No Politics Today

These pictures are from a wall of student art that I pass every day when I go down to our Lower School. I love the variety and the harmonic colors. Looks to me like a teacher set out some flowers in vases and had the kids paint a still life. It's fascinating how each person has a distinct vision or style, even at a very young age.

I'm making a no-politics vow today. To quote the title of Roz Chast's memoir, "Can't We Talk About Something More PLEASANT?"

How about the fact that I solved my home movie crisis? Remember how I recently discovered that the thumb drive that held the digitized version of my family's old Super 8 movies had died, and I'd somehow failed to back it up? So then I was left with DVDs, which are better than nothing, but I wanted a video file I could post online and edit as needed.

I couldn't copy directly from the DVD because the files were locked and/or in a strange format -- VOB, or something like that. So I took the DVD to work and one of the computer guys there figured out a workaround. Et voila! I now have the movies in a simple MP4 file, which I have posted privately to YouTube as a backup (minus a scene of me in the bath as an infant, which I edited out, because YouTube gets squirrely about naked children and rightly so).

Or how about overdue books? You may be wondering if I have successfully retrieved all our summer checkouts. The answer is still no, believe it or not, but I'm down to only about five kids who are holding out. One of them has his book in his bag, according to Mom, but he has yet to drop it off in the book return -- a process that should take a fraction of a second but that for some students takes weeks. It's always amazing to me that a kid would rather needlessly carry a book around in a backpack than drop it off in the library.

Or how about rescuing plants? My favorite topic! I had to walk to the post office yesterday to return a book the library accidentally bought twice. On the way back, I found part of a flat of violas next to the trash bins on the St. John's Wood high street. They were wilted but otherwise fine, so I brought them home last night and I'll pot them up this weekend. Violas are good cold-weather annuals so they should last well into winter. I guess someone bought too many bedding plants and simply discarded what they didn't need.

I've also been reviving the Christmas (Thanksgiving?) cactus at work, the parent plant of my own cacti. It had a terrible mealybug infestation -- every time I looked at it it made me itch. So I treated it with alcohol a few days ago and then laboriously lugged it outside to hose it down. It's much better now but it's going to need repeat treatments. As if I don't have enough to do!