The Roseledge Books Blog

We are one with “social distancing” and “shelter in place”, with boxed meals set outside the door, Charlie’s workshop masks at the ready, and my 2′ poker still good for pushing buttons and  better than anything else for keeping people at more than arm’s length.

Action Shot #16. Almost sightless, a hazard, but MASKED, I’m doing my part, Charlie says.

Well, goodness knows we’re trying.  No outsiders can come into our building, so Charlie brought his dog clipper over to cut my hair, tonsured as it has become.  He does not take suggestions for a more  subtle cut well.  He has upgraded my Internet, so I can become a proper Zoom-er.  No more my nattering away at statues, with an “unstable connection.”

The seagulls have returned, and  Charlie is trying to be one with them.  They bob and preen and pay no attention to his sqwaa-ck sqwa-a-ackng.  Neither do the invading pigeons.  But a  mezzanine lady shouted, “I wondered what kind of very big bird that was.” Hardly missing a sqwa-a-ack, Charlie called back, “I have a lot to learn.”

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Besides the COVID19-related news and great graphics of the online NYT, I’ve spent my pandemic reading articles that help me make some sense of the chaos engulfing the world.

Lawrence Wright’s NYT essay and his NY’er interview are both about his research for and writing of The End of October, his just published, prescient novel about a pandemic  that started with a virus in Asia.  I learned that from history and science, we should have been less surprised and more ready.

Orhan Pamuk’s NYT essay about the classics of pandemic literature is a great Cliff’s Notes, plus wise analysis.  I am glad for his list and lessons and someday, when we are not living in and through this, I may read these, but not now.

Stephen King gives a great interview to David Marchese, who asks great questions.  Interesting that Stephen King, who wrote about a pandemic in The Stand,  was most surprised at how fast everything changed in real life, and thought having food, not fear, is most worrisome.

Every time I hear Trump say we are battling an invisible foe, which, he implies, we therefore cannot know,  I silently shriek AARRGGHH! I recall  Stephen Greenblatt’s NY’er article about “invisible bullets” or the atoms that Lucretius understood were the pith of  epidemics and recoil at the ignorance currently in Power.  Then I read Tom Friedman’s conversation with Dov Seidman on leadership.  It  was a gift, wise and pertinent, and I can breathe again.

Wolf Kahn died and a fresh look at the vibrant colors of his outdoors makes sheltering-in-place in Spring a tad more tolerable.  So did the work of other artists who rendered views from their windows. And as I am profoundly one with my one room — and Charlie and a view of the Ship’s Canal — room-rating is fun, maybe more for the art and the color, though books on shelves are fun, if you can see the disheveled shelf of current reading.  And I love that while virtually testifyingDr. Fauci’s room rated a 10.  But then,  he’s an all-purpose 10 in my book.  (I found a picture of the room, but I couldn’t find the room-rating, which I know I did not make up, though I would have if I had thought of it.)

OTHERWISE, Hope Jahren, whose memoir, Lab Girl, is among my all-time favorites,  has new book, The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go from Here.   It’s true; I’ll read anything she writes, but who better than a well-read, well-traveled paleo-botanist researcher and teacher to think about the future?  I’ve just started the book and it’s already good, but anticipation is much of the fun.

Will McGrath’s memoir, Everything Lost is Found Again: 4 Seasons in Lesotho was fun because friend Mary’s stories introduced me to Lesotho some years ago.  I loved living two places for 35 years and was probably predisposed to like this book, which I did, but then, there on the last line of the author’s acknowledgements was thanks to Bill and [my friend] Mary.  Next I have Bill Holm’s memoir of his life in Iceland, The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland. 

Action Shot #17. Charlie thinks we’re social-distancing, but I am going rogue. Hee-hee.

First freedom stop after sheltering-in-place is lifted a  bit: a latte — when the sun is out and umbrella-ed tables can be set far enough apart.  Until then, read about coffee in the world, especially the third paragraph from the end which notes  Todd Caspersen’s Equal Exchange coffee company and all they are doing right.  Spilling all: Todd is Millie’s son and one of Charlie’s almost cousins from Southeast Minneapolis. Best neighborhood ever.

