Is Spring Coming Yet?

 

At Bao Space downtown, we had a pleasant lunch. I tried their hot & sour soup.
It was tempting because the weather is cold again. But we hope the cold won’t last.

Alice is visiting us. She ordered a rice bowl.

Signs of Spring

Despite our day of icy rain, plants are starting to re-emerge in our garden

Sandhill cranes stay in Hudson Mills Metropark all year, but they seem to have brighter head plumage now.

Addendum: Friday afternoon birds at Kent Lake:
 A Red-Winged Blackbird, a Sandhill Crane, and three wild turkeys.

A new grey recliner is now on our front porch, along with the wooden table Len made recently.
We’ve even had a few afternoons warm enough to sit outside

Reading

I finished reading The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (1947-2024)

The New York Trilogy is very meta — which means that as a reader, you are always conscious that this is a work of modernistic fiction. You have to accept that the author and reader are conspiring about characters, who are being created in a very artificial way. The story is not told the way that traditional authors related to their characters and their readers. 

In other words: these three very loosely related stories make the characters seem aware that they are characters in a story, that they have an author, and that you have agreed to see them as characters. It’s very mannered. At times the characters are relatable, but at times the whole thing just seems annoying.

Auster’s work has been around for decades, and I have meant to read his works — maybe I should have read them long ago. All the pretense might have been interesting back in the 1980s, but now I feel as if the whole thing is a bit exaggerated and passé.

I am reading Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke. It was very hard to get into the book, and I read the first 100 pages twice — but now I’m finding it very good reading. It’s about a Black Texas Ranger and how he solves some mysterious murders in a small town. (I don’t know the solution yet. Will keep reading.)

Quotes about a Sad Week in America

Food Safety? What Food Safety?

From “Food Safety Jeopardized by Onslaught of Funding and Staff Cuts” by Christina Jewett:

“In the last few years, foodborne pathogens have had devastating consequences that alarmed the public. Bacteria in infant formula sickened babies. Deli meat ridden with listeria killed 10 people and led to 60 hospitalizations in 19 states. Lead-laden applesauce pouches poisoned young children.

“In each outbreak, state and federal officials connected the dots from each sick person to a tainted product and ensured the recalled food was pulled off the shelves.

“Some of those employees and their specific roles in ending outbreaks are now threatened by Trump administration measures to increase government efficiency, which come on top of cuts already being made by the Food and Drug Administration’s chronically underfunded food division.” (New York Times, March 19)

Attack on the American Mind

From Robert Reich:

“Make no mistake: Trump’s attack on the American mind — on education, science, libraries, and museums — is an attack on the capacity of Americans for self-government.

“It is coming from the oligarchs of the techno-state who believe democracy is inefficient, and want to replace it with an authoritarian regime replete with technologies they control.

“Be warned.” (source: Reich’s Substack)

Blog post © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz and with Eileen’s Critters.