Years ago, someone I know opened a candy shop near both a university and a high school: target audiences. It did so well she opened a second one in another town.

The guy she hired to run that one was a recent graduate of a top-notch culinary academy, I guess getting in on the ground floor.

This was when political ads were being run warning of a bogeyman–remember when superpredator got smushed into its own single word for awhile? Ie big and black and tall and on illegal drugs that supposedly made him extra strong. After all, the Willie Horton ads had worked for Bush and Dukakis’s candidacy had gone down in flames.

Her employee was a large African-American man.

Her husband was the one who told me of the phone calls–multiple, he reiterated over my stunned disbelief, not just one and not just one person, of people telling them they would not step foot in that second store unless they fired the guy. They had walked in, seen him, and walked right back out.

Instead she offered him a job at the first store and closed the second and made a point of telling that town why. She wasn’t going to be in any way associated with a populace that treated a good man that way and they should be ashamed of themselves.

That was thirty years ago.

Today I was in that town. My audiologist is there, and my hearing aids needed cleaning. Since I have a lot of knitting I want to do on that afghan I brought it with me, carry-around project or not. They warned me it would be awhile, and I knew that, no worries.

So I had a front row seat.

A couple came in. Mid-eighties, easily. He was tall and stooped and walked carefully; she was just as old but more easily mobile. Perfectly coiffed in the kind of hairsprayed upswept curls my grandmother’s generation regularly saw their beauticians for, and perfectly sculpted and tummy-tucked in her skin-tight clothes. She looked seriously about 85 pounds but for the improbably large chest. There is a posh country club nearby and all they needed was the golf cart to complete the look.

He settled down on the couch and she went to the desk. I had started an afghan row with its five dangly balls of yarn.

I finished the row.

Started another one.

Finished it.

Finally, she walked back towards her husband and did a disdainful little yank with her head back towards the young African-American woman who had been trying to help her with all the graciousness one could ever ask for.

There had been others before her who had appointments (including me.) They were going to have to wait.

My friend’s story of long ago came flooding back and I knew I had to do something to show support without putting the young woman on the spot. How do you do this right especially when you know you didn’t hear everything. But I’d seen.

Turns out that technician was the one to bring my finished hearing aids out from the back room two thirds of an afghan row later (and after the couple had left.) The insides had collected water because I’d let it go too long since the last cleaning and that means it takes awhile to dry the electronics safely. So mine took longer.

No worries, truly.

As I put them in I looked at her and asked a little sheepishly, knowing it would be cutting into her work time, Can I show off my moose?

Sure!

I spread the afghan out a bit so she could see and she exclaimed over it and reached to touch that inviting, beautiful wool as I held it so she could. I thanked her; she beamed; she told me, sounding less convinced of it as the words were coming out of her mouth, I could never have the patience for that, while her face started to say maybe I could? I actually want to, no really want to now…

I said, You start off small and work your way up.

Her face! Made me wish I could have taken the time to teach her on the spot.

There’s a yarn store maybe two blocks away; maybe we will have a new knitter soon.

But I loved that the fact that I’m one gave us a means to make each other’s day and, as much as could be done, make up for that earlier experience.

—

(Let me add here that having written most of this earlier and walked away to think about it some more, I’ve reflected on how hard it is to be elderly and stuck being a caretaker, if that was their case. And as someone whose own husband is 15″ taller and quite a bit bigger I know there are limitations on how one would be able to manage. But you just don’t demean others who are trying their best to do right by you. You just don’t. She should have known by now at long last that treating others badly can never make her happier.)

Two wonderful speakers at church today. The second was a man who started off by saying that my husband and I lived in the ward he grew up in in New Hampshire when he was a teenager, and so, he joked, “They have signed a nondisclosure agreement.” Brought down the house.

The first was my Richard.

With a very simple message, quoting from scripture about how dissension and anger are not of G_d: that we can disagree, but it must be with civility. That if we give in to rancor we are failing ourselves and those we’re talking to and G_d himself, who loves us without reservation and to whom we so much owe love by loving His children.

Nobody ever changed their minds by being argued with, he said. Only love changes people for the better.

It was the shortest talk I’ve ever heard him give.

It was all that needed to be said.

That flu/covid vaccine combination is not great for the next day’s plans but I’m glad we did it. It was actually easier than some, it’s just that it made me keep falling asleep.

So.

Nature and towering trees on one side of the river, a farm in pruned trees and neatly plowed rows on the other. (Or, what you do when you have dye lots that look at each other and ask, Say what??)

I’m torn between a farmhouse or a classic red barn later.

I knit a row this evening. That says tomorrow should be fine.