And don’t miss the sheep in the vineyard on YouTube.  Six hours of pleasant.

THE PIER IS FREED! Good times are at hand.

In what surely ranks as a minor miracle, the Water Quality Project People have unlocked, de-fenced, and opened the Pier through August!  This is GREAT NEWS.   Though their reasons were probably rooted in community goodwill and profound wariness of my abilities as a performance artist, their actions came just in time to be one small antidote to the bleakness of COVID 19.

I tossed dried flowers and welcomed the Pier back to the people who walk.                                       Charlie thinks “coming back” makes it a zombie pier.  Sigh.  Who is his mom?

The Pier is a walker’s destination with no surfaces to touch. lean against, or sit down upon.  No “social distancing” problem, as it is still gloriously undiscovered.  Usually,  the wind is enough to blow away a person’s dreaded droplets of sneeze or cough, and more good news, the ducks and gulls and occasional dogs don’t care.

THE PIER IS FREED!  And for a bit each day, so are we all.

Surrounding that brief bit, is the too real ureality of. as Charlie keeps pronouncing the “pre-apocalyptic  dystopian reality” that we are living.  It’s a science fiction novel, he says, somewhat surprised, but up for it.   COVID 19 or no, Charlie and I are fine  He is driving me crazy with his pre-recorded admonitions:  SOCIAL DISTANCING! and    GOVERNOR’S ORDER–SHELTER IN PLACE! and I am keeping him on his toes by perpetually trying to go rogue.  He is more worried than I, but I am not foolish –yet –and I love that he is doing his best to keep me well.

BRIGHTENERS FOR THESE DAYS:                                                                                     I love this puffin.  I love the artist who looked at shoreline debris and saw art with purpose, process and joy — okay, horrifying joy.  It would be perfect for the freed pier.  Or maybe a gull or baby gulls and we in Seattle — and the Scots — could have a “Make Way for Scorries” moment.  I’m also sending  the Seattle Times article on to Richard Fernandez, the Pier Person who knows — for sure with two mentions –when an idea is really good.

One day Stephen Greenblatt’s NYer article noted that Lucretius saw, in The Nature of Things, “invisible bullets” or “seeds” which veer randomly and allow us to make choices.  The god-fearers of his day disagreed, as only a god decided.   Soon thereafter I read in the NYT of the ultraconservative Christian god-fearers of today dismissing the knowledge of scientists trying to slow, then stop the pandemic so much with us.  So history repeats itself.   Save me from “gut instincts” or “I just know” or ” I looked at lots of data” or “I read twenty-five books” or God knows.  As a Continuing Day Brightener, Stephen Greenblatt’s book, The Swerve, tells how Lucretius’ treatise remains known to us these 2000 years later, which clearly leads us to a great read about how information moves, a perpetual personal pursuit.

In his NYT obit, I discovered, and now love, Wolf Kahn’s paintings.  His alive colors of landscape are a great antidote to sheltering in place as glorious Spring arrives.  I think we’ve finished cherry blossoms and are into apple blossoms.  I’ll know more tomorrow when I walk the 4 blocks to have my pacemaker checked.  I have never been so looked forward to having my pacemaker checked.

My name is O’Hoot. I welcome you with too few (Irish) coffee nips.

I loved Jess Kidd’s more-than-a-mystery, Himself.  Maybe you have to be Irish to enjoy the familiar humor and ghosts, midst longing, questions, and the indomitable in pure Irish-speak.  Or maybe you don’t.

FREE THE PIER!

The pier was new, beautiful, walk-able, inviting, fenced and locked.
It was scheduled to open in FIVE YEARS, when the whole tunneling project would be done.
FIVE YEARS?

Five years is a very long time.  I’m 80 years old in a wheelchair and, although I intend to live forever, you never know.  So I wrote to the City’s Project Director.  I noted the many Seniors in a six-block walking radius, the lack of other places to actually be out on the water, and the City’s efforts to be community friendly and to foster healthy lifestyles.  So why five years?  The pier is finished and though it is needed for trucks to haul the dirt dug up to make the tunnel, how about unlocking it on weekends?  FREE THE PIER!

