Visions of Vacations Past

I spent Tuesday morning writing 32 e-mails to the parents of students who still have summer books checked out (all of which were due on Sept. 6). Yesterday a bunch of them came back, and I expect more today -- writing to parents is often pretty effective. One mother told me her 9th Grade son just doesn't seem to understand the difference between going to a library and going to a bookstore!

Still, I'm surprised how many books are still lingering out there. I feel like I say this every year, but this really does seem like my worst year for getting books back. I hope I can get all this cleared up by the end of the month.

Today I'm going in slightly late because I have another round of blood tests at the hospital. The doctor is checking my cholesterol levels again, among some other basic functions. Yay.

Yesterday I randomly discovered that the little resort on Sanibel Island, Fla., where my family stayed in 1979 was destroyed by Hurricane Ian in 2022. Here's what it looks like as of August -- just a couple of cleared oceanfront lots. Right before the storm, it looked like this. We stayed in that front cabin on the left behind the trees, as I recall. (Or at least a cabin in that location. After 40-plus years, who knows if it was the same building.)

The place was called Mitchell's Sand Castles and I wrote about it before, though I didn't name it. I'm sorry to see that it's gone.

Also, my brother wrote me the other day that the Sun n' Sea Resort on Longboat Key, another set of old-fashioned beach cabins where we stayed a few times, was recently demolished. I think plain ol' "progress," rather than a hurricane, did it in. Here's an article about the property sale that led to its demolition, including some photos of the old cabins.

Beach resorts just don't look like that anymore, and it's sad.

Also yesterday, I randomly got an e-mail from a photo site called Shutterfly telling me to buy something with my uploaded pictures -- a calendar, a mug, a blanket -- or they would be "archived." (Or something like that.) This was a surprise to me because I didn't recall having a Shutterfly account. When I looked at it I found it full of pictures of my friend Liz (in the middle above), most of which were not mine. I think I must have set it up in advance of her 50th birthday in 2019, and her friends uploaded many of the pictures, and maybe we had them printed into a book or something -- and then we forgot about it.

Anyway, I downloaded the picture above, showing me, Liz and her friend Jessica at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, back in 2006. Since I spent so much time showing you Iguaçu Falls this summer, and I blogged my trip with Dave to Niagara Falls in 2011, I figured you might like a glimpse of Victoria Falls as well! (I actually blogged from there too, but I didn't say much. That was back in my days of minimalist blog posts.) I have other photos from Vic Falls but I don't think I have this one. Or maybe I do. Maybe it's mine. I have no idea.

(Top photos: Autumnal scenes on my walk to and from work.)

UOCAVA

I've been reading right-wing conspiracies online about UOCAVA voters -- or those who vote under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Yes, that includes me and Dave. We are proud UOCAVA voters.

The conspiracists are convinced that UOCAVA ballots are the device by which the Democrats plan to "steal" the election. They are suspicious of the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of American citizens who live overseas and rightfully wish to weigh in on the presidential race. They seem to think we don't really exist, or at least not in the numbers that we do.

Some right-wingers express hostility that we're able to vote at all -- even though we're citizens and we file American taxes -- as if moving off American soil somehow turns us into instant traitors. (Of course their skepticism doesn't extend to the military -- military voters and their families are given a complete pass. It's only civilians like me who worry them.)

They also seem perplexed that a high percentage of overseas voters cast ballots for the Democrats. Assuming that's true, I suspect it's because overseas voters are more educated and less nationalistic by nature, having become used to crossing international boundaries and living among different kinds of people with different laws, cultures and political systems. We are the dreaded globalists, in other words. We're not flying "Don't Tread on Me" flags and waving badly misunderstood copies of the U.S. Constitution.

So I'm here to say yes, I am a UOCAVA voter. I vote Democrat. We do exist. And according to my voting jurisdiction in the United States, my ballot has been received and counted.

Here's one of our newest books in the school library -- co-written by fellow blogger 37 Paddington, otherwise known as Rosemarie. Woo hoo! It was exciting to label, cover and shelve a book by someone I know, even just virtually.

The flowers on our Thanksgiving (Christmas? Halloween?) cacti are beginning to open! This one and a second pink one, which you can see in the background at upper left, are blooming. My other three cacti are coming along more slowly, but we'll see what the future brings.

(Top photo: The Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate on my walk home last night.)

McDonald's and Melania Shoes

I stopped in to the nurse's office at school and signed up for a flu shot yesterday.They'll contact me with a time to go get it. I wish they could do a new Covid booster too, but that's not something they offer, and I don't think I'm entitled to one under the NHS. Dave has been asked to get one, though, because his Crohn's and its treatment makes him vulnerable in the eyes of the medical establishment.

While in the nurse's office I weighed myself and was shocked to find I'm 88 kilos -- or 194 pounds! I don't know why this shocked me because that's the same weight I was last summer, but I guess I forgot. Clearly I need fewer lazy days on the couch reading "Bleak House." (And probably less dessert.)

