Someone asked the other day to see a photo of the library Monstera. Here it is. One of the maintenance guys, Jose, who cares for the library plants, always calls it a "she." He'll say, "She has been here a long time," or "She needs some new soil." I would add that "she" seems to thrive on neglect. She just hangs out in her corner and Jose waters her now and then. She has lived in the library as long as anyone can remember.
Our library windows desperately need a cleaning.
And as long as I'm uploading random pictures from work -- I walked past a colleague's office yesterday morning and caught a glimpse of this scene out of the corner of my eye. I thought, "Did they hang up a Ukrainian flag?"
But no.
In the Lower School, the kids celebrated their last day before Thanksgiving Break by wearing pajamas and bringing their favorite stuffed toy to school. Most kids had stuffed animals, but one kid had a stuffed plant! I was very impressed and asked him if I could photograph it.
Despite all these fun and games, yesterday was crazy busy. Just more of the same, but I did not have a spare moment except at my lunch break. Today, fortunately, is only a half-day and there are no kids. It's devoted to professional development involving AI. I will limp through it even though I don't really need or desire professional development at this point in my career. I suppose I must remain open to learning new things.
Last night Dave and I went out with our friend Chris to see a drag show in South London. A few weeks ago, Chris spotted an immensely tall drag queen standing in front of a tube station promoting her one-queen show, in which she time-travels and performs comedic bits. We decided to go. So yesterday we schlepped down to a pub for dinner and then a nearby one-room theater for Coco's performance. You could tell her act was still a bit "in development" but it was quite funny. I've never before seen a drag queen feign sex with Napoleon and sing "I Dreamed a Dream" while stuffing her mouth with cakes. Surreal!
Last night, after a long and exhausting day at work that is better not spoken about, I went with some friends to the Barbican to hear the photographer Annie Leibovitz talk about her new book, a two-volume set dedicated to portraits of women. My friend Colin offered me one of his extra tickets on Sunday, and I jumped at the chance because -- photography! (Even though the kind of portraiture that is Annie Leibovitz's specialty isn't really my kind of picture-taking.)
We met at the restaurant in the Barbican overlooking the central reflecting pond. Another co-worker, Mike, came as well. As you can see above, the church across the way already has its Christmas tree up and lit. We had a good dinner -- fish & chips and a gin & tonic for me, two essentially British pairings!
I tried to photograph the unusual round, concrete restrooms at the Barbican, but I couldn't get the whole space into a single frame. So I took a pano shot, which distorts things, but I think it turned out pretty well! The toilets themselves are around that curve at left. You can even see me in the mirror. The space looked like something out of "A Clockwork Orange," but I guess it must be incredibly easy to clean. You could just hose it down.
Anyway, the Leibovitz talk was a bit disappointing. As I told Mike and Colin afterwards, some people are visual communicators and some people are verbal, and Leibovitz is definitely the former. She started by showing slides of her earlier portraits of women, which featured in the first volume, but some slides contained about a dozen thumbnail pictures and it was hard to see them. She also basically just ran down the list of who was featured -- Elizabeth Taylor, Martha Stewart, Dolly Parton, etc. -- but she didn't tell many stories or talk much about the processes she uses to take her portraits. I would like to have heard more about how she gets people to relax, to reveal themselves.
Then she went through slides of the photos in the more recent volume, and then took a few questions in a disastrous Q&A. She declined to use the pre-submitted questions the Barbican had collected, and instead had the poor host trying to pass a microphone from the stage out to the audience, where the questions were often unfocused and Leibovitz was obviously having trouble hearing and understanding them. The questions rambled and the answers rambled.
So I wouldn't call it an altogether successful evening, but it was still interesting to see her and see her work. I suppose at the end of the day the pictures are supposed to speak for themselves, right?
She did talk about how London felt lighter to her, and less oppressed, than the United States does right now. She is clearly opposed to Trump's governance and threw in a few somewhat political remarks here and there. For example, she showed a picture of a room at the White House featuring portraits of the first ladies, and said something like, "Who knows if it still exists?"
