Thursday, February 13, 2025

Skunk, NAFO and Another Moment


Here's another dewy plant in our garden -- an aquilegia that's just sprouting. More signs of spring and new growth!

I think my computer is biting the dust. When I started it this morning, after it nursed at its charger all night, it promptly died. I got a "low battery" notice but when I clicked on the icon, it said the battery was at 98 percent (although I also got a "service recommended" alert). Anyway, I can't do much on battery now, and the speaker is shot, and a lot of the letters are worn off my keyboard, which looks hilarious. I've had this machine for nine years and it's had heavy use. I think its time has come.

I probably won't deal with that until we come back from Florida. I have enough on my plate at the moment.

Yesterday afternoon was quiet in the library and I finally got some things done that I've been meaning to tackle, like updating our database usage statistics. Doesn't that sound exciting?! Woo hoo! I even had a chance to respond to blog comments and catch up on some blogs.

I expect more of the same today, though I have a couple of projects I want to work on, like cleaning up our resource lists and collections in our catalogue. (Sometimes when a class does a certain project, we put together a list of books for the students to draw on as resources, and those lists tend to stack up in our computer even if the class never does that project again. They must be manually cleared out from time to time.)


You know how I'm always intrigued by stickers I find around town? Here's one that's a bit mysterious. What on earth is NAFO? And what is that creature that looks like a fox with Donald Trump hair?

Well, according to the ever-reliable Internet, NAFO stands for the North Atlantic Fella Organization, an "internet meme and social media movement" that arose after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's meant to counter Russian propaganda and support Ukraine, and its symbol is a Shiba Inu dog, which is somehow related to the Doge meme. I think I'm too unhip to really understand how all these things come together, but at any rate, that's what we're dealing with.

Speaking of being unhip, I walked into the library yesterday and smelt a distinct skunky smell. I thought, "How did some animal get into the library?" I wondered if a fox had invaded the building and left its mark somewhere. But then a co-worker came up to me and said, "Did you smell the marijuana when you came in this morning?" Oh, is that what it was?! Now I once again understand why some people call it skunk. Why the library smelled like marijuana I could not tell you, but I assure you I was not involved.


Finally, here's another item from my archives -- a 12-second "Moment of Zen." Back in 2011 I uploaded a video of light changing on a wall over a period of about two minutes. In my days of Zen practice, this is the kind of thing we'd notice while meditating facing a wall -- the patterns of light shifting and changing. I suppose I was trying to convey some of that meditative tranquility. I took the video above on the same day, as a first attempt. It's too short, but if you need a quick Moment of Zen, here you go.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Crocus and Citrus


Another crazy day yesterday. I just do not have "normal" workdays anymore. There's always so much to do -- now that I've taken on half of the duties of my former colleague, whose position has gone part-time -- that I'm streaking from one thing to the next. On the plus side, I got in 14,480 steps according to my Apple health app, so maybe I worked off that chocolate horror of a donut from the day before.

I forgot to mention our biggest news from Monday, which is that we once again have a door on our kitchen cabinet. Remember when it fell off last August? Well, I reported it to property management, but nothing was done until late January, when the property inspector visited and raised the issue in his report. Suddenly, the door was scheduled for repair. Whatever it takes, I suppose.

As you can see, things are happening in the garden. We have a crocus coming up (above) and the buds on the daffodils are yellow, though none of them have opened yet.

Also...


...the stolen citrus tree, which is currently spending the winter just inside the back door, has produced an anemic little fruit! I don't fully understand this tree. It produces white buds which never seem to open into the kinds of citrus blossoms that I remember from my years in Florida, and somehow it occasionally manages a meager little fruit like this. But I doubt the fruit (which I think is a mandarin orange) will ever reach a size suitable for eating or any other use. We shall see.

Dave and I finished "Shrinking" on Apple TV, and even though some of the characters are a little too clever and thus a bit annoying, we're looking forward to Season 3. We also started the third episode of the new season of "Severance" last night, but we've realized we have no idea what's going on. It's possible that we both fell asleep for a portion of the first two episodes, so I think we're going to back up and start the season again.

Finally, while I take a certain amount of pride and satisfaction in blogging every day without fail -- I like to think of myself as a constant in an inconstant world -- I can't hold a candle to this woman, who has written in her diary every single day since 1936, and is still going! (That link is to The Washington Post, which has a pay wall. I am posting it as a "gift article" because you should then be able to read it, but you may have to enter an e-mail address or somehow register with the site. I'm not sure.)

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Ten Across


When I got off the tube in West Hampstead the other day, I saw these shoes sitting forlornly beside a bench. Did someone take them off, switch into fancier footwear, and then leave them behind? Maybe they ran to catch a train and then, just as the doors closed, thought, "Oh no! My shoes!" Or maybe they left them behind on purpose, wanting to get rid of them. Another urban mystery with no solution.


I ate this yesterday, and I'm not proud of it. Not long after I got to work, a colleague called me on the phone and said donuts were available, courtesy of our school's parent group. So I went to check them out and found a variety of heart-shaped confections from Dunkin Donuts including this one with an Oreo on top, and Oreo filling. There's really no way to make a donut nutritious, but this one threw caution to the wind! And so did I.


And here's a career first for me -- I was a clue in a crossword puzzle in the school paper!

Monday, February 10, 2025

Ronald Reagan's Dolphins, and a Cat Named Bob Dylan


I didn't leave the house at all yesterday. The weather was grim -- damp and drizzly, cold and cloudy -- so I stayed inside and read "The Wager." I also did all my usual minor housekeeping and plant maintenance. And I dug around a little more in my photo archives.

