With Erika, visiting Holly

Blue Heron Brewery in Rinconada. Those three doors face East, South and West—so not such a large room as the panorama makes it seem. It was nice to see Holly working. Right after this, other people started coming in.

Amanda's cat Simon

Yesterday we were with Holly in Taos and gave her a ride to Pilar, to her friend Amanda's house, where she had left her truck.

I went down the side of the house Amanda is renting, to photograph the wheelbarrow, and when I turned back, I saw the cat, on on a viga. I took several photos, but THIS one was one of those shots that, looked at later, seems more wonderful than I could have expected or planned. It's not cropped, it was just like this:


I like the hills showing in the lower left, and the sun through the clouds through the trees in two places above that. But at the time, I was only looking at Simon and at the end of that viga.


The cat in greater context:

Serendipity and that

These days Joyce Fetteroll has a small group of witnesses and perhaps assistants, for a book she and Danny are working on. She's bringing (alphabetically) a word and we make up definitions, and when she tells us the real one, we use it in a sentence. There's art involved, and humor, too.

Today she had defined "latrinalia"


I wrote:

Just the other day Holly quoted me the traditional "If you sprinkle while you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie."

I asked if she knew of the equivalent one for men's rooms. She did not.

We aim to please.
You aim too, please.

At a roadside candle outlet in North Carolina or Virginia, on a road trip with a friend of mine many years ago, I chose one of several toilet stalls. While sitting, I read "I love Keith Dodd" in someone else's handwriting. Someone else's Keith Dodd, no doubt. Quite a great coincidence.

Including Joyce's deposit of a word meaning bathroom writings just a few days after Holly and I talked about that a bit, I've had three of them this week.

Because I bought some things from China and Holly was here when they arrived, I told her about the government-subsidized postage and China's 20 years or so of moving toward capitalism. She and Keith brought a bottle of mead they bought because a friend's brother owns the company. It was good. I couldn't remember his name and when I did, I googled and found his dad, who was an atomic researcher and I didn't know so much cool stuff about him. In an interview about early atomic research in Los Alamos, he was asked about a co-worker who had moved to China. He said she was disappointed about China's eventual movement away from communism and toward capitalism.

Yesterday at lunch, Keith was asking what I knew about labyrinths in churches. I did know some, and a friend of ours designed and oversaw installation of an outdoors one at a church not far from us. Later that day I turned on the Sherlock Holmes audible book I'm listening to, and the word labyrinth popped up. 　

There's a word for that—words or factoids popping up—but I don't remember it. It's one of the many magically fun things in life.

And I posted that somewhere and someone gave me the word, and then...
I can't remember where it was provided, or who.

Gargoyle and an airplane

June 29, 2011, I put this on facebook. So it will be a race between whether this blog platform will last longer than facebook's photos do.




Water spout—not a fancy gargoyle. Look up above in the sky, though. This I caught on purpose, but I've had some accidental catches nearly as cool as this. This is the roof parapet at Henbury Parish Church, in Bristol, where I also got to play the pipe organ. The caretaker pressed me to do that. I played it as though it were a piano,because my feet don't play organ and I couldn't figure out how to turn on the lower keyboard, but I did it! I played something I didn't know, in 6/8, with only two harmony lines at any one time. Coool.

Same place, same day, Alison's boys showed me the "King of the Castle" song/game, which I have on video somewhere and should add here.

Throw-away views

This photo isn't new. Summer, 2013. I was looking for a photo of a chain of office for a discussion about the word "Whiffler," and ended up looking through photos I took in Chichester when I was there with Joyce Fetteroll, Julie Daniel and Adam Daniel. It's always hard for me to say what I love about England, but this is an example of it. This was the view from the window of the women's room in a restaurant, in Chichester.



The roof lines, the building materials, things added, clues to things having been chopped off, or repaired, or modernized, different kinds of roof tiles and panels and treatments... Candid, "back stage," not spruced up for tourists. :-)

Inside the room:

Nice description of the David Bowie letter

A Sean Kelley in London sweetly informed me about a post today at BBC.co.uk that describes the letter David Bowie sent me very nicely:

Great tales of David Bowie's good nature flooded out after his death too, but we've known about his letter to his first American fan since 2009, after it appeared on the excellent Letters of Note site.

It's a wonderful thing - a measured, charming, excited and poignant response, written in 1967, to a 14-year-old called Sandra Dodd from New Mexico, whose uncle had given her a promotional copy of Bowie's first album (he worked at a radio station).

"When I called in this, my manager's office, a few moments ago I was handed my very first American fan letter - and it was from you. I was so pleased that I had to sit down and type an immediate reply," Bowie begins, before answering questions Sandra had asked about his real name, birthday, height, and whether he'll ever visit America.

"Thank you for being so kind as to write to me and do please write again and let me know some more about yourself," the letter ends.

I love this: "measured, charming, excited and poignant."
It's the second item here, but I will point out again that he was not yet a famous musician when the letter was written.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/ec553f4f-cf1b-4912-b9b5-a98ddfe8d6c6#

The letter and notes on my site: http://sandradodd.com/bowieletter/

Out the window

Joyce Fetteroll was doing a words game in April and May 2016 (for a project she and Danny were doing), and the word was "defenestration." It means to throw something or someone out of a window.

I recorded this for that group, but I don't think those posts will be around forever, so here it is for me to find later.



May 4, 2016