In which we do all the usual summertime things (except see a movie)

As usual, while Sadie and I walked MAH to work we discussed the blogs. (Ahem, clearly Sadie was not an active participant in the discussion.) He pointed out that we had all of last week to get caught up with on this blog. Last week is a blur to me. MAH had out-of-the-Boro meetings on Thursday and Friday and he was still wrestling with some pesky spreadsheets every night after work. I got myself caught up with helping someone who was having some problems with the Mother Ship, which meant a lot of emails back and forth with various people. But, as Friday afternoon came to a close, I think I managed to get a happy ending for the researcher (and the Mother Ship), MAH returned home safely, and we didn't have to go anywhere on the weekend.

So, life returned to normal for the happy little house in the Boro. MAH spent most of Saturday playing golf. (I believe he shot--was it a 100 or under that? I can't remember.) I went to the farmer's market and bought flowers, corn, and pulled pork bbq. Over the course of the weekend MAH mowed the lawn and we tried cooking the corn by grilling it. Highly recommend this method--results in supper yummy corn. We also managed to watch one of our Netflix movies--"Major League." This seemed appropriate for the season, but, sorry if I'm trampling on your teenage favorite--I thought it was really pretty bad. Bad as in not funny. It really made me want to watch "Bull Durham" again (which I consider a pretty great movie). Is that a classic American summer weekend, or what?

Seeing "The Dark Knight" is still on the table. But do we really need to see it in IMAX? Everyone says so.

The long-delayed post about McMansions and rappin' about Jesus

This post was due on Monday after we returned but sometimes things don't work out that way. Anywho . . . . Fasten your seat belts, this is going to be an epic post.

Yes, last Friday I dropped a sad-faced Sadie off at the kennel and we sallied forth to the suburbs of Richmond to visit MAH's sister and her family. His sister and a nephew had been on a school trip to England so MAH's mother had gone up to stay with the rest of the brood. (There are four total.) His brother-in-law has recently accepted a job in Dothan, Alabama (home of National Peanut Festival) and is squatting in an apartment down (more on that later) there so it was up to the Grandma to take care of the little ones. One of the little ones--the oldest--was off part of the time on a church-sponsored singing group tour of Virginia and North Carolina. (More on that later.) So our visit was timed after MAH's sister and nephew got back and before MAH's parents left to return to Florida.

As regular readers will expect, the weekend menu was heavy on the meat and sweets. Friday evening we enjoyed grilled flank steak (not too fatty or heavy, I must say) but with cherry pie to follow up. We dined late since we had arrived late and my eyelids were getting heavy as we continued to sit around the dinner table. I think it was around ten when I was contemplating making my move toward bed and MAH reached for the FOUR packages of photos from the trip to England. I wanted to kill him. We made it through three of the packages before turning in.

We were camped in the boy's room. What does it say that an eleven-year old boy has the same music I do? He had Smashmouth and Smashing Pumpkins CDs lying around. Or maybe he's just into bands named "Smash" . . . Saturday morning we were both semi-awake when we were greeted with "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way, oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh, HEY!" Repeated over and over. And over. This was the smallest child, singing to herself in the room across the hall. This was followed by "Come and get me, Mama" repeated in a conga rhythm. I liked that one.

Coffee singles are an evil thing. (Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.) There was also a sweetish-breakfast coffee cake thing too. MAH (God bless him) suggested that we take a walk in the morning, as we usually do. We observed at least five houses for sale in our immediate little cul-de-sac cluster of McMansions, and then probably another five or so as we walked around the neighborhood. As we drove around over the course of the weekend we saw probably five to ten new McMansion developments going up. (One of which was said to be 2500 homes on its own. With its own school.) So this is not a great time for MAH's sister and her husband to be trying to sell their house and buy one in Alabama. It's not clear how long his brother-in-law will be camped out in that apartment by himself. It could be a very long time if they can't sell their house.

But back to Saturday morning. MAH's parents had to make a trip to the local Walmart to pick up something and they took the two older girls with them. The girls came back in great excitement. They had pooled their money to buy a new DVD of "Reba" and a bunch of sugary candy. They disappeared for much of the weekend to the third floor of the McMansion to watch their new acquisition. We had never watched "Reba," but I suspect we would not care for it. But anyway, it gave them something to do.

