Musk Mallow

Remember those wildflower seeds I planted in early spring? The ones that slumbered dormant in the chilly ground until I finally planted a second batch, which were equally unproductive? The ones we finally gave up on entirely before planting fully grown comfrey and cow parsley in their place?

Well, I never wrote about it, but we did finally get a few peculiar-looking sprouts in the wildflower garden. They never did much until this week, when one of them rewarded us with some completely unexpected flowers! It's a musk mallow, and I'm assuming it came from the seeds I planted because we don't have them anywhere else in the garden -- but who knows. I suppose it could just be a volunteer, too.

Anyway, we like it!

I had a busy day yesterday. Dave went to school to finish recording student auditions for an honor band competition, and I spent the morning cleaning the house and doing laundry and trimming some stuff in the garden. We've tried to leave the garden alone, even though everything's gone to seed, because plants like the teasel and cardoon and thistles and hydrangeas are interesting when they go all brown and dry and rattly. But finally yesterday I had to gently tidy up, trimming some uninteresting stragglers, because it was getting hard to walk around out there in places.

I'm reading "Boy Erased," a memoir about a boy from a fundamentalist religious family whose parents send him for gay conversion therapy after he comes out to them. Apparently it's being made into a movie, which is probably why we just got it in the library. It's a really good read, but all the Jesus-speak makes me tired and somewhat depressed. I can only take so much.

We're off school tomorrow and Tuesday for October break, and today we'll be boarding a train with Olga, bound for Salisbury. Yes, yes, I know -- beware the Novichok. That's what everyone's been telling me, in a mostly joking tone. I'll do my best not to touch any suspicious doorknobs.

Empire of Light, Part 2

Here's another early-morning shot from my neighborhood, taken when the streets are quiet and the day is balanced on the cusp of dawn. This photo and the one I posted two days ago both remind me of Rene Magritte's "Empire of Light" paintings:

I remember seeing this painting at MoMA, I believe, many years ago and loving it. Something about that magical time of early morning or late evening, and the perfect glow of that lonely streetlight, is really captivating. It's one of a few Magritte paintings depicting this theme.

I've read that the paintings supposedly create an unsettled feeling in the viewer by showing a nighttime street against a daytime sky. The scholarly conclusion seems to be that these two phenomena can't coexist in real life, creating conflict and possibly representing some sort of moral or philosophical conundrum. I'm not so sure, though. I've always found "The Empire of Light" peaceful and soothing, and as my photo shows, day and night can in fact coexist, briefly.

The only element that seems menacing to me is the tall building (or water tower or something) at left, an architecturally Brutalist disruption of the otherwise natural border between treeline and clouds.

(I compared one of my photos to this painting once before, way back in 2010. But that photo was taken at night, which, in retrospect, misses the point of the painting.)

Here's the Waterlogue version of my shot. Not terrible, but hardly Magritte. Which once again proves that even the most remarkable phone app can't replace the genius of human intention in art!

Don't Forget Your Cucumber

Do you ever listen to podcasts? I've recently been listening to one called "Dr. Death," about a Dallas neurosurgeon who was at best incompetent and at worst a sociopath. He maimed and killed so many patients in such a short period of time that he was prosecuted, and is now serving life in prison! It's a crazy case, and unprecedented, apparently. If you want some interesting listening, give it a try. I'm also told "Serial" is out with a third season that I plan to begin ASAP.

I finished cleaning out the library's DVDs yesterday. I've found that getting rid of everything that hasn't been watched in the last five years -- which is the method I used for documentaries and instructional films -- doesn't entirely work in the fiction section. If I did that, I'd be keeping movies like "Cheaper by the Dozen 2," "The Lake House" and "Maid of Honor" while discarding "Birth of a Nation," "Lawrence of Arabia," "Gone with the Wind" and everything by Fellini and Bergman.

So I made a little pile of films I think we should discard, even though they were watched once in recent years, and a little pile of those we shouldn't even though they weren't checked out. I'll talk it through with my boss today and we'll see how she feels about the results.

