It hasn’t rained for two days, which is suitable for the water table, messing up our plumbing and worrying me. This is happening nationwide as the rain has been heavy for the past few months. We’re just taking it one day at a time.
Maria is off to her Belly Dancing Class in Bennington, Vermont. I’m eager tonight to read the new Dennis Lehane novel, Small Mercies, about Boston’s wrenching desegregation struggles in the 1970s. I worked as an editor at the Boston Globe during that awful time; we all had bulletproof windows installed in the newsroom, and the paper was hated for supporting the desegregation orders from a federal judge.
Lehane’s novel “Small Mercies” takes place in the tumultuous months after a 1974 order to integrate the city’s schools through forced busing. I never saw hatred, racism, and class warfare more severe than in Boston, not even when I went to Mississippi as a reporter.
I like Lehane’s writing very much, and I’m eager to see how he portrays that awful period. I’m putting aside the water troubles and the cost, sitting by a fire with some tea and plunging into the book. The book is a mystery, but it says a lot about the country’s twisted history with race.
Ron DeSantis may need to ban it.
Maria and I have been discussing our plans to sell some books on E-Bay to raise money for the anticipated flood, ground, and septic repair in the Spring when the ground thaws. Maria decided to drop the eBay idea and sell some of the books on her blog. I’d link to the sales. Several people suggested this, suggesting I’m an idiot for not thinking of it.
I’m sure they were right, but this is Maria’s program, and my job is supporting it. She’s wicked smart and knows how to do this. I’m not competent in this way.
It’s a good thing to do, water crisis or not. We read many new books, and they are in big piles and all in excellent shape.
We’ve always given these books away, but it would be wise for us to start saving. We can take out a loan if necessary, as many people do with this trouble. It’s time to get them out of the house. It’s not a crisis, as I like to say; it’s just life. We’ll be fine. Blog readers know us, and many of them are passionate book readers. We have a lot of terrific books and they are all in great shape. It’s nice to think of them going to our readers. The house is getting too cluttered anyway. Maria will figure it out; she doesn’t need peckerheads telling her what to do.
I think this is what character is made of – how we handle difficulty, not how we avoid it.
Lulu and Fanny get their feeder now. They are not into sharing.
Zip showing up for the afternoon meeting, he was out hunting all day. Weather means nothing to him. He is always on time for our meetings; today’s lasted about 15 minutes. I love his stare. He is a photographer’s delight.
Maria’s twine sculpture is getting bigger. She adds to the sculpture every day when she feeds the animals.
The Imperious Hens, out eating birdseed beneath the feeder. I love the color when they all stand together.
This is my daily landscape picture, it is never the same two days in a row.
Lulu knows how to bend me to her will; I can never resist her plea for an alfalfa cookie.
