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Almost that time!

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).

Tiny Tuesday!

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.

Mindful Monday

Yesterday’s flashback to a different time

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:

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.

Guess today wasn’t a silent day.

Silence

Questions, No. 8

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

Tiny Tuesday!

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.

Continue reading “Tiny Tuesday!”

Sunday Sundries

Friday, I purged our living room bookcases. I set aside around 120 books to rehome.

A few are paperback cozies that I took to various Little Free Libraries in or near our neighborhood on Saturday. Do you spy Jack on the right in the above photo?

The rest, Tom will box and take to a reseller. I doubt I’ll get any money for them, but they need to move on to new readers. I listed the titles so that if Jim and Tim want me to hold any of them back for them, I will.

A lot of those books are nonfiction, particularly related to the early years of HIV/AIDS. Maybe if people had read some of them, they’d have a better understanding of so much that happened with COVID. It’s called “woke” to think we should learn what science, medicine, sociology, and human experience can teach us from our history. I think it’s funny that “woke” is used as a pejorative.

Mostly, there’s a lot of great fiction in those stacks. The ones I love most I’ve read more than once; they’re only collecting dust here. They deserve to find new readers.

I also needed the shelf space–too many books were crammed in. They’re better arranged now (still divided by genre, and the two bookcases on the right changed very little). Tom adjusted a couple of shelves to make them look more uniform. Here’s how they are now.

I know I need to do this for the library shelves, too, but those contain literature, classics, and books I know I won’t get rid of for the foreseeable future. There’s really not a lot to rehome.

Little Free Library visits on Saturday:

Easiest for me to get to, but it’s often full, so I mostly use it when I have a single book to drop.

This one isn’t in great shape, but those LFLs may need books even more.

A return visit from when I spotted it a few days ago, only this time, I left books.

This is probably the LFL drop I use the most because I know the person who installed it.

Couldn’t resist leaving some good books at this Astros-themed LFL.

Pick One, No. 12

It’s funny, but when I look at this book, or the would-you-rather book I used yesterday, I recognize that I’m very opinionated and can easily pick one choice over another. However, what isn’t so easy is explaining why–not that I don’t have reasons, but I don’t always want to discuss them publicly. =) I also like it when I have an existing photo or the ability to take a photo for my selection.

Today’s pick:
Question 1704: Teddy bear or security blanket? (and why…)

Me and Dr. Neil, my teddy bear since I was three, named for the doctor who was taking care of me in the hospital when Uncle Gerald and Aunt Lola visited and gave him to me. He’s still in the cabinet next to me, though this photo was taken by Lynne when I was fifteen/sixteen. I never had a security blanket.

WYR? No. 4

No. 888. Would you rather go back and get to do high school all over again or have all your debt paid off?

“GET TO” do high school all over again? I’ve heard there are people who think of high school as their glory days, but I not only don’t think of high school that way, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to return to their high school years. There are dear friends I knew in high school who are dead now, and I wish they were alive, healthy, happy, and only as far away as a phone number. I knew good people in both my high schools and had a lot of fun along with my teen angst, but NO. PLEASE, Magic Genii, if you must yield your power on my behalf, take my debt away. I’d rather live unencumbered by debt now than live in the past. I’m fine with my gray hair and wrinkles.