The tune your bones play as you keep going

February snow for us today, after a freak February fake spring Wednesday that reached nearly 65 degrees. I went out that afternoon with my long lopping shears and attacked the Rosa rugosa, carefully tossing the thorny branches over our tall fence into the back yard. I made it out nearly unscathed, just one fingertip embedded with the tiny spikes (my ferocious gardening regularly wears holes in my good work gloves). In the end, I took pity on one very small clump of rugosa, but I may reconsider and shear it to the ground (I should. I probably will). After the ground thaws, I'll dig up as many of the roots as I can...my eventual plan is to replace it with this and this and maybe this and this.

But I'm here now, and now there's dry snow rushing from the sky in clouds, greying the windows. We walked Clover over to Deering Oaks into wind that was shockingly cold, snow that felt sharp on our faces. She chased sticks up and down the hill, and we watched passing plows push plumes of snow into the air along the highway beside the park. The walk home put the wind at our backs. I was thinking about Ukraine the whole time, wondering what the weather is like there right now.*

Abominable Snow Dog

*It's raining lightly in Kyiv, and residents are barricading themselves in their homes, having been instructed how to make Molotov cocktails.

Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.

The pandemic can apparently be blamed on...Maine lobster. 

Driving in the countryside on Friday, we passed a sign that said "Death and Breakfast." Halloween-themed B&B, I guess.

We also saw the White Mountains as we drove; I know they're wee as far as mountains go, but they always make me say "Oh!"

And then Melissa got married, which was the loveliest. 

See what I mean? The loveliest.

Oh! And then I got to join Holly and Maia for a drizzly outdoor breakfast, then rally for reproductive rights with them and my girl. I love how 100% of the people you see at such gatherings are wearing masks and giving you space. 

On Sunday, Adam and I went for one last dogwalk before he heads back to SF for a spell. And Zoë indulged me by helping me figure out my beautiful new game, which as it turns out is fun to play and also, birds. 

And then Clover got skunked. I always run out of bandaids and tylenol, but let me tell you, I am never without a quart of hydrogen peroxide and a box of baking soda. 

A puzzle, a monster puzzle, a heavy choking, a neglected Tuesday*

I asked recently what someone's job was, made a note so I'd remember: cloud engineer. Now when I see the phrase (I wrote it on a work thing, I see it every day), I picture an adorable cartoon about a smiling young man who works overnight designing and building clouds. 

Part of my work these days involves trolling several news sites for stories and associated words that might be interesting from a vocabulary/etymology viewpoint. The stories can't be too violent or terrible, or controversial, or generally involve Israel or Tr*mp. There can't be too many Covid ones in a row, or, you know, an overload of environmental catastrophe. Adults might read this thing, but so will 12-year-olds. Hoo boy. You're generally left with a new prime minister in Samoa and a tiny computer on a snail and an upset in men's basketball.

Yesterday I watched a squirrel fall from above, abruptly, like the frogs in Magnolia. He hit the fence, tumbled head-over-tail several times, and landed in the Hostas. I seriously thought he was dead, made Mark go check, and then investigated myself this morning. There's no sign of a body, so I guess he staggered off? The plants are thick there so I'll keep looking.

It's a trick question, they're both correct.

*Gertrude Stein is making more and more sense to me lately, which may be evidence of a brain defect?

As an elephant draws itself out of the mud

In world news, I heard a few weeks ago on the BBC that China's famous Strong-willed Pig "died of old age and exhaustion." 

Remembering Mom's watch giving her a list of Star Wars movies she didn't recall asking for. 

The bright green lizard on the brick wall of the patio, Z and Isaac laughing out there when we were all three, magically, in Durham simultaneously (Adam too!).

How funny it is when you actually hear someone saying "Yoohoo," a thought I had just now when I heard someone yoohooing at my next door neighbor.

A dance class in the park, a group of a dozen people practicing their moves (salsa?) in slow motion.

I would swim the seas for to ease your pain

Reminding myself of the chill I got the first time I got a New York Times breaking news email that was coronavirus-related but didn't specifically mention coronavirus. The assumption that 100% of everybody knew exactly what they were referring to. And then a Portland Press Herald headline: NEW CASES SURGE. Just the fact that there was no need to specify cases of WHAT.

