Category: Like Life

New books on the shelf, thanks to Brett, Leta, Cleveland’s Horizontal Books, and Powell’s.

Along the broad swath of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania’s Market Street (surprisingly, Market is not the north-south axis: rather, it’s the narrow nondescript Center Street two blocks over) can be found some lovely old street name signs suspended from scrolled brackets. There are variations and simplifications of this design (clips instead of hangers, utility poles instead of purpose-built supports), and eventually the newer signs give in to the conventional perforated post and crosstree design. But still, these that remain are graceful and quite fine.


At Market and Main across from the Civil War monument is this well-maintained fountain. The only flaw in its design is that there’s insufficient dallying space next to it: lingerers are likely to get wet.


Not all of the businesses on Main Street are thriving.

A cheery batch of sunflowers from Charlie’s garden, just because.

A new shipment from Powell’s, thus some turnover on the read-me shelf. The Bible is my mother’s much-read copy, mended with spike tape; equal time after getting through Mohammed and Joseph Smith. Kate Atkinson continues to wait in the wings, perhaps patiently. The Echenoz translation is a bare-faced crutch to help me through Les Grandes Blondes. The revived-from-downstairs title is Catch-22, one of those books I came to so long ago, one with a strong movie attached, that I can’t remember whether I’ve actually read it.

A quick trip to Main Line Merion, just over the Philadelphia city line, for a quick, gentle wedding. A nice opportunity for a ride on SEPTA’s regional rail, something I’d never done before, and a lovely hand-built street name sign. I surmise that Idris Road was once named something else, because the fonts on the two wings of the sign are different: graceful serifs for South Highland Avenue, and a more no-nonsense sans for Idris Road.

And that would turn out to be the case: Beacom Avenue, provided with a sidewalk in 1911, was renamed to Idris Road by ordinance of 8 April 1914.

In 1999, I had a consulting gig that took me to New York frequently. On my last trip up there (which turned out to be the week of Hurricane Floyd [have I told you the story about the clueless D.C. cab driver?]), a music festival had hoovered up all the hotel rooms in Manhattan, so I found myself in a place called the Pan American in Queens. The matchbook cover that I saved touts it as New York City’s Most Convenient Hotel. Uh, no.

But it turns out that this patch of Queens, still known as Newtown, must have been the place where great-ancestor Josse had his farm in the very early 1700s. Gorsline Street runs one block, from 51st Avenue to Kneeland Avenue. As you can see, it’s beautifully kept Archie Bunker territory; it could easily stand in for Hauser Street.

Another hurricane story. The night that Isabel came through town in 2003 (downgraded to a tropical storm by then, but you could have fooled me), the Norway maple that shaded the ground between my house and my neighbor’s thrashed and flailed and generally sounded as if it wanted to crawl in my bedroom window for shelter. Finally, a shattering crack rang out, and I think I heard somebody yell, “Holy cow, look at that!”

In the morning, I saw what had happened. A good third of the tree was lying in my front yard. It crushed a lamppost and generally made for difficult navigation.

A cleanup crew promptly showed up and reduced the entire thing to a stump and chips. My townhouse cluster never has replaced the tree. The Morrissettian irony is that I had just given up on trying to grow flowers that liked sun under the maple, and had just planted a little shrub that liked shade.

In 1998, I drove Alberta to Florida for some birding. On the way back, I stopped at South of the Border so that she could meet Pedro.

How is it that Leta, with each annual WATCH awards, looks more fabulous than the year before?