The Hellebores are coming out again. Mrs. Kravitz's Polish gardener used to call them "Christmas roses" -- before he vanished, as all Mrs. K's gardeners eventually do. I think she fires them all. Anyway, I still think of Hellebores by that name. The white ones are blooming now -- the red ones haven't appeared yet and always come a bit later.
Speaking of Mrs. K, I haven't seen her in ages, or even heard her being belligerent with her gardeners. Of course it's not exactly a gardening time of year, so she may just be indoors, but normally I see some sign of her. I think she must be away again. And our neighbors upstairs are so well-behaved we barely know they're there. It's quite a change from how things used to be around here!
No Olga, no noisy neighbors -- what's my blog coming to?!
We had a bit of a scare yesterday. I was going through the bank statement when I found a charge for $31.72 -- yes, in U.S. dollars -- that I did not recognize. The debit was named UNHYYTERJP2, which was not helpful, and the charge came from Hong Kong. Of course this sent up alarm bells right away. I hadn't ordered anything online, and I asked Dave if he'd ordered anything and he said no.
It seemed a very weird and specific amount to be fraudulent, but I racked my brains and could come up with no legitimate reason this would be on our bank statement. So I tried to call the bank. This led to a vortex of automated phone hell that eventually told me their fraud office was closed (!) and I'd have to call back on Monday. I couldn't report it online unless I had their app, which I do not because I don't do any banking on my phone, ironically for security reasons.
When I Googled that payment name, I found a discussion thread of people questioning transactions with similar names, and they all had to do with Apple Pay. I don't use Apple Pay, but Dave does. So I suggested he go back through his payment history to see if anything would explain that charge. He wasn't sure how to do it, but he figured it out -- and BINGO! It turns out he ordered a board game online for his Dad and then forgot about it.
I was so relieved I forgot to be mad at him. I had visions of reporting fraud and having our cards canceled just as we are about to go to Tenerife later this week. What a headache that would have been.
I moved our little Mandarin orange tree outside again, now that the weather has warmed up. It has numerous little oranges on it (above) and seems to be having a very productive year. That spidery thing to the right of the fruit is a fallen leaf from the Russians' miniature Japanese maple on their terrace upstairs. (Yes, they moved, but they left all their plants behind with an automated watering system.)
Otherwise yesterday was quiet. I read more, took care of all the houseplants, and did some minor housework. Aside from the banking scare, a nondescript Sunday.
The avocado has been released, and looks none the worse for wear -- compared to the banana tree at lower left, which definitely got a bit frost-burned. (It freezes back every year. We don't even try to preserve it as it will leaf out again in the spring.)
And we had lots of rain yesterday, which no doubt helped freshen up the avocado too.
I stayed inside and made:
Yes! Front-porch squash soup! I only used one of the squashes, the one that looked the ripest (the bright orange one in this picture). I cut the squash into chunks, baked it, scraped it off the skin, pureed it with chicken stock, cumin, olive oil and salt & pepper, and served it topped with dried onions and toasted squash seeds. And in my case, accompanied by toasted rolls with peanut butter, which you can see at right on the floor.
Dave, who had ridiculed my plan to bake a squash that served as a porch decoration for the past month, had some too and agreed it was good, though he thought it needed more "backbone" and suggested I add cream to it. We didn't have any cream but I used a dash of milk instead and that did make it richer.
I was pretty darn proud of myself. I plan to eventually cook up the other two as well, if they look like they're suitable for eating. I won't know until I cut them open.
I spent the afternoon reading, cleaning, the usual stuff. I also downloaded the garden cam and found 358 videos (!), so it was a very active wildlife week in the garden!
I edited those videos down to nine action-packed minutes. Still too long, maybe, but it seemed the absolute minimum.
