dual personalities

Another week has passed and soon will fade into snatches of memory: an anniversary celebrated, a movie watched, errands run, packages received, emails sent, and words exchanged in conversation. By next week I will remember what this post records and little else. Here are the highlights of my week.

My office is finally finished! I put the last posters up this afternoon.

Note the new poster half-frames, a marvelous invention that a colleague recommended. These ingenious ‘frames’ consist of four strips of magnetized wood, two at the top and two at the bottom of the poster, so that the it hangs correctly. Frames come in a wide variety of sizes, are incredibly easy to assemble and look great. (A number of different companies make these and I chose almost randomly; I’m not endorsing one in particular.) Here’s another view of the office.

As you can see, I still have piles of paper to go through but it’s getting there, and I am quite happy on the ground floor.

In other news, I received Storm over Sky in the mail and was delighted to discover that it is the prequel to Master of Morgana and takes place about a year earlier.

Lest you doubt that our young hero could experience so much adventure in quick succession, the plot involves trying to catch the sheep thief who threatens to destroy the community’s livelihood and mutual trust. I can’t wait to read it!

When not working (I did do plenty of that), I watched an Indian movie called Talvar from 2015, starring Irrfan Khan. Based on a real case, it is the story of a respectable dentist and his wife who awake one morning to find their 14 year old daughter in her bed with her throat slit. Having failed initially to undertake a complete search of the compound, the authorities eventually find the family’s live-in servant, a 50 year old man, similarly murdered on the roof-top terrace of the house.

The parents’ claim to have slept through the murders seems unlikely, but if they were smart enough to plan the crime, then they should have come up with a better excuse. Rashomon-like, the film presents three different explanations, each of which is incomplete or tainted in some way. The local police are so stupid and incompetent that they ruin the forensic evidence and assume the parents are guilty. The national police take over the case but care only for political advancement and so suppress the findings of their one competent investigator (Khan) on the grounds that his methods are not altogether legit. A third investigator comes up with another implausible explanation, while the media report every sensational and unverified rumor about the poor young victim. Like Rashomon, the story does not inspire confidence in one’s fellow man. The film was well done and interesting enough to make me look up the real case, the unsolved 2008 Noida double murders.

Perhaps the world is full of awful people. I prefer to think that it is full of decent people who are sometimes awful and often stupid. Be humble and remember, the fact that we can outwit sheep and lobsters (as the DH puts it) may place us at the top of the food chain, but it doesn’t mean we’re very smart.

Have a great weekend!

I’m taking the blog duties today and my mother will be back tomorrow.

Today for work, I ventured all the way to St. Joseph, MO and back (it is a bit of a trek) for an announcement and to shoot a video for our social media platforms. Can you spot me in this picture? That pink jacket is bright.

In my world, two cameras in the Buchanan County courthouse is a win. And worth criss-crossing the Missouri River. If you’re wondering, did I snag the aux cord and play “Don’t Cross the River” as we crossed the river for six or eighth time (you lose count), the answer is yes.

I got to see more of downtown St. Joseph than I did when we were here last year. They are the county seat of Buchanan County and thus have a square with the courthouse in the middle. There are some old buildings. But, the city itself kind of has the vibe of one whose time has passed it by. This is to say, the city is kind of run down.

However, I just learned on the Wikipedia page that Eminem was born in St. Joseph before moving to Detroit. Hello! Of course, it is was also the start of the Pony Express and the place where Jesse James died. Another fun fact: St. Joseph was the second U.S. city to install electric street cars. It has its own tv market–although it is the 201st largest of 210 U.S. markets.

Today kicks off several busy weeks for me. I will be in Salt Lake City next week for a conference–look forward to a post from Daughter #2. Then, Daughter #2 is coming to town the following week (woo hoo)! After that, it’s the Bicentennial celebrations (where the most exciting event is the ice cream social at Central Dairy). And then the State Fair kicks off. Big things in Mid-MO! And good blog posts to come.

What with moving office, making a quick trip to Burlington, VT, and starting the last two days of my digital history workshop, I’ve had a busy week. Despite the activity, I don’t have much to report. Although the Vermont countryside was lovely, Burlington was way too crowded and built up. The heavy traffic did not make me feel adventurous, but I did manage to visit a couple of antique stores, and at one called (fittingly) Rusty Relics I found a little trinket tray that matches the heart-shaped box my Aunt Susanne gave me decades ago.

When I needed a break from heaving books around and driving across the state, I started re-reading a young adult novel from 1959 called Master of Morgana that I gave to one of my sons years ago.

The book is set on the Isle of Skye and involves a sixteen year old boy’s efforts to find out what caused his sure-footed brother to fall into a gorge. As the brother languishes in a coma, our hero takes over his job among the fishermen, at least one of whom must be to blame for the ‘accident’. Perilous adventures ensue. No one writes this type of book anymore. The protagonist is intelligent, resourceful and upright, but not superhuman, and although the villains are bad, they are not psychotic or perverted. High-tech gadgetry and physics-defying stunts do not figure at all; coastal salmon fishing and smuggling do. The story unfolds at a reasonable pace and all the characters and events seem plausible and real. I’m enjoying the book so much that I ordered Storm over Skye by the same author, and I am really looking forward to its arrival.

Not bad for a busy week…

*Andrew Lang, “Lone Places of the Deer”

Well, I’m in kind of a funk today. Sometimes it feels like certain things should be easier. You know, like paying a social media platform to advertise. Or buying furniture. But no. And sometimes, on top of all that, you get emails like this.

We can all just assume that Nordstrom’s algorithm is way off and NOT that they’ve heard me making jokes about how sweatpants are all that fit me right now. Right? Sigh.

Did you get my reference? Because at work, I’m always making Mean Girls references and no one gets them. To the point that I get emails like this from out of state program partners during conference calls.

In other news, this happened yesterday.

We are all so lucky to have local news that send push alerts like this.

To update on my mother’s blog post from Monday, I did eventually get my new bed put together. And I got rid of my old bed on Facebook Marketplace in less than an hour. I also got a new rug for my room. It brings me joy–even if the upholstery color isn’t quite what I expected on the bed and so I’m not quite sure the two go together.

It’s all still a work in progress–but aren’t we all.

Once again, on Monday, my mother had a quote from Freddy B on the blog and so last night, I took one of my Buechner books off the shelf and settled in for a little insight into my soul.

“And God knows we have all had our wilderness and our temptations too–not the temptation to work evil probably, because by grace or by luck we don’t have what it takes for more than momentary longings in that direction, but the temptation to settle for the lesser good, which is evil enough and maybe a worse one–to settle for niceness and usefulness and busyness instead of holiness; to settle for plausibility and eloquence instead of for truth.”

Frederick Buechner, The Two Stories

As usual, it didn’t disappoint.