As it turns out, it's very difficult to tell whether all my photo CDs have been moved to my hard drive. But everything I checked had, in fact, been moved, so I'm taking that as a good sign.

Above is a piece of street art I found in Brooklyn way back in 2007, depicting leaping dolphins in a circle around Ronald Reagan's nose. Here's the original Reagan photo, a pretty famous one. I'm not sure what the art means, if anything, but it's visually intriguing, isn't it?


And this is me, on the roof of our family home in Florida in 2007. Every once in a while we'd have to climb up there and rake the leaves off the shingles. Otherwise they'd pile up and my mom was convinced (probably correctly) that they'd rot the roof.


And finally, here I am in New York City with two other bloggers in 2007. Some of you may remember Reya, in the middle, who had a couple of blogs including The Gold Puppy, named after her beloved dog Jake. She hasn't blogged for about ten years now, but she posts regularly on Facebook -- which I suppose is blogging, in a way. She can still be found in older comments on my blog, and in some of my posts like this one about our blogger May Pole gathering in 2008.

And on the left is Janine, whose blog Tangled up in L'Heure Bleue was a combination of personal writing, Bob Dylan fandom and perfume reviews, with photos featuring her cats. Some of the cats -- one of whom was named after Bob Dylan -- even had their own blogs, as I recall. I used to hang out with Janine a bit but I haven't seen or heard from her in years.

You know, it's interesting -- the 2000s seem to collapse like a telescope when it comes to the passage of time. The year 2000 seems not that long ago, doesn't it? The '70s, '80s and '90s are very distinct decades in my mind, but the 2000s are a muddle. I don't feel like fashions have changed much, or that life is all that different now than it was a quarter-century ago. We now have AI and streaming television, but that's about it. Maybe the years seem to streak past more quickly because I have now lived so many of them.

Anyway, that was a blast from the past!

Today, back to work -- but it's a light week for me. Thursday and Friday are parent/teacher conferences so the kids aren't in regular classes, and though I'll be at work, there won't be much to do with no kids around. Wednesday is only a half day. Woo hoo!

Sunday, February 9, 2025

More Memory Lane


Another old picture, this one from July 2011, the month we moved to London. I don't think I ever blogged it before -- at least, not that I could find. I don't remember where it was taken. Maybe Notting Hill or Queensway, near the flat where we were moving.

As you can probably tell, I spent part of yesterday looking through more archives. I'm trying to make sure everything that is on a CD has been moved to a portable hard drive, because how long are those CDs going to be accessible? I already have to borrow a CD player from work to read them. Pretty soon even that will be difficult.

Here are two more photos from the beginning of July 2011, right before we left the USA:


We drove first to Michigan, where we left our furniture to be sold and put some stuff in storage in Dave's parents' basement.

Here's Dave at the home where his family once lived on Grosse Ile. The funny thing about this picture is, they didn't live there at the time it was taken. They'd already sold it, but as I recall we went back to pick up an old bathtub from the garage. Dave's father wanted to install it in one of his rental properties. While we were there Dave apparently felt the need to water the new owners' garden. Why he did this is a complete mystery to me -- maybe the plants were looking desperate. And what's that that tripod on the lawn behind him? Looks like something that would be used by a land surveyor.


And here I am in Saugatuck, on Lake Michigan,  where Dave and I caught the local Fourth of July parade. I remember this only because I blogged about it. I don't have that shirt anymore but I liked it -- I got it at the Bridgewater Commons mall in New Jersey. Lord & Taylor, I think, or maybe Bloomingdales.

It's kind of fun to root out these old photos that I'd completely forgotten about and show them the light of day.

What else did I do yesterday? Well, I read about 75 pages of "The Wager," which is really good. It's been fun to enjoy some non-fiction for a change. Reading about the perilous life of a seaman in the 1700s -- the lice, the typhus, the scurvy, the ever-present danger of falling overboard or getting tangled in the rigging, the rats, the filth -- makes me appreciate the luxury of my own life now. We don't know how good we have it, honestly. Just a couple of hundred years ago people lived truly hellish existences. (And still do in some places on our modern planet.)

Dave and I also went to the 50th birthday party of one of his co-workers. She had a little gathering at her flat in Lisson Grove, near St. Johns Wood. And when I say "little gathering," it was still too big for her microscopic flat. But we had fun and it was good to get out and socialize.

One of Dave's co-workers asked if I was still walking around the city with my camera as much. I said no, I haven't been, that I've been taking more photos with my phone these days. "They're almost as good as the camera photos," I said.

"But is it as satisfying?" she asked. And I thought, hmmmm...that's a good question. "No, it's not," I said. And maybe that's an aspect of photography that I've been missing lately -- the ability that the camera gives me to control more of the exposure. Something to think about. (It doesn't mean I will strap on the ten-pound camera and lens bag any more readily.)

Saturday, February 8, 2025

The Past is Never Dead


Because I'm sure you all don't want to read another post about shelving books and other library activities, how about a little trip down memory lane?

I went digging around in my digital archives last night to try to find some writing I did years ago that I thought I might be able to turn into a post. In 2006 or so I wrote a lot about my childhood and my life, partly because I'd gone to a therapist who encouraged it, and partly because I was hypochondriacal and convinced I was going to die (these two things are not unrelated), and I wanted to write down all my stories.