Lunch was brats on the grill (more meat for MAH!). We looked at the final pack of photos and I was getting really jealous. I haven't been to England in a long time. With the dollar the way it is (and will likely be for a long time), I don't think we will be getting to Europe any time soon. We managed to have a bit of rest while MAH watched the end of the golf, but soon the girls were after us to play a game. MAH (much to his later regret) selected "Apples to Apples" which neither one of us had ever played. I didn't think it was that bad, except for the yelling. The kids were very energetic in stating their arguments and the dining room has no rug or other fabric to dampen the noise. MAH suspected his sister of actually throwing the game to him in order to end it.

But then it was time for the main event--the concert at the family church of the choral group MAH's niece had been travelling with. MAH and I are not church goers, and if we were, we wouldn't be attending this kind of church. And you know how we feel about kids (except for yours, of course, we love yours), and I'm not very keen on these kinds of performances (see previous posts), so this was a kind of trifecta of annoyances (for me, at least).

But, it was MAH's niece, so we put smiles on our faces and headed out.

It was bad. Really bad. Like "A Mighty Wind" bad. We had a big scare when the Guy Smiley-like minister started out by saying something that made us fear we were in for an actual service. I believe I mouthed the words "Oh fuck" at that point. But, no, we were spared that. The word that came immediately to mind when the kids started to perform was "earnest." As they went through their repertoire of trying-to-be cool Christian music, you could see that some of them were really into it. Some of the songs were quasi-rap or hip-hop and the kids were dressed in outfits that made them look like a cross between the extras from the movie "Oliver!" and an 80s Madonna video. But with crosses on the backs of their ragged vests. Some of the boys got to play electric guitar, which must have had something to do with their willingness to participate. Because MAH pointed out that a lot of the boys--even the ones with solos--really couldn't sing.

As you would expect, there was also a lot of bad choreography. At one point toward the end an adult (at least I think it was an adult) got up on stage and did a little tap solo in the middle of a song. Which was also bad. MAH thought he was the choreographer. (There was no program for the concert--just the regular church bulletin, which I tried hard not to look at because I was desperately trying not to smirk too much). One of the most heartfelt moments for the performers was when they took a minute to share with us their thoughts on what they would say to someone who didn't believe in Jesus (or something along those lines). So these kids came up with stories from their short lives that they thought would convince a non-believer. I got to tell you, based on their stories, I'd be sticking with Buddha. But maybe that's just me. Oh, and there was a skateboarding video too.

But, you know, the kids had a good time on their trip. Their parents were loving it. The church was feeling like it was doing a good thing. Who am I to rain on their parade? God bless, kids.

Maybe as a payoff to MAH for sitting through this, we had Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. He was very pleased. We had brought the dessert. Yes, finally, the top layer of our wedding cake was making it out of our freezer. When we took it out of the freezer and put it into a cooler it looked fine. When we took it out in Richmond, it looked like this:



Wait, this shot gives you a better idea of the devastation. It's kind of "Two-Face" effect:



We didn't expect it to taste good. We just wanted to free up the freezer space and it was way too much for the two of us to eat alone. As expected, the frosting was not good (freezer burned) but the cake itself (lemon) was not too bad. Some people had more pie after finishing their obligatory one piece. There was a lot of frosting left on plates.

On Sunday morning MAH's parents were up and out pretty early and we followed a little later. We listened to a few episodes of "The Bugle" on my iPod. (I'm still obsessed with it.) We arrived home with plenty of time to spring Sadie from the kennel.

We've got five pounds of new blueberries, courtesy of MAH's parents, so we're working our way through those. Our veggie swag from the farm on Tuesday included most of the ingredients for the famous orzo salad. As well as more beets. Haven't tackled those yet.

That doesn't bring you quite up to date, but it does lay out the basics of our weekend. I wanted to capture those not just for you all, our devoted readers, but also so that we can look back and remember, as Lisa H. would say, "Good times, good times!"

Unless we make an unscheduled trip down to DC, that's our last weekend out of town until late August. Which is good because with the mint coming in from our neighbor's garden and our tomatoes starting to ripen, we've got a lot to deal with around here.

In which MAH quashes a rebellion against the tyranny of the vegetables, and lots of other things happen

As usual, I thought there was very little to write about but when MAH and I were going over the events of the week we turned up a long list of blog-worthy stuff. But first, in this blog's long tradition of posting pictures of anthropomorphic vegetables, I give you the Jean-Paul Gaultier-period Madonna look alike carrot:



Actually, it was Wonder Woman who first came to my mind. The, um, extra growths were a lot perkier earlier in the week. We haven't eaten it yet.

