Asides

Zeugma’s had a kitten-cold the past few days, sad and low-energy and, well, pretty much the way we all get when we’re sick. She coughs and sneezes and sleeps, and like the total mush she is, she wants attention. So she curled up on my chest when I was doing some web-surfing, her face in the hollow of my collar bone, her hind end supported by the crook of my arm, and went to sleep a-purring while I browsed. Of course, it’s summer, and both the girls are shedding hugely every day, and Zeugma’s stray fur tickled my nose. I stifled a sneeze, which woke Zeugma up. She stared up at my face, blinking, and not to be outdone, gave me a full-face wet open-mouth kitten-sneeze.

In the past several days, my primary activity has been repairing my mom’s furniture (wood epoxy is a fine thing) and shuffling it around, trying to find space for it all, and sorting through eighteen cartons of books. There are some perils to inheriting books from a librarian with degrees in French, German, and Comparative Literature (not to mention Library Science and Management and Public Policy). I’ve also washed lots of china, glassware, cookware, and serving dishes (my mom had a small catering business on the side), and am in the process of polishing some brass and silver. A good friend helped me out immensely by taking some of the books off my hands; most of the rest — I mean, aside from the hundred or so that mean a lot to David and me — will go to charity or the used book stores. There were also four big cartons of cookbooks, which will go the same way, although I did hang on to all the Julia Child, James Beard, Fannie Farmer, and Craig Claiborne for David and me. (David hopes to eventually open his own restaurant.) For all the treasures and important memoriata I’ve found, there’s also lots of stuff that my aunt Carol (my mom’s executrix) and I packed in a hurry that doesn’t really seem to me to be worth saving, but that David might want. How important is it to save a porcelain cookie jar that both of you grew up with and that both of you snatched cookies from for the space of some twenty-four years?

To frame the question more generally: I’ve got all these material possessions here, in a space where my brother can’t see them, touch them, handle them. It’s easy to make value judgments on stuff that’s important to me; it’s a lot harder to make such judgments for him. And it’s compounded by the fact that there’s not enough room in my apartment for all this stuff. My dad and I crammed tight a storage locker with David’s stuff in Maryland; there’s just no room for anything more. So what do I do?

It’s pretty clear, I guess. I hold on to what I think is important, and ask David what he wants when he gets out. We’ve already discussed the broad inventory: I’m not going to go through a narrower thousand-item inventory with him. Neither of us are interested in that.

But I put myself in his place, and look at such a decision, and it distresses me: chunks of his history, things that he might not remember until he handles the items, get flushed down the memory hole. I’m not sure I can do that.

Anyway. Those are my excuses for having not blogged lately. I’m trying to get back into the swing of things, and I’m grateful for the comments, and know I’ve got some responding to do: thanks for the kind words, y’all. There’s still a dissertation in progress, I promise.

In the interim: can anyone tell me what this is? My mom had a dozen of them, sterling silver, inherited from her grandmother. They have a narrow lip around the bottom, which is 2.5 inches in diameter; the top is 3 inches in diameter, and the handle is 2.5 inches long. They fit none of my mom’s glassware, and, well, I really don’t think they’re napkin rings. Any ideas?

We are led to believe that rogue states are stockpiling WMDs.

In recent investigations, I have discovered incontrovertible proof that my mother was stockpiling cheese boards.

I hold before you exhibit A: no fewer than five, yes, five devices designed and constructed solely for the short-range delivery of a solid cheese payload, with or without cracker, to possibly dense populations of civilian mouths. Some of these devices are remarkable in their complexity, particularly the marble and steel and wire cheese guillotine; others comprise a multitude of materials, including porcelain, wood, and magnets (for cheese-knife retention purposes). In clear breach of the Crocker-Stewart Hors D’oeuvres Non-Proliferation (HoDoNoPro) treaty of 1998, Ms. Irvine knowingly accumulated devices with grave and immediate consequences in their intended use. Surveillance archives recently uncovered evidence of the victims of such devices beyond any hope of clear-minded self-control, declaring, “Ann! Is this a Manchego? And a Wensleydale, as well?”

Our national inaction is no longer an option: left unchecked, Ann Irvine’s accumulation of cheese-related devices will surely
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Got stuff loaded up in DC two days ago, and the movers got up here to New England tonight. I’ve got a crowded apartment. Being the proud new owner of my mom’s dining room set, I guess I’ll be doing some entertaining in the future. Right now, it’s cutting the plastic and cardboard off of everything; I’m not even going to think about starting on the boxes until tomorrow. With the litigation, we were a bit rushed when we packed everything, and so many of the boxes are less than adequately labeled: as my aunt said, “It’ll be like Christmas. Lots of surprises.”

Anyway. The movers left about an hour ago — they took the stuff from Silver Spring to Annapolis, and then up here, and they’ve got the other half of the truck to unload in New Jersey tomorrow morning — and I’m relaxing for a moment and enjoying a beer. I’m sure that by tomorrow, I’ll be so tired of all this stuff that I’ll be eager to get some reading and writing done.

For now, though, I’m just happy to not have to make that nine-hour drive down Interstates 84, 81, and 83 for a while.

