Intermission with Cricket

Olga and I came across this sign on Scrubs Lane on Saturday. Curious, isn't it? I love the ambiguity -- is it talking about our Covid-related "intermission" from normal life, or just an "intermission" between purchased advertising on that particular billboard?

Well, I looked into it, and it turns out this is a project by artist Fiona Banner. Here's an article about it -- full of head-spinning "art speak," for those of you who like that sort of thing. ("Ekphrastic transcriptions," for example. What the hell?)

An excerpt: The signs "are arrant demands we pause and acknowledge the epic and everyday sacrifices made during this pandemic interlude, yes, but also to recognise affirmative sides to the social, economic and political impacts of Covid-19. According to Banner the enforced intermission from capitalism affords an opportunity (and) we really should not 'piss it away'; instead it’s time to rethink, recalibrate our addiction to consumer culture. 'We are being told the intermission is over, we’re being told to go shopping and buy stuff. I think we should be questioning whether the intermission is really over. The climate emergency is not over.'"

Let's take an intermission from high-flying artistic statements and look at the garden.

For the second year, our Chinese lantern plant has given us exactly one lantern. That's better than none, but I'm not sure why this plant isn't producing them by the dozens, the way other lantern plants seem to. It produces lots of flowers but they don't seem to lead to lanterns. Maybe we need to put it in the ground. Maybe it's not happy in its pot.

Our primroses are putting forth another burst of blossoms. I'd forgotten that they bloom in fall as well as spring. (Apparently!)

Finally, Olga and I took a long walk to Hampstead Heath yesterday. I was surprised she wanted to go, given our walk the day before, but she was enthusiastic. Once again, I think that anti-inflammatory medicine has done wonders for her. While on the Heath we saw a cricket game in full swing -- I find cricket rather bewildering but it was very English to see all the players in their white sweaters. We also saw boys playing football with a coach, about three dozen picnicking families and at least a hundred kids on the playground at Golders Hill Park. No one seemed to be thinking about masks and social distancing, but I read an article saying that London's Covid infection rate is now apparently very low -- much lower than several cities farther north, which are back in lockdown. No one is sure why that is, but I'm not complaining!

Train, Canal and Scrubs

A momentous day yesterday -- my first use of public transportation since mid-March! I decided to take Olga to Wormwood Scrubs, and in order to go there we need to get on the Overground. Many of my colleagues are using transport to come to work each day, and I figured, if they can do it every day, I can do it once. (Well, twice -- once there and once back.)

Olga and I were happy for the change of scenery and the opportunity to walk along the Grand Union Canal (above), paved with bright green duckweed. There were tons of bicyclists zooming up and down the towpath. I read that bicycle sales skyrocketed during lockdown, so maybe I was seeing evidence of that.

It's always colorful along the canal. Dave and I watched an episode of "Gardener's World" the other day that featured a person who gardens atop a narrowboat in this area. I couldn't figure out which boat might be hers, though -- if it's even still there. They do move around. (For example, I saw the "Success!" boat that I noticed while walking the Capital Ring last summer!)

Olga was very insistent that we stay on the canal and we walked much farther than we normally would -- all the way to Ladbroke Grove. (I'm serious -- I tried to take our normal turn from the canal directly to the Scrubs and she planted her paws and refused!) We then cut back toward the Scrubs through the neighborhoods of North Kensington. We didn't do a full circle of the park because by the time we got there Olga was getting tired -- but as you can see, she was very happy.

Someone left appalling racist graffiti ("whites only") on this bench and someone else turned it into a recipe: "Egg whites only to make meringue." Brilliant, if you ask me.

We walked back to the rail station along Old Oak Common Lane, which like many roads in London is a snarl of traffic these days. Work crews are laying cable for faster broadband (or something) and traffic diversions like this one are not unusual, complete with road signs reminding pedestrians to social distance.

The good thing about the Overground trains is just that -- they're above ground and they have some circulating air. They're also wide compared to the tube. So I felt pretty safe on them. (Everyone is required to wear a mask on London public transport, and fortunately I only saw one person doing that useless below-the-nose thing.)

Distancing, Corn Chips and Kitty

After just a few days of being on campus with all our students, I'm already convinced that social distancing in school is completely impossible.

There are just too many kids, and too many spaces (like hallways) that are impossible to navigate without joining a crowd. I can do it, because I'm not moving around between classes or going to lunch at peak times. But the kids have no choice. Yes, they're all wearing masks, and I'm sure that helps. But the school has apparently abandoned attempts to get kids to travel in certain directions and dictate the flow of hallway traffic -- because, well, kids.

And honestly, many of them seem completely unconcerned. We have signs up all over the library asking them not to move furniture and to keep distance (which means a max of two to a table), and yet twice now I've found three kids all sitting together, virtually shoulder-to-shoulder.

