No-klahoma

We hosted the local quiz bowl at school yesterday, and the teams in the final round competed in the library. So I got to sit by and watch two teams of three students each from other schools in a battle of wits. It was pretty fun, though it always surprises me when a pop culture question comes up that seems really obvious to me and the kids are completely clueless.

They're great on classical music. But in yesterday's competition, for example, the students were given a clue about the first song in a famous 1943 Broadway musical, and they heard the first few lines being sung: "There's a bright golden haze on the meadow..." They were asked to name the show. They had no idea it was "Oklahoma!"

They were also confounded when played some well-known guitar licks from The Who's "Tommy," and last year, I remember, they could not name Stevie Wonder when they heard one of his songs -- "Sir Duke," maybe? (I'm surprised I didn't write about that at the time, because I was so dumbfounded and felt so old, but apparently I didn't.)

Anyway, I don't mean to knock the kids, because they know a heck of a lot of other stuff and they're pretty fast on those buzzers. They can certainly name square roots and chemical properties faster than I could. Pop culture, after all, is so transient.

I guess school drama departments don't automatically perform those Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals anymore. In my day, they were the standard school productions -- "The Sound of Music," "South Pacific" and, yes, "Oklahoma!" We did them all at the high school I attended. Nowadays maybe they've moved on to edgier fare like "Urinetown" or "The Drowsy Chaperone."

These kids today!

Here is a gratuitous picture of our blooming hyacinth, and a daffodil that Olga broke off while loping through our garden. She's hell on the daffodils.

My cold has moved into my nose. I am a sneezing, spluttering mess. But I don't feel too bad, all things considered, and I still hope to get some photography done today.

(Photo: A perfect pool of rainwater in some tree roots on the West Heath, last weekend.)

An Incident at the Grocery Store

I think my "bronchitis" is actually just a minor, garden-variety cold. This morning it's more in my nose and throat than in my chest. So I have high hopes it will subside before our upcoming trip. My boss basically pleaded with me not to call in sick today, so I guess I'm going to work, too! (I'd go anyway. My rule is, unless I have a fever, I go in.)

We had a strenuously busy day yesterday. It was our visiting author's final day and I was trying to coordinate the signing of about a zillion books that people had purchased and left for her to sign. For the most part it went well. One of the books got lost somewhere in the mix, and how that happened I am not sure, but it was no big deal and we solved the problem in the end. The author was so gracious and patient. She was terrific.

Here's an exchange Dave and I had late in the day, while I was at work and he was at the grocery store:

I think that "Beer before liquor" saying only really applies after the liquor is drunk...but who knows? Maybe he was buying his second bottle. (In case you don't know it, the other half of the expression is "Liquor before beer, in the clear." One of those handy college rhymes.)

I should probably have been more compassionate. But the people I'm really feeling compassion for are the Tesco cleaners.

Finally, a couple of interesting items in the news:

-- The stories about the Justice Department's investigation of the police activity in Ferguson continue to astound. Turns out the place is a real rat's nest of racism and injustice, a system run by whites that basically milks the local black community for revenue. Appalling! And the scary thing is, this is just one community that happened to get caught. You know there are hundreds and hundreds of other Fergusons out there.

-- Did you see that Ringling Brothers is doing away with its elephant acts? Animal acts in circuses seem so archaic, and the cynical part of me suspects that this decision is more economic than based in any concern for the elephants. But from what I understand they'll win anyway, and be allowed to live real elephant lives in retirement in Florida. A positive step.

-- And then there's this. Which is BS, to put it bluntly. If you are in business, you should be prepared to serve the public in all its diversity. Why you would feel it your obligation to subject each and every customer to a vetting process based on your own conscience and religious convictions is perplexing to me. You don't have to agree with your customers, do you? You're just providing a service in exchange for payment.

(Photo: Shadows on Finchley Road in Swiss Cottage, on Tuesday.)

A Visiting Author

I think I am flirting with a case of bronchitis. Maybe that's why I was in such ill humor early this week? I've had an intermittently froggy throat every since Florida, but the night before last it came back stronger than ever, and now I feel a little bit like I've inhaled sandpaper. I don't want to cough because it feels like it might hurt.

It's never a good time to get sick, but now is really not a good time. We're off to Singapore in less than two weeks, and I only have three more weekends to finish NW11 for Bleeding London before the end of the month. Plus, work. That whole earning money thing.

Oh well. I'll try to take it easy and we shall see.

We had well-known children's author Jacqueline Woodson come to school this week for a series of writing workshops and a lecture. I attended her talk last night and she was a very interesting speaker, discussing her family and girlhood dreams of being a writer, and her writing life today. She talked about how she often got chastised for lying as an imaginative child, but writing her thoughts down changed everything -- because "when you write it down it's not lying, it's fiction."