When I was young I weighed about 175, and when I worked out more in my 30s and 40s I was somewhere around 180-185. But this additional ten pounds is not muscle. Sigh. The weird thing is, I still have the same waist size I've always had -- so where is this weight gain going? I guess my trunk is thicker than it used to be.

I may have blogged this photo before -- I'm not sure. This is me as a 16-year-old, in the summer of 1983, wearing my uniform for my first-ever job at McDonald's. I don't recall the pants being so flared -- they're practically bell-bottoms! But I do remember that uniform was magical. You could spill literally anything on it, and then throw it in the washer and it would emerge clean. It was 100 percent polyester, obviously.

This photo came to mind yesterday as I read about Donald Trump's ridiculous assertion that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald's, as she has said she did in the very same summer that I began working there. One wag called it "burgerism," a play on Trump's "birtherism" argument that Obama wasn't born in the United States. I'm surprised Harris's campaign doesn't just release a photo like the one above -- but then again, if you spent all your time keeping up with Trump's firehose of lies and accusations, you'd never be able to spread your own message. I suppose whether or not she worked at McDonald's for one summer is hardly the most relevant issue we're facing.

I keep wishing this campaign season would just end. But the minute it does, the next one begins, you know? The news media has always liked the horse-race atmosphere, with this or that candidate pulling ahead or falling behind, and it's much easier to cover politics that way than to actually analyze the issues (which readers and viewers don't have much patience for anyway). It doesn't really do anyone any good, though. It just makes us all tired.

I found this blingy pair of shoes while walking Olga yesterday morning. They're still out there, as far as I know, lying atop their carpet of leaves and soy sauce packets. They're very Melania, aren't they? Except that hers would be Gucci and would cost $10,000.

Bridges, Bleak House and Burros

I belatedly realized that I may have caused some confusion by titling yesterday's post "London Bridge" but showing a picture of Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge is what you see from London Bridge, but it's not the same as London Bridge. Sorry about that!

In fact, the BBC article I linked from that post (here it is again) addresses a longstanding myth about the two bridges -- that the man who bought old London Bridge and moved it to Lake Havasu, Arizona, mistakenly believed that he was buying Tower Bridge. His grandson says that isn't true at all. "My grandfather knew exactly what he was buying," he said.

Anyway, hopefully I have cleared that up!

I had possibly the laziest day of my entire life yesterday. It was rainy and blustery and I spent the entire day on the couch with Olga, who showed no inclination to want to go anywhere. Both of us were in hibernation mode. I watered the plants in the morning and did some vacuuming, and just before and after lunch I struggled to keep my eyes open while reading. I don't know why I was beset with such fatigue considering I'd barely done anything.

My eyes may have been involuntarily closing because I was reading "Bleak House." I'm about 250 pages in, and I think I can already say that this is not my favorite Dickens novel. I had no idea what it was about when I began it (lawyers) and it bothers me for a couple of reasons. One, the perspective keeps shifting from an omniscient narrator to the first-person account of a main character, a young woman. (I think this is the first Dickens I've read with a female protagonist.) Second, there are about a million characters, some of whom have two names, and some of whom have very similar names -- I kept reading about Mr. Turveydrop and his "deportment," but I was confusing him with Mr. Tulkinghorn.

Again, I chalk some of this up to the fact that I was nodding off. But I will persevere.

Let's look at a few more of the old postcards that Jeanie gave me last week. Here's one of a small marina on Bradenton Beach, Fla., mailed in 1953.

"Arrived home Thursday noon. Had a nice trip down, found everything OK, it is no warmer here than in Ohio. -- Mr. and Mrs. Francis, Judy & Pee Wee"

Mailed 1944 from Bakersfield, Cal.:
"Hello Linnis -- I am sending you a pair to work on the farm this spring. How do you like them? How much do you think they are worth? -- Bill Greene"

(On the front: "These are out on the desert where I work.")

This one, mailed in 1910 from Topeka, Kan. to Albuquerque, N.M., gave me a chuckle:

"Dear Arthur & Marie: This is the crossroad to your farm a few years hence. -- Della"

(Top photo: Dramatic shadows on Finchley Road on Friday afternoon.)

London Bridge

Well, I was wrong about the weather yesterday. It was rainy in the morning, but just before lunchtime the sun came out and the afternoon was beautiful. As you can see from the photo above, showing Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast on the Thames, I decided to go on a little excursion.

Blogger Jeanie, who you'll recall I met up with Wednesday night, brought me some old postcards, because she knows I'm a fan of old ephemera like that. She forgot to give them to me on Wednesday but she left them in an envelope at the front desk of her hotel, where I picked them up a day or two later. They were mostly American but thrown into the mix was this:

That is a view of London Bridge meant to be seen through a stereoscopic viewer, which would in theory give it a three-dimensional perspective. It was sold by Montgomery Ward, so it had probably not actually come from London, but was instead a way for Americans to "see the world" without traveling in an era when travel was difficult, time-consuming and expensive.