Isaac ventured out to the grocery store for the first time in a while, and he wore his suit to do it. It was an event. I've been going the opposite route, hair scraped into a ponytail for maximum mask ease. Gray mask. For a while I was carefully applying mascara before I went into the world, because we're all 100% eyeballs now, but the last few times I didn't even do that. It's all about comfort, and pockets for keeping my debit card handy. Last time I went to Hannaford, I got carded for my tiny box of cooking wine, and I had to scrabble around in search of my wallet and then rifle through it for my driver's license (these masks, they hamper downward peripheral vision, have you noticed?). The whole time I was thinking Really? Do you see these eyeballs? I'm fifty-two goddamn years old and I'm buying 12 ounces of bad white wine.

We've had some days warm enough to open the windows, and it's made this whole situation feel a little easier, although from the look of things it's also made people feel like it's probably fine if they meet up with friends and stand close together, and in the case of my cigar-smoking neighbor, smoke stinky cigars en masse, defiantly. Even Isaac and Edna can't stay away from Christian, who comes by in his sharp outfits (brightly colored jackets and crazy shoes, velvet and suede and satin) so they can take long, socially-distanced walks together and sit, spaced apart, in the back yard.

Gus has stayed with us long enough to celebrate his eighth birthday! He naps so deeply these days, buried deep enough in sleep that I have to put a hand on his side to make sure he's breathing. At night, he snores more loudly than ever. He's taken to eating dirt sometimes, seeming a tiny bit confused at others, but mostly he's still 100% Gus.

I took little Clover to the beach this morning. I like to think that we both looked at this cottage and dreamed of living there, a step away from the sand, with the constant sound of wind and waves.

Come visit any time!

Wait, they don't love you like I love you

Every street in The Original Portland.

This is fun — it generates a drawing of every street in a city or town of your choice. It's cool to see big cities, but I kind of like the tiny villages even better (I tried Brooklin, Maine and Katonah, New York).

In other map news, that thing with Mike Pompeo and Mary Louise Kelly! I...I don't even know what to say about it, except that I deeply admire her intelligence, persistence, and ability to keep her cool. Not to mention how satisfying it is on some level that he got a blank map and made her point to Ukraine, which she (of course) did.


Updated to add: ridiculouser and ridiculouser, he claims she pointed to Bangladesh. We're all going to look back on this era and laugh. I hope.

I think it is important to be quiet and in love with park benches

I like to reminisce about how our long-ago instructor in dog class never did get that our dog's name was "Bird," and called him "Bert" instead, for weeks.

I had a dream the other night about nine year old Isaac with his long blond hair and pre-braces teeth. He was a little morose, and was listening to (I think) Death Cab For Cutie through giant headphones. 

Why didn't anyone tell me about these rainbow colored squirrels in India??

Rukmini Callimachi has the most beautiful, soothing voice I've ever heard. Just imagine if you could listen to her softly telling you bedtime stories as you fell asleep, or gently narrating your directions on Google Maps. Unfortunately, the stories she tells are mainly about the Islamic State. Seriously, though, her reporting is brave and masterful, and I recommend listening to Caliphate. 

A happy, ordinary life on the banks of Loch Ness

Funniest thing I found myself Googling this week: "Do capybaras get lonely?"

The luckiest woman in the world? (She has never felt pain or anxiety. And she lives in Scotland.)

The movie I am currently most enthusiastically looking forward to (although I know nothing about it apart from this trailer, it looks gorgeous and sad, MY FAVORITE):

Because of my falconry training

I'm so glad I got to meet the Black Hawk in person, skating by on actual ice skates (me, not the hawk), before his little feet got frostbitten and he was rescued by some intrepid cross country skiers.*

Noted, while walking the tundra-frozen byways of Portland the First today: some people shovel such incredibly narrow paths along their sidewalks. What do they use to do that? Tiny tiny shovels? Litter box scoops? And others are so sloppily excavated they look like they were done with frying pans (a thing I actually witnessed once, although it was a person shoveling their car out of a snowbank).