I got a very nice note back from the Project Director, but freeing the pier was a no go.

                                                       Action Shot #14.  Being chagrined.                                                                            The pier is locked. No boats are docked.  No gulls have flocked.  Time to  FREE THE PIER.  

Some weeks later, the neighborhood newsletter named the three local artists hired to invigorate the boring fence.  And I had a thought.  So I sent a second note to the Project Director offering to be a performance artist, sitting on the pier enjoying a latte, reading a “pertinent” book, or just being one with the water.

And several weeks later, he responded.  FREE THE PIER!  (To be continued.)

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Ballard Landmark Book Notes:  I read And enjoyed enough of Joanne Freeman’s Field of Blood Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War to prepare for attending her talk about the polarizing dysfunction and violent incidents of 1850’s Congress leading up to the Civil War.  The current parallels were obvious and many, and reviewers gave the book a rave, in part because of her  extensive research and cited sources.  So I was bound to love the talk.  (She is the daughter of my neighbor and spoke while visiting her mother over Christmas.)

It was a great talk.  She described her purposeful, but serendipitous 17 year search for violent incidents in the secretive Congress, which was secretive much  like today’s Congress is.  Other than C-Span and a still flawed Congressional Record,  how do we know what really goes on when the House and Senate meet?  Dr. Freeman searched government records, family letters of members and the 11 volume journal of the Clerk.  Newspapers, as we know them, were just starting and biased.  But the new telegraph was coming to the rescue.   Introductory Notes and Appendix 2 were about her efforts with information distribution and credibility and searching.

I loved the talk and loved finding her recent, great Op Ed piece in the NY Times.  With her learning, she provided context to note the rightness of Nancy Pelosi’s wonderful speech-shredding and the wrongness of Rand Paul’s public-naming of a possible whistle blower.  She is lively, learned, just a joy, who uses history to make current points and draw pertinent conclusions.  She would be a GREAT commencement speaker.

Right now I’m reading Think of a Number, a mystery by a  new author, John Verdon, whose main character is retired NYPD  Detective Dave Gurney, who lives in the Catskills but with a tie to Seattle.  So far so good, but compelling?  I’m not sure.

Enough, already. I’ll keep you posted on our Crusade to FREE THE PIER.   Every life needs purpose.

DON’T CRY FOR ME, MINNESOTA,

FOR SPRINGTIME HAS COME TO SEATTLE.

Action Shot #9. Being one with the magnolia and apparently having more hair.

READ IN SEATTLE BOOK NOTES:

I love Timothy Egan and not just because he’s a NY Times columnist, a Seattle-r and Jesuit-trained, although he is, but his latest book Pilgrimage to Eternity is a great travelogue and liberal arts review, as he walks 1,000 miles from Canterbury to Rome, questioning his faith.  It doesn’t hurt that he has an extensive, varied, and quite wonderful bibliography including a cited reference to Roland, the [medieval] Farter, the only citation I found that provoked Charlie’s interest enough to look up from his newspaper to check him out.  By-the-by, Roland was a flatulist, not to be confused with a flautist, and his current exemplar is professionally called Mr Methane.  Good grief! I have failed as a mother.  No, you raised a male, said Kathy, mother of two males.  Sigh.

I am a big Reacher fan, but Jack Reacher’s latest adventure, mostly as a cardboard vigilante, in Lee Child’s Blue Moon, is disappointing.  I followed it with John Grisham’s The Guardians, which was an encouraging antidote.  It chronicles an Innocence Project-type lawyer as he goes about his work freeing innocent people who are unjustly jailed.  It was fiction, but based on the work of a real lawyer/Episcopal priest in Texas.