I was thinking specifically about a time when I "ran away" as a little kid, and went meandering aimlessly through my neighborhood until someone came and got me. I was sure I had written all that down and wanted to refresh my memory.

I got briefly distracted when I found the much more recent photo above, from May 2015, featuring Olga as a graceful young lady (!) watching Dave come into the living room. We'd just moved into this flat the previous summer, and I'm struck by how empty the place looks compared to now. And doesn't Olga look robust?! She was only about five years old then. (She got up with me this morning but now she's back in bed as I write this.)


I also found this picture, which isn't even mine -- it's something I took off the Internet because we used to have cups just like these when I was a kid. As I recall, I sold sets of them in 1978 or so as part of a school fundraiser for the marching band. Or maybe for the Boy Scouts.

Anyway, we wound up with a set and I have never forgotten them. My brother and I still talk about them. I have no idea what happened to ours, but similar cups are still available on eBay and other resale sites. I'm sure bazillions of them were made. They're very '70s.

I finally found the writing I was looking for. Here's a snippet:
The Central Florida that I knew as a child has disappeared from many areas. Back then, it was already suburbia, but sparsely developed. There were pine lilies in the vacant lots in autumn and vast tracts of palmetto and scrub. The road in front of our house was unpaved white limestone marl. Quail ran across our backyard in a single-file line, and mayflies blanketed the windows in spring.

The sunlight, the coarse grass, the pine needles, the fire ants. The sighing of the wind in the pines. The stinky, decayed smell of the muddy lakeshore. All of it is so deeply embedded in me that I feel like part of the land – I feel like the tannins that darken the water in Lake Wisteria are flowing through my veins. I may be part alligator.
A few paragraphs later:
(My brother and I) went “camping” together one day, packing our little school bags with slices of white bread and jars of water. We walked to the end of the road. Then Mr. Betz drove up and told us to go home, that Mom was worried, and so we did.
That's it?! Not quite the memory I have now, which is that I walked not only to the end of the road but to a distant part of an adjacent road, and that my brother wasn't with me, and that I was not "camping" but running away. But I may be conflating two different incidents, neither one particularly significant or eventful. I thought I'd written more. Oh well.


This is not my picture, but one my brother took last November while attending a remembrance for my mom at the church we grew up in. (And thus, also related to my childhood and this post!) I had no pictures of the sanctuary and I asked him to get some, having spent many hours staring up at those stained glass windows of Jesus, which at the time were shadowed by the fronds of a palm tree planted outside that back wall.

I suppose I'm thinking more about Florida now that I'm preparing to go back there in a week's time. One of the tasks my brother and I have planned is to spread my mom's ashes near where we grew up.

Anyway, thanks for indulging this rather disjoined trek down memory lane. As William Faulkner wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Friday, February 7, 2025

Overloaded


I know I say this all the time lately, but this week has been brutal. I have pulled ten carts of books for various classes, so many that my knees and hips are sore from all the kneeling and crouching. (Of course every single book I need is on the bottom shelf! It's a librarian rule.) Plus I've been re-shelving all the returns and working in the Lower School library too.

When I first started feeling my joints this week, I thought it was from walking to and from work. But I do that all the time, so why would they suddenly start bothering me now? It took me a while to realize my aches and pains were actually from moving all those books around. Plus we changed out all our book displays this week, which required additional pulling and re-shelving.

I am so exhausted that I somehow convinced myself yesterday that it was Friday, and had to keep reminding myself that I have one more workday left this week. February Break cannot come soon enough! (One more week...)

On top of that I could not sleep last night. I finally dozed off around 2:30 a.m. and slept fitfully until Olga got me up at 5:30 a.m.

Anyway, I'm sorry I haven't replied to all your comments the last few days* but I really HAVE read them all. I just cannot seem to keep up in blogland. (Maybe I should have gotten online when I was lying awake last night? I did not use my time wisely!)



I've also been planning our trip to Florida and trying to organize the garden work here. Plus Dave's been sick, which I'm sure means I will catch his cold just as we're about to get on an airplane.

There's just a lot going on!

*Addendum, 11:54 a.m. -- just caught up on comments!

(Photos: Taken on my walk home yesterday.)

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Gaza, and a Valentine's Day Cactus


I walk beneath this second-floor lounge and restaurant in Swiss Cottage most days. It's right across the street from Ye Olde Swiss Cottage, the closed pub I wrote about yesterday. It looks like kind of a colorful place but again, as with the pub, I've never been inside. Apparently it's a shisha bar. I've never smoked shisha and it isn't something that appeals to me, but I like Lebanese food, so maybe I'll check it out sometime.


It certainly has a colorful staircase. I'm not sure about the wall of plastic plants, though.

How to describe yesterday? Another day, another head-spinning, reality-bending dramedy from the White House. My jaw was once again on the floor reading Trump's statements about Gaza. This president who ran on a platform of isolationism and ending foreign wars suddenly wants to "own" Gaza and transform it into a tourist mecca? After taking steps to dismantle the government's main agency for foreign aid? And he's going to move two million people to adjacent countries that don't want them, in violation of international law?

I really don't want to turn this blog into a daily round of "what Trump did yesterday," but honestly, this Gaza thing was so far off the charts I can't avoid mentioning it. Even his ardent supporters on the right-wing news site I regularly read were dead-set against it. They elected him to be America-first, and understandably they do not see "owning" Gaza as a step in that direction.

As one of them wrote, "I wish he’d just shut up in these forums and make such outrageous announcements in a reasonable, objective manner elsewhere. This is far from something we’re 'going to do.' He needs to cool his jets and stay focused on the current challenges."