*He's doing better.

Impeach Facebook

As I contemplate quitting The Book of Faces and Twitter (I am definitely taking some time away from both this month), I've been making mental pro and con lists, trying to sort out what's positive and healthy, what's necessary or at least convenient, how I can use social media so it doesn't use me.

Some of the pertinent issues I'm facing with loosening my connection are getting news, learning about cool stuff, connecting with other people, expressing myself.

I still use an RSS reader almost every day, where I read blogs, basically (are they all blogs? Do we still call them blogs?). I still blog, with (obviously) great irregularity and half-heartedness. Does anyone besides my mom still read it? Do I care? (I'm not implying that I don't, just that I'm uncertain.)

My brother is thinking of doing a newsletter, which I would enthusiastically add to my list of newsletters, and would read with even more enthusiasm than I read the ones I already subscribe to! I add and subtract them as the whim takes me. I am not a paying subscriber to any of them (which often gets you extra issues/deals/info), at least not yet. Maybe I want to write a newsletter? Do I?


Newsletters I always love:

Laura Olin (Everything good. She describes it as lovely/meaningful things, and it is!)
The Collected AHP from Anne Helen Petersen

Newsletters I almost always love:

Leah Finnegan
Brainpickings
Carrie Frye's Black Cardigan
Austin Kleon
Strange Times ("...a day-by-day rereading of the weirdest articles printed in the 1921 New York Times. Starring gangsters, killers, bootleggers, madmen and jazz, it is a weekly reminder that the past was stranger than we think.")

Newsletters I sometimes love:

R. Eric Thomas's Here For It
Two Bossy Dames
Jamie Varon's Friday Letters
The Shatner Chatner (Oh how I want it to be the Toast, but alas, it is not.)

I Want a Dog Named Laika

I don't need a dog named Laika, because I've got a whole lot of dog in Mr Gus. HOWEVER, I do sometimes dream of a little sister for Gus* who would love me best.

I am thinking of taking a Book of Faces hiatus, just a week or so. It has more to do with politics and the news than anything else right now. I think it would be good for my mental health to avoid social media and even lighten my consumption of NPR for a spell.

(I keep thinking about the above idea and NOT DOING IT, which is in keeping with my adult onset, Internets-related ADD, but oh well. As my dad would say, "Squirrel?")

In other news, I should've been a kindergarten teacher because I want all the clothes with little animal prints, like this and this and this. And I prove to myself daily what a little old lady I'm becoming. E.g. I just ordered some new reading glasses online and I am pretty much beside myself with excitement.



*I've said this before, but I'm pretty sure Gus thinks of me as "that nice lady who lives with Master and me."

Six

I saw a headline on Twitter that said: Maine man accused of shaking baby to plead guilty. Doesn't it sound like the guy shook the baby to try to force it to plead guilty to something?

Will you meet me in the air?

1 // I throw my head to the heavens and ask, "WHY IS 'SISTER GOLDEN HAIR' PERMANENTLY STUCK IN MY HEAD? WHY O WHY?"

2 // Usually things are much more simple than we think, but occasionally they are way more fucked up and convoluted and crazy than we'd let ourselves believe.

3 // I am reading that great big fat book everybody's reading! Donna Tartt...The Goldfinch, that's the one! I like it. It has sucked me in and I stay up too late nightly reading just one more chapter.

4 // The dog is not my child, the dog is my friend, my dog, my beloved companion. It's just that the protocol at the dog beach seems to be that we refer to each other (us humans, that is), as "Blackie's mom" and "Sparky's dad." Mark and I do not do that, even though Mark secretly wants to run away with Gus and live in a little cabin in the woods.

5 // So much TV, but SO? You wanna make something of it? Also, see: book-reading, above. Most days, I also complete many hours of billable work, and clean the basement for an hour or so, and sometimes I even vacuum & such. We have started The Good Wife, and finished season one of The Leftovers.

6 // Still with that salad. It's so good.

7 // I need to not listen to the news for a while.

darkness cannot drive out darkness

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."


