The Barber Shop

I've been thinking, like many Americans, about the video of Donald Trump and his appalling remarks about groping and assaulting women.

There have been Trump defenders who say his remarks don't matter because they're only words, and that men talk like that all the time. I think they're wrong on both counts, but that defense got me thinking about a story from my childhood.

In the town where I grew up, in Florida, there was a barber shop called Chuck's. We didn't go there much; my mom usually cut our hair. But I went once or twice, probably with my babysitter, who knew the people who worked there and at the adjacent beauty shop. I remember it being a fairly grimy down-home place with hair on the floor, smoke in the air and guys sitting around talking in a southern twang.

During one of his visits to our house from up north, my grandfather went to Chuck's for a haircut. He came home appalled at the language used by the other men. He said he'd never heard such filthy talk.

Which is simply my way of pointing out that while some guys might talk that way, not all do. Some of us find it shocking, especially in a presidential candidate. The constituents in Chuck's (which has long since closed) are pretty much Trump's core voters, I would imagine -- but surely even among them there are men with daughters who are not going to react well to that kind of banter.

I took Olga to Hampstead Heath yesterday, and she found this narrow trench in the ground. I'm not sure what created it -- it was there during the rainy season and would periodically fill with water. Now it's completely dry, so Olga climbed right in and explored.

I think she liked it because the ground was cool. She's such a goofball.

We had a good long walk, and then Dave and I went to dinner with our friends Chris and Linda at a neighborhood restaurant. And now, back to work!

(Top photo: Autumn foliage in Hampstead, yesterday.)

Dingbats of All Kinds

When I was at Homebase last week I came across this very strange billboard near the parking lot.

I thought, "What on earth could that mean?"

Well, I looked it up. (Isn't the Internet wonderful?) Turns out these billboards have been appearing all over the country. The BBC looked into the mystery and linked the message on the signs to a Canadian who apparently has some cockamamie ideas about government.

The argument appears to be that when when we're named by our parents, that name is appropriated by the government in the form of birth certificates and whatnot, creating a legal entity separate from us as a person. Because the government owns that legal entity, it's potentially fraudulent for us to use our names.

Which, legal experts agree, is crazy.

Anyway, the real mystery is who's paid for all these signs, which, to quote the BBC article, "potentially cost hundreds of thousands of pounds." Nor do we know why the signs are in the UK, when the person most closely linked to their message appears to be based in Canada. (She apparently has a radio show -- whether Web-based or broadcast I'm not sure -- and I'm guessing she wants to scare up listeners.)

There's a web site that explains all this, kind of -- except that the explanations, as far as I can tell, make absolutely no sense. So go there at your peril.

In other news, I had French class yesterday -- and only as I was leaving for class did I realize I'd misplaced my textbook and notebook. They were nowhere to be found in the house. I took them to work Friday so I could do my homework -- and Dave and I carried them with us when we visited the Regent's Park tube station (as mentioned in my previous post). So I called Dave, who had already left home for the day, thinking they were in his bag -- but they weren't there either.

I went to class sans books, which gave me a good excuse to not participate in the homework review. And then, midway through class, I suddenly realized where they were -- I'd left them on the checkout stand at Waitrose, one of our local grocery stores. We'd stopped there on the way home Friday night.

After class I went back to Waitrose and there they were, right where I'd left them. (Apparently they don't clean off the checkout stations very often!)

I'm Famous in the Tube

Remember the portraits my pal and coworker Martin painted of me, beginning about two years ago? There's one of my face and shoulders and another of most of my upper body. You may remember the latter was exhibited in a museum show last September.

Well, now the former is going to be part of a gallery show in East London at the end of the month. A poster has gone up in the Regent's Park tube station advertising the show -- with my face on it!

Surreal. I never imagined I would be exhibited in the tube. Life takes some strange turns sometimes.

Dave and I went to see the poster last night. We had to make a special trip and I wasn't able to get there earlier -- with all our recent traveling and whatnot -- although I think it's been up about a week. It's supposed to remain on view all month but I wanted to be sure to see it before it got graffitied or otherwise damaged -- which is always possible in the tube!

Martin called the painting "librarian."

So, yeah, that's one of the stranger things to ever happen to me.

In other news, yesterday while walking Olga I found nine wood and/or metal picture frames piled in a trash bin. They were in perfect condition -- in fact, some hadn't been used -- with intact glass and no visible damage. So I took them out of the bin, stacked them in my arms and continued, rather precariously, walking the dog. Let me tell you, nine picture frames can get heavy. But eventually I got them home, and I put them in a tote bag and took them to work, where I set them out on a table in the staff lounge with a "free" sign. They were gone in no time. Woo hoo! Victory over the landfill!

The problem with industrial production, especially overseas where costs are cheap, is that it makes items too inexpensive. People consider everything disposable. Realistically, things should cost more, which would encourage us to value and conserve them -- and reflect a more accurate cost of our impact on the planet.

I haven't heard much more from my relatives regarding the hurricane. My mom confirmed that she and my brother's family reached their evacuation destination out of state. The storm apparently weakened by the time it was off Jacksonville, and the local paper says it was "not the catastrophic event the region feared in recent days," but there was some damage. So we'll see.

Stormy Weather

I had a busy day at work yesterday and, unusually for me, didn't have time to read the news. I'd heard about Hurricane Matthew striking Haiti, but I was completely clueless about where it was headed next until late yesterday afternoon, when my brother posted something cryptic on Facebook about the potential for a tree to fall on his car. "What is he talking about?" I thought. And then I realized the storm that so ravaged the Caribbean must be on its way to Florida.