-- We start with Q-Tip and then Guy Fox, both sniffing the ground right in front of the camera. -- At 0:40, a brand-new cat! Who is this cat?! -- At 0:50, pigeon panic. -- At 0:57, Guy Fox is back, and makes a quick exit to the right. Hunting something? -- At 1:28 we get a daytime view of Q-Tip, which I always like so I can appreciate the foxes' red fur. He goes over the fence at right. -- At 1:56, squirrel shenanigans. -- At 2:06, the beginning of several clips showing both foxes together. Although it looks like night, these clips were taken about 5:40 p.m., which means Dave and I were up and around in the house. If we'd looked out the back door we could have seen these critters hanging out. -- At 3:27, one of them starts vigorously scratching and you can see fox dander (or hair) float past the camera! -- At 4:20, Guy Fox again. There's a lot of territory marking in this video, which may account for all the curious sniffing. -- At 5:08, Blackie saunters past. -- More fox activity, and then at 6:37, Pale Cat wanders by. Note the temperature: 34º F (about 1º C). -- At 6:45, two magpies toss aside fallen leaves, hunting for insects. -- At 6:58, we catch a fox with a string of sausages hanging out of its mouth! Where did those come from?! -- At 7:06, woodland utopia with pigeon hop. -- At 7:15, Q-Tip trots past, followed at 7:23 by his bark. It's an ungodly sound so don't let it scare you! -- At 7:40 we see another cat (Tabby, I think). -- At 7:48, Blackie walks past the bench, followed at a distance by Pale Cat, who stalks Blackie right past the camera.
OK, that was a lot! I admire you for sticking with it, unless you didn't and I don't blame you for that either. I'm well aware that nine minutes of foxes and cats is not entertaining to everyone. I did try to cut out anything superfluous, while still keeping enough variety to make things interesting. I had so much footage that I cut a lot of clips I would ordinarily have used.
I'm thinking I may be seeing multiple foxes out there, not just two. It's hard to tell.
Finally, last night, I was off to Bermondsey, where I snapped a photo of The Shard looming over this streetlit scene. I attended a birthday party for my co-worker Staci, which took place in a restaurant in one of those arches beneath the train tracks at left. I stayed a couple of hours, chatting with people from work, and had a couple of glasses of white merlot, which I didn't know was a thing. Dave didn't go, and curiously he suddenly feels better this morning. I suspected he'd improve once the threat of that party was past!
Sometimes on my lunch hour at work, after I eat, I sit in the corner of one of the library's quiet rooms and read or respond to blog comments. Yesterday I went in there and this was the scene (above). Is there any plant that makes a better shadow than a Monstera? I've blogged our library Monstera before -- it's been there longer and I have and longer than any of my immediate predecessors. I'm not sure anyone at the school can remember a time it wasn't resident in the library. (The plant itself is just around the corner to the left, by the window.)
I wound up not answering comments yesterday because I was shooting pictures of the shadows instead, and just letting my mind decompress. I did read them all, though, and appreciated every one!
Yesterday I worked with two Lower School classes. These first-graders (above) decided to slide beneath the couch to read their books, which I thought was pretty funny. (Their heads were sticking out the other side.) In case anyone ever asks you how many first-graders fit beneath a couch, now you know the answer -- at least three. I bet another one could have squeezed in there.
If I get ambitious today, I'm going to try to make soup with our front-porch pumpkins. I also hope to make more headway in "The Old Curiosity Shop," and I have an adult birthday party to attend this evening. Hopefully Dave will feel well enough to go with me. He seems better today. I felt a bit woozy yesterday afternoon, like I might be coming down with something, but the feeling subsided so maybe I've fended it off.
It's a comparatively balmy 40º F (4.4º C) as I write this, and the low temperatures won't be below 40º F for the foreseeable future. Liberating the avocado from its sheath is also on the day's agenda.
I'm not sure how this happened, but it is somehow already 7:34 a.m. as I write this, and I have to leave at 8 a.m. to get to work on time. So blogging today will have to be speedy! Clearly I overslept, partly because Dave isn't feeling well and plans to stay home, so I didn't have the benefit of his alarm going off at 5:45 a.m. (Though usually I wake up naturally earlier than this.)