"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes...Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." *


Martin Luther King, Jr

*this is the authentic quote -- thanks, melissa!

it is SO not fair

they have such funny news items in cambridge, and there's really no equivalent here (at least not that i've come across -- like a good old fashioned police blotter compiled and edited by someone with a great sense of humor). my mom sends me things from wicked local cambridge all the time, and they're often laugh-out-loud funny. case in point:


Cambridge Man Threatens Woman With Frying Pan

By Auditi Guha
Wicked Local Cambridge
Posted Jan 26, 2010 @ 02:43 PM

A man who attacked a woman with a frying pan in his Cambridge home was arrested on Jan. 21, according to a police report. The 62-year-old Cambridge victim told police the suspect allegedly came towards her threateningly, a raised frying pan in his hand, causing her to “duck and back away.” She said she believed he was going to strike her with the pan and called police. The defendant told police he was cooking soup in the kitchen when the victim came in “like a hungry vulture.” All she does is “talk, talk, talk,” he added. He said they argued and she called him names so he lost his cool. He denied going after her with a frying pan. He also reportedly complained “she has time for everything in the world but me.” Swarn J. Singh, 70, of Cambridge was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. The pan was tagged as evidence.


***note: the above photograph is for illustrative purposes only. it was a fake altercation staged by me, my bruddie, and my mom in the kitchen at christmastime. our acting out of such scenes staved off any actual misbehavior for the entire visit.

russian commuter dogs

my very favorite recent international news story is about moscow's commuter dogs:

"The clever canines board the Tube each morning. After a hard day scavenging and begging on the streets, they hop back on the train and return to the suburbs where they spend the night."

there is a monument to a stray dog who was killed in one moscow subway station, a group of zoologists studying these dogs, and even a russian website devoted to metrodogs.

cake

i just heard this on the world, spoken by one of these g-20 summit tea party-style protesters:

cake asks the eater to trust that the baker means well.

it makes me want to bake cakes for all my friends and enemies!

funny prononciation on my radio

corey flintoff on npr : "marijuana." he says it with such a sort of spanish flare. "mare-uh-hwwwhana!"

everyone on the bbc: "condoms." they pronounce it in a kind of uptight british way. "con-doms." an american pronunciation would be like "con-dums." oh, okay. i guess we say it wrong. they also have a tendency to pronounce our president's first name, "bare-uk," like the word "barracks."

this guy on one of those boring midday cityclub talking shows: "hybrid." he was talking about hybrid cars, and he said the word over and over again, pronouncing it thus: "hy-bred."


there is also funny pronunciation going on on my telervision, via baltimore locals on the wire (which i LOVE LOVE LOVE - i don't think there's an actor in the world who can "do" the authentic white baltimore accent correctly).

opposite of the cute list

i need to come up with a personal category which is the opposite of my ongoing cute list. cases of animals (especially pets) mutilating humans (especially their faces) belong on such a list. this story would go on that hypothetical list (warning, do not read unless you want to learn more about a chimp ripping someone's nose off).

also on the yucky list or whatever would be this story, from boo:

enoch: we should play frisbee at deering oaks this summer.

boo: i don't like deering oaks anymore.

me: why not?

boo: i just don't like it ever since i saw a homeless guy skinning a bird there.

me: (!)

enoch: (!)

mistrial by iphone

i had a funny reaction to this article in the new york times today, which is about jurors screwing up trials by using their blackberrys and iphones to google defendants, twitter jury decisions before the trial is over, and make other smartphone-related infractions. so my first thought was, "would i do that if i were on a jury? would i blog and twitter and facebook-status about how the trial was going? lord knows i love to share the daily details of my life." then i realized no, of course i wouldn't, because 1) i am a huge fan of constitutional law and 2) i'm not an idiot and 3) i am a rule-follower. in fact, i tend to be a rule-follower almost to a fault, and sometimes i try to cure myself of it, for the sake of spontaneity and carpe diem, etc. (although actually i believe that it's kept many of my loved ones from mortal injury, and worse, getting yelled at). but if a judge frowned sternly at me over her judicial-looking glasses and instructed me not to go on the internets during the course of the trial, there's no way i'd disobey.

i've never been on a jury, or even called for jury duty. i'd actually really love to do it, and i promise to leave my iphone at home.