Like many places, we were lucky to have dry mostly sunny weather for our No Kings rally and march. It is clouding up now and rain is on the way. The preliminary estimates are 40,000 people for our big rally. That’s a little more than 6% of our population. Lots of fun costumes and people being silly but the news is so dark it is hard to keep the mood up. My favorite sign was on an older woman’s back, “It’s so bad, even the introverts are here!” She was all by herself wearing a tiara.
I had gone for a jog/walk/run combo on the track earlier and standing for many hours was more of a challenge than I was up for plus the PA system was a tad bit too loud for my kind of partial hearing loss. But still I ran into one of my students and together we found the League group and so I was able to do some friendly visiting. Then I just took it all in. Like the No Kings in June I felt a bit sad coming home, like what is the point, but I know for people who can’t get out to the rally (like Mrs. Sherlock) and for those of you not here it is so important you know, this crazy stuff happening in this country is not of our making.
Mr. Sherlock is home from the hospital and is now officially enrolled in home hospice care. Having an ostomy bag for someone who is also struggling with confusion and mild dementia at this point, ugh, it is so hard for them. Mrs. Sherlock has been through so much this year I think she is plain worn out. A body only has so much energy.
The dialogue group on Thursday was a bit intense. A guy showed up, very tall wearing sandals with a Band-Aid on his forehead and like always I assume he is someone a person in the group knows. It did turn out that he was invited and friends with one of the many slightly odd men that Walt knows. But there was no introduction and as we were starting our chat Walt wanted to talk about this film that he thought was amazing and good called “Human” by Yann Arthus-Bernard.
They got talking about cities and New York in particular and this guy, we shall call him “The Chocolatier” blurted out that you can’t see the Milky Way in New York and then went on a climate change end of the known world rant. He told Walt he was wrong to like New York so much and telling Walt he is wrong is not a good idea. The argument got so heated at one point with only a couple of people trying to cool things down I thought I was going to need to leave. I was the only woman there.
In retrospect it was pretty funny. Walt, Mr. Peace and Love arguing about all the fabulous culture available in New York and this guy saying we are all going to die, we have ruined it all. Luckily, our professional mediator was in the room, and he managed to get them to cool it and Walt was able to explain how the group worked and the guy, who it turns out makes exquisite vegan chocolate truffles settled into a groove, and we were able to carry on more like normal.
I shared with the group that I had inexplicably been out collecting red maple leaves to mulch my garden plot with.
There I am with my trug standing in the gutter picking out only the red leaves. I haven’t a clue why. I have mulched with maple leaves before but never only the red ones. They got a good laugh out of that, that maybe it was some sort of atavistic instinct. I wondered if there was something special in the chemical makeup of the red leaves in particular that might benefit the soil. (It turns out not, the sugar that makes leaves turn red are called anthocyanins and are protective to the tree from harsh sunlight and certain insects but don’t enhance the soil in any particularly special way.)
The thing is, and I was out doing this yesterday as well, as the red maple leaf pickup window of time is pretty short, the thing is I think I am doing this because the red leaves are, um, pretty. It is an aesthetic choice.
I guess you could say I am living artfully on many levels. Walt texted me out of the blue yesterday afternoon a picture from a car window of a street lined with trees with red leaves. It made me laugh.
I have been experimenting with the shoes I have to see if I can find any that I can wear to do cardio that aren’t going to make my feet painfully hot. And I was chuffed to find a pair. I have no recollection of buying these shoes, they aren’t really athletic shoes, but they also are if that makes any sense. They are grey and black with turquoise accents. It is like discovering how handy the small whisk is, shopping in what I already have.
This last week I made apple cinnamon muffins from a New York Times recipe. I chose the crumble topping and used a Fugi apple and they came out yummy. Sadly, I couldn’t get the guys to eat more of them although some had seconds and so I had to eat a number myself. I loved the texture. Cake like with a crunchy top. I haven’t been baking much since I took on this role with the League. And as I was starting to assemble the ingredients all these emails appeared that needed to be responded to right that minute and I am like, guys, can I have two hours to make my stupid muffins???
I didn’t say that of course, but I did think it, and blessedly the flurry slowed down.
There were no parents watching a child’s game in the oval on the track today. No parents is a good thing on the track. I like the track. It is surrounded by trees and lovely planting and what goes on is always fascinating to me. People come and go seemingly at random. There is a patch in the shade that gets icy after a frost, but we aren’t there yet.
We aren’t there yet. First, I need to get the rest of my hand selected red leaves on the garden and cut back the enthusiastic native lupine and nepeta and the League’s taxes done and…
Gear up for the rain that is coming in tonight. There are going to be some very wet frogs out there.
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