Rain, Roses and a Florida Flashback

We did get some rain yesterday evening, thank goodness. It wasn't much, but it was slow and steady over a period of hours, and when I look outside this morning I see everything is pleasantly damp. The world seems refreshed. There's a better than 50-50 chance for more tomorrow and Thursday. Bring it on!

Before the rain came, I took Olga up to the cemetery for a leisurely walk. Here she is in front of the rose garden, which is at its peak at this time of year. There was lots of ball-chasing and grass-rolling.

Otherwise, I read. I finished David Baddiel's short book "Jews Don't Count," about modern antisemitism. He argues that while society is highly attuned to racism against people of color, and hatred toward LGBTQ people, it has become numb toward subtle (and even not-so-subtle) antisemitism. This is partly because there's an inherently antisemitic perception that Jews are no longer a disadvantaged group -- that they are, in fact, wealthy and privileged and even "in control." But he goes on to challenge this thinking and illustrate the many ways antisemitism still flourishes, largely by recounting exchanges from Twitter, the dark underbelly of human thought and expression. It's an interesting book and food for thought.

I also started "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, which I've never read before. It consistently lands on lists of challenged books (and indeed was one of the books recently challenged in our own library) so I've been eager to see why there's such a fuss. I'm only 45 pages in, but so far it has only reaffirmed my opinion that Morrison was an amazing writer.

I forgot to mention that my most recent old-Florida postcard came a few weeks ago, bearing a big number 6 and a cropped version of this photo. It's from June 1968, depicting two FSU students tubing at Wakulla Springs. The caption reads: "WHAT A PASS FOR A QUARTERBACK - Calling the play for the afternoon Steve Maresco does the 'tea honors' for Cookie Cook while drifting down the stream. Home was never like this... on a Sunday afternoon."

I'm not even sure what that means -- home games, I guess? Whatever. The photographer was Dan Stainer, from the collection of the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper. This isn't a scan of the postcard -- instead I pulled the photo off the web site of the Florida State Archives. (It's in the public domain.)

Here's an alternate version of the same shot. I like this one better, don't you? I wonder where Steve Maresco and Cookie Cook are these days?

AirPods and Ethics

Olga once again confronted her nemesis on her walk yesterday morning. Her nemesis wisely stayed out of reach. This cat lives at the same place as Door Cat, but this is not Door Cat, unless it has taken over from the previous Door Cat. Or maybe they work in shifts like Ralph and Sam?

I was confronted with an ethical quandary this weekend. A student left a pair of Apple AirPods (wireless earbuds) in the library several weeks ago. They sat on my desk in plain sight for ages and no one claimed them. So at the end of the year I brought them home -- because, frankly, I could use a pair of AirPods.

Problem is, they didn't have a case. And you need a case, because it's the "brain" of the AirPods and also the method by which they are recharged. So I went to the high school lost & found, which has about 20 pairs of unclaimed AirPods, and the attendant happily gave me a matching case as well as another pair. (I think we all feel like unclaimed lost & found stuff is common property at the end of the school year. Whether this is right or wrong is debatable, given what happened next.)

I carried the AirPods with me when I went out with my boss Friday afternoon, and then when I got home I tried to link the latter pair with my phone. But I had a message on my phone screen saying the owner could see the location of their AirPods with Apple's "Find My Device" app -- and indeed it showed me a map of all my movements that day. THAT freaked me out a little bit. Was someone actually watching me carry around their AirPods, or could they only theoretically see me, if they bothered to look?

This drove home the fact that these AirPods are smarter than your average headphones, and they still belonged to someone else. I found that when I added them to my own "Find My Device" list, they were identified by a student's first name, i.e. "Joe's AirPods." So then I looked in our student database and was able to determine who they probably belonged to. I e-mailed the student and said, "Hey, I think I have your AirPods!"

And the student wrote back, and long story short, I'm leaving them at the front desk of the school for him to pick up. This makes me wonder why we don't use our own phones to identify the owners of ALL the AirPods in the lost & found, rather than letting them just sit unclaimed. (And why don't students look for their lost stuff, for Pete's sake?!)

This also means I still have a pair of AirPods -- the first ones, abandoned in the library -- without a case. It turns out buying a replacement case costs almost as much as buying a new pair of AirPods, so I guess I'll just buy my own pair and return the unclaimed ones to the library. I suppose there's a slim chance their owner will resurface next year. (I really can't identify that person because there's no case and thus no "brain.")

I mowed the lawn again yesterday and did quite a bit of tidying. (Ignore the dead dog at left.) I mowed down the daisy patch, finally -- it was looking weedy and the daisies were browning and enough is enough. I also pulled out most of the remaining forget-me-nots. And today we might actually get RAIN, which would be fantastic. It is dry as a bone out there.

When working in the garden there is inevitably some damage. This rose was on a twig that got broken, so I cut it and brought it inside and now the kitchen is smelling positively rosy.

