lauradi7dw

I have not been out of Massachusetts since last November, when Arthur's mother died. The next trip I have scheduled in in December, for another family gathering. I had had the thought of taking Amtrak as a day-trip to visit a friend near Portland Maine sometime this summer. I have considered going to Newark for a concert or to NYC really soon to see Audra McDonald's Mama Rose before "Gypsy" closes (earlier than expected). Although aside from being in the room for that performance I'd actually rather see "Maybe Happy Ending" if I got off the bus/train in Manhattan. But would I rather stay home? Going back and forth to see Flo's family might be plenty of travel.

As opposed to going to Japan, not ever on my list except that a friend will be there in the fall for a family thing and it's close enough to South Korea that one can still go on a boat.

Makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero, sent to hell-equivalent in El Salvador by our government without a hearing because he has a mom tattoo on his arm, has been released from CECOT and sent to Venezuela, according to Rep Robert Garcia, quoting Andry's legal team. Not brought back here to be exonerated from the made-up charge, but better than being in prison, especially that prison. I did nothing to cause this after one initial email, but I'm glad other people were working hard.

Today is the 5th anniversary of John Lewis's death. There were protests organized, although not many in person
https://goodtroubleliveson.org/#about
There were some virtual ones, but at the time of one on youtube, I was finishing up a visit to Flo's family and driving.
The babies had their one month pediatrician visits this morning. I went to help Flo out with driving and baby-wrangling. I was pleased by the NP who will be their primary care person - extremely pro-vaxx, masked for the appointment, cheerful, full of good advice. I also was impressed that there was a scribe taking notes, so that the NP was entirely focused on Flo and the babies. My own primary care people spend part of their time sitting at the computer during appointments. This is better, although presumably more expensive for the practice. The children were pretty relaxed about the exam, somewhat to our surprise. Also surprising to me, considering how small their mouths are, was that there were almost regular-sized tongue depressors to look down their throats. Good job, Flo & B. The children are growing at a good rate and are healthy, knock wood.

https://www.wearequeeraf.com/conversion-therapy-groups-spend-2m-on-lobbying-and-promoting-practice-in-soaring-costs-since-promise-to-ban-the-abusive-practice/

I am 100% opposed to conversion therapy, but for my personal life I mostly need the hashtag part of the signs. Maybe today I really will fill out all the documents the lawyer wants me to do to prepare a will (last done in about 1991). The looking things up part isn't as annoying as getting a pdf form filled out and sharing info online. It's almost too late to print and the form and mail it, though. I made the appointment a couple of months ago and now there is less than a week to go.

Not me. The T (or whoever owns the little building at the Arlington Heights busway) has been doing work on it. Not enough work, IMO - fresh paint on the outside walls but they have yet to do anything about the bottom of the walls - are they just going to cover it up somehow? Leave it eroding?




The area on the busway side has been blocked off during construction, and the bench was moved. I think in its old position is must have been leaning against the building. One of my getting into Boston routes on Sundays (no bus to Lexington) is to park at the Heights and take the bus to the Red Line. This morning two people who looked older than me, including one with a walker (and a shopping bag) were sitting on the re-located bench. When the bus pulled up, they stood in unison (not deliberately), the bench flopped backwards, and the guy with the walker fell backwards as well. At first I just held the bench in place so that he could push up on it with his arms to get to standing, but eventually I asked him repeatedly if I could touch him, and then lifted under his arm. After that he seemed OK, and got onto the bus without much fuss. The bench-mate and I decided to leave the bench flopped, to keep that from happening again. Gee whiz, construction people, try to put some thought into your actions. If you're not going to anchor the bench, don't leave it as an attractive nuisance.
(I just looked it up. Legally a hazard like that is only an attractive nuisance if it attracts children, not old people. Harrumph).

Yesterday I used the expression "walking around to music" in my post. Overnight I wondered whether something that is entirely percussion (at that point three kinds of drums and a small gong) counts as music.
Merriam Webster says yes (this is from definition #1)
"vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony"
Change ringing is music in multiple ways - in addition to being a kind of percussion and being based on rhythm there are different musical notes, so it fits various parts.
Do the bird calls that woke me up this morning count as music? Presumably a particular bird call can be defined as a melody, in addition to being an alert to other birds, its underlying function.

I remember Maya Angelou on Sesame Street defining poetry as "words in rhythm and sometimes in rhyme." That's music too, probably.

In April I mentioned the term "celebrity boyfriend" as used among my Korean class friends (bottom of this post)
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/945571.html

A lot of the time I think of Jay Powell as my celebrity boyfriend, although as usual I don't think I would have him as my real boyfriend, even if he were single, which he's not. Despite all the sh*t that has been flung at him, he's still a registered Republican. WTH?

This morning I decided that maybe my new celebrity boyfriend (coincidentally in line with the class's Korean focus) is Kang Soobin, a bespoke tailor in Seoul. Derek Guy had a couple of Atelier Willow's IG stories embedded in a twitter thread, and I got a zing from watching an impeccably dressed person doing hand sewing.
I spent quite a while trying to track him/the store down in two languages, one of which I can't really read.
I found someone's blog about buying a jacket from them (in Korean on Naver, with a translate button that made it possible to me to figure out what is going on). (the owner of the new jacket also had a couple of photos of cute twins, a plus).
I don't use Meta products so I can't link to the little videos. I found a video interview with him on youtube, but he's talking, not sewing. English captions are available
https://youtu.be/oXoDPuKjbvU?feature=shared
I found an architecture firm in Alabama with the same name. There's an herbal store in Montreal, also.

