Up early and what a racket!

Sunday morning. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

One of the ways life changes with age is the diminishing capacity for sleep. (Note: I am not saying need for sleep, just capacity. Big difference.) That diminishing capacity means wakefulness during hours, that, in youth, I would have been thoughtlessly enjoying sleep. That diminishing capacity also means that, that same wakefulness blesses me with the gradual noise of early mornings.

The 3 a.m. quiet, with cat sitting at an open window. Me at my laptop, checking email and newspapers. Then an increasing racketing of bird song, so that by 5 a.m.-ish the world outside is a symphony of chirps and calls. (Cat has abandoned window by this point and is snoozing in his basket.)

It's prime bird time and I would not be alive to it were it not for the fact that I can't sleep. I think there is some irony involved here. Birds are wide awake, but that's because it's their job.

Anyway, I love the before-dawn chorus. It really is a racket, and I can hear layers of songs, some close, others a bit farther away.

As an aside, one night last week I watched swallows dipping and diving in the 5 p.m.-ish sky, near my Mom's house, chasing after bugs for their evening meal. They are pretty birds. Glad I noticed, but could not help but wonder what a small number of them were flitting about.

Pretty sky in Pittsburgh this morning, too.

Limits of toleration and a discussion of copy editors

As we say en Français: Plus ça change... 

Photos by Katy Buchanan

From page A-2 of Aug. 28, 1981 Boston Herald American, saved from my honeymoon. (Not saved for the news, but for the Red Sox score, since we went to Fenway. These photos show the reverse of the HA's front page mast with the Sox-A's score, which, to forestall any questions, I do not remember and I'm not turning over the page to find out. (So there 😀)  I just saved because I was young, in love and keeping every scrap of paper from our week in Boston and Cape Cod.

Looking at these also made me feel: a) Nostalgic for UPI (one of my former employers) and for the many U.S. daily, weekly and community newspapers that have gone to their graves since then, and 2) Grateful for the training I received from them as a young journalist.

As an aside, I believe journalism needs more well-read, intellectually adventurous copy editors. I know the trend is to centralized desks where the editors are far from the reporters and the stories they are filing, but that shouldn't preclude good editing (excepting, perhaps, in stories involving local geography). A copy editor's best friend, as far as I'm concerned, is the phone. Confused? Unsure? Call the reporter. I know reporters who have already gone a few rounds with their direct editors can get cranky when copy editors call, and I don't blame them, but the whole point is to be correct and factual. One of my worst memories from my copy editor days was the time an assistant city editor suggested I didn't have enough to do when I questioned an education writer's math in a story at the Pittsburgh Press. The reporter's math was wrong. And math is not my best subject. (And do not get me started on dangling modifiers.)

Getting back to the first sentence in the previous paragraph, please see this delightful piece from the New Yorker's 'Comma Queen.' Greek To Me

Notre Dame: Breaths of other humans

KaLisa Veer/Unsplash

Today is April 18, 2019. Nearly seven years since I have last been under dusky light that shelters worshipers and visitors inside Notre Dame.

Until Monday, when Notre Dame burned, I thought (when I thought about it) that the whole structure was stone. I know differently now. The roof was a forest of ancient oak. And the spire was wood coated with lead.

The times I have entered Notre Dame, although they are far from me now, bring me the memory of the quiet ... of the breaths of so many humans before me.

The quiet is the interesting part.

You go in to the church. There is the long nave, filled with pews and the scent of incense. The ceiling is so very high, the air still, the sun's rays gently streaming in through ancient windows.

I love the quiet.

I love and have loved, sitting in contemplation, in a place that has been welcoming, and surviving, for centuries.

Je reviendra quelque jour.

Go figure

The accountant. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

It's tax season.

Despite meticulous record keeping over the year, preparing our returns always involves lots of paperwork, receipts, etc., spread out over the dining room table. (No room in the office ... so, why do we have an office? Question for another day.)

The cat is always pleased to contribute to the prep (just not financially).

Any refund will be used for kibble.

Almost done. Then, it will be time for a nap! (Or a bath.)

Of Oz and Wonderland

With apologies to Lewis Carroll

"All in a gloomy afternoon
Full fearfully we hide ..."

I found the Mad Hatter's chapeau in my driveway this morning, perhaps flung there by the Queen of Hearts. Or to claim a Wizard of Oz metaphor, dropped there like a house by a tornado.

(What? Oh, sorry. Back to Wonderland. Hatter interruptus.)

I like to think that the Hatter, the March Hare and Alice are continuing on with their very mad tea party this evening. Because, really, how else can one deal with this ridiculous February weather?

Besides going down a rabbit hole, I mean.

A walk through ancient mythology

Almost every day, I go for a walk in my neighborhood, for about 35 minutes. Usually the same route; but sometimes, I vary it by taking it in the opposite direction. No matter which way, it's good exercise because my neighborhood is especially hilly.

There's a middle school nearby, which normally doesn't signify because I'm mostly out and back by 2:30 p.m.

Got a late start today, though, so passed by lots of tweens lugging giant packs on their backs, or carrying cases with musical instruments. Or both.

At one intersection, I'm heading downhill, and the cross street, to my left, heads down as well.

Here is what I witnessed.

To my left, top of the cross street, three tween girls be-backpacked and bunched together, screaming at a boy child fleeing them down the street and across the intersection. Their words were "And don't ever bother us again!"

As this boy fled, he passed, to my right and across the street, four other boys, much bigger than him. Eighth-grade, I guess? Totally oblivious; from the bit of conversation I overheard they were making plans for the evening.

So I'm calling this tableau "The Harpies, the Mortal and the Young Gods."

Through thin paper, or Reflective, Yes, but Up to a Point

Pages 15 and 16, New York Times, January 27, 2019, through the sunlight.

On a very cold Wednesday, I was catching up to the Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure section of Jan. 27, 2019, holding it between fingers, the pages spread wide (me wearing my readers). The day was sunny for a change, and light brightened the living room through the picture window. At page 15 of the 16-page section is a story about 21-year-old rapper Kodak Brown. Two photos, one a portrait the other a performance shot, accompany the story. Flip to the next and final page, 16, and there is a story about 78-year-old painter Pat Steir. Four photos, a small portrait, a large image of her "Barnes" series and a couple of detail shots, flesh out the story.
I skimmed both articles, the one about the painter last, and held up the last page to see the Stier photos more closely, then flipped back.
Turns out, newsprint and the ink used to make newspapers, have some magical qualities. One is transparency (and the irony of using the words newspapers and transparency at this particular point in time is not lost on me, but I'm not getting into those weeds right now).
When the paper is held up to the light, the images meld together.
I think the headline for the story about Kodak Brown, "Reflective, Yes, but Up to a Point" captures what happens when the photos from pages 15 and 16 meet in the sunshine.
Here are the pages as they look unreflected.

The original photographs were by Gerardo Mora and Ike Edeani.