Last weekend we went down to DC to attend the first birthday party of the adorable son of the OSGs. People kept being amazed that we came "all that way" just for the party, but it's really not that far, and besides we were out of Italian soda so we had to make a visit Trader Joe's. As with all parties at the OSGs, the food was plentiful and divine. Which reminded MAH, hey, BA, post that damn recipe for the orzo pesto salad already! And while you're at it, get the recipe for that peach sangria, which was to die for.

We also enjoyed seeing one of our favorite children (and fellow Ghostbuster), LBA. When things were feeling a bit crowded, LBA announced that he wanted to go outside and play soccer, so I decided that we were going with him. Which meant that MAH played soccer in the incredible heat and I just sat and drank sangria and talked to Mrs. BA. Hey, it worked me for and LBA.

It was kind of late as we were driving back home and we couldn't stop at our favorite farm stand, so we went back on Sunday and bought sour cherries, apricots and more than a half a peck of peaches. This had one expected result and one unexpected one. I did make yummy sour cherry crisp, as expected. But unexpectedly, I've had one line from a song that I barely know stuck in my head: "Movin' to the country, gonna' eat a lot of peaches . . . " from the song "Peaches" by the Presidents of the United States of America. I only know this one line because that's the one they repeated over and over when they discussed this song on VH1's "One Hundred Greatest One-Hit Wonders," which I have seen more than once. Anyway, yes, I have moved to the country, and I'm eating a lot of peaches.

I've had a tough time getting much done this week. I blame this primarily on three factors. First, I blame this terrific podcast that I just discovered: The Bugle, sponsored by the Times (London) Online. I read about it in Wired, and it features John Oliver, who we like on the Daily Show. Give it a try if you are fond of British humor--it is excessively British, so be warned. But anyway, I find I have to listen to each episode more than once to really catch everything. Damn those Brits!

Second, I blame my neighbors. Earlier in the week the weather was just lovely, and naturally we had all the windows open. Three of our neighbors across the street seem to have employed the same incredibly noisy landscaping service. One of them must have had some major work done, because for three days in a row there were the nails-on-chalkboard annoying sounds of gas-powered lawn tools streaming in through my windows. Driving me crazy. Driving me and the dog down into the basement where there is no internet access (but a TV with Tivo).

Third, I blame MAH's public spiritedness. As some of you may know (or remember), MAH got himself elected treasurer of a little professional organization we belong to. In preparation for a meeting, he is trying to acquaint himself with the way the books have been organized and figure out how much money they have. This is being more complicated than he anticipated. Which means he's been up late every night this week poring over numbers. So there have been some late nights, and I really don't do well when I don't get my sleep. (And who can nap with those damn weedeater things buzzing around?)

It was in this frazzled state that I took the bold step of suggesting we go out to dinner one night, fridge full of vegetables be damned! I mean, why should we have live under the tyranny of the vegetables? Why should we have to let them rule our lives? So what if we don't end up eating some of them? Sometimes a person just wants a burger and a Diet Coke, right?

Well, you know where this is going even without the title of this post. MAH was having none of this. I mean, he didn't just say "no" right off. He entertained my suggestion, but then pointed out in his maddeningly reasonable way all the completely valid reasons why we should not go out. And of course, since he was right, the rebellion faded away. But I expect it to rear its ugly head again later in the summer . . . watch out, beets!

There was also the good news this week that someone we know (and like) is getting the recently-vacated job of "librarian" (really an archivist) at the local historical society. The bad news part of this is that now I will have to go back to volunteering there to help her out. I was kind of hoping that they would blow this hiring opportunity, giving me an excuse to drop this from my list of commitments. Oh well, it will get me out of house, won't it?

This weekend we'll be on the road again--this time to Richmond to see MAH's sister and parents (who will also be visiting). The good news is that we will be taking along the top layer of our wedding cake out of our freezer and will finally be eating it (and freeing up valuable freezer space). (Sorry, it won't be making a trip down for a BA function. We can still bring pies.) The bad news is that we have to attend a children's church choral group concert. Three of my least favorite things combined--children, aggressive Christianity and bad Jesus songs. Wish me luck.

We may reward ourselves on our return to the Boro, after we pick up Sadie at the kennel, by going to a local festival to eat food like this:


They also will have funnel cakes. (Picture courtesy of the local paper.) We'll see if we have enough energy left on Sunday night.

Oy, it's taken forever to write this, so I've got to go try to do something productive before we head south. Have a great weekend, everybody!