One teacher was telling me he watched one student chew on an ink pen and then loan the same pen to his friend -- right out of his mouth!

I'm also not sure how well these "bubbles" are working -- keeping kids in smaller groups to reduce exposure in case someone gets sick. I'm hearing that the bubbles are quite often broken.

This is going to be an interesting year.

In other news, although Olga will eat virtually anything, I've discovered something she's not crazy about. Corn chips!

It's surprising, right?! You'd think she'd go for fat and salt. But no!

Dave and I watched an interesting documentary on Thursday night called "The Witness," about the famous murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964. The initial news accounts of her killing reported that 38 neighbors watched as she was stabbed to death in three separate attacks, and didn't even call the police. The documentary picks apart the details of those reports and shows that they were incorrect in critical ways -- people did call the police, many didn't "watch" the crime (they may have heard shouting but they weren't sure what it was), and there were two attacks, not three. I found it quite interesting (although I could have done without the re-enactment of the crime). I was prompted to watch it when I read the obituary last week of one of the witnesses, who held Genovese as she died.

The case illustrates how even top journalists, in pursuit of a good story, can punch up certain details and elide others, ultimately (and probably unintentionally) leading to an incorrect overall report.

(Top photo: A leaf on the sidewalk in St. John's Wood.)

Saxifrage and Carpeting

I found these low-growing flowers around some stonework in the cemetery. It's either saxifrage or sedum, I think. (I'm going with saxifrage in the headline just because I like the name!)

There's a bee on that little clump of blossoms right in the middle. Here's a close-up:

Yesterday was the first day back with all of our students. It was a busy day. We were already checking out books for the fifth graders and some of the other middle schoolers -- they'd tell us what they wanted and we'd collect it and deliver it to their classrooms. That's going to be our method, keeping them in their "bubbles" and isolating some students from others. It's hard to explain, but the idea is, if any of them get sick, only other students in that "bubble" will have to quarantine. I actually don't even deliver books myself -- the middle school librarian does it, keeping me out of the "bubbles."

I was also deleting departed patrons from the system and trying to track down a few who left school with some of our books in their possession. (In a few cases, stacks of our books.)

Remember my Newbery Medal reading project -- to read all the books that have won the Newbery? I put it on pause over the spring and summer but now I'm picking it up again, too.

Oh, and thanks for all your helpful hints yesterday on opening jars! Honestly, the one I mentioned yesterday was the first jar we haven't been able to get open with plain ol' hand-twisting. I think I will buy one of those gripper things, though -- because that difficulty might be a harbinger of the future!

My brother has been going through some of my mom's old paperwork, and we've been amused by some of what she saved. Here, for example, is the receipt for the $845 she and my dad spent on wall-to-wall carpeting in 1970! (It's dated just two days after my brother was born, so I'm guessing my dad schlepped to the store and made the payment.) We had this carpet in our house for the next 20-plus years, and when I mentally picture our living room I still see avocado-colored carpeting. I never knew its name was "Plaza Suite." A sculptured shag, I guess you'd call it.

What's funny is, she not only kept the receipt long after she had this carpet replaced in the '90s -- she even moved the receipt after she sold the house! She wouldn't consciously attribute any emotional importance to it, but I wonder if it made her think of a time when she was young and her kids were babies, and her marriage hadn't yet foundered. Maybe she just couldn't quite bring herself to throw it out.

Found Negatives

Wow, am I ever running late today! I just woke up about ten minutes ago, and I have to leave the house at 7:30. So this is going to be a very short post.

You'll notice that today's pictures are a bit unusual. When I was walking through St. John's Wood on Tuesday, I saw a strip of negatives lying in the street. It had been run over by cars and probably got wet in the rain, but it was so surprising to find film lying around that I couldn't resist picking it up. I brought it home and put it through my negative scanner.

I'm thinking these were taken in South Asia, maybe India or Pakistan, and it looks like some type of celebratory gathering. I believe there are only men in the pictures, which suggests a country where the genders are separated for such events.

There's something cool about rescuing one-of-a-kind images that could have been lost forever -- even though these are so damaged they're pretty much lost anyway. But hey, some artists really try for this distressed look. In New York you'd pay money to see work like this!

Dave and I had a funny experience last night. We were trying to open a jar of Mexican tomatillo salsa, and neither of us could do it. We used towels and oven mitts; we braced it on the floor. We tried and tried and that jar lid would not budge.

"We're so gay!" said Dave.

I replied, "Are we gay, or are we old?"

(The obvious answer, I suppose, is both.)

