asked the usual question, “What would you ladies like to drink?” Katie, who comes here often, mainly because it is across from the Dunedin library that she and Evie love, said “What is your special tea today, is it ...

Everyone else followed the same protocol: stand behind the lectern; look at your notes below the mike. But she didn’t stay safe behind the big block of wood on the stage. Even as the applause continued for her famous name, she started messing with the microphone, taking it off the stand and unwrapping the cord from around it. Then she stepped out in front of the lectern, in her professional-looking black patterned dress just above the knee, put her hand on her hip, and unleashed that Kennedy magic. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend definitely has the family poise, charisma, humor and intelligence, not to mention the ability to play a crowd like a musical instrument. I found myself wondering what it would take for politics to become thought of as an honorable profession again in America – FDR, Adlai Stevenson, George McGovern, Howard Baker, Sam Ervin, Sam Nunn, Leon Panetta – we admired their character beyond their political positions. And then I looked at the crinkles around her eyes and...