I hope you and yours have a safe and happy holiday, however you celebrate. It’s raining here (which we GREATLY need; Houston is under a drought), so even if we were giving out candy (we’re not), I doubt there’ll be many children trick or treating. Behind the cut, I’m sharing the last days of my skeleton photos posted to Instagram. Y’all get a lot more details here than I provide on my Instagram posts. I had a little help today thanks to posters from the coloring book pictured above. It’s always a party if there’s music!
Last year in September, I left Debby at the grocery store while I ran some other errands. She was still deep into shopping when I got back. I’d been doing a lot of coloring that month, so I grabbed a Halloween-themed cat coloring book I found inside the grocery store and colored in the car while I waited. I think the page (above right) is the only one I colored from it, not even another one in October. I posted the page only on Instagram.
Today, I enjoyed an incredibly productive day, and I think that’s because I’d had eight solid hours of sleep with no interruptions, which is kind of a miracle. Along with three rounds of dog and dog-waste policing I did on the grounds, I dust-mopped the house to get up lots of dog hair, dust, and leaf bits, mopped the library, cleaned both bathrooms, ate all my meals and took all meds as scheduled, washed up the dinner dishes (Debby cooked the meal she shared with us), and most of all, I FINISHED THE CHAPTER that I’ve been working on since the seventeenth century. It needs a reread and no doubt some edits, but now I can move on, and hopefully the next ones for the remainder of this novel will go more quickly. Nothing would make me happier than to have a full draft of Book 7 before New Year’s Day.
To celebrate, I took a break to dig out that 2023 coloring book and color a Halloween page. Tomorrow will be my last skeleton-music-homage photo for the season on Instagram, so I’ll devote Thursday to posting those here before we officially close the Halloween season by sundown (no trick-or-treaters this year).
From the book of Tiny Pleasures, I spotted this one:
When I did my recent book purge, I discovered that in the past, I had a tendency to grab whatever was handy to use as a bookmark (despite several posts this year featuring the abundance of bookmarks I own).
Here are a few of the things I found tucked into books I’m rehoming:
Three actual bookmarks: one with an inspirational saying, one from the Doris Day Animal League, to which I was a contributor long before I worked in animal rescue, and one with other state and Texas locations of Half Price Books.
Two business cards, one from the bookstore where I was employed as an assistant manager starting a few months after we moved to Houston, and one promoting The Deal and Three Fortunes In One Cookie, with contact information on the back.
A red ribbon decal that was probably part of a donation appeal from an HIV/AIDS-related organization.
A thank-you card from Amy after she spent a summer living on the second floor of our fifth Houston home (The Compound was our sixth, and Houndstooth Hall is our seventh; between our first and third, we spent the summer of 1990 living with Lynne and Craig. I guess we paid their hospitality forward with Amy; then here at the Hall, Lynne and Minute lived with us for a few weeks between homes). So many good friend memories.
I emailed Amy photos of the message she wrote inside the card, and we reminisced about those times. The envelope is postmarked September 1, 1994, when a postage stamp was 29 cents.
When I started the Sunday Sundries theme to replace Button Sunday, I didn’t mean that each Sunday would have a grouping of sundry items that had nothing to do with one another. Each Sunday may have related items*, but most Sundays will introduce some new and random thing. If you read here (THANK YOU!), you can always suggest something, and I’ll see what my home or environment provides.
This week, the group is PIGS! I’ve had to purge them periodically through the years, because they were given in such abundance, but here’s a good sampling of what’s around. These don’t include the holiday ornaments that are packed away.
A few Piglets from the curio cabinet in the writing sanctuary–this is the cabinet the Harvey flood didn’t get. A couple of the Piglets are Hallmark ornaments, gifts from Lynne.
Some of the stuffies from a cabinet also in the writing sanctuary. That very large pig on the left used to grunt “Jingle Bells” (and may still). It was a gift back in the early ’90s from Christine and John. Christine was another assistant manager at the bookstore, and if I’m not mistaken, I wrote this pig into A Coventry Christmas because whenever I got called to the cash wrap area, I took it with me to make our shoppers smile and reassure them the line was moving fast. At least a dozen times, men offered me ridiculous amounts of money for the pig. THAT is what comes of husbands and fathers shopping on Christmas Eve.
These are pigs who live in the toy chest that’s under the dining room window. I adore them, and most all of them are gifts. I found Miss Piggy at a thrift store to use back when I did Runway Monday, because Miss Piggy had been a client on “Project Runway.” Lynne once appeared in a home movie back in the Seventies as Miss Piggy. She was fabulous.
The living room display cases that came with our house at Houndstooth Hall (thank you, Mr. S) needed two photos to get them all in. These include pigs I’ve had the very longest. My original six to a dozen pigs all had names and stories, most of which I’ve forgotten, except for Jimmy Hogga and his wife, Mrs. Hogga. If any of these pigs happen to be excessively ugly, they probably came from Lynne and later her granddaughter Lila. Finding them to give me has been a holiday hobby for them.
These are the pigs who guard the pantry. That paper towel holder is from my brother. The cross-stitched pig is from my mother. The little quilted pigs were made from vintage quilts and purchased from an antique store in the Houston suburbs where Lynne, Tom, and I used to shop every Christmas for unique gifts for each other and family. I miss that store!
There are likely more pigs here, but these were the easiest to find.
ETA: GASP! How could I forget sweet Olivia who has her own shelf in the library; two bag clasps that hang out in the pantry; and the pencil holder that resides on my big office desk?