Being on Medicare and getting vaccinated was a new combination for me; I didn’t know which card to pull out so I did all three: Medicare, Supplemental, and Part D.

The guy stewed over the computer for awhile. Turns out someone had put my maiden name in the system and my last name bounced. We talked him through it, he tried again, and finally it worked.

Finally–not quite looking me in the eye–he handed me my two cards back.

There are three, I said. I gave you three.

He’d clearly been hoping I wouldn’t notice. He’d already picked one up off the floor and there had been no sign of the other.

He got another employee to look all over. Then to try. Then there was this little Monty Python sketch of all the methods they used (those tongs had a definite rubber chicken look to them) after they realized where it had to have gone.

There was the countertop, there was this one area where there were two filing cabinets just below the countertop side by side, and there was a metal plate under those cabinets. And somewhere in there, they determined, was the only place it could be.

They said they would work on it, and the original guy, who turned out to be the pharmacist, gave me my flu+covid shots and told us to wait 15 minutes to make sure there’s no reaction, like they always do. They promised us they would work on it in the meantime.

Forty minutes later, I said to Richard, quite sure of this though we couldn’t see from there, They’re not doing anything and they’re just waiting us out hoping the store closes on us.

We went back over there and I was exactly right.

They tried to tell us it was gone, it couldn’t be done, go have your insurer issue a new card, not their problem. Sorry.

Richard, looking at the cheap set up, told them all furniture is designed to come apart when you need it to.

They were in disbelief. We really wanted them to deal with this?

He offered to help, and he certainly looked the big and strong type.

They tried to say it couldn’t be done.

Things get put together and they can come apart and he was offering to do that if they needed the help.

So okay, boss pharmacist apparently thought, better you than me, and let him into the pharmacy area to help with those filing cabinets. Which he seemed to think were permanently installed.

They’re too heavy full, you have to empty them, Richard said to one of the women, boss-man having gotten himself as far away as he could. (Richard wasn’t about to touch official pharmacy stuff.)

Another store employee saw him on the wrong side of the counter and came over to ask what on earth is going on over here and all three pharmacy people said in unison and waving their hand away at her in unison, Never mind.

(One of the pharmacy women had basically said they’d all be fired if I went in there to try to help, too.)

Richard said to me afterwards, There was no organization in those cabinets–just stuff. Thrown in randomly for someone else to have to deal with later.

But drawer by drawer it all got removed and then at long last one steel file cabinet got moved out of the way. Then the other. (See? They do move.)

And there, under the metal plate on the floor that the two filing cabinets had been standing on, was my Medigap card. How it got there I’ll never know. But one hour and fifty minutes after we arrived for my shot we finally had my card back, and my husband is a hero because they would utterly have blown me off, and in fact did, but he refused to be. Nicely, but firmly.

It was probably not a good time to ask them if they could squeeze in the paperwork and a shot for him too even though online had said there was only the one opening. So we didn’t. His is tomorrow and thankfully somewhere else.

As I type this I’m realizing, we still don’t know which card we’re supposed to hand them. We don’t ever want to give them too many again.

Not that the following matters…

I knew that brand. My husband’s a licensed ham radio operator. Was this just a reporter who didn’t know what they were talking about? Or directing to an audience they assumed wouldn’t?

Walkie-talkies are children’s toys, he affirmed. Counterfeit or not, those would have been ham handhelds.

Now that is a sky with promises of the rainy season to come.

Meantime, I found a new use for finger puppets: every time I finish a row, I put one of those bright cheerful little things on top of the stack of books next to me that I’m not reading while I’m trying to get this thing done in time. I think I forgot to one time: 3484 stitches today if I didn’t, 3752 so far if I did.

I drove four hours to go two miles to see an old friend today and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Kelly’s kids and mine grew up together, or most of the way before she moved away. It’s been way too long.

Today also happened to be one of the very rare times when my husband had to go into the office, one of those, weren’t we going to buy a second car one of these days? days.

I can affirm that morning and evening rush hour across the Bay Area say the economy’s doing great!

As I was coming home, there were three people walking by taking in the feel of the area, a couple and, lagging behind a little, an older gentleman, whom I had to wait for before I could pull into my driveway–just as the woman was about to get into their car across the street.

I got out of my car. She closed the door on hers after seeing me looking her way and we all four converged eagerly on the sidewalk to make introductions.

They are putting an offer on the house next door tomorrow. I had the same reaction to getting to meet them that she’d clearly had to getting to meet one of the neighbors before doing so: YES!!!

I asked, Does it still have the koi?

