I am in here.

via panoramio.com

This is not my picture of the church in Repton, England , but we spent a wonderful two weeks here in the summer of 1987, digging it up. Well, much of the ground around it, that is.

The whole project had started as a few townspeople wondering just how old the church was. It turns out to be one of the oldest churches still standing in England. The core of it was built well before the winter of 873-874 CE when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that the main force of the Vikings‘ great army wintered there.

Digging up all that dirt was exhausting but lovely. It’s nice to know that all of the trenches are filled back in, though.

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A favorite poem. A favorite artist.

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via kottke.org

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From staring today at the sidewalks of Boulder, I have come up with a realization: Those young kids who want to have the glory of participating in modern culture, but actually have nothing to say, will scrawl the names of dead black musicians on walls and sidewalks. This is true whether here in Boulder, or in Tel Aviv.

What started this train of thought off for me was seeing, yet again, the name of Bob Marley underfoot on a sidewalk slab, having been scratched there by someone before the cement dried. I immediately thought of the graffiti I had seen throughout one of the less affluent neighborhoods of Tel Aviv: 2PAC.

Dead black musicians, whom the graffiti-writers were not themselves old enough to have known when they were alive: Bob Marley and Tupac Shakur. I could make the clichéd remark that all great musicians and artists speak to those who come after them; in fact, I just have. I know that at least in Bob Marley’s case, his popularity is widespread even in those socio-economic classes that he was not trying to encourage. I am convinced that it would be an easy task to get a roomful of drunken bank presidents and other Republicans to sing along with “Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights!”

I have no idea whether this is what Bob Marley intended or wanted for his songs, but there it is. Music ends up in the strangest places, like sidewalks in Boulder and walls in Tel Aviv.

[And no, "2PAC" is not what it says on that picture. I just liked the picture of this other graffiti in Tel Aviv.]

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Found a bit of Omar Khayyam in the sidewalk in Boulder.

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I am sorry to report to you that our newest addition to the family, Rocky the Squirrel, has met a sad end. As I reported before, Rocky had suddenly appeared in our laundry room. We didn’t see him at all after my initial sighting of him (her?), though he left many traces of his presence around the floor, and in a just-washed comforter that he nested in.

Then, my husband made the mistake of unloading some laundry out of one basket. There he found the mortal remains of Rocky, who had evidently given up the nest in the comforter for the laundry basket, where he suffocated himself.

We had a short funeral by the garbage can, and did lots and lots more laundry, after getting rid of the comforter. The cats and the dog, who had been behaving strangely around the house in the past couple of days, are returning to normal.

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We have a new pet. This was a completely unexpected and inadvertent acquisition on our part; it just showed up. A squirrel.

I was down in the laundry room this morning, apropos of nothing in particular, when I hear a tiny scrabbling sound above me. I look up, and there the squirrel is, on top of a steam pipe by the wall, frozen with one eye staring at me. I stared at it, and wondered what to do.

The squirrel didn’t look to be ill or starving or in any distress. I couldn’t think of a reason to be afraid of it. It found its way into the house by unknown means, and I assume it can leave when it wants. Now I want to know whether I should feed it, and what we’re going to name it.

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