From the RSS feed for the local paper

"West Shore police seek anyone who saw naked man"

This is in keeping with the tradition of:

"Boiling Springs woman flown to Hershey after snoring prompted assault"

and

"Northeastern Pa. borough may ban some porch couches"

Note that none of these news stories refer to The Boro, but they're close . . .

Here's a thought-provoking post

Over at the Freakonomics blog, "How Much Do Looks Matter?"-- maybe some of you can consider answer these questions too.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate your physical attractiveness? On the same scale, how do you rate your intelligence?

If the average is 5, I don't know, maybe a 6 or 7.

Intelligence though--at least an 8. Maybe a 9.

Has your level of attractiveness ever affected your job or salary?

Yes, I'm sure when I was younger and cuter I can think of at least one job that I probably got because of that. I think being attractive (and looking professional) may have affected how I perceived and influenced some of my promotions and salary increases, but I don't think it was a really big factor.

How important is physical appearance in your industry?

Not very, I'd say. At least, no more important than it is in any other aspect of society. I think in general attractive people are more likely to stand out and be given opportunities. But I don't think being average or unattractive holds genuinely talented people back. But mediocre people who look good probably rise to the top faster than most. Anyone have any thoughts about that?

About how many coworkers do you consider above average in attractiveness?

Back at the mother ship . . . considering all the rest of the building as co-workers . . . 10 to 15%. It was a pretty average group of people. In my immediate office (3rd floor) probably higher than that, of course.

Do you prefer to work with people you find attractive over people you find unattractive?

I guess I'd prefer not to work with people who are downright ugly, but other than that I don't think I care. Other qualities are more important. I'd take a smart unattractive person over a gorgeous idiot any day.

Tell me about a work-related incident that made you most aware of the way you look.

No thanks, I'll pass on that one.

Anyone else want to share their thoughts? And if this gets talked about at the lunch table, please post a summary!

I didn't throw everything out

I kept my old "Star Wars" bubblegum trading cards. They smell kind of musty, but I thought I'd see how much people were giving for them on eBay. I kept a few other things too.

By the way, the project to rid myself of old files continues. You may remember that I worked my way through the files for books and music. A few days ago I took the big fat "Restaurant" file, looked through everything, and threw every single thing out. They were all places back in DC (or Annapolis). We're not really looking for new places to try there these days--and besides all the reviews are out of date now. There's always the web (and you guys). I also pulled the file labeled "Storage and Organization Ideas." I still have a few things to over in that one.

It's a beautiful day in the Boro. A hard day to knuckle down and get anything done. I must have some more old files to go through . . .

Two very different posts in the blog world

In my inbox this morning were two very different items I felt I should pass along. Serious one first. I know as much about Hunter S. Thompson as anyone else who went to a small liberal-arts college, but I don't think I had ever read any of this work. There's a new documentary film out about him called "Gonzo." Listening to the review on Filmspotting, one of my favorite podcasts, made me want to see the film and learn more about him. In that review they read a passage that Thompson wrote on the day after 9/11. That passage is also referenced in an interview with the filmaker that I read this morning on Salon:

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives ... It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerrilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

Thompson apparently was well past him prime when he wrote this, but it's pretty prescient and gives me a new-found respect for his abilities. Maybe I need to put some of his stuff on my summer reading list.

On the lighter side, for anyone who has or does watch any (and I mean any) reality television, this is must see viewing. Brilliant.

How we spent our 4th of July weekend

I just finished my second coffee of the morning. I never have a second cup of coffee, but this morning MAH had to be out the door at 6:45 to go to a conference so our schedule is all screwed up.

Yes, we drove up to my parents' house in Upstate New York for the holiday weekend. We arrived (with Sadie, of course) on the 3rd, after being stuck for an hour in ridiculous backup on 81. MAH had much to say during this backup about the pathetic incompetence of the Pennsylvania highway authorities. I had much to say about which lane we should be in. But we arrived in one piece eventually.

On the 4th my oldest brother and his wife came over with their pickup truck to help celebrate the holiday and my parents' wedding anniversary and so that we could load up the back of the truck with junk. My sister-in-law had scheduled a bulk trash pick-up for the following week and was offering her lawn as a dumping ground for my parent's junk. She had been putting stuff out on her lawn for about a week and the trash pickers had been swooping down and taking stuff about as fast as she was putting it out.