I’m in DC for a few days, dealing with movers for my mom’s belongings and other such estate business. More as I have the time.

Pending the resolution of my mother’s estate, I’ve been going through some scrapbooks. In the picture below, I’m sure you can guess the identity of the dashing young fellow in the sailboat sweater vest, thoughtfully stroking his chin. Or something.

And, in a later picture, there’s a skinny Brad Pitt on the left (yes, that’s David), and a skinny, uh, well, Uncle Fester on the right.

Maybe eyeliner might help?

I’m down in DC again, for my brother’s graduation. The ceremony was held outside today, on the lawn of the prison; David earned his Associate of Arts degree Magna Cum Laude, completed entirely while incarcerated. There were a good number of other inmates there earning their GEDs, and the co-valedictorians talked a lot about second chances. David has tutored many inmates working on their GEDs, and I’m pretty proud of him. (He also serves as recording secretary on the Inmate Advisory Council, and performs other coordinating administrative duties for inmate life, as well.) My friend Jason the brilliant high school teacher delighted David by sending him a fancy multicolored ’04 tassel for his cap and gown, in addition to the plain blue-and-white one the prison gave him.

After the morning ceremony, there was a picnic (each of the graduating inmates was permitted to invite two family members) where family members were allowed to bring in pre-packaged store-bought food. David was conscientious about asking us to bring in enough food to share with a few of his buddies who didn’t have family members coming to the ceremony. I got a lot of pictures; lots of nice people, and it was great to see so many people who conservatives say should be written off and forgotten about (the Department of Corrections educational budget was recently eviscerated) playing with one another’s kids and laughing with one another’s families. One of David’s friends had been in the graduation ceremony the year before: he had been completely illiterate upon entering the prison system, and had taught himself to read largely on his own, managing to do so earn and complete his GED — and he’s several years younger than David.

It was a good reminder to me of how easily education comes to some and not to others, and of the force of will that one doesn’t often see exhibited by more traditional students. It was a good day.

I enjoyed a picnic with a friend for the 4th, though I was a little sad to have not been home. Ruth, my father’s mother, had a rural Maryland farm called Sassafras Knoll, and every 4th, family and friends would gather there to grill bratwurst and drink sun tea and Pabst Blue Ribbon and eat deviled eggs, or to walk back through the pastures and wander around the pond, or to shoot bottle rockets and Roman candles over the barn and the carriage house, and maybe even roll out the ’53 John Deere that I used to mow the pastures with when I was a teenager. Cindy, the police officer who lives next door, would let us know that she’d be elsewhere that day, so’s not to see us with our illegal-in-Maryland fireworks. My cousin Zach and his wife Toby bought the farm from Ruth, who passed away in February, just before her ninety-first birthday. Cindy gave us a police escort for the funeral procession. But Ruth had been there at every 4th of July celebration I can remember, sometimes shucking peas with me and the dates I would bring, baking her gooseberry cobbler, and last year happily downing two or three of the Jell-O shots Toby had made. So I’m figuring this year’s celebration was bittersweet for everybody there, especially my dad and his sister, and I’m wishing I’d been able to be present.

Tonight, as a post-4th celebration, I’m going to see Fahrenheit 9/11. I might have to try and find me a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, too.

Here’s to you, Ruthie.

Spent most of the day comparing HTML and CSS between my MT install and some WordPress templates, trying to figure out where I’ll have to make changes. Right now, I’m using a poorly-kludged three-column layout (check out the source and you’ll see the ugly trick I use to keep the right column at the same height as the weblog entries); when I move over to WordPress (sorry, Charlie and Clancy, but Drupal’s a bit more than I need for a weblog, like the equivalent of giving tactical nukes to a leg infantry platoon), I’m planning on switching to a more elegant CSS-based semi-fluid three-column plus top banner layout. I’m thinking about being a little more ornamental, too; a little less spartan, a little less All That White Space. Patterns and borders, mostly. And since MSIE makes dotted borders into hideous coupon-cut-here dashed borders, I’ll probably switch to solid single-pixel borders.

Yes, I know: yawn. Fascinating stuff, Mike. It’s just that I’m not a tech type, so figuring this stuff out for myself takes a lot of intellectual labor, and I’m usually all talkative when I do this much intellectual labor for my dissertation.

And so one obvious conclusion might be that my dissertation research isn’t much more interesting than my navel-gazing noodling about figuring out how to format my weblog.

Which is a pretty sucky epiphany.

I got a phone call from a caller ID-blocked number yesterday. When I picked up, it was a recorded message from T-Netix, telling me that an inmate (my younger brother) at Correctional Institution X wanted to get in touch with me, and in order to allow that to happen, I’d have to set up an account. The message gave me a toll-free number (1-888-221-5671, if you’re interested) at which I could set up an account. In the past, my brother has always been able to get in touch with me via AT&T or Verizon collect calls, which charged a special extortionate prison rate, something around ninety cents per minute, so I was initially hopeful: I thought that maybe the Maryland Division of Corrections had finally decided to treat prisoners’ families like human beings.

Upon calling the T-Netix number (“The nation’s largers provider of corrections industry related telecommunications services”), I discovered that I was sorely mistaken.
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