A quizzical, Well, it has a pond, I didn’t see any koi…

Me: I used to feed Alma’s koi when they went out of town, and they forgot to tell me it was on a timer. Went over a bit late one day and got zapped hard with water by their raccoon defense set-up.

They laughed. We talked gardens briefly.

And I thought, that full bath Alma and Jim added onto one bedroom for a caretaker’s use would be great for their family’s grandpa to have his privacy.

I came away so hoping they get that house. But there have been so many people coming to see it in person since Saturday that, well, whoever gets to have these good people as their neighbors will be very fortunate. I just selfishly hope it’s us.

I booked it. Then I did the math. What have I done to myself, knowing how much I’d wanted to hand my brother his afghan in person and computing just how many rows per day at 268 stitches (six strands per row currently and six rows per inch) I’d have to do to get it finished by then. I’m not even quite to the halfway point.

Every time I’d gone to book that trip I’d found myself going to a certain weekend. No matter how many times I checked the fares further out–and Southwest, for all their sale emails enticing me towards them, kept giving an error message that was very frustrating.

But that set of dates worked.

Okay, then, that one, I don’t want to wait any longer to see Mom. It just felt right. Done.

And then I sat down and spent most of the last three hours knitting like crazy even though that’s too much because I have to at least try.

To make myself give my hands a break I went to go check to make sure I’d written the flights on my calendar. I had not. Okay, looking up at the itinerary and then down to the page as I flipped to the–

–there smack dab in the middle of when I’d booked it for were the words in my own hand, written small and emotional at the start of the year: “Miss you Dad.”

It will be the fifth anniversary of his passing. My mom misses him so much. We all do. And so that brother and my oldest sister and my son and I will be there with her on that day, celebrating the man with the best laugh any of us ever knew.

I can just picture Dad doing just that at the moment it finally got through my thick skull. I’m sure he’d been trying to get my attention for awhile. For Mom. For all of us.

A talk in church today:

He grew up in the more rural outskirts of DC, not all that far from where we did. His parents grew up very poor, the children of immigrants, one grandfather a refugee Ukrainian Jew.

His family had bought a small wheat farm in Maryland with the intent of as much self-sufficiency as they could manage in order to supplement their paychecks.

But it needed a new well, so his father took a branch from, he thinks it was a peach tree, and used it for divination.

Nathaniel hastened to add that divination has been debunked, there’s no science in it, it’s an old folk tale, he made sure we knew he knew that. But that’s what his father could afford to go on so that’s what he did.

Seems the peach seemed to tell him there was more water where everything was greener. Worked for him. So he got some help and dug himself a well and when there was a drought it kept right on going.

On finding out his neighbors’ wells had gone dry, he shared his water with the farmers around him–because when you’re in a position to be who and what someone else needs, that is a gift from Above.

And then Nathaniel read the scripture that whoso comes to God to take part in His love, “It shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

Love thy neighbors.

Help them water their much larger fields. Because that’s the one thing they most needed that they couldn’t do for themselves right then, and his family with their very small farm could do something about it.

The children and their children have never forgotten the lesson.

Spent lots of time doing that staring I talked about, then drawing, attempting to chart, repeat. I can’t wait to see how the rest of the afghan turns out.

And in between, rested my hands while reading about the third of a mile wide and long rock face that fell into a fjord in Greenland last year after the glacier beneath it had melted just enough that it collapsed into the water after lo these many millenia and took the rock above with it.

Which was found after scientists spent days trying to figure out why seismographs around the world were putting out a reading as of a nine-day earthquake but without quite the zig zags.

There had been a tsunami inside that fjord 650 feet high and it just kept sloshing around in that bathtub.

There are often cruise ships in that fjord. But not the day the mountain fell. Metamorphically speaking.

A photo before today’s knitting began.

I ran to Andy’s to try to get some of the last peaches of the season to share but they were sold out. I did get some Reine Claude Green Gage plums, which Trees of Antiquity considers the best stone fruit of them all.

As the couple in front of me in the line turned to go, I said to them, If you’re going home by way of 101 north there was a brush fire just starting on the northbound side near Capital Expressway as I came down–you might want to go a different way.

I can only imagine the traffic snarl, much less the risk of being hemmed in that close to it. They thanked me.

I went the other way, too, with visions of how fast those flames had spread down the side of that onramp. Not high–things had been mowed recently enough and I saw no bushes nor trees–but the smoke! Whoosh!

In the emergency of the moment, I told Richard later, I realized I didn’t know how to make my 6S phone call 911 without my touching it while I was driving and I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road for fear others were looking at it rather than where they were going. There were so many other cars; surely someone else reported it, I wouldn’t want to flood their lines.

