Good, Solid Work

Started the morning off with the usual laundry. Dad was around. He said he'd seen Rose and Craig last weekend. Both are fine and very happy about their upcoming baby. He went out to rake his yard as I did the same.

The leaves in the front yard had gotten really bad again. I think they're even worse than last year. The acorns were still fairly bad, too. I raked the first "layer" of just leaves this morning and put it at the curb for the city leaf collectors. It was a warm, partly cloudy morning, probably in the lower 70s. It felt good to help my landlady out and do some good, real work for a change, instead of just pushing things around registers.

I picked up the laundry and brought it home around quarter of 1. Had a quick lunch of home-made Rye-Whole Wheat Bread spread with peanut butter and an apple, then rode to the Haddon Township Library for this week's volunteering session.

There were lots of DVDs to return today. The children's DVDs in particular were a mess. There were ones turned around, on the wrong shelf, and the were PG titles mixed in again. (Allow me to repeat - just because a movie is animated or looks like it's for kids, doesn't mean it IS for little kids.) I returned the DVDs, then looked for my own. I took out the next Nora Blackbird novel, Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too, a Miami-set mystery novel about a Cuban American female private investigator, A Miracle In Paradise, another book on job hunting, and three DVDs, Ragtime, The Graduate, and the Irish musical Once.

Made a very brief stop at Dollar General next to the Westmont Acme for ground ginger, then headed home the long way across Newton River Park. It was about 4:30 by then, and the park was filled with dog walkers, old people going for a stroll, kids just out of school, and high schoolers jogging together. I dodged so many people, I decided to leave the park about half-way through and ride the sides streets in Oaklyn the rest of the way home.

I finished the first half of the yard after I got in. I'd left piles of acorns that the leaf collectors wouldn't take after I'd gotten up the initial leaves. Also helped Miss Ellie take out her recycling (they pick it up on Tuesdays here) and finally remembered to take out my own.

Put on Ragtime as I made salmon with mushrooms and leeks cooked in home-made chicken stock and steamed broccoli for dinner and a "chocolate chip pie" (chocolate chip bar batter in a pie pan) for dessert. Ragtime is based after the novel by EL Doctorow that weaves the lives of real and fictional people in early 20th century New York and Atlantic City. A white-middle class family, a black family, and a Jewish immigrant family's lives intersect when a black maid leaves her baby in the white family's garden. The arrival of the baby's father, a well-spoken piano player in a dapper new car, sets off a chain of events that ends in a stand-off at the Morgan Library in New York.

I fondly remember my mother, who loved this era in history and is a big fan of Mary Steenbergen, talking about this movie and the book during my early childhood. No wonder she loved it so much. This is a really excellent film, well-made and cast by Milos Forman, who would go on to make the equally excellent Amadeus a few years later. Special kudos to Howard Rollins (who would later appear as a black actor in a Remember WENN episode) as the dignified and yet passionate Coalhouse Walker Jr, James Cagney showing what made him a legend in his last role as the New York Chief of Police, and Elizabeth McGovern as ditzy, dizzy Evelyn Nesbitt.

And even as the transit strike in Philadelphia ends, I received what sounded like an automated phone call from the Acme's union that said they were in major talks tomorrow and may be signing the authorization to strike. They'd better not. First of all, I don't think a second strike after we just got through one that everyone hated would be well-received. A recession is a bad time for anyone to be risking their jobs. Second, I'm terrified of the idea of striking. I'm not a hippie from the 60s. I couldn't pick up a placard and march and chant with everyone else. I just couldn't. There's no way in the world I could.

I heard from Linda Young tonight, too. She and her husband James are visiting from Georgia, and I'm hoping to see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, among other things, with them on Thursday.