I consider it very promising that even his voters are saying, "WTF?!"

Now apparently the administration is trying to walk back this idea and portray it as Trump speaking extemporaneously (even though he had written notes) in a way meant merely to shock and provoke action from Middle Eastern leaders. He's just a bumbling narcissist who respects no institution and sees everything as a real estate deal -- an extractive capitalist who apparently has no idea of the costs associated with such a ridiculous scheme. (Maybe this is why his businesses have been forced to declare bankruptcy six times?) He's like a cartoon character with dollar signs in his eyes, his tongue hanging out.

Meanwhile, an even deeper danger comes from Elon Musk and his college-aged minions, slashing their way through the federal bureaucracy with no constitutional authority to do so.

I am not going to write about this every day. I am not, I am not, I am not.


Here's one of the Thanksgiving cactuses at work, which has decided to also become a Valentine's Day cactus. I took this picture right after spraying the leaves down with an alcohol-and-water solution to kill mealybugs. I am still on a campaign to rid this cactus and its much larger parent plant of pests. It is a never-ending campaign, but it's a good way to decompress between busy periods in the library.

Oh, and one last thing about American politics. I know there's been a lot of talk about the price of eggs in the United States. Out of curiosity, I asked Dave, who handles the shopping, how much we spend -- he said we pay £3.50 for six eggs, from a grocer who delivers them to our door. That's about $8.50 per dozen. But it's possible to buy much cheaper eggs here -- Sainsbury's is advertising a dozen free-range eggs for £3.15, or about $4. So I'm concluding that 1) The UK is not having the same egg price crisis as the USA, and 2) Dave and I pay too much for our eggs!

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Farewell, Swiss Cottage


Another day, another dead pub. This is the former Ye Olde Swiss Cottage, in the neighborhood of the same name, which I pass through on my walks to and from work. The pub, which I depicted a couple of times on this blog even though I never went inside myself, closed on February 1. The wrought iron rooftop sign and ornamental lampposts have already been removed, leaving the building forlorn.


It's right next to the Swiss Cottage tube station, and in fact apparently gave its name not only to the station but the entire neighborhood. If you want more history, read Matt Brown's article from Londonist -- he notes that although there's been a pub here since at least the early 1800s, the widening of Finchley Road in the 1960s left it standing on a traffic island, and "a pint in the Swiss Cottage beer garden was less like sitting on the shores of Lake Geneva and more like the Zurich western bypass."

That's pretty much why I never went there. Despite the cozy chalet-style architecture, Ye Olde Swiss Cottage always seemed rather inaccessible amid a sea of concrete and busy roadways -- even though all it took to get there was crossing the street. (You could even avoid the traffic fumes, sort of, by using a subterranean footpath -- or subway, as the British say.)


Although the owners removed the signage and probably anything else of value, they left behind the flowers, which is kind of sad.

Farewell, Swiss Cottage. I hardly knew ye. (Or perhaps I should say "uf widerluege," although apparently that technically means "until we see each other again" and I'm not sure that's going to happen.)

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Green Sunrise



Another day, another picture of Olga. This is around the corner from our flat, next to the Roche Bobois furniture shop (the window with the funky vases at upper left) and across the street from the tennis club. We had just a hint of sunrise on the horizon, below the clouds, but most of the greenish light is coming from a streetlamp.

I promise I am not going to complain a lot about Donald Trump today. But I've been struck by the irony of his recent moves to destabilize the Agency for International Development (USAID). Trump makes so much noise about illegal immigration, and he's allegedly taking forceful steps to stop it, yet he is targeting an agency that could play a critical role. If we want to stop or slow immigration, we need to give people reasons to stay home, and that means developing the economies of their home countries. Which is exactly what USAID does. It's a tiny fraction of the federal budget (and ought to be a lot more) and it makes a real difference in providing jobs and developing industries for people overseas.

As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I am curious to see what Trump will do with that agency. I can't imagine it will prosper under his inwardly-turned worldview. (The Peace Corps is separate from USAID.) The Peace Corps is less expensive, so it's probably lower on his hit list.

Trump has done at least one thing that I think was a good idea, and that is ordering the declassification of all the information about the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations. There's apparently not much classified material left, and it still may not all be made public, but I think it's past time to be as open about those events as possible. Anyone involved is almost certainly dead by now, or at least very elderly, and perhaps doing so will quell the endless conspiracies that continue to circle about JFK in particular. It's probably just political showmanship, as the Kennedy family has said, but I'm all in favor of anything that could help foster the open flow of information.

Monday, February 3, 2025

Doubting Myself


Yesterday the sun was so bright that I put Olga's bed out in the garden so she could soak up some rays. I put on a jacket and sat with her, reading "The Wager" by David Grann, about the wreck of British ship off the coast of Chile back in the 1700s. I've just started it but it seems promising. Unfortunately, despite the sun, it wasn't warm -- 44º F or 6.6º C -- so we didn't stay out there very long.

Still, the seasons are slowly revolving.


We heard nothing back from Mrs. Russia regarding the front garden. Maybe she's written the landlords, but I doubt it. I think we're in a stalemate.

