Toad in the Hole

Un Dia de los Muertos

An interview for All Souls’ Day, with the woman who wrote Stiff and Spook. I intend to read them both, especially the former.

In memory of Aunt Katie Reith, who ran the funeral parlor on Main Street in Girardville after her husband, the owner of record, died. (No, I don’t think she buried him herself, but that was before my time.) I have no idea where she did the embalming and prep, but the viewing room was her living room, and the kitchen in back always smelled like gladioli. And when I was there, cookies. I do remember being entertained at her kitchen table, not during a funeral or viewing (if I was at one of those, I was expected to behave myself, meaning sit quietly) but incidental to visiting Grammy and Poppop Adams, who lived up the street.

I hadn’t seen her for years when she died, in 1978. I heard the news when I was sick and depressed—sitting in Alta Bates Hospital here in Berkeley with my IV steroids just discontinued, which was like hitting an emotional brick wall—and reading the inimitable Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death. I sort of think Katie and Decca would have liked each other.

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Monday Odd Ends

One for all you knitters reading here (Hi Kate! Hi Janis!) because, you know, knitted raw chicken hats, boobs, and uteri are such hard acts to follow.

And now for something completely different, yet strangely familiar:

The Editor’s Corner, or, Why Everybody Could Benefit from a Decent Liberal Education (Thanks, PZ!)

Science magazine, the distinguished publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; vol. 309, 16 September 2005, p. 1813; RANDOM SAMPLES/ PEOPLE: “Survivors: Weathering Katrina”

For 10 days after Katrina struck, New Orleans, Louisiana, zoo veterinarian Elizabeth Hammond slept in the reptile house and helped the zoo’s 1500 animals cope with the disaster. She tended to an injured flamingo, helped evacuate 11 sea lions and otters to Texas due to fears that the zoo’s water supply might be contaminated, and assisted in feeding the zoo’s skeletal staff as well as its permanent residents.

Any typos are mine. What I’m taking issue with here is not the unnecessary comma after “Louisiana”—a fine point but one that matters to ease of reading. I’m startled at the gratuitous reference to the physical attributes of the zoo’s staff. They hadn’t been starving for that long.

Wait, maybe “skeletal” wasn’t what the writer meant. Maybe he or she meant “skeleton staff.” That would refer to the size of the staff, not the size of the staffers.

A schmittox to page editor Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. Schmittox withdrawn, with both sympathy and empathy,  if target has already slapped own forehead when this appeared in print.

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Quote of the Day

“they have *really* soft toilet paper in the white house.”

-Commenter at Twisty’s.

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A Brief History

It’s been an interesting week, I guess. Birthday aside, we’ve managed to call forth the first significant rain of the season—though it wet the ground only about an inch down, it did make the doormat on the lower steps sprout little green leaves—by deciding to paint the bedroom. We painted anyway, and it’s a bit more of an ethereal turquoise that I’d hoped, but still a major improvement over the filthy former-white that’s been there since before we moved in. We never did get a chance to clean the place while it was empty. It’s just going to take days to dry, is all. And, as the century-old plaster (some of which appears to have applied by drunks having seizures, and using their tongues) soaked up the paint like a sponge, it’ll probably take a second coat.

Talk about conditioned responses: something about the smell of latex paint carries a sense of clean renewal and optimism.

I could use a bit of optimism, as another interesting event of the week was losing the job I’ve held, if I’m counting right, longer than any other I’ve ever had. Not my only job, since I’m mostly a freelancer, but as things are unraveling it’s one of very few remaining. I’m surprised how attached I was to it. Maybe I was waiting for it to pay off.

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Visitor

We had another California towhee in the house the other day, as I was computertating and Joe was making a pear pie. This one I scared when I walked out of the office, and it flew about the dining room and parlor without finding a way out, and then into the guest room/library/closet, and then into the bathroom, where it perched on the top of the open door. It bounced around that room a dew times, trying perches on the shower-curtain rod, the little shelflike thing on the frame of the other door—knocking one of the collection of old silver baby cups askew—back to the open door.

The whole time, it was oddly calm for a panicked bird. It never flew into a closed window (well, we haven’t washed them in ages, so they’re not invisible) or ceiling; it never said anything but that little “Tink!” they use as a contact call. It cocked its head and kept an eye on me and Joe, but didn’t fly every time it saw us. And it kept that persistent “Tink!” up at regular intervals. Joe opened all the windows and doors to give it a chance to exit, but it stayed in the bathroom, looking down at us.

Then its mate (I can safely assume this; they stay together all winter, as far as I can tell, and are residents here) called from the plum tree outside the bathroom window, “Tink!” Our visitor turned its head and tinked again. “Tink!” from outside. Same rhythm, pitch, pace. Clearly, our bird oriented itself to the call.

I opened the bathroom window all the way, and took my shower hat off its hook in the windowframe. The towhee, a regular exchange of tinks going on all the while, flew to the curtain rod over the window, ducked to peer out the open side, and flew out to its calling mate. As far as I can tell, they went on with their daily routine.

It’s funny how I liked the house when it had that bird inside, flying about.

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