I’ve started another Kathy Reichs book, this one titled The Bone Code, and am finding these fun to read. Booklist says this 2021 novel is “A-game Reichs, with crisp prose, sharp dialogue, and plenty of suspense.” It’s a nice change of pace from Dan Brown’s Inferno which I just re-read and a welcome distraction from the mid-1950s resources about the KKK in Florida (mentioned in yesterday’s post). Hmm, it feels a bit warped saying a book about the autopsies of badly messed up people (think of the TV show “Bones”) is a lightweight distraction from KKK atrocities.- It appears that using Grammarly is making my bad spelling and copy editing worse because now I don’t have to try to spell the words right when an approximation of the word brings me the correct spelling out of nowhere.
I’m happy to report that after four days, our new Black & Decker drip coffee maker is still working. In years past, I used to write the birth and death dates of our coffee makers on the engagement calendar to track how long they lasted. Yes, I know, in this Internet age, we’re totally old-fashioned using an engagement calendar. I suppose the fact that I use this kind of coffee pot with Maxwell House coffee is another habit that proves I’m old-fashioned. But then, what do you expect from an old guy?
Here’s an example of writing about one’s traumas in order to help people suffering through similar experiences: “She survived a mass shooting — then created a graphic novel to help others.” More and more writers and readers seem to be discovering this truth nowadays. “It took Kindra Neely years to seek help. Seven years ago, she survived the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, where a gunman killed eight students and one professor, and injured eight more. She has now shared her experience in a debut graphic novel, Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting, hoping that it will help others.”
As most of you know, I’m cheap and buy swill-level red wine at the grocery short for $10 or less for a 1.5 L size. So it bothers me when the Biltmore House tempts me with a wine sale that includes free shipping from Asheville. I’m not a fan of the so-called standard 750 ml bottle because it’s an expensive way to buy wine. And yet, Cardinal’s Crest is my favorite. We’ve been going to the Biltmore Estate since the 1980s and always stop by the winery to stock up on good stuff to drink. We don’t go for the wine, of course, but for the beauty of the estate and the history and architecture of the Biltmore House. If you’re ever in Asheville, NC, you must stop by this wonderful tourist destination for a visit even though it’s a bit pricey. It’s well worth the time and cost
–Malcolm
The grass was not only higher than the cat, it was higher than the mower. Dark clouds were rolling in. Vicious lightning owned the horizon off to the east. I had to move quickly or darkness would swallow the world and I’d run into the black Angus cattle in the adjoining pasture. (Before the farmer put in a new fence, the cattle got out on numerous occasions at night. I could hear them in the yard, but couldn’t see them. When cattle get out, the whole community comes out to round them up.)
J and I often carried .22 rifles when we were hiking down by the branch because, in addition to the copperheads, there were dangerous beer cans down in those woods that could kill a guy in a New York minute. We lived down by the branch, J and I, because we both had bedrooms filled with fresh and saltwater aquariums that constantly needed new residents.
Today’s special event (let’s help Malcolm mow his yard) has been canceled due to hot weather. Even CNN, which normally stays quiet about news it doesn’t like, posted numerous stories about the heat, noting among other things that heat will be bad in the South. Duh. Apparently, the weather system is centered around Mempis. Those of us who live in Georgia think all bad weather begins in Memphis.
I tend to notice when nearby restaurant patrons leave with their meals largely untouched. That’s like going into a place like Antoine’s in New Orleans, ordering the best meal on the menu, and then deciding you need to go see a man about a dog–without bothering with a carryout box.
The ancestors that impact my life on a daily basis are more recent. They were farm people, and that’s fine. Being farm people, they ate their evening meal (called dinner except on Sundays when it was called supper) at 5 p.m. Dinner continued to be served at 5 p.m. (or else) even after the farms were sold off and folks moved into town. This habit was passed down to my parents who ate at 5 p.m. even though doing that was falling out of fashion. My wife tells me that her mother (a farm person) and my mother (a farm person) were also “ruined by home ec because it taught them how to cook the kind of meal a farm family would eat along with where all the flatware and glasses and plates and saltshakers should be positioned on the table.
The Soylent Green Company truck stopped by the house today and pumped out the septic tank. The first house on this lot had a privy. A year before we built our house on the land where my wife’s grandparents had their house (long gone), the county changed its rules about septic tanks. Previously, a simple perc test was all it took to get approved for a septic tank. But then progress came along and septic tank systems had to meet stricter requirements and that cost a lot more money.
At first the new crap as exciting because it was something different than those kitchen gadjets that sliced and diced with only a 10% chance you’d be injured or set the kitchen on fire. Now we have electronic gear that is guaranteed not to tell the NSA where you are exactly and products that will run your house to much better than you do, they’ll probably run off with your spouse.
Malcolm's Round Table 