On the bus, originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

A little after 9-11.

About this time I rode on a bus with an angry silent young man with a backpack. I got a bad vibe off either himself or myself, and imagined that backpack detonating, over and over again, until i was glad to get off that bus and leave him behind. No one’s blown up a bus in Kansas City yet, but I’ve not forgotten my reaction to him.

It says more about me, I think, than him, indeed. But Mumbai brings it back.

I don’t think I’ll ever meet a more intelligent or handsome dog than de Coucy ever again. I wish I had gotten to spend more time with him to get to know his personality better. But those expressive eyes told enough of the tale, and impact he hand on others.

What a dog!

leedy voulkos lights, originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

I’m fond of this photo, the way the Leedy-Voulkos sign just hangs up there in the dark. Nothing artistic, anyone could do it. I just like it.

Probably been last summer since I was at the Leedy, too.

all milling around stuffing themselves, originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

Before Dukakis, before Mikhail’s death. The sight of fat cats making themselves fatter off an infinite supply of food is pathetic at worst, and hysterical at best. Chachi is beginning to emerge from her long hiding, and Dukakis is beginning to hate her a little less.

I still miss Mikhail.

a little experimental comic i drew to submit to a local pet-oriented paper. it was violently rejected, and i do mean violently. (i was, apparently, arrogant and insulting for submitting it.)

i suppose it isn’t that good.

After all, I need to get coffee and juice and write off November into history.

The whole corner is looking pretty shabby these days, what with Starbucks gone and that what-its-name rave clothing store across the street looking as dank and dismal as it ever does. I just don’t enjoy going up to Westport anymore, and to think I used to live there! I understand that the night life has worsened as well, what with everyone hounding off after the Power and Light District like it’s everyone’s favorite Great Ba’al downtown, bodies hurled in sacrifice into the flaming maw of a Great Liquored Up God.

The eocnomy’s hurting everyone, but it’s too bad that they had to open an area, at taxpayer expense, that would destroy local existing businesses while going on to be huge failure itself. Smells like Kansas City, doesn’t it?

It is impossible to see in this picture, but the tree is up on the coffee table and against the wall where she cannot get to it, and there are no ornaments or lights on the lower branches, to dissuade the cats from, hurling themselves skywards and pullings things down.

It’s a pretty tidy solution, and solves the problem we have had before,which is how much of a footprint to do we want to give our Christmas tree. Answer: not much of one, and certainly less than it gets when on the floor.

Sparrow is currently reading through her Yellow-Red-Blue book. It’s always funny when she slecects a book to go through. She has to turn it around and around and find the opening edge, then she has to decide if it has more than two page in it or not as she turns them.

Anyhoo, I put the tree up while she was napping yesterday afternoon, and then brought her out. She was about to start up her dissatisfied “I’ve just awakened” crying, when she saw the tree and stopped literally in mid-rawp. She stared at it for the longest time, and I know she had to be thinking about what she had just seen at Crown Center when we took her to see Santa.

The first snow accumulation of the season fell last night. Sparrow has not been out to see it, and I am wondering how she will react. The show showers fell all day last night, to not much effect. It was not until we went to Lucy’s christening that the streets grew just a little slick, resisting the brakes. This morning it all lies on the ground, about a quarter of an inch of it. I’m not sure whether or not to expect any more today, although the weather forecast calls for it, and I am not sure if I’ll take Sparrow out on her Sunday walk, although I really want to. (The last couple of weeks she’s been pretty grousy about it anyway.)
If nothing else, this coverlet of snow should give just a touch of a Christmasy boost to the start of the shopping weekend, Thanksgiving’s last day.

We also have the tree up, but I’ll put that picture up because it certainly deserves its own post. I remember last year how we almost did not put a tree up! And failed to put up the house lights, a mistake I shall not repeat. It all seemed to be “too much trouble” under the circumstances.

The violence in Mumbai claimed the lives of Alan and Naomi Scherr, two pilgrims from the Synchronicity community in Virginia. It seems tragic and ridiculous that two people, father and daughter, peacefully visiting ashrams in India, should be slain in this callous way. It seems that anyone should have died there that day, walking down the street and minding their own business, but there it is.

There is something wrong afoot in the world. Maybe there always has been.

Indian security forces are saying that the only one of these persons they have caught alive is Pakistani. Pakistan is not keen to hear this. We shall see where this goes.

Killing and killing and killing, and eye for an eye until every eye is blind.

I didn’t mention Buy Nothing Day, since I was on the road and had other things in mind, but I reflect back on Friday and I indeed, bought nothing at all. Bonnie got a bib free for shipping off of Spots, but I don’t really count that as buying, and in the end that only cost a dollar and a half.

I sort of wish every day were Buy Nothing Day, but I suppose most retailers this year will say that it is, even though Black Friday was evidently not horribly inadequate, although nothing to write home about. People went for the loss leader items–killed for them in fact (how would you like to be a part of that mob, knowing that you might have played a part in a man’s death?)–but will they stay for the stuff that’s not so discounted?

Next couple weeks will tell . . .