Speaking of a commonly chosen celebrity boyfriend, Kim Seokjin (mentioned in the post linked) is doing a solo tour with a fairly limited number of cities. A twitter thread this morning was talking about how far people are traveling to see him. Someone in CA is driving 400 miles. She was one-upped by someone driving 600 miles to Tampa. Someone else said that she had considered flying to Tampa but was afraid she'd be turned away by ICE at the airport. This is someone (judging from her profile) who would be coming from Peru. Are her fears sensible? I looked on orbitz. There are no nonstop flights from Lima to Tampa, but lots of connecting choices. The shortest trips connect through Panama City, another place that is not the US, so she'd have to have her passport checked twice on the way. The airlines would not be offering flights if most of their passengers were being denied entry. If she's worried, should she be posting like that?

We had a heat warning for the day. (not as hot as a couple of weeks ago, but high of 90). My plan was to stay in the house all morning under the ceiling fan sorting through the piles of papers. That didn't happen.
There is a privet hedge between my driveway and the neighbors' driveway. We have a vague deal of taking turns to cut the hedge. It was my turn. I had thought to do it tomorrow, but we're supposed to have rain, so I decided to do it today, fairly early in the morning while shady. I am not tall enough to reach over the whole hedge with the electric trimmer, so it is much easier to do half of it from their side and the other half from mine. They are currently away with both cars, so that left me space to do it. My system is to plug the extension cords into a socket in the kitchen and feed it out the window and then under the hedge to reach over from their side. This morning I was making progress, and then absurdly cut into the cord (not through it, but enough to damage the wire inside the coating). I went to the hardware store and bought another one. That delayed my finishing time a good bit. Pouring with sweat. After I had swept the twigs, put everything away, and taken a shower, I ate lunch and started lounging around. Then I walked down to the farmers' market and bought a lot of stuff. Hauled it back in the backpack and put things away. Late afternoon I got a last-minute email saying that more helpers were needed for the Interfaith garden, so after grumbling a bit to myself, I changed back to the working with dirt clothes and walked down the hill. I only ended up weeding for a while* then went home, and took another shower. I had noticed a flyer advertising a concert this evening by one of the two teenage choirs of Village Harmony. I was tired, but it was nearby and I felt I should be supportive. Walked back down the hill and sat in the extremely warm sanctuary at First Parish. No AC, but there were six not very powerful oscillating fans along the walls. After the intermission the elderly couple who had been sitting near one of the fans left, so I took their place. Much pleasanter. The music was good. I knew some of the songs but in my head they were each sung by one person. It really sounded different. I reminded myself that harmony was part of the name... There was not a designated ticket price - the suggested sliding scale was $15-25. As far as I could tell, there were 20 dollar bills in the donation basket, no other denomination. Give somebody a scale, and most will pick the median?

* what's a weed? I was asked to remove lots of purslane plants from around the squash area, but on Saturday morning, more will be picked to take to the food pantry with the other produce of the week. On Tuesdays it's a weed, on Saturdays it's a vegetable. I am being deliberately obtuse - squash is a valuable foodstuff as well, and having it over-run by something else would cut back on squash production, I guess.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/purslane

I spent Tuesday-Thursday with Flo, B, and the babies.
I was with them about 11 hours a day, but spent the nights with a friend, who also lives alone in a house. She plans eventually to convert what is now her upholstery workshop into a downstairs bedroom when she becomes unable to use the stairs, so she's ahead of me in that regard.
Most of the time I was holding babies, but while the family was at a lactation specialist appointment, I went for a walk in a nice (public) woodland and was chomped on very much by mosquitos. When I got back home I couldn't find my anti-itch ointment. It must be in the house somewhere, but no luck so far. It's not like it's the only thing I've lost, but the timing was unfortunate. I smeared on some hand sanitizer instead, something I've been doing from time to time - it makes the alcohol stick on the bites.

A number of people were advocating not doing anything celebratory today. As a protest, that seems ineffectual - would anybody know I am mostly sitting at home alone? I was in Boston when there was a small protest in Lexington, so I missed that. In a not protesting way, this morning I was (in charge of) a group of bellringers at the Old North Church (plus a bunch of non-ringing relatives that I didn't expect, all of whom were well-behaved). Then three of us consumed the Entenmann's snack cakes with blueberries and strawberries I had brought as a seasonal treat, choco_frosh pondered on non-factory cake recipes, and we discussed trifle.
There is a large screen live showing of the Pops concert at Robbins Park in Arlington starting fairly soon, but I don't know where one is supposed to park (my local bus isn't running on the holiday) and I am already covered in bug bites from an hour walking in Greenfield on Wednesday (possibly more on that later). I probably will stay home and listen to the concert on the radio and not see any fireworks.
Edit
Not on the radio this year. What the heck?