Here are a couple of tweets from our library account that include pictures I took of her with the kids:

Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson is signing books and meeting students in the Mellon Library! pic.twitter.com/Wp2uNMbkQV

— Mellon Library (@ASLMellon) March 4, 2015

Author Jacqueline Woodson drawing crowds in the Mellon Library! pic.twitter.com/gb0FCzRJIe

— Mellon Library (@ASLMellon) March 4, 2015

(I've never embedded tweets before -- apparently I can't center them. Which is weird.)

Anyway, that's all the news there is. Olga just roused herself from bed so I guess it's time to go for a walk!

(Top photo: Shades of E.M. Forster on Finchley Road in West Hampstead.)

Pink Tudor

Not much to report this morning. I still had some residual crankiness yesterday, but overall I was in a better mood than the day before. All things pass, right? I'm just going to leave you with this photo of a pink house taken last weekend in Golders Green, because, well, pink houses are always amusing. Especially pink Tudors.

Dispatch from the Bedroom

I was such a crab yesterday morning. I understand why people came up with the idea of demonic possession -- because sometimes, no matter how hard you try to be nice and you know you should be pleasant, you just want to smack people. All people. That's how I felt.

Maybe working from the dining room isn't such a good idea after all?

(This morning I'm in the bedroom, because Olga couldn't even bring herself to get out of bed, so who knows what effect that will have on my day...)

Seriously, I'm not sure why I was so cranky. I was more or less OK until I got to work, and then suddenly the prospect of finding a certain magazine article for a teacher who maybe might have seen it at the doctor's office, and sending a tenth reminder to that girl who still hasn't returned her computer charger after more than a month, and quieting the ninth-grade "geek table" which has grown into a geek convention in the library's back corner every afternoon -- well, it all just seemed too much. Fortunately I don't think I displayed my crankiness, except that I sent some inconsequentially tart e-mails to a couple of people.

Oh well. Onward and upward. Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. Right?

Dave and I watched Woody Allen's movie "Manhattan" on Sunday. I've called it one of my favorites for years, and visually it is indeed spectacular -- every shot celebrates the city, perfectly framing the buildings and streets, and the black-and-white film gives it such beauty. Before I lived in New York, because of that movie, I imagined everyone there lived in book-lined apartments with Georgia O'Keeffe prints and spider plants. I still love the atmosphere, but this time around I was struck by how terrible all the characters are to each other -- cheating, lying, acting in their own self-interest.

It's a good thing we didn't watch "Interiors." I might have been inspired to walk into the ocean like Geraldine Page.

Last night, as a crankiness antidote, Dave and I watched back-to-back episodes of "Star Trek," "That Girl" and "The Brady Bunch." Let's hear it for happy, campy, brainless TV comfort food!

(Photo: On my walk to work yesterday morning I noticed that this building is being demolished. I've always wondered about that banner advertising "London Scenes and Framing.")

Dispatch from the Dining Room

I went walking yesterday in Golders Green and photographed 52 more streets for Bleeding London. It felt great to get out with the camera for a day -- my first long photo walk since I returned from Florida. And it was even sunny, believe it or not! Well, intermittently sunny. But still.

I got a couple of OK shots, like this one of an Orthodox Jewish man walking beneath a railway arch. He's shielding his face from the camera, which makes it even more interesting -- a bit mysterious and noir.

Also, I've finished uploading my Florida photos to Flickr. You can see most of them here. (Some of the people pictures have privacy restrictions, so you won't see those.)

Dave, meanwhile, spent yesterday in the garden, enjoying the sun and relative warmth. It's definitely feeling more like spring. We found another crocus -- a purple one, growing at the edge of the lawn -- and more of our daffodils are beginning to pop.

Olga is not convinced that winter is over, though.  This morning she got out of bed, went into the living room, decided it was too chilly and meandered to the dining room, where her Union Jack dog bed lies next to the radiator. She's now curled up on it, dozing, and I'm sitting at the dining room table, which I almost never do. And why not? We ought to use this room more.

Mud-boggin'

We were dogged by a misty rain yesterday morning, and initially I thought I wouldn't get my planned photowalk with Olga. But later in the morning I decided to go for it anyway -- I mean, we can survive a little dampness, right? So about 10 a.m. we set out for Hampstead Heath.

I hope you can appreciate from the photo how muddy it is this time of year. I was slip-sliding along the paths and Olga's undercarriage was completely splattered. I even fell at one point, when the act of throwing Olga's Kong mysteriously knocked me off balance and I went down on my left side, leaving me looking like this guy.

Well, OK, it wasn't quite that bad.

I did, however, fall on my camera bag -- and hence, my camera and lenses. Fortunately they seem unaffected. The bag needs a serious wash and I'm not sure it's really machine washable. Stay tuned...

Mishaps aside, it was a fun walk. I took some more Bleeding London pictures and Olga found a tree stump that was perfect for scratching her itches.

Both of us had showers when we got home. (Not simultaneously, though. I draw the line at bathing with the dog!)

Dave and I did not make it to the movies. I did, however, move our geraniums and our poor dead-ish lemon tree outside, gambling that the coldest of the cold weather is past us. They need some sun and rain and nature.