Maybe the cold weather has activated my hibernating instincts. That's our birdbath (above) yesterday morning -- a solid block of ice.
Work was pretty slow yesterday. The Model United Nations group has been holding a mini-conference in the library in the afternoons with students from other London schools. It means a lot of people and a lot of activity, but there's not a lot for me to do -- none of them are really using library resources, just the space. So I mostly wind up hanging out. I did work on gathering our monthly usage statistics yesterday and filling out that spreadsheet, so at least I had a task to work on in the background.
I came across the book above in the Lower School and sent it to my brother with the caption, "The world is going down the toilet!" The Hardy Boys, in my day, were relatively sophisticated mystery books, or at least that's how I remember them. They were not skinny paperbacks of cartoon characters worrying about zombies.
But...this prompted me to read about the history of the Hardy Boys books on Wikipedia, which brought the revelation that the books were actually shortened and rewritten even before I was a child, to compete with television and "dwindling attention spans." (And to remove offensive racial and ethnic stereotypes.) So I can hardly claim to be a Hardy Boys originalist, though I think I did read some of the originals when I found my uncle's old copies at my grandmother's house in Maryland.
I loved Hardy Boys books when I was young. I read dozens of them. They practically taught me to read. I specifically remember developing the skill of skipping over words I didn't know and then surmising the meaning based on the context. I taught myself a lot of words that way.
To be fair, the book above is actually a special Hardy Boys offshoot series targeted toward younger readers, featuring Frank and Joe Hardy in grade school. So it's not representative of the state of the franchise as a whole, though I'm not sure how well read the series is these days. We have some in our library and they rarely get used.
I did bring in that orange rose to save it from the freeze. I'm appreciating it a lot more on our kitchen windowsill than I would be outdoors!
And with that, I'm off to work -- at 7:52 a.m. Not a bad blog post for eighteen minutes of writing!
Well, I managed to get the avocado wrapped up yesterday morning before I went to work. Dave had to leave before me so it wound up being a solo job, but at least I had the benefit of daylight. It was perfect timing, too, because about two hours later it was snowing.
I wired a bamboo pole to the avocado's trunk, to hold the peak of the wrapping above the foliage. Then I used two more poles to lift the shroud over the top of the tree, and then clipped a second shroud around the base. Hopefully that's enough.
I considered color-correcting that photo above, because it's so blue -- but that's what the thin morning light looks like at this time of year. So I left it.
When I checked my phone a little while ago it was 30º F outside (about -1º C) and it's usually a tad warmer on the patio, so I'm optimistic. I'll leave the tree shrouded into the weekend, when it's supposed to warm up again.
I was in the Lower School when the snow started falling yesterday morning and the little kids' faces lit up like it was Christmas. Of course they're all so young they may have never seen snow before, or not remembered it, anyway. It melted as soon as it landed, but it was pretty while falling.
I read a disturbing story in The New York Times yesterday about the growth of Orthodox Christianity among young converts, who see it as a strong, masculine, demanding religious tradition. A certain strain of young, conservative men like the patriarchal structure, the beards, the emphasis on family and tradition -- and the idea that it's Christianity closer to the "source." Of course I have nothing against Orthodoxy, particularly for those who are born into it, but it's worrisome that young men seek it out for perhaps not the healthiest of reasons (and risk distorting the religion in the process). Apparently the growth of the church is partly due to online influencers, which of course makes me suspect the malign hand of certain international actors.
And now I read that young Spaniards are drawn to Franco and the Spanish government is trying to find ways to educate people about the terrors of his regime.
Is this a generational thing, a pendulum effect? People who are too young to know what authoritarianism really is, being drawn to it? What is this need for a big boss daddy, for discipline and structure? Why are kindness and compassion seen as "feminine" weakness (an inherently misogynist association)? Maybe now that we're seeing authoritarian tendencies creep into our own governments and our daily lives (at least in the USA, but potentially also in the UK with the rise of Reform) younger people will begin to see the downsides and better appreciate freedom and liberalism. Wishful thinking?
