Two days ago, I was in the kitchen with housemate Dan. We were remarking on the variety of cups in the cupboard, their various messages, each one a seeming contradiction to the others. Just goes to show the various influences that flow like currents into and through our little village. I decided to line them up. (BTW, that’s housemate Brie’s art in the background.)

I no longer remember where I volunteered for “Citizen’s Corps.” “Mathematical Reviews” is where my deceased mathematician husband Jeff Joel used to work as editor in Ann Arbor. “Gettysburg” reflects the southern roots of Dan’s hometown of Booneville Indiana. And the classical composers cup is also, most likely, from Jeff. There are lots of others, of course, and I bet anybody who looks in their kitchen cabinet will also discover a juxtaposition of influences.

The day before yesterday I looked outside and noticed a bunch of leaf bags lining the fence that were not there the day before. What’s that about? I asked housemate Dan. “Oh that!” He exclaimed: “Last night at midnight, an old guy named Steve [“about 80, says Dan] who some of us have met before (he haunts music venues downtown in his overalls) came rolling down the street about 15 miles an hour with an overloaded truck. Said he’d been raking leaves since 2 p.m.!”

They were for us.

Oh boy! Yesterday housemate Brie managed to unload six bags as mulch on garden beds.

Last night our weekly Community Dinner featured the GANG garden’s huge bounty of squash from 2016, made into an enormous pot of squash soup. So much that people took squash soup home with them in quart jars afterwards.

It was as usual, a fun time, and graced with two kids, Celeste who is eight or nine, and Ramayah, four months.

Ramayah’s Mom Raylin also sported a new tattoo (which everybody around here calls a “tat;” get with the program, Ann!). And her Dad Jeremiah also showed off one of his, he calls it “a USA map with a fly eating maggots” or something like that. Geez! Raylin says she wants to get another piercing, can’t remember where.

Of course I don’t understand at all just what this business of seemingly permanent alteration of the surface of the body is all about, thus showing my age (74). (On the other hand, at a Crones Counsel several years ago, I was amazed to talk with a woman who had tattooed enormous beautiful leaves on her shoulder and upper arm. Said she did it for her 70th birthday.)

Forest showed up with his guitar; he and Aaron played guitar and banjo deep into the night, so I hear. (I left at 8:30, after giving a scratchy, soulful rendition of House of the Rising Sun, fueled by wine, googled lyrics, and those two musicians who egged me on.)

 

Then, the astonishment: this morning, when I looked outside . . . What! More leaves! Gobs more! More than before!

Okay, Dan. What happened this time? “Steve, the old guy, showed up at 10:30 last night with more leaves. This time we were able to entice him inside, where he agreed to a bowl of soup, but refused the offer of a quart jar to take home.”