Sure enough, my mom and brother were directly in its predicted path, in Jacksonville, and by all accounts this is a major storm. The governor of the state has told 1.5 million people to evacuate. It sounds like the classic nightmare scenario -- where are that many people supposed to go?

My mom has lived in Florida for 54 years and, to my knowledge, has never had to evacuate before. But these days she lives close to a tributary of the St. John's River, and that's vulnerable territory. My brother's house is also fairly close to the river, although not as close as Mom's. So, anyway, they got on the road and left town. They went to stay with friends out of state.

I'm glad they're getting out of the storm's way, but it's frustrating being here and unable to do anything -- except have coffee in my Jacksonville mug, in a superstitious attempt to send good vibes to the city.

Au Revoir, Ragwort

I finally cut down our ragwort last night. I took these pictures on Sept. 24, when it was already looking brown and autumnal, but it had become even browner since then. There weren't many flowers left. To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn).

Dave and I were back at school yesterday, but there were no students -- it was a professional development day. I took a workshop on mindfulness, which was kind of fun, and then worked in the library on book weeding. (A never-ending process!)

We came home to meet with Lucy, the woman we've asked to watch Olga during our upcoming travels to Copenhagen and Florida. She's a friend of a friend at school and she seems nice and reliable. Olga took to her right away and curled up against her leg for ear-scratching. (Lucy was wearing black and I winced, thinking of all those little white Olga hairs getting on her clothes, but like any good dog-sitter she apparently didn't give it a second thought.)

Then I raced down to West Kensington to meet a friend and his wife for dinner -- a guy named Chuck I used to practice Zen with in New York. We attended the same Zendo but I haven't seen him since I moved. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's the first person from the Zendo I've seen since Dave and I came to London five years ago. It's funny how I mothballed that aspect of my life after we moved, partly for lack of a place to practice but also out of ambivalence. I recognize the value of stopping, of letting the world happen around us and stepping back -- but as I've written before, I struggled with spending time on a cushion when I could be out in the sun or on the street or in the park. As long as I'm remaining somewhat mindful, it's better to be engaged, isn't it? Engaged and distracted don't have to be the same things, do they?

Anyway, dinner was fun, and I was glad to get an update on the life of the Zendo and its participants. I was also glad to get home last night and collapse into bed.

Oh, I never mentioned it, but my new passport arrived last week -- with a rather dreary-looking picture (you aren't supposed to smile anymore) and lots of nice empty pages ready to fill with stamps! So I am all set for Copenhagen at Thanksgiving.

No Longer Lords of the Manor

This (above) is pretty much how we spent yesterday morning -- lying around.

We had to check out of our room at 10:30 and our train back to London didn't leave until 3. I'd originally planned for us to go into Oxford and look around town, but with all our bags and the dog it seemed a daunting task. We decided to simply stay put and relax.

Olga and I took another walk around the village of North Leigh. I discovered another pub -- alas, too late for us to visit it. Oh well, next time!

Finally, we called a cab, and on the way to Oxford station we chatted with the driver -- a lifelong resident of the area -- about all we'd seen. We told him we'd gone to the Roman villa and he chuckled.

"I imagine that was a bit of a disappointment," he said. (Apparently the place has a reputation!) We told him about the inaccessible building where the mosaic is kept and he confirmed that it's almost always locked.

We also talked about all the new housing proposed for the area. I asked him who was buying all those houses. He said mostly people from London, who want more space and then commute into the city. I couldn't imagine commuting from that far away -- it's a bit over an hour to Paddington on a quick train, and then you've got to get where you're going in London -- but I guess people do it.

Anyway, Dave and I had a quick bite to eat at the Oxford station and then made our own commute with the dog.

She was so tired by this time -- she was very well-behaved on the train and in the cab back to our flat, and she's pretty much been asleep ever since. She's in bed right now, in fact.

We're relieved to be back, too. It's time to stop pretending we belong in the company of Lady Fortescue (whose book, by the way, I did not finish). The best part of going away, even to such an idyllic place, is coming home!

A Roman Villa

Yesterday morning started out misty. We had breakfast at the hotel and then decided to take a walk with Olga to see the nearby ruins of a Roman villa.

(Being an American -- and from Florida, no less, where practically everything is less than 150 years old -- it still blows my mind to be reminded of the long history of habitation in this part of the world.)

We set out walking according to the directions we got at our hotel, and we didn't have any trouble finding the site. Along the way we passed some horses and little villages and flower gardens with still remarkably fresh-looking cosmos.

And then there we were, at the Roman villa -- which was kind of a disappointment, to be honest. Two landscapers were there mowing and weed-whacking, so as we walked around this site of remarkable antiquity we were assaulted by the annoying buzz of tiny engines. I think they need to manage the lawn as the Romans would have, with grazing sheep.

The building at the far end of the ruins is a shelter that houses a mosaic floor and some other architectural elements from the ruins. The floor is a much-touted feature of this site, but the building was locked, and seemed like it had been locked for some time. So all we could do was peer through the grimy glass window at the equally grimy mosaic. Which, for the record, looks nowhere near as nice as it does here.

But we enjoyed the walk itself, and on the way back we took a different route -- a footpath through the fields that led us back to the village of North Leigh, near our hotel. We passed the village church and the old vicarage (above). It was a scenic little community, plastered throughout with posters advocating against a couple of large proposed housing developments.

There's a pub in North Leigh and we tried to check it out, but alas, it wasn't open. So we went back to our hotel and had a pint out on the lawn, and then came back to the room, relaxed and enjoyed our view:

Oh, and yesterday evening, I used our copper bathtub! Taking a bath isn't really my thing, I gotta say, but Dave was in the shower and we were trying to get ready for dinner, so I thought, "Why not?"

Yes, there's a picture. No, you can't see it.