We are also in a bit of a Cold War with Mrs. Kravitz next door, over our rubbish bins. Remember how several years ago we locked them because she (or someone in her household) kept using them? Well, one day last fall I found one of the locks torn off and a lot of rubbish from her bins strewn around in our alleyway. I came in and told Dave, who marched over to her house to demand answers. Mrs. Kravitz was greatly offended that we suspected she had torn off the lock, and she hasn't really spoken to us since. (I think she's also been gone for much of the winter. I've only caught a glimpse of her once or twice.) Her rubbish at the time included a lot of gift bags from fancy brands like Chanel, and in retrospect, I think a homeless person or other passerby tore off the lock because they thought something valuable might be in the bin. (We did apologize for confronting her, for what it's worth.)

Thinking about these fraught neighborly relations, I began to wonder yesterday if we're the problem. As I said to Dave, "Am I an asshole?"

He assured me that I am not. Granted, he's a biased source, but surely wanting to use your own trash bins without finding them filled with the neighbor's debris isn't that extreme.

Besides, I suspect being an asshole is a bit like being insane. If you worry you might be, you're probably not. It's only people who think they are without fault who have the real problems.

We have since removed the locks on the bins. They were a pain to navigate and one side benefit of confronting Mrs. Kravitz, and her appalled reaction, is that she wouldn't dare put her rubbish in them now.


Well, let's lighten the mood. Here's a video of Olga plowing through the overgrown ivy in the garden. This is the same ivy we're going to have pruned and brought under control when the gardeners come in about a month, so Olga is enjoying it while she can!

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Desk Hygiene


I shot this image of the moon and Venus yesterday evening in our western sky. According to this very informative website, the moon was in a Waxing Crescent phase with 11 percent of its surface illuminated. A beautiful night!

I had a pretty low-key day. I spent several hours in blogland, reading others' blogs and responding to comments on my own. I think I'm more or less caught up.

I was amused by John Gray's post showing his "untidy desk" (which was not at all untidy). It made me think about the reporters I used to work with and their appalling desks. If there's any industry that creates a less tidy culture than a print newsroom, I don't know what it is. Reporters, at least in my day, were constantly scribbling notebooks and legal pads full of handwritten notes, and stacking them up around the margins of their desks, along with police reports and depositions and old newspapers and all manner of paper detritus. I worked with one guy, Tom, who had years worth of paper piled on and around his desk -- he was notorious even in our messy environment -- and how he ever found anything I'll never know. I wish I had a picture of his desk now because it was truly remarkable. A paper mountain, or fortress, with a chair in the middle.

I guess the fact is, for the most part, we reporters only ever needed our most recent notes. After that, the notebooks and paperwork could be consigned to an "archive," in whatever formal or informal sense we maintained one. After all, news was a daily business, and we could always go back to our earlier published stories if we had to rehash older information.

I worked with another guy early in my career, Sam, who was notorious for leaving half-consumed mugs of coffee sitting atop his piled-up paperwork. Those cups sat there so long that they became biology experiments. I guess he must have cleaned them at some point but I remember them being pretty gross.

Personally, I always keep a tidy desk. I can't stand piles of paper. I remember reading somewhere that having too neat a desk sends a negative message to supervisors -- that you aren't busy enough. But I still kept mine clear. I saved my notes until a story published, or maybe for a few weeks or months afterwards, and then I'd periodically throw them all out. Even now, I keep my desk at work mostly empty -- which is hard because it's the main circulation desk in the library and it tends to be the place where people flump stuff down as they're passing by. Whatever's on it is what needs to be done imminently, and then it gets shelved, filed or tossed.

I don't even have a desk at home. My laptop is my desk.


Here's Olga navigating the narrow path along the side of our house. It leads to the garden gate, which opens onto the street (except it's always locked). Every morning she has to go sniff around over there as part of her "rounds." Maybe foxes wander through? Or squirrels? Something keeps her intrigued.

Saturday, February 1, 2025

Hagar's Head Lice


I got an extra hour of sleep out of the dog this morning! She woke up at 5 a.m. as usual but when she began giving me the paw, I just rolled over and darned if she didn't settle down and let me sleep until 6. I consider that a major victory.

The snowdrops have come up in our garden -- they're not quite open yet but they're already looking good. The daffodils, despite an early start, have slowed and we don't seem to have any that are near blooming. I think the recent cold weather has chilled their enthusiasm. We've had daffodils in January before, but not this year.

Speaking of gardening, the saga of our front garden continues. You may remember that our upstairs neighbors, the Russians, cooked up a plan to rip out some of the bushes. I opposed this plan and said so in an e-mail to our landlords, and they sided with me. (The Russians and our landlords jointly own the house where Dave and I rent the bottom flat, and under the terms of our lease they are jointly responsible for the front garden.) Well, Mrs. Russia wrote me yesterday complaining that her wishes have been "disregarded and misrepresented" and she pushed again for ripping out those bushes. She expressly asked that I not forward her message to our landlords. I don't know why she insists on coming to me with these issues because, to use George W. Bush's word, I AM NOT THE DECIDER. I told her to write the landlords.

Meanwhile, it looks like our garden won't be trimmed anytime soon. Pruning gridlock!

Honestly, is it any wonder the world is such a mess? We can't even get simple landscape maintenance done without instigating another Cold War.


I found this Viking hat (complete with braids!) on the ground on my walk home from work last night. Have we been invaded again?

Seeing that fake hair reminds me that we got a note the other day about cases of head lice being reported in the school. Fortunately this is not a problem I have to think about, having very minimal hair myself. I remember when I was a kid we would have lice checks in elementary school -- the nurses would come to our classrooms and go up and down the rows of students examining our heads. As I recall they used a pencil to look through our hair, and it felt great. If they found lice the kid got sent home right away, which must have been embarrassing. Do you think they used the same pencil to look through all of our hair? That seems problematic, doesn't it?