It's interesting, because like all library weeding projects, this forces us to consider our mission. Do we keep what people want, or do we bring them significant films for educational or cultural reasons?

(Top: Hampstead Heath, last weekend. Bottom: Found on the sidewalk on my way home from work yesterday.)

Early Morning and Early Life

I took this at sunrise on Tuesday, as I was walking Olga. I liked the balance between the two light sources -- the colorful morning sky and the street light casting its orangey glow. It was an interesting moment. We're getting to the time of year when we'll be taking our morning walks in darkness.

At work, I'm thinning out our DVD collection. There's a plan to remove the cabinet where all our DVDs are filed, and when we relocate them they're moving to much smaller quarters. Since we're streaming more video (like everyone else) we're going to take the opportunity to get rid of a lot of them. My standard is, if it hasn't been checked out in five years, we don't need it.

You'd be amazed at how many DVDs that is. Looks like we'll be keeping about a third of what we've got. I wish I could get Dave to help me thin out the DVDs we have here at home -- I think we could cut back just as much, if not more!

Here's a photo my mom gave me when I visited her in August. That's me as a two-year-old. (I was very into flowers as a little kid -- hence my enthusiasm for gardening, I suppose.) My parents were living in Adelphi, Md., that year while my father finished his doctorate at the University of Maryland. They rented a modern house and I have very faint, scattered memories of that period -- losing a toy in a drain pipe in the yard, for example, and going to a nearby park with my father. Funny what sticks in our minds. And look -- I had the same hair then as I do now!

These Kids Today

I woke up this morning with the strangest collection of ghostly images in my head, the remnants of a dream that I don't remember. You know when you have a dusty camera lens, and you take a picture into the sun, and you get those blurry floaters in your picture? That's what my dream looked like -- undefined images obscured by floaters and lens flares.

I think I was in Pinellas County. Something about beaches and bright light. Otherwise it's all a blur.

When I was in the Peace Corps, my site mate -- another volunteer who lived with me in the same community -- used to have incredibly elaborate dreams. She would wake up and relate them to me, and they were always fully plotted with fairly logical development, and they went on for ages. They were like novels. I, on the other hand, would wake up and say things like, "I think I was in Pinellas County."

Anyway, I'm only writing about this because it's 6:23 a.m. In an hour even those ghostly, sunny splotches will be gone from my mind.

I'm reading an interesting book called "iGen," about the young generation born in the mid-'90s and later. (The group after the Millenials.) I figured since I work with these kids it might be interesting to see what makes them tick. Apparently, what makes them tick are their phones. They are the most plugged-in generation yet, but according to studies cited by the book's author they are more anxious and less happy than previous generations, partly because of the pressures imposed by social media. They're also less religious and more focused on individuality and personal freedom, which is great for causes like LGBT rights but surprisingly bad for issues like the environment. There's little sense of collective purpose.

Then again, kids in high school and younger are still adapting and changing. When I graduated from high school I thought I liked Ronald Reagan, but that's only because I had the most superficial understanding of his "great communicator" persona. When I learned more about his policies my political outlook swung 180 degrees. Maybe kids today are more settled in their identities than I was, given how media-saturated they are.

There's also the well-known tendency among young people to delay adulthood, as they rely more on parents well into their 20s and postpone steps like marriage and family. That's partly related to economic insecurity -- they're more worried about making a comfortable living than almost anything else. (I can relate, having seen my own career and that of many of my friends upended since about 2005. Dave and I are doing OK, but we often rejoice that we don't have kids to support.)

Anyway, it's an interesting book. I suppose generalizations about such vast numbers of people always have to be taken with a grain of salt, but I must say, I'm glad I grew up when I did -- a happy member of Generation X, mostly pre-video games and definitely pre-Internet. There was a peace of mind that came with being in my own little oblivious world, and today's super-connected kids miss out on that.