Had fun with reporter Bruce Mowray’s telling about a theft he had covered in Stealing Wyeths.  It took place in the early ’90’s in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the non-Maine home of the Wyeth family.  It was a “just the facts, ma’am” telling, but filled with the detail that living many summers in Maine’s Wyeth “neighborhood” made fun.  Had it been published a few years earlier, Roseledge Books could have had a field day.  A best-seller for sure.  Okay, okay.  I know that a RB best-seller was 3 copies sold in one summer.

Right now, I’m having fun with Martin Cruz Smith’s latest Arkady Renko mystery, The Siberian Dilemma.   He’s on his way to Siberia, looking for journalist/lady-friend, Tatiana, and rescuing her from the charms of an oligarch — or so it seems!

Enough for now.  Coming soon: much ado about Joanne Freeman and her book, Field of Blood:  Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War.

Information comes and goes.
The how of it? Nobody knows.
I care.

This is not a post for everyone, maybe not for anyone, but the post is true to its title.  I have been thinking, again, about the flow of information: how; it moves, who changes it’s flow or content, and who finds and chooses to use it. Think about the crazy information trails from obscurity to foolish action to widespread disbelief in the Bedbug Incident or Pizzagate, but not today.         

Because, finally, the impeachment process has begun, and already people don’t know how to choose a source that will give them credible, current, newsworthy information  Already the impeachment inquiry is a lot of recorded information from a lot of sources, gathered by a lot of official bodies.  Where to look?  Who to believe? Where to start?  Who or what outlet(s) to follow?  Oh yeah, I am so ready. 

How about beginning with the two official documents that started it all: the whistle-blower’s complaint and the President’s summary of his phone call? Then add the pond ripples of official testifiers, their testimony and documents and you have a useful information trail to follow, though the record of the Congressional hearings will only be made public later, and the distractions will be ever with us.

Action Shot #8 Wondering. What makes beauty? Pause to consider. Color, texture, shape, growth, sunshine, and.., and…. Hard to pinpoint. Clearly, we need to keep going to the Botanical Gardens.

Add the coming circus of seemingly endless other primary records, e.g. tape of the President’s actual call, translator notes, notes from others listening in, other whistle-blowers chiming in, legal opinions, Congressional rulings, Judicial rulings, White House press interactions and walk-backs, etc.  Then add the wanna-sayers,  analysts and everyone else with an opinion and a bull horn. The problem is not in the number or variety or even the distribution of these records. No, the problem is figuring out what information you need and how to find it. Clearly, you need a map with routes built on  a visual image of an organizing scheme.

Scheme and image have to come together somehow.  That’s the fun of the challenge. Bibliographic chains used to work, and maps are always good, but two dimensional, although overlays help..  A maze or web come to mind, but they are too inflexible. An opening peony blossom works for the expanding sources, but the inter-petal links apparently don’t exist. Color could sort the political from the legal sources, but other variables, e.g. origin, authority, spread, influence, timing, point-of-view, need to be included, maybe.  (Have I said I love the NYTimes’ online graphics?)  Consider these three ways of thinking about the problem. 

 The complex of bare branches of a living tree might work. 

Carol Lee Chase’s painting ”An Order Shared” at Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis

Photographs of mathematicians’ blackboards “[with] swirling gangs of symbols sketched in the heat of imagination, argument and speculation.”  are food for thinking about possible variables which, when somehow combined, might  suggest a useful trail to follow.   

Jessica Wynne, photographer, “Do Not Erase.”  A collection of these images, will be published by Princeton University Press in the fall of 2020 some of which appeared in the NY Times (9/23/09). 

Finally, of course, a book, one of my favorites.  Barbara Ann Kipfer’s The Order of Things: Hierarchies, Structures, Pecking Orders is an unusual, useful, charming effort to sort things out and give them a place.  This was one of the hardest books I had to give up when I could no longer manage pages of a bound, paper book. And it is not available for Kindle readers, so I am remembering my years of pleasure in having it nearby.  Edward Tufte’s books are great graphic displays, especially, in this case, Envisioning Information, but they are data driven, and my information variables are not yet that established.

