No, Thursday's Out....

That was the headline, but I didn’t buy the newspaper, so I wasn’t sure if it meant that the Queen longs to go to church now, or if she is feeling so lousy that she is unable to get to church. I had to look it up later. She missed a service, doctor’s orders, resting up after feeling poorly. I missed church in the longing sense, and I decided to go to Evensong, which I haven’t done since Before, because I have been so very careful about not congregating indoors. Much of my recent caution was so I could make this trip, and now I’m here, so Evensong seemed like a fitting celebration. Plus Evensong is a pretty nerdy affair, not a rock concert, and I was sure there’d be all of nineteen people in attendance. I opened up Uber, and it asked if I wanted to go to Bristol Cathedral, which was impressive, except that, come to think of it, the last time I used Uber for anything, it was two years ago, when I went to Bristol Cathedral, for Evensong. My driver was Muhammad, which was also very coo...

So after I posted the photo of the penguin blanket, I got a note asking if I was really making a blanket for a stuffed penguin. I allowed as I was, yes. And then I got a note asking if the penguin might need some fish.  Long story short, today I received some tiny fleece fish, which I will give the penguin along with the penguin blanket. You can't see the exquisite detail here, but trust me, these are very fine. 

Lacrosse is the oldest organized sport in North America, originating in aboriginal Canada as early as the 17th century! Stereotyping lacrosse players as rich kids is a tired and lazy trope!  Lacrosse has appeal to many! And if by chance someone had an unfortunate experience with a lacrosse player forty-odd years ago, well: That Is Not  Lacrosse's Fault. 

 It would be wrong not to share a snippet from Gravity's Rainbow that relates, however loosely, to the oddly-named menu items that appeared under the new dining hall guy. Here 'tis, and if you have never read Gravity's Rainbow, well, now you can say you have read SOME of it:

I worked in the dining halls during college, which meant I couldn’t go out for lacrosse. (JOKE! I had never heard of lacrosse before freshman year, never met anyone who played lacrosse in prep school. One does not “go out” for lacrosse any more than one goes out for that Mongolian horseback sport where the ball is a human head. One is born into lacrosse, or into Mongolian sports society. [Let us pause at the very bottom of this digression and give thanks for living in our amazing era. We can type “Mongolian horseback sport human head” into a search bar, and a magic screen will return “ buzkashi, ” which, granted, involves placing a goat or calf carcass in a goal, not a human head, but still, we live in an age of riches, and we don’t pause to appreciate that enough. I don’t, at least.]) I worked in the dining halls during college. (Some People had lacrosse practice while I was in the dining halls, which made me snarky, but that’s another story.) We were unionized, the pay was good...

The youngest son at Casa Irresponsible left for freshman year at Drexel, and his mom decided to move back to California. It has been quiet. A guy with a huge pickup is cleaning the place out. Jeff across the alley thinks Pickup Guy is an uncle. No news on whether uncle is staying or putting the house up for sale. It is a cool old house. I’ll keep you posted. The wonderful family next to Jeff all got COVID, the first-grader from a friend, and the moms from the first-grader. Both moms are nurses and well-vaccinated, but breakthroughs happen. One felt really crummy, but is feeling much better. On Jeff’s other side, there’s someone new in the little ochre house, and then the enormous grey house is empty. The younger brother, who spent years so flagrantly mentally ill that dogs used to whine at his approach, and who was then transformed – we assumed it was medication – into a friendly guy who liked to chat about bicycles, died a while back. Jeff doesn’t know what got him. Now his older ...

Remember the man who tried to give me a flag in thanks for helping him jump his car/home?  This isn't where he lives. This is where someone else is living, on the sidewalk along SE 30th, in the rain, with a flag providing a little privacy. 

I’ve been reading John M. Barry’s book, The Great Influenza, a popular history of the 1918 influenza pandemic (Penguin Books).  It is copyright 2004, (but was updated in 2009 to add a bit on Swine Flu), and was a New York Times best seller. But best seller or not, I don’t like it much, and I don’t think I would have liked it much even when it came out. It’s written in the style of a Victorian thriller. In fact, the style bugs me so much that I have really been skimming it, not exactly reading. I was interested in how that pandemic compared to ours.   Lest you think I’m just being finicky about the style, I’ll share two snippets. In the prologue, Custer’s forces are defeated at Little Big Horn by a band of primitive savages, and I thought, WAIT, where are your quotation marks? Is that YOU speaking, Mr. Barry? Are YOU saying, “primitive savages,” or are you somehow channeling the lingo of Custer’s times? Are we supposed to supply the quotation marks ourselves? Not channeling...

 It's called Satin Blanket Binding! And the stuffed penguin known as "Penguin" will soon have a blanket with penguins on it. My work here is done. 

Drove to the seafood market out by 82 nd , sad stretch of town, but hey, where better to support local biz? Great market, still. One parking space, next to a car with the hood up. Guy needed a jump. Sure! Realized once I looked more closely that it wasn’t just a beater, it was both car and home, not uncommon, alas, in that stretch. Repositioned my car so my cables would reach. It went fine, and he was very relieved. He crossed himself twice (not like he was crazy or manic; he was still in his car, it was before he undid the cables, he wasn’t out on the street doing something odd), and bowed his head in prayer. He undid the cables, thanked me, wanted to give me something in return, no, no, it’s cool. I had to move my car back into a reasonable slot, and while I did, he rummaged and brought out this pristine American flag, all folded up, maybe the cleanest thing in that chaotic mess, the car duct-taped, black-plastic windowed, windshield crazed, IN THIS HOUSE, ALL PEOPLE MATTER placard...

Until 2008, I worked in a relatively unknown segment of the book industry, mostly for one company. We were not agents, or editors, or publishers, or printers. We were neither a library nor a retail bookseller with a shop. We were a wholesaler. We bought books from publishers, and sold them to libraries. (If you want to know why a library would order a book from a wholesaler rather than directly from the publisher, you have to buy me a beer and then look interested for at least half an hour. Fair warning.) After 30 years, it all went belly-up. (Barman! Another round!) I spent nineteen months  job hunting , which first involved figuring out if I had transferable skills (spoiler: not really, no). Amongst other dead ends, I took a class to become a Certified Supply Chain Manager (and, for a mere saucer of sriracha peanuts, I will perform my imitation of the SCM teacher). After all, wholesalers are nothing if not parts of the Supply Chain, and I’d been a manager, so I must have be...