They arrived and immediately started stacking wood--my parents had gotten a couple of cords (or face cords, I can't remember) and had not yet found a local teen to stack it for them. While they were stacking, MAH and I hit the basement to identify stuff to get rid of. Wow. There were many boxes of stuff that was mine, actually, so I was the only one who could dispose of it. Which I did--letters and stuff from late high school and college days. I trashed it all. We found old financial documents which could go. We got rid of two trunks, various cast off small appliances. And bags and bags of golf balls. My father and our last dog used to go walking on the golf course every morning. And every morning the dog would find golf balls and bring them back to my father, usually three or four a morning. This went on for years. My father kept them all so we have hundreds of old golf balls in the basement. We also got rid of a metal frame for a twin bed and various other stray pieces of metal. Anyway, we filled up the back of their truck and about half the wood got stacked. Then we broke for lunch.

After our other guests had left I asked my mother about the stash of family photos I had discovered that she still had squirreled away. Alert readers may remember that the last time I was up there I thought I had gotten all the photos out of her--wrong! There was another cache. I've gotten her to come around to the idea that she needs to hand this stuff over to me and eventually to an archives--I've been successful on that score.

Late in the afternoon we got a call from my sister-in-law with a report. They had unloaded the truck and neatly set out all of our junk. Almost all of it was gone within a few hours. Including all the golf balls.

The next day, Saturday, MAH and I headed back to the basement and loaded up the car with paper and cardboard to take out to the dump for recycling. We had one Passat-load of just recyclables. Then we took another Passat-load of trash out to the dump. I also asked them about getting rid of old TVs and tires. They will take TVs, but we're on our own with the tires. After getting cleaned up, my parents took us out to lunch for our birthdays. We went to a local place on the top of a hill with a beautiful view of the lake. Here is picture of people taking pictures of the view:



They also have a lovely garden in the front:



After lunch my parents went off to the nearest city to buy a digital TV--long story. After eating such a big lunch (with two glasses of wine for me) we felt more like going home and relaxing. Which we did. Well, I did. MAH finished stacking the rest of the wood.

Sunday, after walking the dog to the other end of town (as usual) and picking up the Sunday New York Times, MAH headed down the basement with the shop vac to clean up the dust and cobwebs. I turned my attention to the very uncomfortable computer arrangement in my mother's study. With MAH's help I unplugged all the cords of her printer, separate scanner, monitor, CPU, mouse, keyboard, phone, lamp, and shredder. We moved some furniture around, dusted (yipes!), and then re-arranged things in a way that made more sense.

In the course of doing this my mother and I began cleaning out some of her desk drawers--in order to find a new spot to keep her extra paper. And, guess what--more old family photos stuffed randomly in the drawers. As well as many papers with family information on them--all went in my "to take" pile. Then I got her to begin throwing stuff out. I eventually got her a big garbage bag for it. She had been on a bit of purging binge herself actually--she and her cleaning woman tidied up the linen closet a few weeks ago and she had gathered a bunch of linens to get rid of. She is over the phase when she wanted to keep everything and is now, as I said, come around to the idea that it's good to begin to purge the house of the things she really doesn't need to keep. (That's a wonderful thing, isn't it, BA?)

In the afternoon MAH moved outside to dig up some black raspberry bushes to take home with us. Oh, I forgot that part. Before we left the Boro we went to the local farmer's market and saw that they were selling black raspberries for $8 a quart. At one point during our visit MAH went out in the backyard and picked about $6 worth of the best black raspberries I've ever tasted. My mother is always wanting to get rid of her bushes because they're encroaching on her flowers. How wasteful! But then she doesn't' go out and pick them so what does she care? Anyway, MAH did things outside (including transplanting a few things for my mother) and I stayed inside trying to get all of my mother's digital pictures in one place. This took all afternoon. She had about 3,000 image files. Of these, I think she probably only has about 1,000 individual pictures, but she has multiple, multiple copies of them. And so many "new folders" inside other new folders--it was a nightmare. But I got everything in My Pictures, at least and deleted as many dupes as I could. Meanwhile MAH and my father were watching a recorded episode of "Monsterquest," which is one of my father's favorites shows. It was one about giant super rats in New York. MAH is skeptical.

On Monday morning I showed my mother what I've created so far on Ancestry--that is profiles for family members with scans of associated photographs. She seemed appreciative and understood the value of being able to share the information with far flung cousins. So I think I'm getting some credit with her for actually doing something with the materials I've been carting off. We also went through the discarded linens and took some tablecloths, and then I helped her go through some of the other linens which she keeps in yet another location---God there is a lot of stuff crammed in that house!