Epilogue:  Thinking about thoughts of a happy post-er:

I majored in philosophy, so now I  see, frame, and ask questions.                            I became a librarian, so now I search for the possibles.                                                As a trained researcher, I apply rigor and imagination.                                                With God’s grace and dad’s Irish tongue, I am still, ever an  arguer                        I am well-prepared for my life of little movement and much thought.  Sigh.

I thought Charlie and I had found our neighborhood coffee-house, a part of settling in. We tried the latte at five places. We sat inside and outside and checked for noise, proximity, and wheelchair-amenable spaces, tables, and entryways.. We found the Bauhaus, and I put a Bauhaus decal on my mug., though I first thought “Bauhaus” was a dog-grooming business. And yes, I know Bauhaus is a German art school, but a pet care place is just a corner further down the street.  So the mistake was natural, practically expected. Then Charlie saw the sign.

Action Shot #9. Pointing. Note the absence of “Short Person Approved” from the list of pluses of a coming Equal Exchange coffee place, linked to, among others, Charlie’s almost- cousins, Todd and, by marriage, Beth Ann, from the SE Minneapolis neighborhood, now at Equal Exchange.

Equal Exchange is only a few blocks further than Bauhaus and kitty-corner from the drugstore.  Lattes will be good both places.  So do we choose old neighborhood loyalty or new home proximity — in the rain?  I know for sure I will have to put a second decal on my mug.

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The early bird gets the worm, unless the worm has wiggled on. Go worm.
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Is a pertinent book of interest better read before or after a trip? Should it provoke anticipation or ease withdrawal?

Marianne read Barry Unsworth’s The Ruby in Her Navel, set in the 12thC. in Palermo. She liked it a lot so she included time in Sicily, which she also liked a lot, on her recent trip to the Mediterranean. Maybe good, pertinent historical novels before travel help focus on and compare places, cultures and, significant events then and now. So if a good historical novel builds excitement and awareness, what would be an equally good withdrawal read? I’m at a loss. Suggestions?

Barry Unsworth, called “a literary time traveler” in the NYT, writes great anticipation reads. He also writes a good withdrawal read. I liked his Land of Marvels which I chose after I took and loved a course in Sumerian, the language of ancient Iraq. Set in 1914 Iraq, this Unsworth book also contrasted then and closer-to- now, and demonstrated that access to and control of water, then oil, were, and still are, the stuff of dreams, plans, and war.

Anticipation reads are tricky, fun, and personal. For example, murder mysteries set in a place you are about to visit are better than travel guides, if you think the author’s knowledge and opinions are worthwhile. John Lanchester’s A Debt to Pleasure about food in France, among other things, comes to mind.

When in Tenants Harbor, which I love, I recommended Robert McCloskey’s One Morning in Maine as an anticipation read for those thinking about visiting Maine. If they thought nothing happened in the book, I suggested, they might enjoy more visiting someplace else. Nearly 30 years ago, I spent a five month sabbatical in Seattle.

Maybe my favorite example is Charlie, who lived in Seattle thirty years ago, as he does now, sending me, as an anticipation read, Timothy Egan’s The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest. It was perfect then for my sabbatical year  and  now, as I am again in Seattle.

Action Shot #10. Thinking. See the VERY BIG fishing boat going through the narrow, complicated Locks into Puget Sound, then into Juan de Fuca Strait, and finally into the ocean. I’m not in Tenants Harbor anymore, but I’m still keeping an eye on the boats and loving being near the water.

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Some people follow the money. I follow information. So I enjoyed reading in the NYT that a 2019 MacArthur fellowship was awarded to “[t]he historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez, who has drawn on suppressed or scattered records to write histories of the United States Border Patrol and the Los Angeles County prison system.” NYT, 9/25/2019  I hope she writes of the strategies, surprises, and quandaries of her search.  Public records can be a gold mine.  Remember Roy Moxham’s The Great Hedge of India about the 2500 mile living hedge the Brits built to control the salt trade?  As an archivist, he mined the extensive files of maps, etc. from the British in India.  Maybe unintentionally, the nastiness and folly of walls comes through, too.