He, a former county and Red Cross emergency communications volunteer, told me, Actually–almost no one ever does.

Sounds like I need to get up to speed.

It’s 20″. Hey, that was two weeks ago, pre-water leak and pre-guests! There are lace parts (they’ll stretch out the moment water touches it) and stockinette (not so much.) It’s 25″. It’s whatever length it wants to be in the moment, but whatever, my needles say I’m back to work and making progress and it feels good to be back.

One thing I do know: I’m at the point where I need to put it on two long circs tomorrow so I can lay it out all the way flat and just stare at the thing awhile to make sure that what I think I want is still what I actually want from here.

Can I just, y’know, squeeze a Great Blue Heron in on this side? Could I make that picture work on a small enough number of stitches that it doesn’t look ridiculous in scale to the moose?

James Fallows is both a reporter and pilot and you’ll often get a cockpit’s-eye view of the world from him.

One of the first things they teach you about flying in DC, he writes, is how absolute the rules are on restricted flight space there.

Last Wednesday a plane took off from DC National Airport (now called Reagan.) It flew straight.

There is only one take-off runway and every plane on it must immediately turn left over the Potomac River.

It did not.

Its flight path was about to take it directly over the White House.

The air traffic controllers reminded the pilot to make that turn. Still no turn.

Finally, they commanded the pilot to call a number upon landing. Fallows says no pilot ever wants to hear that command. He doesn’t say outright that their license is forfeit but it’s certainly an implied possibility, along with I’d guess potential criminal charges.

To my knowledge, this is the first time that airspace has been breached by an unauthorized plane since 9/11. This happened last Wednesday. The name of the plane was the Eastern Express.

It was the chartered campaign plane of one Donald Trump, with JD Vance listed as passenger.

One can only wildly guess at what was going on: was Vance trying to say this will all be mine soon? Was the pilot a MAGA who’d fallen for the rules don’t apply to us mentality of his boss? Was the pilot out to lunch?

But you just can’t be, and certainly not there.

By the time Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 there were fighter jets scrambled to take it down rather than let it continue its course to crash in DC now that we knew that day what those planes were doing.

And a week before that anniversary Trump’s plane threw away the rules and invited that kind of response. Why? Just, unfathomably, why? What message were they sending?

Springfield, Ohio is being destroyed because Haitian immigrants are pouring in and they’re, like, they’re eating everybody’s cats and dogs. They’re eating them! He had to say it twice because repetition makes the lie true.

It does, right?

And then in his closing statement he claimed our military is destroyed because Harris had given all our weaponry to Afghanistan.

What the what now?

He seemed to think she was already President. At other times, he had to be reminded that Biden was not the candidate.

Twice, the moderator asked him point-blank if he had any regrets about January 6. Twice, he turned it into a snarl of self-pity and self-justification–and he claimed nobody had died.

And then blamed “their side” for the death of the “beautiful woman” repeatedly warned and then shot while climbing through the window towards the terrified Congresspeople in the chamber caught on the other side with a mob trying to beat the doors in.

Meantime, Harris had the perfect “Please continue” face. Re Jan. 6th, she reminded him that she. was. there.

She didn’t have to say any more than that.

She told what she was offering the American people in terms of policies and plans, to expand the caps on drug prices to more meds–the concession Biden had had to make on Medicare negotiating drug prices having been that they would start off with only so many being regulated in the first year and the second and the third, etc. Child tax credits. First-timer housing support. (Let me raise my hand here and say thank you USA for the FHA loan on our first that got us in.) Small business support. The return of manufacturing these past three+ years, and the jobs that came with. A tax plan that builds the middle class back up again (and one quite a bit less liberal re soaking the richest than Biden’s.) And, always, the right of a woman to make her own medical decisions, while citing cases of women miscarrying and bleeding in hospital parking lots after being refused care for fear of jail time on the part of providers.

And that’s not left-wing talking points–that has happened. Including sepsis from that lack of care.

Mean, angry, self-centered, chaotic, and, frankly, nuts, vs calm, knowledgeable, competent and caring about others and the future we offer our children with our votes.

It’s just really not a hard choice. Let’s do this.

They left for their 7:00 a.m. flight and we woke up to a house that felt far too quiet.

Walked in the laundry room and eyed the distilled water bottle next to the iron: Wait. That one was new, right? I hadn’t opened it yet. Why then…?

…!!!

And so life with its wry sense of humor handed me back one of those blankets nice and wet again along with just a few other things in reach of that water. No mildew yet, not this time. After all, I needed that extra laundry to distract me from missing them so much, right?