I was aghast at Trump's press conference following the Washington, D.C. plane crash. I don't think I've ever seen such a bizarre performance from a sitting president. My jaw was literally hanging open. To immediately use such a tragedy to make a political point about DEI programs, insulting all the pilots and air traffic controllers involved by implying they were unsuited for their jobs, basically blaming every minority group in the country for the crash, and providing no evidence to support any of those claims -- it was astonishing. The fact that the helicopter pilot has subsequently been shown to be a woman doesn't change any of that, because who knows who was doing what at the time? There's been no completed investigation. I cannot believe this man is the leader of the free world.

Also, why are Army helicopters flying so near the flight path of a major commercial airport? Is that part of the training? Are we now using innocent civilians as military training fodder without their consent?

Is it just me, or does Trump look terrible? Like, even worse than usual. He looks like a ghost with an Oompa-Loompa spray tan.

Friday, January 31, 2025

Winter Lights


Last night after work I took the tube down to Canary Wharf to see the annual Winter Lights display of light sculpture and immersive art. I do this pretty much every January and it's always fun. Winter Lights only runs for about ten days, and this year it was closed one of those days for Storm Éowyn, so there wasn't much time to waste. I'm glad I got to see it again.


As usual, the artworks come from a variety of artists around the globe. Above is "Evanescent Droplets" by Atelier Sisu of Australia and Peru. That woman stood there taking selfies for a good three or four minutes. She must have taken a hundred of them. I was trying to wait for her to get out of the way, but she never did.


Here's "Artificial Humans" by Atelier Haute Cuisine from Belgium. Apparently the artists asked AI to create an image of a light art installation, and AI came up with a vision of hunched figures all looking down and milling around in a group. The artists then brought that concept to life in the real world.


And here's a detail from "Stitching Light," by Emergency Exit Arts with Ruhul Abdin & Oitij-jo, from the UK and Bangladesh. Using traditional fabrics and sewing methods, combined with illuminated thread, women from Bangladesh and the UK told stories of their lives on fabric panels arranged around a short walkway.


And finally, here's "Portal," a monumental work by Lucid Creates in the UK. It's a giant doorway composed of highly reflective material, illuminated on the inner surface and echoing the shapes of the surrounding buildings. At 13 meters high, it is both "delicate in feel and dramatic in scale," as the exhibit notes say.

Pictures don't really do many of the works justice, because they include sound components and pulsing or moving light that a photo can't capture. So here's a video of the more dynamic ones, with a guide beneath to point out what you're seeing and hearing:


1. "bit.fall" by Julius Popp from Germany, a permanent installation at Canary Wharf that I've blogged before, which takes random words from five news sources and instantly converts them into a literal waterfall.
2. "The Clew," by Ottotto from Portugal, a round red-lit gateway, also a permanent feature that I've previously blogged.
3. "Aj Vana Be" by Benedikt Tolar of Czechia (apparently what we're now calling the Czech Republic?). I love this piece, which converted bathtubs salvaged from demolished council housing into illuminated, musical art. Behind it you'll see Newfoundland, a huge apartment building where Dave and I fantasize about living.
4. "Circa" by Limbic Cinema (UK), where each of twelve circles overlooking the Thames represents average light fall over one month of the year. (Sound design by Joe Acheson of Hidden Orchestra.)
5. "Error" by Vendel & DeWolf of the Netherlands. Based on the idea that evolution stems from genetic mistakes and mutation, "the swirling black hole in the work 'Error' is then a striking, abstract visual representation connecting the randomness of the universe with the randomness of technology -- sucking us all into the unknown," according to the exhibit notes.
6. "Wave" by Squidsoup (UK), which uses about 500 suspended orbs to create the effect of breaking ocean waves. (And squawking seagulls, if I'm not mistaken!)
7. "Evanescent Droplets" by Atelier Sisu (Australia/Peru), is supposed to capture the ephemeral, transient state of soap bubbles, evoking "universal playfulness and childlike wonder" in our fragile world.
8. "Mirage," also by Atelier Sisu, is a metaphor for the "fabricated mirage of social media," using coated acrylic panels that display light differently at different times of day and night and depending on the position of the viewer. It seemed to me like a very subtle piece. Maybe too subtle.
9. "Bird Passing By" by Luminariste (Benjamin Nesme and Marc Sicard) of France. The 64 sections of this sculpture imitate a bird in flight, and bring to mind migrations that carry birds through urban and rural spaces, both solo and in flocks. It's another of my favorites and I show it from two angles, during two different segments of the light and sound program.
10. "Portal" by Lucid Creates, as described above.
11. "Positive Spin" by Liz Harry and Kazimier Productions (UK). Based on childhood experiences at beachfront game arcades, it invites viewers to step up and ask a sort of gigantic slot machine for a fortune. (A positive one, of course. The guy who spins it here gets the results "physical growth," "emotional growth" and "friendship.")
12. "Illusion Hole" by UxU Studio of Taiwan. Using precisely arranged lights, the artists create a "black hole" that seems to open in the middle of a Canary Wharf waterway, prompting viewers to consider the truth of their perceptions.