(Photo: A corner on Finchley Road. The posters change, but otherwise it always looks like this. I wonder if that building, which was recently renovated, will ever be occupied.)

Surfin to the Eskimo Dance

After yesterday's political discussion, I need at least a day of recovery. So how about some iPhone pictures?

Surfin appears to be the name of a cafe chain (is two a chain?) in some communities north of London -- one humorously named Biggleswade and neither particularly close to any surf.

I found this poster intriguing. What, I wondered in my square way, could an Eskimo Dance possibly be?

Turns out it's a well-known event among followers of London's "grime" music scene. Grime is electronic urban dance music influenced by hip-hop, and Eskimo is a specific beat developed by the musician Wiley.

I have no idea why it's called Eskimo. Maybe because it's so cool?

This tree is always one of the first on our street to change color in autumn.

An interesting (?) art piece I found discarded in a dumpster. I was not tempted to rescue it.

Nor did I try to save this baby half-shirt, even though it is rockin'.

This was waiting outside a house down the street. It's a somber-looking collection, especially with that wheelchair in the middle. I wonder if someone died.

Finally, this is in the window of the paint-it-yourself ceramics shop on West End Lane. Looks like Snow White had a rough night. Or maybe she's reacting to Kavanaugh's confirmation. (Sorry -- politics slipped in there after all.)

Rolling in Daisies

I've been mulling over this Kavanaugh situation.

I was upset by his confirmation. But I've been hesitant to condemn it outright because I respect Susan Collins, the Maine senator who critically voted in his favor. I initially thought, she knows more than I do about this guy and his intentions, and she's a pro-choice woman, and she's shown herself in the past to be willing to break with her fellow Republicans. She's not hyper-partisan. She has every reason to vote her conscience. Maine, in 2016, was a pale blue state -- she has less incentive (than Joe Manchin of West Virginia, which is very red, for example) to simply appease Trump-loving constituents. So maybe Kavanaugh isn't so terrible?

It was a bit like the period when George W. Bush was pushing to wage war on Iraq in 2002. I was 100 percent opposed, and then Tony Blair spoke up in favor and I thought, "Hmmmm. Tony Blair is a reasonable guy. Maybe there's something to this." I remained opposed, but he gave me pause.

But having watched Collins defend her position since, I gotta say: just as Blair was dead wrong, I think she is too. I understand, given a he-said, she-said situation, wanting to adhere to a presumption of innocence. But a confirmation hearing is not a criminal trial. It's a job interview. And Kavanaugh, in his statements to senators, showed himself fundamentally unfit for the job in both demeanor and (lack of) intellectual neutrality. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think a confirmation hearing requires the same standards of proof as a criminal proceeding. A credible allegation seems reason enough to turn Kavanaugh away, as Collins' fellow Republican Lisa Murkowski courageously did.

Maybe deep down, Collins thinks Kavanaugh is better than the other judges on Trump's list of potential appointments -- a scary thought. She seems convinced he is not a threat to Roe vs. Wade, which is hard for me to fathom.

In any case, his confirmation sure seems like a victory for the old white guys. It's interesting and bizarre that a pro-choice woman cast one of the linchpin votes.

Olga and I went to Hampstead Heath yesterday, where she ran off an incredible amount of energy. She's clearly been building it up over the past few weeks, while lying on the couch in post-surgical recovery. Among other things, she rolled in this field of purple asters, also known as Michaelmas daisies -- one of our most reliable and ubiquitous fall flowers.

Walking the dog, on a sunny, cold autumn day, helped me feel better, anyway. I don't mean to brush aside the continual assaults on my belief system coming from governments on both sides of the Atlantic, because they hurt. But at the end of the day, I've got to find beauty and peace in what's going on around me -- in my garden, in my marriage, in my dog, in my job (not always easy). And in my blog.

So let's all roll in the daisies, shall we?

(Top photo: A leaf on Hampstead Heath, yesterday.)