Oh, and here's a mystery. Some kids living a few houses down have some kind of noisy toy in their back garden. It sounds like radio-controlled racing cars, maybe? They play with it for hours. You can hear it in this video (in which I give you a completely irrelevant visual of bees on the blackberry blossoms):

What do you think that is?!

Gin & Tonics in Church

We begin this post with a completely gratuitous picture of Olga, taken on our walk yesterday morning. That's for no real reason except to celebrate summer vacation, which has now, finally, FINALLY, officially begun. Hopefully there will be a lot of Olga in my summer.

Yesterday was actually quite busy in the library, with lots of last-minute tidying up and shelving and dismantling displays and recycling newspapers and that kind of thing. (Perhaps you've noticed that I haven't been answering blog comments in recent days. I have just been too slammed. I'll do better, I promise.)

At noon we had our big school-wide celebratory luncheon in the gym, where we bid adieu to the people who are leaving with speeches and a slideshow. One of those people is my boss and her husband, who are moving back to the states -- though as I may have written before, my boss has taken a last-minute temporary job as one of our colleagues' maternity replacements, so she'll be back for six months during the next school year.

After the luncheon, she was headed to Selfridge's to run an errand and I needed to find a birthday present for Dave, so I tagged along.

It's always interesting to go to Selfridge's and wander among the rather eccentric fashions. These oversized Gucci sweatshirts with Patrick Nagel designs were eye-catching, but that shirt costs £2,200, so needless to say I won't be buying one. Remember Nagel's cover for Duran Duran's "Rio" album? We all had that record in the '80s.

After making our purchases (I got some fun socks for Dave, which weren't too ridiculously expensive) we went to the rooftop bar. I had an Aperol spritz as we gazed out over the rooftops. Fortunately my boss had an extra pair of sunglasses because it was freakin' bright up there. I looked like Jackie O on a bad day but my eyes were comfortable.

Afterwards we weren't quite ready to go home, so we went...

...to a shopping and restaurant complex housed in a former church in Mayfair. We got a couple of gin-and-tonics and took in the atmosphere.

Dave, who was out with his own co-workers, was home by this time, so I joined him and Olga for dinner and an episode of the new season of "Black Mirror" on Netflix (which we love). And now, for two months, I am free, free, free!

The End, and None Too Soon

Bob wins the prize (there is no prize) for solving the mystery of the photo upload button on Blogger. Apparently I had inadvertently increased the type size on my screen, which made several of the controls slip into the drop-down menu behind the three dots. I decreased the type size by just one click and they all reappeared again. Thanks, Bob!

I have no idea how I managed to do that. And sorry for inflicting that conversation on those of you who don't blog and thus don't care.

Yesterday was a day for tidying up at work. I took down displays and re-shelved all our remaining books. I also had to move four bookcases' worth of books, because the maintenance guys have to break into the wall behind them in order to remodel an air conditioning system. (There's always something like that happening over the summer at school.) I had a father come in to pick up some last-minute books for his son.

We also had a meeting with our head of school to debrief about the end of the book challenge, and how that all worked out. It was nice because I got a shout-out -- she said she'd talked to a parent who praised me for giving good book suggestions. Woo hoo!

And there was an all-school meeting at which the head-of-school gave us a moving goodbye, because she was serving on an interim basis until a new permanent head was hired. He will begin this summer and will be on board when we reconvene in the fall.

Today there's more tidying before our big year-end luncheon, and then we're officially done. And none too soon, either. I always feel like the end of the year just drags on and on. It's a long, long goodbye, which is silly because most of us will be back in two months.

(Photo: A Hampstead street scene.)

Ah, Technology

Bee on wallflower

Has anyone else noticed that the tools for adding photos and links to blog posts in Blogger have moved into the drop-down menu, rather than sitting atop the composition field? Why on earth did Blogger make this change, I wonder? Now every time I want to upload a photo or link I have to click the three dots for the drop-down, which is an extra click. Annoying.

I'm having tech issues with my iTunes, too. On my computer my music library looks fine, but on my iPhone, the album covers are all mixed up -- when I'm playing Adele I'm seeing Boz Scaggs, and when I'm playing the Alan Parsons Project I'm seeing Cocteau Twins. Syncing the phone doesn't help. I've done Google searches about how to fix this -- it seems to be a common problem -- and many people dispute the proposed solutions, so I'm still trying to figure it out. I suppose it doesn't matter, really, as long as I can hear the music, but it bothers me.

Two days of work left! Will I survive? I feel as though I'm limping across a finish line, but at this point it's just tedium, really. The kids are gone, so it's a matter of tidying and doing any last-minute checkouts. Tomorrow will be mostly school meetings. I did get to come home early yesterday, which was nice -- I sat out on the garden bench and finished a New Yorker.

Speaking of which, I have to decide whether to renew. (Sigh...) I suppose I will. That magazine makes me crazy with its frequency but there's no question I learn a lot from it. And though I've talked about going all-digital, the fact is I'd be less likely to read it if I didn't have a paper copy in front of me. So I guess I'll bite the bullet, even though it is exquisite torture.