We belatedly saw a little note on the lid of the jar: "If lid is stiff, please tap the lid on the side." Clearly the manufacturers knew this could be a problem. So I got a knife handle and tapped all around, as hard as I dared without endangering the glass. And it worked! The lid finally popped off. The salsa was actually made in Mexico -- maybe they seal it up tight to ensure it survives its overseas journey?

A Birthday Surprise

First day back with students yesterday -- and not all of them, just a subset. It went OK and it was good to see some of the kids again, but we're clearly still developing our ideas about how everyone should move through the building safely. When I went to the cafeteria at lunch the food service area was a mob scene.

I had a busy day, including a trip to the post office. I mailed that book back to the Barnet libraries -- the one I tried to take up to Childs Hill a few days ago. I found that I couldn't return it locally, so I just sent it to them. Job done.

And then, speaking of mail, when Dave and I got home, we found an unexpected package on our doorstep.

Remember how Dave's parents in Michigan sent him a present for his birthday, June 22? Yeah, we didn't either. They mailed it on May 27 and it never arrived, and because they'd misplaced the tracking number we couldn't even check its progress. We'd pretty much given up on it. Well, lo and behold, there it was -- looking quite battered and tired but apparently intact.

Here's a little sticker on the mailer that gave us pause. New Zealand?!

We tracked the package, now that we had the number, and sure enough, it was in an international mail hub in New Zealand on August 18. That's the earliest tracking we could get -- either its earlier movements went untracked or the tracking had already been deleted from the post office's computer systems. So who knows where it was before that.

The important thing, I suppose is that Dave now has his Wrangler denim shorts and Amazon gift card.

Speaking of the first day of school -- here's mine! The year was 1972, and I was so proud of that purple outfit. I thought the shirt's ring-pull zipper was the coolest thing ever. All I remember about that day (I think it was the same day) is that I didn't fully understand the school bus, and as I was riding home, I cried when it passed my house without letting me off. (It was headed to the bus stop down the street.) The driver had to reassure me we were going to stop!

(Top photo: Basing Hill Park, a few days ago.)

Bank Holiday Turaco

Yesterday was the UK's August bank holiday, so we didn't have to go to work. Andrew was wondering why we have this particular holiday, and as far as I can tell, it's just a sort of "farewell to summer." Unlike its counterpart in the USA, Labor Day, I don't think it has any specific commemorative meaning.

What a weird weekend it's been, too. There was a big demonstration in Trafalgar Square on Saturday by anti-mask, anti-vaccine activists convinced that the coronavirus is a hoax. (Or that it's caused by 5G technology, or that all vaccines are harmful, blah blah blah.) There was also one in Germany. Honestly, of all the things to worry about in the world, wearing a mask seems like a pretty minor imposition. I don't understand why people get so heated up about it.

People who get their news online from dubious sources, and then build on that by searching out more dubious information, eventually start marinating in their own crazy conspiratorial fantasies. I just read a fascinating article in The Atlantic about Q-Anon, and the New York Times recently had an equally interesting piece about the Boogaloo movement. Both build on the idea that mainstream (i.e. responsible) media aren't telling the real story, and people feel empowered to then ignore real news and go search out alternative explanations that reaffirm their skepticism. And even though those explanations are basically made of popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue, they take them on with an almost religious fervor.

I put it all down to a failure of education. People don't understand how to do research, determine cause and effect, and discriminate between reasonable and unreasonable assertions. And they don't value professional journalism, which really does exist for a reason.

I had a pretty busy day -- lots of housework and mowing the lawn, followed by a walk through the cemetery with Olga. I'm often intrigued by the headstones there, some of which give almost dynastic histories of certain families. This one is pretty interesting -- the Neresheimers were German jewelers and silver manufacturers, and Louis apparently helped run the company's New York offices before moving to London. (Note that the headstone doesn't mention he was born in Germany.) His wife Adele was born in New York during the Civil War, and died in Paris in 1924. They sound like an elegant crowd, don't they?

While there, I heard the turaco, and since I hadn't seen it in months and was lugging my heavy camera and zoom lens, I decided to make the effort to track it down. I followed its call to several different trees, but the minute I got there it would swoop away. (Olga trudged along behind me, obviously wondering why I was dragging her hither and yon.) The turaco finally paused in the very top of a tall dead tree, and drew a small crowd of admirers. My pictures wouldn't win any awards -- it was hard to get a good shot against that bright sky, and I had to stand well back to see it from the side rather than directly below -- but I was satisfied.

I also finally finished "The Likeness" by Tana French, which I enjoyed even though I found it wildly ridiculous. The premise is that a detective looks so much like a certain murder victim that she impersonates her and goes undercover among her friends -- who don't know their real compatriot is dead -- to find the killer. Are you kidding me? Even Q-Anon seems more plausible! Still, French is a good storyteller and she somehow made it work.

(Top photo: A wildflower gone to seed at the cemetery.)