Well, it was a Pretty good bday lunch for mom. After hitting the sf library booksale at Ft mason, we had lunch at Greens.
When dessert came they put a candle in it, and we sang a quiet little happy birthday.
Then Grammy award winning singer India.Arie came over and sang it with her mom and godmother/acting coach.
They sounded much better than we did.
Ironically, Lois produced and broadcast “Iron ladies of Liberia” and India.Arie wrote the song for the documentary, which was premiered on Independent Lens. So Lois had a great conversation with her.
Six degrees indeed.
Happy birthday mom!
As part of the “Jay’s Secret Laboratory”/Shed build, I’ve been spending the past few weekends digging a big hole in the back yard (and creating an almost Egyptian dirt pile). This project started with Lois and Rick also digging but I’ve been solo for the past two weekends. Anyway, a few things have come to light, literally and figuratively.
It turns out that a backyard as leisure space is a more recent phenomenon, whereas historically it used to be more of a utility space. Besides clotheslines and gardens, a common activity was trash burning. (This makes me wonder if urbanization and laws against burning resulted in the shift to leisure space? Well, that and supermarkets vs. gardens I suppose…)
Anyway, as any Jr. Archaeologist will tell you, trash piles are a treasure trove of information about previous cultures and people. [Keep that in mind as we create landfills that beggar the imagination.] Anyway I can now state the following about the previous inhabitants: they had a burn barrel, 55-Gallon steel drum, and threw lots of trash in it (I found the rusted remains of the barrel’s bottom, literally scraping it with the shovel. We’ve also pulled a lot of steak bones, rusty metal, broken glass, broken plates, and best of all some intact old bottles from the back yard. Yesterday alone I pulled out 4 good ones. My favorite so far was a smallish triangular blue glass bottle from the “Owl Drug Company” labeled “POISON” right on the glass. I got that one last weekend. This weekend I got a very small bottle which took the cute award, and a still-full bottle of what appears to be lotion of some sort. This looks more recent than most of the stuff out there, but I’m still a little leery of opening it.
So where’s the profit? Well, mostly that had we hired this work out, it’d be about $1000. So we saved a grand and got some cool bottles.
Yay. I’d put an exclamation point there, but I’m not sure my back is up to lifting it…
So after two weeks of being sick, bronchitis, I’ve now got antibiotic pills (huge!) and they’re finally kicking in. And I even got an inhaler, but I have no idea if it’s doing anything. Whatever, I’m getting better so I’ll stick with it. It’s actually a pretty amazing little plastic device, with 14 measured doses, the indicator reminds me of my old 110 film camera. Ka-click, and the number changes.
Anyway, I’m returning to something resembling healthy again. I’m just around the corner from there, but I can still see that it’s a much nicer place to be.
Really looking forward to arriving in the next few days…