Our pink Asiatic lilies have opened...

...and our brook thistles are blooming...

...as is our sage, though it's coming to an end.

The patio is looking very colorful, with the new foxglove I got at Homebase and our orange Peruvian lilies and pink cascading geranium. That geranium is really going gangbusters.

Creamsicle Rose and the Tornado

I deadheaded our roses on Monday. Most of the blossoms I cut were withered or collapsing, or even just a bare rose hip, but this one still had a little life in it so I put it on the windowsill for a day or two. It's one of just two flowers that came on one of our more particular rose plants. Doesn't it look like a Creamsicle?

It's funny that in yesterday's post I was complaining about being so busy at work -- because yesterday then turned out to be dead. The seniors have graduated, the high school underclassmen are mostly done, and many of the middle schoolers were away on day trips. My prayers were answered! I got a quiet day to just chill at my desk, re-shelve books and get organized.

Today is just a half-day, in the morning. The high school and middle school staffs then go off to their end-of-the-year parties and since I don't technically work for either, I'm going to come home. (We have an all-school luncheon on Friday, and I'll be at that.)

Remember the tornado? Well, that situation is finally resolved. It's taken awhile because for all the challenged books -- there were eight of them -- we had to convene review panels, read the books, have meetings to come up with recommendations and submit those to the head of school. She then sought legal and professional advice and made a final determination, and on Monday we finally got an answer on the fate of the books. Seven of the eight go back to the shelves, with access essentially unchanged. One will remain in the library catalog but for now will be housed in the high-school counselor's office, rather than on library shelves. If a student of suitable age wants it, either the librarian can retrieve it or the student can go get it themselves.

It's not a perfect solution. But it's not terrible. At least we're keeping everything.

The school has never publicly named the titles, so I don't want to do so either, but they include commonly challenged books you've read about in the states, with many mentioned in the original article about the whole kerfuffle. As I've said before, I cannot vouch for the assertions made in that article. (This issue, incidentally -- removing books from school libraries -- doesn't seem to ignite parents in the UK to the same degree as those in the US, which is interesting. As I've probably said before, it's my perception that religion motivates conservative politics in the states more than it does here.)

Here's Olga, patiently waiting to be let inside after one of our walks. I'm posting this picture to show you the blooming valerian along our front steps. It got a bit trampled by the workers who were here rebuilding the bathroom -- I suppose they couldn't very well worry about flowers when they were lugging bathtubs up and down the steps. But valerian is tough and the flowers persisted.

And here's a bonus shot of Olga with our volunteer snapdragon!

Did you hear about Treat Williams dying in a motorcycle crash? Such a shame. I loved him in "Hair," which was one of my favorite movies when I was infatuated with hippie culture as a teenager, and I saw him on Broadway in "Follies" when I lived in New York. I found it poignant that he tweeted about the wonderful smell of freshly-mowed grass on the same day he died. Gather ye rosebuds!

A Broken Orchid

The dog got me up at 4:45 a.m. today. Thanks, dog.

We've had a minor disaster with one of our orchids. Early in its blooming cycle, something bored a hole into a leaf and part of the flower stalk -- I assume some kind of insect, though I never saw one. It didn't seem to harm the plant, which went on to bloom just fine. Until, that is, the weight of the blooms became so heavy that the stalk broke at its weakened point. I found it lying on the windowsill, barely attached to the plant, the flowers wilting.

I put it in water so we can at least enjoy it for a while, though I don't think it will last as long as it would if still attached. We'll see.

In happier plant news, remember that geranium I severely pruned? I saved one of the cuttings and put it in soil, and it has taken root and even bloomed! The original plant has leafed out a bit too, but it's still looking pretty twiggy overall. Time will tell how well it recovers.

I had a busy weekend. Aside from walking Olga on Saturday, I planted all my sunflower and datura seedlings. I put most of the sunflowers in the ground (as above) and I put the daturas in bigger pots. My foxglove seedlings are still too small to move.

I also finished "The Magic Kingdom" -- FINALLY. I now have to catch up on several weeks of The New Yorker.

Speaking of which, this is the newest cover -- "The Look of Pride" by Sasha Velour. Don't you LOVE THAT? So energetic and colorful and contemporary for the legendarily staid magazine.

In other happy news (aside from the geranium), I think I may have fixed my big camera. I switched out the data card and cleaned the lens contact points with a cotton swab and rubbing alcohol, and they seem to work. Not sure how long this will last, but I'm eager to be able to use the camera again. I love the phone and its convenience, but there's no question the camera takes better pictures.

Today's our last full day of school with students. I have been feeling besieged lately -- there are people around me ALL THE TIME, kids demanding books and people asking me questions and hovering around my desk. I am desperately ready to retreat into summer vacation! Just gotta hold on a few more days!