Goldenrod is blooming everywhere. Check out the two little bugs on the left. I had no idea they were there when I took the picture. I love surprises like that.

Neil Simon. Truly a gigantic loss for American Theater, as well as film. We’ll not see his like again. He started out as a very young writer working on the famous Your Show of Shows  with Sid Caesar, along with fellow writers, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner (who also performed in the skits) and his brother Danny Simon. He was also a famous script doctor, hence his nickname, Doc. When a show was trying out on the road and the script needed a fresh eye to make it work, he would be brought in to fix it. Everything I’m writing here is what I know off the top of my head. I have no idea how many shows he doctored, but there were a lot of them. Then there was his output as a playwright and screenwriter. No one knew how to write comedy like he did. No one. The comedy was character-based, so it worked. A joke just for the sake of a joke does not work. It has to come out of something real.

I did scenes from his plays in college, I did a staged reading of Prisoner of Second Avenue years later. Don has done The Odd Couple. And, several years ago, Don actually spoke with Simon on the phone. We hadn’t moved East yet and Don was staying at our friend’s place in Manhattan. This friend is a well-known director who was working on a project with Simon, but our friend was out of town. One day, the phone rang, and it was Neil Simon wanting to talk with our friend. So Don got to chat with him for a while.

Don and I speak often about how much we miss Larry King’s show on days like these. It functioned as a gathering place, a place we could all come together to mourn the loss of someone like John McCain or Neil Simon. We could tune in and hear stories about that person from those who knew and loved them. I really miss that. CNN disappoints me in all sorts of ways (I rarely watch it nowadays) but the failure of CNN/Jeff Zucker to keep that 9 pm slot for that kind of programming is perhaps my biggest disappointment. I can think of about 5 people right off the top of my head who would be great successors to Larry King.

I saw this tiny moth yesterday:

I see them a lot among the wildflowers. I tried to identify it but was unsuccessful. I’m pretty sure it’s a moth but maybe it’s a teeny tiny butterfly?

The markings are so beautiful.

I saw this wildflower blooming up in the back forty. I’ve never seen it before and as far as I can tell, only the one plant is blooming. Isn’t it sweet?

We’re making big plans for the month of October, when we will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. More on that soon! (Yes, it’s a teaser.)

Happy Monday.