SEATTLE POST 4

Mom-gull was watching over about twelve fuzzy chicks who were mostly resting in the shade of the roof, except for the wandering outliers. Mom-gull was alert, but not moving. Knowing little that matters about seagulls, I wake up to their 5 am sqw-wa-acks, watch, make up stories and enjoy a cup of coffee.

Action Shot #7. Watching. The shadowed, coffee-d, tonsured watcher watches the mom-gull or dad-gull watching the chick-dots in the shade of the wall, except for the darker-dot outliers walking about.

Charlie is convinced the mom-gull is sqwacking, “Get up, Charlie.” Fortunately, the NYTimes had a great article, sensible about seagulls, noting that mom-gull just might be dad-gull, sqw-wa-acks and all. Good to know.  Birder friend, Katie, said that one of her fellow birders said that seagulls are not a distinct bird; rather they are a combine, of some kind, probably with some herring gulls. Well, humph, I say. The NYTimes called this “birdsplaining”. Perfect.

Maybe a critic who wants to see abstraction might label Jamie Wyeth’s paintings of seagulls “visual birdsplaining” because he paints them with incredible knowledge of detail, which I appreciate, AND with keen awareness of personalities, which I am beginning to appreciate. Granted, in his series of paintings, the “Seven Deadly Sins,” seagulls are sinners (Aren’t we all?), but also his companions, surviving with him in the wild on the far side of Southern Island. I figure you take companionship where and in whatever form you find it…

Action Shot #8. Showing detail of mom gull or dad gull as painted by Jamie Wyeth who is a friend and neighbor and really good painter.

…especially when you are one among strangers, except for super-son, Charlie. All-purpose friend, Kathy, reminded me of the companionship that the gulls provided for the young protagonist who lived alone in Where The Crawdads Sing.  I loved the book, but didn’t remember the seagull perspective.  Delia Owens, the author, is a zoologist who knows whereof she writes so well, which is a very good thing.  And I think the gulls like me. One walked to the ledge nearest my window, looked at me, sqw-wa-acked ”What’s up?” and waited for my answer.   And when the birds dive-bombed toward  me, out and about in my wheelchair, they avoided my spreading tonsure and landed instead on the sidewalk. Whew! Charlie said they were pigeons.  Humpf.

So I am adapting. Ten years ago, I was asked about my hobbies. I listed adapting. I figured reading was more a way of life, and drip-drying was a long practiced super-power. Now, with my move to Seattle and the companionable seagulls so near, adapting has advanced to a way of life. Reading would have moved to super-power status, if I hadn’t missed the “gull as companion” thread in the Crawdads book, but it is on it’s way.  Drip-drying, especially in Seattle, is by definition a super-duper power. And multi-tasking has reached hobby status.

Action Shot #10. Adapting, e.g. wearing the barf. Master dribbler adapts to scarf-like bib, hence the barf. Maybe, more accurately, I am barfing….and maybe becoming a monk-ess.

Are adapting and becoming the same thing?  Can becoming ever be other than THE way of life?  Do I have too much time to think about things?

I went down to the water and what did I see?
A lonesome duck dinghy, looking sideways at me.

Action Shot #6. Staring Back. See the duck dinghy. Love the duck dinghy, T. Harbor needs a duck dinghy.

and saying, as loudly as eyes can imply,                                                                                                                                                                                 come glide with me.  I am not shy.

If only I could, I said with a sigh.

Doggerel on a lazy afternoon near the Ships’ Canal, and thinking of you all and good times.

SEATTLE POST 2

I’M SETTLING IN.

I’m now a regular at the Sunday Farmers’ Market, where, with Charlie’s running interference. I, with my nimble joystick, have zigged through one side of the Market regulars who are mostly tall, slow, texting walkers with dogs, strollers, and wandering eyes.  Unfortunately, the bagel-like preztels are on the too-crowded side.

To Charlie’s 30-years-in-Seattle chagrin, I’ve tried 4 coffee shops and still like Starbuck’s latte best.

