Find Love

This was on the refrigerator at my old house for so long I forgot where I took it. I think a coworker and I were in Southside Virginia (but, why?).

Inspired

First, Anna posted a posy from her yard, and that made me go check ours.

Then, Aunt Sally's picture from earlier in the week of her teddy bear and Uncle Walter's toy lion reminded me that I should try adding a bit of stuffing to my panda so it could sit next to Phil's bear and not flop over. Tah-dah! She looks much less tragic, now. I tried adding a bow, but that was too much.

And my final project for this damp day is a bit of a left over from last week's yard sale clear out. I unearthed this collage that I believe hung in my senior year dorm room and first apartment -- and has lived in storage since then. Pictured: Mitch; sailboat Blaze; Jamie and Kristin; 1986 CITs; Laurie-Liz and me; Mary Sam; oh look, that's the Galers so that's 1989 or so; Junior Show; a picture from GS Maine trip; Ween and me at Junior Show; Laurie and me in the snow; Claire and Gretchen.

What's bugging you?

Pose

Perhaps I will recreate this woman's pose when we put  up the aluminum tree this year.

Done!

A year ago, we started doing puzzles at work.  We're quite hooked. When we were in Boston in May, the only puzzle in the art museum shop that I liked was an Edward Gorey design. Made by Pomegranate, it felt good -- nice heft, nice paper -- as well as being a fun design to put together. For my birthday, I asked for another -- and here it is!

Addictive Game of the Moment

GeoGuessr.

Proud of this guess! (Seeing the name on the electric bus helped. . . . )

Still mad about the one before it: IN the ocean, near Hawaii?! Also, convinced that I have seen the same stretch of rural Scandinavia more than once.

An Incomplete List of Places We Find Earwigs @ Our Library

• in the bookmarks holder
• in the notebook with school summer reading lists
• on the scanner (on the glass)
• in the lid of coworker's covered coffee mug 
• behind the lock on the glass display case 
• under keyboards
• in the plastic holder with a flyer announcing an upcoming event (2!)
• in the plastic holder featuring a photocopy of the bestseller list 
• inside an interoffice mail envelope 
• in the drawer of Summer Reading Club prizes

("Some tunnel as deeply as six feet into the ground to escape the cold. The name earwig is from a European superstition that these insects entered the ears of a sleeping person and bored into the brain. This belief is totally unfounded." -- learn more about these mostly harmless critters from the Virginia Extension Service website, here.)

Observations from a Major League Town

Since I last paid attention, the footwear of choice while commuting in business attire had become more likely to be flip flops or Toms or Converse than running shoes.

I always think that Richmond's narrow sidewalks are holding it back, but that's not it.

The parts of New York I know don't have 18th and 19th century buildings smack up against modern in the way that Boston does.

People talk on cell phones all the time, everywhere; no wonder they are shocked at the library when we ask them to quit it.

Monday night was Daisy Girl Scout and Cub Scout meeting night in Beacon Hill.

"White Violets in South Hadley" by Cynthia Zarin

So many of them wicking the lawns--
a hundred handkerchiefs dropped
by the daughters of the Pleiades
to mask their seven-square fears.

Their gold is the hive's dry dust --
their petals a thousand small white knuckles . . .

On Faculty Lane, the whiteness
of the dogwood bleaches their white
bank to almost nothing, ghosts of
ghosts, damp violet coals burnt out,

as if a bruise that seemed to leave no mark
had left the image of its pressure here.

(The New Yorker, 10/12/1992)

#poeminyourpocket

Wigged

I'm really wigged out by how quickly official statements are made, official logos created in the wake of disasters. For example.

Spring Still Life

A bouquet of current-bloomers, some macaroon-type cookies off of Pinterest that I wanted to make look like those nest confections, and the slightly absurd bunny (a housewarming gift from the teachers' society next door).

Where Do I Put Magazine Notes?

Among the things I like about Shelfari is the ability to note quotations that speak to me. But what of the good bits of The New Yorker? I guess I have moved beyond filling blank books with tidbits, so here I am circling back to the neglected blog.

The February 11 and 18 issue includes the beginning of a memoir Joseph Mitchell began. He jumps right into reflections on parts of the city he's haunted, experienced. A long paragraph lists things (old hotels, old markets) that draw him to them, including,

I am also strongly drawn to a dozen or so old buildings, most of them on lower Broadway or on Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Twenties and Thirties, that once were department-store buildings and then became loft buildings or warehouses when the stores, some famous and greatly respected and even loved in their time and now almost completely forgotten, either went out of business or moved into new buildings farther uptown.

Yes. Before we went to the Eastern Shore, I reviewed Lost Communities of Virginia (a book I just adore), and then I watched Capeville (the featured community) and similar places come and go up route 13. I keep describing it as a rhythm: isolation, railroad brings connection, cars rise, isolation settles as the main road skips the town, or simply makes a stopover unnecessary. Every town had a tiny, beloved (perhaps) store, car dealer, factory, bank -- and now they are completely forgotten in favor of the Dollar General, Food Lion, and Suntrust. When I poke around Richmond history, I wonder what made Miller & Rhoades, say, special. Perhaps the answer is nothing -- it's just the one that I saw fade in its downtown location, shiny in the suburbs, then go out of business. Someone two generations older than me knew other places that did this (even if she knew M&R, too).

Excursion

We took a trip with some friends to the Eastern Shore. Part of the fun, of course, is crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel -- 17.6 miles of cool views, awesome engineering. Only, we had some fog for the trip out. Still, in addition to gulls, I spotted ganet and a pelican.



We stayed in a very nice lodge at Kiptopeke State Park.

sunset at Kiptopeke

I snuck in some birdwatching. Here's a list (of what I could identify):

common loon
double crested cormorant
mallard
lesser scaup
bufflehead
red-breasted merganser
brown pelican
northern gannet
herring gull
great black-backed gull
great blue heron
black-bellied plover
killdeer
red-tailed hawk
osprey
vulture
downy woodpecker
crow
blue jay
carolina chickafee
tufted titmouse
carolina wren
catbird
mockingbird
eastern bluebird
robin
yellow-rumped warbler
red-winged blackbird
grackle
cardinal
white-throated sparrow

I always misremember that the full quotation from Cosmos that includes the phrase "the ocean calls" as actually describing being drawn to the shore, rather than the metaphor it is. Still, I explain to myself in Carl Sagan's voice that it's weird, supernatural how the water draws me. This weekend, it cheered and refreshed me, too.