Kit stares, Swirly walks away.

Saturday Evening Post

What happened today?  This afternoon, Pat & I watched another episode of Balthazar...

...earlier, we walked up the street, passing a house that had freshly-dug inch-wide edging next to the curb.  And lying on the bottom of the rut was a round object, the same color as the dirt.  I cleaned off the surface dirt at home and revealed a 2002 quarter.  (Another donation for Tabby's Place.)

...I baked a lemon-blueberry buttermilk cake, and although it doesn't look like something a cake boss would produce, it tastes just fine.

Miss Nora

After the rain

Fledgling or nestling?

Just outside the front door is a young robin.  Pat wants to help, but according to the Audubon Society, the best thing we can do is leave it alone.

Images from the back yard

My favorite advice

Photography advice is everywhere on the web.  My eyes glaze over for most all of it.  Nikon had free photography classes during the lockdown.  Not interested.  One piece of advice has stayed with me, though: four keys to taking a photo.

...two more things from today.

Driving to Wegmans, Pat and I saw a tiny baby bunny in someone's yard.  (Be safe!)  And for lunch, she and I went to Wally's in Emmaus.  They know us there.  Boss Hog, sweet peppers, hold the onion.

Ah, there's good news today.

Money in the mail.

An hour later, a Hyundai backed into me in the Wegmans parking lot.  There's a scratch on the rear bumper, but no other damage.  Not even worth trading insurance information.

History

A photo of an American officer who served during  the Revolutionary War.  Doesn't seem possible.

Yellow Wood Sorrel

Nicely volunteering to fill in the space around a maple tree in our front yard.

Welcome!

Rabbits are always welcome here.  Today, this one passed a little time in our back yard during a spring rain shower.

Exhumed TV

Skipping and streaming tonight... WatchYour.TV had first a sitcom starring Peter Lawford, and a minute later, there was Charles Lane as the boss.  Then flipped to another stream, and there was some dancing going on, but I stuck around until the dance ended, and next there was a sketch with Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, doing Cavalcade of Stars a couple of years before The Honeymooners.  I like these kinds of surprises.  There couldn't have been much demand for those shows in the sixty-plus years since their moment in the spotlight, but it's 2020 and their moment has come again.  They can't be public domain, but they can't cost much, either.

Hand-feeding bird video

Watched this one more than once.  In slow-motion, a bird lands on a human hand, then a little cock of the head as if to say, "Not bad, eh?"

Another way to get an edge

Granddaughter Diana has helped me get into volleyball, and I'm trying to learn more about the game.  Looking up info on Penn State coach Russ Rose took me to this story.  Near the bottom is an anecdote from one of his former players, Roberta Holehouse.  Not everyone would do what she did, but having the opportunity to pick the brains of one of the most successful coaches was worth a few milligrams of tar and nicotine.

What happened today?

After lunch, Pat and I drove to Trexlertown via the bypass.  The big pond of standing water across from Air Products campus appears to have dried up.

First stop, the post office.  Pat went in alone, masked.  No 5-cent stamps there, intended to get them to go with the Zazzle 50-centers at home.  Mailed ballots for PA Primary with some forever stamps bought there.

Next, People First FCU.  Drive-through windows only, lobby is closed.  Pat deposited proceeds from savings bonds bought originally in 1990.  Cashier said she would have to mail the receipt later.

Next, Giant.  Dropped Pat off at the entrance, then parked across from the exit and caught up with her.  They have given up on one-way aisles.  That didn't last long.  Still, nobody I saw was blatantly ignoring the social distancing rules.

A couple was standing in front of the juices, and the man said he was choosing a certain brand of grapefruit juice that cost less.  The woman with him told him he should just pick the one he liked best; "life is short," she concluded.  I walked away before learning how he decided.

The checkout line snaked around the seasonal aisle, then stretched back through the bakery and around the corner until about halfway down the far dairy aisle.  We wound up being assigned to checkout lane #15, where I found a dime.  No bags from home allowed at Giant.

Not yet used to masks on everyone, or the plexiglas shield between customer and cashier.  The credit card machine had plastic across the key pad.  For the first time, tapping the Costco Visa against the screen worked.  Didn't need to insert the card.  "Only" $74 today.  Last time at Wegmans set us back $110 or so.  Of course, we bought more meat that day.

Pushing the cart out the door, saw a masked man trying to enter and being told by a Giant employee that it's an exit only.  He was wearing Coca-Cola apparel and said to her in an irritated voice, "I'm a vendor" and walked by her into the store.

Days like this, with a little driving, a little grocery shopping, feel pretty close to normal, despite the masks and the signs everywhere proclaiming service workers as heroes.  After supper, I caught up on reading the daily info and then watched some NCAA volleyball from 2018 on YouTube - Nebraska swept Kentucky 3-0.

Books I'm at least in the process of reading

• The History of the Standard Oil Company, Ida Tarbell
• Eastward Ha!, S. J. Perelman
• First and Last, Ring Lardner
• The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker

• The Campaign of the Century, Greg Mitchell

• "The Good War", Studs Terkel
• Ernie's War:   The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches
• Brave Men, Ernie Pyle
• Guadalcanal Diary, Richard Tregaskis

• The Fifties, David Halberstam
• Much Ado About Me, Fred Allen
• October 1964, David Halberstam
• The Summer Game, Roger Angell

• Drift, Rachel Maddow
• The Last Love Song, Terry Daugherty
• Elderhood, Louise Aronson
• Dark Money, Jane Mayer
• Modern Romance, Aziz Ansari

Then there's the list of books that I haven't started yet...

Links of interest

Write it down. Keep a pandemic journal. 
  -- Yeah, I guess I can do that.

I finished ‘War and Peace’ — and now I’m over pandemic self-improvement  
 -- I keep finding public domain books and adding them to my Kindle folder, knowing full well that I'll never get to read them all.  What's the word for that?  Oh, right, the one borrowed from Japanese:  Tsundoku.

Shutting down for the day

Late yesterday, the word went out from above that one of our team members is now in a new role.  Result:  J and I pick up their work.  So today was a busy one. No time to go out and take a photo or slip in a quick walk around the block.  But now it's quitting time, and the laptop is off until tomorrow morning.  A good day.

21st-Century Tech, mid-1900's humor

This was a link to "A Tribute to Jack Benny", broadcast shortly after his death in 1974.  It's since been taken down.  

And now, the phlox are blooming

This is part of a cluster of plants along Lower Macungie Road, taken today.

"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way."

 -- Franklin P. Adams

Yesterday, I was reading Ring Lardner and saw a reference to "I, Mary MacLane", which led to 1902's The Story of Mary MacLane.

Remarkable.  In 2020, she'd fit right in.  In 1902, so much less mass media, but the 19-year-old in Butte, Montana, found a way.  Determination, perseverance and, as she admits, ambition.

Although she died in obscurity at age 48, she hasn't been forgotten.  Probably an inspiration to young people in every generation.  Including this one.

Well played, Google Dictionary.

Hello world

Blogging 2020 style.  Still easy to begin using Blogger, and probably still difficult to come up with content, if past experience is any guide.

Really should have started this when the quarantine began, but so little changed that it didn't come to mind.  But now that shelter-in-place has extended into its 3rd month, I'd like to have a place to jot down a few observations.

And away we go...