With Charlie, I’ve walked by, looked or sampled, and found issues with
–the handsome Nordic Herita[ge Museum, where among the scheduled events, I saw no mention of Irish influence in the Vikings’ early explorations — surely, an oversight.
– -Ballard Consignment where, on the sidewalk sits a perfect yellow vinyl lawn chair with arms, which Charlie thought unneeded and, therefore, refused to sit in.
–the nifty Ballard Branch Library, where the best hours for me occur when Charlie plays basketball.
Charlie’s great and he’s coached me well.  And some explorations are best done together.  But, mostly, it’s time to solve some of the world’s problems  on my own.  Charlie is beside himself.

IT’S TIME TO GO ROGUE!

No, said Charlie.

I’ve figured out how Leary, Market, 22nd, and even Old Ballard Avenues intersect and where the crosswalks are, I said.

I’m going to follow you from 20 feet back, he said.

For heaven’s sake, I said,you sound like the dad who can’t let go when his kid takes the training wheels off. And I am not getting an Uber-Walker, even if such exists, (Good idea, Steve.) or dog-walker with too many leashes and a side business.

You can’t get in and out of the Landmark by yourself, Charlie grasped.

There is usually someone nearby, I said. Besides, you made a poker for me to reach elevator buttons and, good news!

Action Shot #3. Poking. Opening the inside Lobby front door.

It reaches the inside Lobby OPEN button AND the in-between Lobby OPEN button behind the sofa.  Now I just have to hurry through the opened doors. 

But for Charlie, the poker has An unexpected consequence.

Action Shot #4. Poking, again. The mom-poker rouses a napping Charlie. (I have created a monster, Charlie says Ambiguously..)

I thought I had won the Battle of Going Rogue. Then, hard to believe, last week, a crazed guy with a (lethal? ugly? evil?) pitchfork attacked a woman sitting in her car with the window down. It was mid-afternoon on a Wednesday in front of the Ballard neighborhood post office. Hard to get more ordinary than that. The woman raised her purse to fend off the pitchfork wielder, as two men ran to her aid. Charlie was all over this

That could have been you, he said. Midday visit to the neighborhood public library and WHAM! Pitchfork wielder strikes again

The pitchfork guy is in jail. I pointed out.

A copycat, then, Charlie says. And you don’t have a purse.

I have a lethal attack-wheelchair which I drive at 3 (of 5) hares and five turtles on the street. (Thanks to C.J. Box who has Joe Pickett attacked by an evil mom when he is questioning her in jail. Charlie might point out the evil mom similarity. See Action Shot #4 above.)

This may all be settled when NFL games start and are played during Farmers’ Market hours. The Market is on the street immediately out the Landmark back door., which is, unfortunately, trickier to open. But surely someone will help. This is Seattle, which with Minneapolis and Tenants Harbor may have captured all the nice people. Okay, add Wiley’s Corner for Scott and Brian.

Action Shot #5. Thinking. Just got back from the MOBBED market. H-m-m-m.

LET THE ADVENTURES ROLL!

Hello from Seattle! 

Yes, three weeks into my latest adventure, I am happily west coastal and loving my digs.

Though nothing can replace Roseledge on the harbor of my summers,  I am still near water, busy monitoring boats as they line up in the Ship Canal to go through Ballard Locks on their way to Puget Sound.  I see mostly a few very big fishing boats and lots of too-big pleasure (power) boats, both of which are new to me. So much to learn.

Action Picture 1.  Monitoring. You may think this is Alfred Hitchcock, with chipmunk cheek, planning a Rear Window adaptation, tentatively titled Canal Window, but you would be wrong.  It’s a good idea, though.

East coastal Roseledge, the place of my heart and a memory for the ages, will carry on only in blog-dom as  Roseledge Books, which will be ever there for inquiring minds, those curious folks who ask and vote and generally make the world a better place — except for 2016.  Where were you when Disaster Trump appeared? Aargh! We have our 2020 work cut out for us. I hope for all of our differences in books and other matters, that we can join together, as people who read and think and get things done to rid the world of His Pestilence.  