All in all, I found it a fascinating show, and it was fun to get out and walk around. (This opinion may not be universally shared -- I passed one man on the sidewalk at just the moment that he muttered to his companion the words "boring and cold.") The crowds weren't too bad, and I bought a cup of mulled wine and enjoyed it while sitting on a bench watching "Bird Passing By," so that gave me a little boost of warmth.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

I Wonder as I Wander


I took this picture almost a month ago but I'm pretty sure I never blogged it, so here you go! This is Buckingham Mansions, an apartment block around the corner from our flat, on a rare sunny winter day. I loved the light and shadow. We're supposed to have sunshine today too, and colder temperatures though still above freezing.

I spent most of yesterday switching out displays in the library. We're putting one up involving an annual science reading project by the 10th grade, in which the kids recommend (or not) science-related books they were supposed to have read over Winter Break. It was a lot of work and of course the cynical side of me wonders how many of the recommendations were written by Chat GPT. At least I only have to pin them to a bulletin board, and not grade them!

I shouldn't be so suspicious, but it's the result of my reporting background. As we were always taught, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."


Remember the architecture/planning fail that I wrote about on Jan. 19? The ugly barriers erected on the sloping sidewalk in front of Five Guys? Well, some signs have gone up indicating they were placed there by Camden Council and directing people with questions to call a hotline or write an e-mail address for "complaints." I wrote yesterday, not so much to complain as to say, "What's the objective here? How long are these barriers going to stay and what's the ultimate fix?"

I don't really expect an answer but I'm curious to see if I'll get one. This is the kind of thing that, back in my day as a reporter, would have produced a story in the local paper telling people what the heck is going on. Nowadays, with local media on life support, people are left to speculate online -- which is how we wind up with Q-Anon and lizard people.

Me, I will just continue to idly wonder and display my mystification on this blog.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

A Crank at the Laundromat


We had more blowy, rainy weather yesterday morning, apparently involving Storm Herminia. Looking out at the street I would never have known it was a named storm  -- it didn't seem particularly intense, at least not in my part of the world -- but apparently it has caused some damage and flooding elsewhere in England and Wales.

I took the photo above in the pre-dawn darkness while walking Olga. This morning, she got me up at 4:45 a.m., her tail thumping the mattress, ready to go! As Dave so often says, that dog is insane.

Last night I picked up our sheets and towels from the laundry and the clerk there annoyed me by asking again that I pay in cash. I said I didn't have cash. "Could you go to a cash machine?" she asked. I said no, I could not, that I was prepared to pay by card and that I never use cash. This is the second time in a row that they've done this to me, the last time in early December. I asked her if they intended to stop taking cards altogether. She said they were having problems with their card system, but I pointed out they've had this issue for weeks without getting it fixed.

I think they're simply trying to do business off the books to either avoid taxes or transaction fees on card purchases. I told her I was going to find another cleaner if they couldn't take a card, and darned if she didn't whip a perfectly functional card terminal out from under the counter. "For you, I'll use this from now on," she said, like she was doing me a special favor.

I hate to be such a crank, but come on. It's 2025! People pay for cups of coffee using a card. Businesses just have to be able to allow customers to pay that way.

Speaking of cranks, did you hear about Caroline Kennedy's letter skewering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ahead of his confirmation hearing? (To be clear, I'm saying he's the crank -- not her.) I was amazed at her candor. Good for her.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I watched a second David Lynch film the other day, as part of my sporadic personal David Lynch Memorial Film Festival. The film was "Inland Empire," which I'd seen once before back when Netflix mailed DVDs. (Remember those days?) I didn't recall the plot, and now, having watched it again, I understand why -- it has only the loosest of linear plots. It's more a three-hour collection of disjointed surreal scenes that fold back upon each other, and like "Mulholland Drive" they involve Hollywood and moviemaking and questions of identity -- "Mulholland Drive" on mushrooms, you might say. Apparently the movie was made without a complete script and Lynch filmed it all himself digitally and edited the footage. Even the stars -- Laura Dern and Justin Theroux -- have said they don't understand it. Despite moments of brilliance I did not love it overall. It was too Lynchian for me.

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Birds and Garbology


During our half-day of sunshine on Saturday, I went out into the garden with my zoom lens to try to catch some of the birds in action. I could see them flitting around from the living room, but as soon as I went outside they all took to the shrubbery. (And then Olga began crashing through the bushes, as she often does, and that sent them even more into hiding.)

I did manage to photograph this little dunnock sitting in our Hebe. In yesterday's post I was comparing camera and phone photos -- well, this is a good example of a picture I could never have taken on my phone. I needed my long lens. (And remember how I said my Canon camera weighs 3.5 lbs with my macro lens? Well, with this zoom, it weighs 5 lbs, 5 oz.! You can see why lugging that thing through the streets of London can get tiring.)


Here's a blue tit sitting in our Philadelphus. That bush really does need to be pruned, but I hate to do it because so many birds live in its thicket of branches. I know the neighbor dislikes it because it blocks light from her garden. As usual, I struggle to find a sensible middle ground, where wildlife doesn't suffer but the garden is also kept under control.

I got my test results back from my gastroenterologist from my followup visit earlier this month. My calprotectin levels are still a bit high (153) -- lower than they had been but still not quite normal. I take it as an overall improvement, though, and since no cause can be found, I'm assuming that whatever's happening is hopefully on the mend. The doctor said he will "review in due course," whatever that means. My possibly unrelated aches and pains seem to have subsided.

