A charming essay about her grandmother from The (liberal)Girl Next Door. She begins:
My grandmother will be having her 8oth birthday this summer, and to look at her or spend any time with her, that fact would surely shock you. She still rides her bike daily, still bowls with her girlfriends and loves to go out dancing. She’s a beautiful, vibrant woman who reads her local paper each morning, watches the national news each night and has an opinion on just about everything. When I look at her, I can’t help but hope I am glimpsing my own future. Some day I want to be a beautiful 80 year-old woman who still cares what happens to the world around me.
She’s a saucy little activist too. Last summer when there was so much talk of mosquitoes spreading West Nile Virus, she noticed a clogged drain on her bike route that was causing a rather large pool of standing water. She contacted the city, but still the pool sat and the mosquitoes multiplied. She took matters into her own hands. She made a sign that read “WARNING, West Nile Virus Breeding Ground!” nailed it to a wooden stake, strapped it on her bike and rode to the spot and hammered her warning into the ground. Needless to say, in a matter of days the drain was fixed and the water was gone. Ask her about it and she’ll likely say, “Well Jesus, there were kids playing all around there. This town is run by idiots.” You go Nana!