Lobster spotting

Here’s a lobster in an unusual location — right outside Baltimore’s Penn station.

No, not the one in NYC. And sometimes people refer to all the stations on the Pennsylvania line as being Pennsylvania station, so I’m always in a perpetual state of confusion about which station is which. (NYC or Philadelphia or Baltimore or Wilmington, Delaware or even D.C.)

Seen during ArtScape. This was one of the art cars. Hopefully this red lobster (who was animated enough to drive over, even though it’s evidently been cooked) will head off to Massachusetts, where it will fit in better than in the blue crab state.

The fiberglass claw on the door was a great touch.

Looking Back East

Gail Tsukiyama’s book, “The Samurai’s Garden” was a dense, well-measured, spare book with beautiful imagery. I was drawn into the story from the minute that I read the first line, that began, “I wanted to find my own way…” I read very, very slowly, dipping into a totally different world, of a young, Chinese man living in Japan during the eve of the Second World War.

There were so many filters/screens here for me — time, gender, and the eyes of someone from another culture discovering Japan. From the blurb on the back cover, I worried that the story would be dulled, like one’s vision looking through rice paper screens. However, there were also themes of writing, art, appreciation of nature, and the rhythms of events beyond one’s control, that allowed me to follow the story and appreciate its still voice.

Your mileage may vary. But it was quite a relief to be carried through to the satisfying closure of following the seasons through a year that begins with Autumn.

Fluctuations in pressure

Life is always filled with some sort of pressure. The drive to get work done, the physical crush of crowds at a festival…. And then there are lazy Sundays in the summer which should be more relaxed.

Today, because it’s been really cool for summer, I thought, “I will bake a cake. That will be relaxing…”  So, to the tune of the Gardener mowing the lawn, I slowly wash eggs and crack them one by one into the bowl. Until I get to number 5, when the water pressure dies, shoots air, then suddenly all of the city’s water pressure shoots the egg out of my hand, out of the sink, and onto the floor.

Splat.

Much bad language and cleaning.* And then I put a small bowl under the spigot to get water to wash another egg. The cake is in the oven. I am hiding away from the kitchen, stuck with a David Bowie/Queen song going through my head (wonderful for highway driving, but not so much for incorporating flour).

I’m going back to my knitting. At least I can frog errors without egg on the floor. Honestly, there are worse things than water pressure fluctuations. Earlier in the week there was no water at all.

On the left is the Honeycomb vest. I’m a few inches away from decreasing for the arms. Yes, it’s still the back.

*The cats were no help cleaning up the egg. The only one to show up probably wanted me to rub the runny egg on his head. Ewww.

Railroad

Found on a recent roadtrip out into Western Maryland — a red caboose from the days of the Western Maryland Railroad. It’s part of a park in Hagerstown, MD. Lots of steel for PS4 Fire there as well….

These are the wheels of the engine that they’re trying to salvage after years of abuse, when it was used as a piece of playground equipment, etc.

The season of ice cream trucks

In looking for the first post on the topic, I realize it’s been a year since this blogspace started. The Asiatic/ Stargazer-type lilies are blooming again too, so the whole backyard is scented in the moonlight. To kill this mood of celebration, the “La Cucaracha” ice cream truck is back.

It’s parked not far from here. I can hear its eerie, ghostlike sound through the walls of my home office. I wonder, grimly to myself, what kid actually NEEDS ice cream at 10:45 PM (and what parents will let him or her walk down the city street to get it)? And, yet again, why cockroaches in a song advertising food?

I like the neighborhood, but sometimes it’s just strange.

Yawn

The knitting isn’t going to make a great photo opp. The blue and white striped sock continues to be blue and white. Once I’m past the heel or near the toe, perhaps it would look more interesting. But really. Yawn.

Last night was filled with disturbing noises from the outside world… perhaps a bit too much excitement for me to sleep enough to make today any fun. Hopefully everyone who was on the warpath last night has sobered up and are willing to stay the heck home. One can hope, eh?

Hopefully by the weekend I’ll have laddered back and reknit the Arches project (I did catch a runner in the lace section before it got too far… there’s hope). Maybe pics of that before too long. It’s at least pink and fits into PS4 Red.

Kind of Odd signs on trucks

I’m not talking about the KANE is Able truck signs (although they make me smile with this slogan that sounds like a Biblical joke), the Batesville Casket Company logo with its green tree or the Leidy logo (which I remember in its pre-2003 incarnation, with Leidy in the shape of a pig). I’ve shared my drive with all three of these.

I’m talking about homegrown slogans with hand-drawn letters (or reflective letters lovingly glued to the side of a truck. Recently I saw two:

1. On the back of a moving van: “The Lord Is MY God!” (Is it me, or do you wonder if the truck was professing its faith too? All I could think in the heat of the commute was “You go, Van! Tell it to the faithful!”
2. On an old, green dump truck, in silver hand-painted letters with red outlines “Pimpin Aint Easy” (Even the trucks out there realize it’s hard for a pimp. I mean honestly… what? Maybe an explanation of why the driver is behind the wheel earning an honest day’s work hauling dirt?)

I’ve seen hand-painted logos from team sports, marijuana leaves on the back of a city trash truck, and a Pinto painted a pink most often found in the medicine cabinet.

So, seen any fun signs on trucks or cars while you fight the fumes of the morning commute? I’ll keep watching. It makes a welcome break in the day when I find something as fun as a yellow rubber ducky stuck on the end of someone’s antenna.

Red

Red is an attention-getter — a glowing stoplight in the dark, a showstealer among a crowd of black dresses, the promise of ripe fruit, the glow of embers in a campfire that emphasize the night. And, sometimes, it’s a big old flag of “do not touch”.

In this case, our friend Virginia Creeper. Some people can touch it. Not me. But I will admit that it’s very very pretty. Of course, so is poison ivy.

Robert Frost — Nixon

“Whose tapes these are,
I think I know.
His house is in the district, though.
Listeners still think it’s queer
The hisses on the tapes they hear,
But I have ratings to make
And he’ll sweat about Watergate” – a failed attempt to cash in on the poet-politics market, quite a few decades too late.