(Previous Sunday Sundries posts have included shells, bookmarks, Mary Stewart books, crayons, old blog features, oracle animal cards, romantic comedy DVDs, political buttons, items related to The Netherlands, random small boxes, bracelets, writing research aids, DVDs I’m watching, comics I’ve read through the years, Eddie Van Halen paraphernalia, Mary O’Hara books and some plastic skeleton photos, books to donate and some local Little Free Libraries.)
Friday, I started looking at a social media site I rarely visit after I learned that The Washington Post declined to endorse a presidential candidate. One of the first things I saw was this film still from the 1976 movie All The President’s Men, in which the characters’ grim expressions probably mirrored my reaction to this news:
Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford portraying Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward; along with Jason Robards as Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee; Jack Warden as Harry Rosenfeld, the assistant managing editor who supervised Woodward and Bernstein; and Martin Balsam as Howard Simons, the managing editor.
The real Woodward and Bernstein during the Watergate period: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Fiction meets fact: Dustin Hoffman, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, and Robert Redford attend the premiere of “All The President’s Men” on April 4, 1976, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
Katharine Meyer Graham presided over The Washington Post, her family’s newspaper, as publisher from 1963 to 1991. That includes the paper’s coverage of the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon and convictions of many Watergate co-conspirators.
The Washington Post is now owned by the second-wealthiest man in the world, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos. A source close to Washington Post leadership claimed to Fox News Digital that Bezos was not involved in the decision. However, a separate source spoke with Fox News Digital and believes otherwise, citing The Post’s own reporting claiming the billionaire directly intervened.
Reactions to the news were swift; within 24 hours, more than 2000 subscriptions to The Post had been canceled. There were dozens of immediate public reactions shared across the news media from columnists, reporters, journalists, and political analysts, including this joint statement from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein:
“We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 12 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy. Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”
Former Post executive editor Martin Baron, who led the paper while Trump was president, said in a text message to The Post: “This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Here are quotes from the news side of the paper in reaction to the announcement:
“An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner–Amazon founder Jeff Bezos– according to the same sources.”
“A non-endorsement would have made sense if it had been announced before the nominees were known. But doing it 11 days before the election suggests Bezos is worried he’d lose government contracts if Trump wins. So it signals intimidation works,” a current Post staffer told Fox News Digital. “Trump certainly caused trouble for Bezos in his presidency by killing a big cloud computing contract and messing with the Amazon postal contract. So [Bezos] knows how expensive a second term might be if Trump were mad at our coverage.”
The Post’s Guild statement in reaction to the decision:
Much has been made of the paper’s official slogan, adopted in 2017: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
Indeed.
Out of the 80-plus newspaper endorsements for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, a few of the notable ones include Winston-Salem Chronicle, New York Times, Boston Globe, The New Yorker, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Denver Post, The Las Vegas Sun, Los Angeles Sentinel, Seattle Times, The Star-Ledger, Tennessee Tribune, Scientific American, and San Antonio Express.
Meanwhile, the fewer than ten media endorsements for Trump include New York Post, The Washington Times, and Las Vegas Review-Journal.
At The Los Angeles Times, the man in charge is Patrick Soon-Shiong, another billionaire, who blocked the paper from endorsing California’s own Kamala Harris for president, as its board was reportedly planning to do, resulting in at least three editorial board members’ resignations.
I haven’t done one of these since March of 2022. Took it from the shelf, randomly opened it, scrolled down the page until a question caught my eye: What is your favorite author whose name begins with the letter R? As my mental search engine kicked into gear, I promised however it turned out, I’d go with the first name that came to mind.
That would be U.S. author Tom Robbins, who is still with us at 92 years old. He was born in North Carolina and is considered a post-modernist, and I have my brother to thank for getting me to read my first of his novels, Another Roadside Attraction. I never looked back.
I’ve mentioned on here before that had I finished my Masters program, I knew I’d either pick the works of Tom Robbins or Larry McMurtry as my thesis subject. That thesis (and a foreign language requirement) are the only two things I didn’t complete. Did well in all my classes. Passed my masters comps. Then somehow it all slipped through my fingers and I moved away without finishing the program. These things happen.
From my bookshelf, his eleven novels:
Another Roadside Attraction; Even Cowgirls Get The Blues; Still Life With Woodpecker; Jitterbug Perfume; Skinny Legs And All; Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas; Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates; Villa Incognito; Wild Ducks Flying Backward; B Is For Beer; Tibetan Peach Pie
A new smaller skeleton joined the pack at Houndstooth Hall: young Ambrose’s twin sister Amarise (whatever century some variety of plague occurred was hard on this family). Here’s a photo from her first appearance on Instagram, wearing a “Who The Hell Is Ben Cote?” button that I let her claim because, as Lord Cuttlebone explains, “Never come between a girl and her devotion to a guitarist, songwriter, performer, and possessor of great hair.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. For more of my Instagram skeleton Halloween homages to music artists, check behind the cut.
A new smaller skeleton joined the pack at Houndstooth Hall: young Ambrose’s twin sister Amarise (whatever century some variety of plague occurred was hard on this family). Here’s a photo from her first appearance on Instagram, wearing a “Who The Hell Is Ben Cote?” button that I let her claim because, as Lord Cuttlebone explains, “Never come between a girl and her devotion to a guitarist, songwriter, performer, and possessor of great hair.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. For more of my Instagram skeleton Halloween homages to music artists, check behind the cut.