Bright skies, old friends, and dogs

When I was in elementary school, we had to memorize a poem about October’s bright blue skies. As I went out to meet a friend for lunch today, I looked up and almost recited that poem. It was the brightest, most beautiful sky I’ve ever seen, even if it was November and not October. A beautiful day that lifted the spirits.

Otherwise, Monday was, well, Monday. Baking cookies, odds and ends at my desk, lunch with my good friend, Fred, the man who saw me through graduate school. Love I that I can talk to him about the projects that interest me—few other people get excited when you talk about George Pullman, the Pullman railroad cars, and the Pullman riots in Chicago in the 1890s. Fred gets my enthusiasm—and I get his for the early aero plane culture and particularly the women pilots. Good lunch at the Black Rooster, where it’s quiet enough you can hear each other talk.and the sandwiches are great.

Interesting and fun happy hour tonight. In grade school and middle school, Jordan and Sarah were good friends. Although they were always friends, they drifted apart with adulthood and marriage. Recent events have brought them back close to each other in the last couple of years. I remember Sarah’s parents from those early days but hadn’t seen them in years. They came for happy hour tonight. In an interesting parallel, they now live in a cottage (converted garage/guest house) behind Sarah’s house, a situation so similar to mine.

You’d think given the connection and situation we’d have spent a lot of time “catching up,” but we really didn’t. There was a bit of talk about tiny house living—theirs is almost twice as big as mine and they have a real stove—and a bit about when the girls were young. But then there was a lot of talk about politics—we are all on the same page—and a lot of talk about dogs. Sarah has three Labrador pups, and Sophie was begging for attention from anyone who would love on her. We talked of dogs past and present. It always delights me to talk to people who care as much about dogs as I do.

Got most of my molasses cookies baked—maybe two pans left to go. A good project for tomorrow, when impeachment hearings will again be on TV. I can roll balls of dough in sugar while staring at the TV. I’ve decided of late that trump is taking way too much of my time and thought, when I could be doing more constructive things. But as I said in our discussion tonight, I feel a moral obligation to keep informed on what’s going on and to share the news when appropriate, offer my own opinions less frequently but occasionally. We talked at length tonight, without actually quoting it, about the saying that’s been around for a few years: This is not your father’s Republican Party. These are wild times we live in, and I can only imagine how history fifty years from now will assess them.