On my walk to work yesterday, I passed several heaps of trash and some discarded furniture on the sidewalk, and dutifully reported them to Camden Council via our handy "LoveCleanStreets" app. Two of my reports were allegedly cleaned up within a couple of hours (I haven't walked past yet to be sure but I have no reason to doubt the app) -- and one was already gone by the time the rubbish collectors arrived. Now there's a metal helium tank sitting on the corner that's been there for several days, and the regular garbage collectors won't take it, I assume because any gas in it is under some kind of pressure. I'll report that this morning if it's still there.

That's me -- Steve Reed, Neighborhood Trash Cop!

Dave told me last night that one of his recent staff meetings opened with the question, "What is your obsession?" Each person had to name one and explain why they were obsessed with this subject. I told Dave, "I know what my obsession is -- trash collection!"

I read an article yesterday about Bristol, in western England near Wales, possibly switching to rubbish collection once every FOUR WEEKS! This is my nightmare. They'd continue collecting recycling, including food waste, more frequently. The theory is this will pressure more residents to funnel waste into the recycling stream rather than the garbage -- but as I understand it already a lot of "recycling" doesn't really get recycled. So the whole thing seems like a money-saving shell game, and I tend to agree it will just mean more trash dumped illegally. I hope to God we don't do that here, but I suspect any money-saving decisions made by one municipal council will soon be adopted by others.

Monday, January 27, 2025

Camera Comparisons and Urban Archaeology


I just cleaned out my comment spam and found TEN comments in there. Sorry if you've commented recently and then wondered where your comment went! I usually check spam every day but apparently I got behind. You've all been released from spam jail now.

This house is one of several on our street under heavy renovation at the moment, basically being gutted and rebuilt on the inside. Our street is not particularly long -- the equivalent of about three blocks, if our area was laid out on a grid -- but I'm always amazed how many people are renovating at any given time. Maybe the Russians aren't so unusual after all. Maybe I'm the unusual one, just making do with what we've got.

Anyway, I took the picture because I liked the light, shadows and colors. I used my big camera, a Canon EOS 5D Mark III. I bought that camera back in 2012 and it cost a pretty penny then, but I was trying to make a go of doing serious photography so I wanted good equipment. As it turns out, that wasn't really the best camera for me because it was geared toward people who also wanted good video capability, and I didn't really need that. (Plus, it weighs 3.5 pounds with my lightest lens!)

I shot the photo in RAW for best detail, and processed it slightly in Lightroom to correct the perspective and lens distortion.

And then, just for fun, I shot a similar picture on my phone:


This one took no processing -- and it has more detail in areas with bright light. If it's not better overall, it's at least just as good. Aren't they amazing, these tiny computers we all carry nowadays? With video too! The only things the big camera can do better are zoom photos from a distance, with my telephoto lens, and macro photos, with my macro lens. And it doesn't telescope distant objects and make them seem incredibly far away, which the phone camera does because of its tiny wide-angle lens.

Still, phone cameras are amazing.

I spent yesterday cleaning and reading. I finally finished "The Bee Sting," which I mostly enjoyed. It ended on an agonizingly ambiguous note and was ultimately quite tragic, but I'm glad I read it. Now I have to catch up on New Yorkers before launching into another book.


When I was walking Olga on Saturday I found this tiny pendant lying next to the sidewalk. I interpreted it as the letters "IL" and I couldn't imagine what that meant. A souvenir of Illinois? That seemed unlikely. (The "I" was originally bright red, which is what caught my eye on the ground, but when I rubbed the dirt off the red came off too!)

I brought it home, cleaned it up and photographed it (with my macro lens!) and then ran it through Google image search to try to figure out what it meant. Turns out...


...it's a zipper pull from a Fila sweatshirt.

Well, not quite as exotic an artifact as I had hoped, but the mystery was intriguing.


When I walked into the bedroom last night to go to sleep, this is what I found. Geez, dog, leave some space for us!

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Visiting the Bromiges


We had bright sun and blue skies for the first half of yesterday. The robins were singing and other little birds were chasing each other around with possibly amorous intent. It's too early (and too cold) to say it's spring, but I got the barest hint that our darkest days of winter are over.

As I may have mentioned, I've arranged with a gardener to come and help us get our ivy under control. They're also going to prune our roses and some of our other plants. This won't happen for another month but at least we've got it on the books. I still don't know what's happening with the front garden -- I haven't heard a peep since writing the landlords last weekend.

I spent yesterday morning doing laundry and reading "The Bee Sting." I think I ought to finish it today. I really like it, except for the parts with minimal punctuation, but it's been hard to find time to read more than a few pages here and there which is why it's taking me so long -- and it's a 600+ page book.

In the afternoon, inspired by the sunshine, Olga and I took a walk and went...


...to the cemetery! Just weeks after lamenting that we may never get there again, I was happy to see her willing to make a go of it. We didn't walk the whole thing, partly because we ran out of time -- the cemetery gates close at 3:30 p.m. at this time of year, and we got there a little after 3 p.m. At the speed Olga walks, we had time to do just a small part of the back area. But still!

Olga did pause as we were walking there and look at me as if to say, "Are you sure this is a good idea?" But I gave her leash a soft tug and she came willingly. I think she did it for me, to be honest. She'd be just as happy sniffing trash bags closer to home.


Here she is on a woodsy path, passing the partly-buried headstone of Charles Absalom Bromige and his wife Eliza Margaret, which I've discussed on this blog before.


And here she is with the grand grave marker of the Banister Fletchers.

She seemed confused when we didn't follow our usual circular path through the cemetery but as I said we just didn't have time, and in the end she relented and allowed me to walk her home early. Surprisingly she didn't seem particularly achy last night, either. She's a tough old bird!