Ruby Tuesday

I have to confess: I don’t really love how donating blood makes me feel. I mean that in the physical sense, although it’s kind of creeping into the emotional realm as well: there was a moment, however brief, yesterday where I wondered what would happen if I told the blood suckers I’d changed my mind […]

No Season for Students

We had two customers of note in yesterday at Pat’s Screen Printing. We don’t know who one was, or even when he or she came through. We just know this person was there. And we know this because it was March yesterday: first it rained, then it froze, then it snowed, then it fogged, then […]

LEEDing by Example

As I mentioned yesterday in a very truncated post (it was not a particularly productive weekend on any front, other than I did get caught up on household bills), World Ark magazine, which usually highlights people and projects in the developing world, made the jarring juxtaposition of how Americans save the planet versus Tanzanians. So […]

Puzzled Out

Do we all remember how the Grinch “puzzed and puzzed ’til his puzzler was sore?” Well, my puzzler is sore. We spent most of yesterday in another fervor of indecision, until I just completely gave out. And this morning, while casting about for blog topics — there are several, but nothing leaped to the forefront […]

Breakfast With Ben

This week, three people who previously worked at Pat’s Screen Printing stopped by to say “hi,” one of them twice, and I was not at work any of those times. Of course, among time mismanagement, blogging, house-ing and on-the-street socializing, that doesn’t leave much time in my day for work, so I suppose it stands […]

My World is Blue

There was a time when a neighbor family gifted Terri and me (Tia was around, but barely) a pair of Frisbees. One was red, the other blue. The blue one was actually a much nicer disc, but since I was 6 and Terri 4, “quality” wasn’t nearly as important as “color.” In good oldest sibling […]

A Pox on the First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Here’s a sticky wicket for you: is it okay to […]

Inundated

There are days — and this is one of them — when I watch the news and wonder how I then turn about and engage in such frippery as this blog. Today — probably for One Day Only — I may just be less fripperous (not a word, but it should be) than usual. People […]

Holding Pattern

Donnie, who has worked at Pat’s Screen Printing for something like 13 years, has a milestone birthday coming up tomorrow — but that didn’t seem to be foremost on his mind yesterday when he came to work. “Spring in two days,” he kept saying. Almost as if he could will that to be true. I […]

Connections

We have at least one deer here in town with a severely broken leg. Above the knee it juts out at a 90-degree angle, and it is awful to watch her walk. One night she and I had a close encounter: she was under one of Carol’s pine trees next to the driveway as I […]