Bobo

A quiet but busy morning yesterday. I washed our tablecloths, put away some laundry, watered all the houseplants, cleaned and organized some stuff and finished a book -- Brian Selznick's "Run Away With Me," a romantic same-sex teen love story set in Italy. Calling it a "teen love story" makes it sound like a Judy Blume book, but there were also elements of art and history and questions about the nature of time and being, along with Selznick's fabulous pencil sketches. I really enjoyed it.

After lunch I persuaded Dave to go to Sweet Corner with me for coffee. We sat out on the sidewalk just as we did in Paris, watching the parade of humanity, but it was less of a parade at Fortune Green than it was at Notre Dame.

Afterwards Dave went home and I took a walk through the cemetery, where a lot of late-summer insects were still active in the butterfly area:

That first butterfly is a small copper, I believe, but for some reason the color is paler than what I usually see on coppers. Further along you'll see a large hoverfly on thistle -- that's Myathropa florea, the "Batman" hoverfly, with a black mark on its thorax that looks like the Bat Signal. The weird music is an Apple jingle called "Jacaranda" that I chose mainly because it was the right length -- allow it to transport you to exotic lands!

I walked the narrow path (top) from the cemetery to the adjacent sports fields, where some guys were playing cricket, and then through a nearby neighborhood.

There was a rubbish skip in front of one house, filled with debris and topped off by this memorial stone for (one assumes) a pet named Bobo. Who knows what the story is here? Maybe the house sold, or Bobo's owner has passed away or moved and there's no longer a need for a marker. Bobo was 15 when he/she died in 1987, which means he/she was born in 1972, which is kind of mind-boggling to think about. That creature was alive before Richard Nixon resigned, before Patty Hearst became "Tania," before Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were world leaders, before hostages in Iran. Bobo was already a senior citizen when the Challenger exploded!

Last night we watched a documentary called "Active Measures," from 2018, about the depth of Trump's involvement with the Russians and Putin's efforts to influence western elections. It was made during Trump's first term, but it's still timely given more recent events in Ukraine and Trump's insistence that stories of his campaign's collaboration with Russia are a "hoax." Even if there was no direct collaboration, it seems apparent that Russia meddled on his behalf. It's a really good movie and worth watching.

Want a happy dog story? Check out the tale of Trooper, the dog who was rescued in Tampa after being tied to a fence during Hurricane Milton.