This makes Roseledge Books and it’s readers sound very much like the “business” started by the Canadian ex-spy who, for pay, recommends to his Wall Street followers, that they choose best books from his lists and, then, set apart reading time in their days (all previously noted two posts back, dated March 20, 2019). More recently, it sounds like Ceridwan Dovey’s efforts to find out if reading can make you happier. She did this by signing up for a remote session with a bibliotherapist from London’s School of Life.  The session was a gift. Similarly, but on her own, Marianne sent me the following note: “I just finished reading Soul of America by Jon Meacham, about surviving the Trump presidency. It was encouraging, so I appreciated that.” I call that hope, and surely hope is at the center of happy.  So maybe reading CAN make you happier. Better and more interesting, I know for sure. 

In this spirit of learning about current affairs through reading books, I continue to tackle  Middle East mores and moves from the exploits of Israeli spy and art restorer,Gabriel Allon, and Daniel Silva is spot-on again in his brand new novel, The New Girl..  Equally learned about intrigue in places less well- known is David Ignatius, foreign policy analyst for the Washington Post, though his last two, The Quantum Spy and The Directorate were as much about the FBI as they were about world affairs, but the FBI seems a mess, too.

So we read, which is good..  But, increasingly, we also see, too.  Remember the recent “Pelosi looks drunk” video? BIG ALERT!  It was a deep fake, about which Regina Rini notes, among other good points, that with so much seeing, we need to start paying more attention to  what the video says, who it comes from, how it got to us, and why, because it all matters.  Prior to Professor Rini,the latest, best source I remember reading about visual sophistication is documentarian Errol Morris’ Believing Is Seeing.  So, CHECK YOUR SOURCES.  BE PERPETUALLY WARY! Pictures have always been malleable, but with unregulated social media and new technologies, videos can be easily manipulated, then distributed widely and virtually instantaneously through all kinds of channels.  We, as readers and voters have to be vigilant for our own good, and we, as librarians, need to be vigilant and pro-active for the good of the world. I firmly believe librarians can — and should — save the world, one wary reader at a time.

Okay, books are good, but not enough when a mighty lonesomeness sets in. So, this weekend, I indulged my love of rocky coasts by getting up way too early and watching for way too long, the (cough) British Open Golf Tournament on the magnificent coast of Northern Ireland. WOW!  And though I have a few sailboats and the calls and swooping flight of gulls nearby, it is not enough. I miss Tenants Harbor a lot. So I am calling on the Sea Street walkers-by, to rest a bit on Roseledge’s rock wall, watch the harbor, and through ESP, keep me in the loop which Scott has promised to invent.

In a word,  my move defines “bittersweet.”  For all that I love being near Charlie, I miss the you-all of my former lives.  It’s a bit like knowing when my sister, Charyl, than Gordy died, that there was no one left to keep me honest when telling of my early years.  Well, except for my college roomie, Nons, who recently rediscovered yearbook pictures better left unseen. So I’m starting a new history in a new place at 80.  Bittersweet, indeed.   

But I am ready for new adventures, and in every way, every day offers just that..  At the moment, I am trying to convince Charlie that I could be his caddy when next he golfs.  I could roll like a golf cart and strap his clubs to the back of my chair. He has not said no, which is VERY encouraging  But today, when he gets up, we are starting the BIG picture-hanging marathon, which I know requires an enormous outlay of goodwill from everyone.   He has promised me one hanging and one re-do, so I am optimistic. LARRY, WHERE ARE YOU IN MY TIME OF NEED? I am also generally encouraged because Charlie was a very good sport and put on his sunglasses to get me a Starbucks medium skim, extra hot latte.  Thusly anonymous,he retained his Seattle coffee chops and I slurped my latte right down and didn’t say a word as he did the same, surreptitiously.  

All in all, I’d say we’re settling in.  Good omen: the street was closed and I rolled right out, just as if Kathy and I were walking and rolling again.  And my telephone number — 612.331.7643 — and email address — colleen@roseledgebooks.com — remain the same.            

Action Picture 2. Waving and pink toes.