So, we loaded up the car with all the things I was hauling away, the black raspberry bushes, and the dog and headed south. We made a brief stop in New York State to purchase a more diverse selection of wine than we can get in Pennsylvania. Nothing special--just some inexpensive things to drink in the summer. The drive was much more pleasant thanks to the working air conditioning in the 13-year old Saturn.

So we're home safe and sound. I'll bring you up to date on the latest from the Boro in the next post.

Update: My mother just sent this picture of all the wood stacked in the backyard. Somehow it doesn't look like quite as much as it really is. There are two rows going each way:

From the files: Books

Now left in my "Book Reviews" file are only some articles from The New Yorker which really need to be moved to other files--they take books as their starting point but are really essays on larger topics. There are also two old and beat-up articles from The Washington Post. Both are about history books and I kept them more because of what they said about the authors than to remind me about the books. The first is about Sarah Luria's Capital Speculations, a history cross-disciplinary history of Washington, D.C. The other is about Edward Ayers and his then new book The Promise of the New South. When I looked this up in Amazon I was confronted by the "15th Anniversary Edition"--what? Did I clip this article out 15 years ago? Is that possible?

I bought Luria's book but have not read it. I did not buy Ayers' book and probably won't. I clipped and kept the reviews because of the way they described the kind of scholarship the two authors practiced--cross-disciplinary, grounded in personal experience (in Ayers' case in particular), and grounded in archival materials. Note that I clipped both of these articles and filed them long before I thought about being an archivist. I was interested in the history--using the materials to tell a story. I am never interested in materials for their own sake; only in how people can use them.

But, I am going to throw out these two articles--they are really beat up and I don't think I need to keep them. Ok, wait, I think I will keep the Ayres one. But I'll file it differently. I mean, just consider this sample:

In 1983, with the aid of a foundation grant, he bought a 12-year-old Plymouth Satellite with a bashed-in side and set out on a 12,000 mile journey through every Southern state except Arkansas and Floridia, sleeping in cheap motels by night and by day combing the state archives for anything he could find bearing on life between 1880 and 1906."

and:

"And what makes this book remarkable among many recent U.S. histories is his insistence on treating his subjects not as faceless members of abstract ethnic or economic groups but as responsible individuals, and of letting them speak for themselves. Their voices pour forth from an astonishing wealth of private letters and diaries, from old newspapers and unpublished memoirs, from business records, and even poems and songs."

Here today, gone tomorrow. Help yourself, Pooh.

When I was growing up, my father used to quote those lines. I don't know how accurate he was, but it was something Eeyore said to Winnie the Pooh. As quoted, it went something like this: "Oh, it was just a little something I was saving for my birthday. But then, what are birthdays? Here today, gone tomorrow. Help yourself, Pooh."

Yes, the birthday is history, but I still get to thank all the people who wished me well here, on FB, by email and on the other blog. I also thought you might appreciate seeing two of the birthday cards I got. They are both handmade. This is the one from my parents, made by my father (front and back):





And then this one from MAH's parents, made by MAH's mother:



Quite a contrast, eh? I also got rain for my birthday, which we were very pleased about since the Boro has been looking a bit on the tan side lately. I still have not gotten my rain barrel, but I fully intend to as soon as possible.

I think I mentioned here before that I have a very bad habit of clipping/ripping things out of magazines and newspapers that I think I should keep. I then dutifully file them away and never look at them again. In effort to break this unproductive cycle, I'm trying to go through these folders periodically and get rid of stuff. Yesterday I attached my "Book Reviews" folder. There was some old stuff in there--I think the record was a clipping from 1995. (Was it 95, MAH?) Most things were more recent. At least after 2000. It was quite a trip. There were a lot of things that I had either clipped because I thought my ex-husband might be interested in them (gift ideas) or that I took a look at and no longer thought I'd be interested in--these got immediately pitched. For the things that I still am interested in, I first checked the online catalog of my local public library to see if they had it--and was surprised by how much they have. My online list there now has 42 items on it (there were a few to begin with). For things they didn't have, I went to Amazon and put them on my Shopping List (and a few on my Wish List). I think I added about 27 items to the Shopping List. I don't necessary want to buy all of them, but it's a great way to keep track of things. I haven't checked the catalog yet at MAH's employer to see how many of the 27 are there, but I imagine some will be. Now I have an empty folder except for some long essays from The New Yorker which I need to read and possibly dispose of.

Next up, the folder labeled "CD Reviews," which if I were making today I'd label "Things to Look Up on iTunes."