I tried to figure out how old the picture is. The same card is available on Wikimedia, dated circa 1895-1900. Another very similar image, also said to be from a stereopticon card and probably taken by the same photographer -- is dated "early 1890s." (They look like the same picture but the arrangement of the pedestrians is different, so they must have been different exposures.)

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to go down to London Bridge and compare the view to see what it looks like now.

And here's the answer. I couldn't get the same altitude as the photographer of the stereoscopic image -- maybe he was shooting out a window or from a rooftop? But you get the idea.

In the old photo, across the river you can see the Monument, and immediately to its right the steeple of the church of St. Magnus the Martyr, and then farther to the right another church spire. None of that is visible now, having been hemmed in by more modern buildings. (Maybe the top of the Monument or the St. Magnus church spire would still be visible if that building on the riverfront wasn't covered in white scaffolding, or if I could attain the card photographer's elevated perspective -- I'm not sure.)

And of course the bridge itself is also different, the old one having been famously "falling down," sold to an American oil tycoon, and moved to Lake Havasu, Arizona. Here's the full story on that, according to a BBC article from just a few days ago.

I walked across the bridge thinking I might go up in the Monument, which I've never done. But alas, it was closed. It commemorates the Great Fire of London in 1666. Instead I settled for having coffee and a cookie while sitting beneath it on the plaza.

I tried to figure out what church is visible on the right in the old photo, and I eventually settled on this one -- The Guild Church of St. Margaret Pattens. Like the Monument, it has been overshadowed by more modern buildings including the "walkie-talkie," at left.

Anyway, it was a fun day out and a good way to experience a sunny afternoon!

Fog

It was damp and misty yesterday morning, the garden shrouded in a soft white fog.

Olga and I went on our walk to the corner, but I was running late for work so I had to hustle her home again pretty quickly.

The spider webs were exactly like a child's drawing, beaded with misty droplets.

I've got the dehumidifier going again, and this weekend we're looking at two days of rain -- so it's got a job to do!

Yesterday during my lunch break I tried to comment on several blogs, and Blogger would not let me. I kept getting a "your comment failed to post" message. I hope it was a temporary glitch and not something based on the school's Internet security settings, because that would mean I can't comment from school anymore, which would truly be a huge pain for me. (I also couldn't answer my own comments, but I will try to catch up today.)

I'm looking forward to a weekend of "Bleak House," which I have allowed to languish untouched for several days now.

Maw and Manifest

The vine that covers "the maw," the pedestrian bridge that runs across the tube tracks in West Hampstead, is now a flaming red. It's just about the only time of the year that the maw is attractive. I suppose the steps wouldn't be so dark and shadowy if it weren't for the vine, but I'm glad the council (or whoever has responsibility for this bridge) has left it.

And here's the tree at the top of the hill near our flat -- always one of the first to change. Autumn color all around!

I repotted the rescued dracaena I mentioned yesterday. This one really is a long shot. Most of the roots were dead. I think there was a single surviving root, or maybe a few of them. I discarded most of the dead roots and the root ball and put the stalk with its few remaining roots in fresh soil. They're tough plants, so we'll see what happens.

A few days ago I got a thank-you note from my niece for a graduation gift I sent her. She mailed it in JULY! Why it took so long to get here I have no idea. She had the address, city and post code right, though I noticed that someone at the post office hand-wrote LONDON in big letters on the envelope, as if it went some other place first. They also blacked out all the little bar codes and whatnot that sorting machines usually leave on the envelope. So who knows what happened there. Just further evidence that our postal systems are collapsing, but at least it got to me in the end.

I heard back from the doctor about my recent tests. My calprotectin level, measuring gut inflammation, is still elevated, so she's referring me back to the gastroenterology team at the hospital. I am unclear what happens next. I feel mostly OK -- maybe slightly more tired than usual --  but I think we have to get to the bottom of what's happening and whether it's an early sign of anything serious. There's no blood where blood shouldn't be, so that's a good thing.

Dave had to work last night, so I warmed up some leftover chicken and watched the last couple of episodes of "Manifest." It's a wacky show, a jumbled grab-bag of plot points involving tarot, Noah's ark, dragons, jewels endowed with mystical powers, bizarre meteorological events, rock carvings, evil government operatives, you name it. The premise is that a flight experiences severe turbulence during a storm, and when it lands, everyone on the plane is shocked to find that five years have elapsed. How this happened is never quite explained, beyond the involvement of a supernatural or divine force. Dave gave up on the show a long time ago but I kept watching it all the way to the end of its fourth and last season -- I developed an affection for the characters despite the absurdity of the plot. Now, time for a new series!