Well now.  Personally, I don't like to travel.  Others like to go abroad.  One of them is my friend Jennie.  She recently made a journey to various Asian locales and brought back pictures.  You will likely agree that she knows how to take a picture--and that her vacation was something to remember.  See the show at:  www.flickr.com/photos/mulaohu/collections/72157603549478122

Michael McGrorty

Memo to my friends

Subject:  Confessions from 2007

I freely confess the following sins:

I rigged the calibration on my electronic bathroom scale to register 50% more body fat on the “visitor” setting.

I once picked up a smaller pile of poop at the dog park than the one my own dog made.

I have gotten buzzed on free samples of wine while my wife was shopping for groceries.

I often daydream of pitching in the major leagues.  Sometimes I fantasize about beaning people I don’t like with a nasty fastball.

Sometimes, when nobody is home, I will play Youtube videos of old jazz singers and pretend that I’m at a concert, but only when I’ve had a glass or two of port.

When I’ve had a bad day, I take a nap with the dogs and tell them that other people are wicked.

I tell myself that getting a tattoo is stupid because I never got the one I wanted when I had the chance.

I pray for bad things to happen, but it doesn’t count because I’m an atheist.

I like to run over plastic bottles with my truck tires.

I like teaching little kids to make vulgar noises.

I take long showers at the YMCA so I can save water at home.

I’ve thrown wildflower seeds down in other people’s yards when nobody was around.

I gave beer to the squirrels.

I threw snails over the fence and they hit the neighbor’s car.

I left a banana under my truck seat and forgot about it until I left the dogs in the truck while I went shopping.

I got mad at the dogs for finding the banana under the truck seat.

I bought a sandwich from a lady at a food stand because she was pretty.

I sometimes accept the senior discount at the thrift store even though I’m too young.

I make up vulgar lyrics to old songs and sing them in the shower.

At a convention, a woman took my business card, but left it on a table, so I tore hers in half when she left.

I tell each of my dogs that she is the one I love best.

When people give me credit for things I haven’t done, I correct them in such a way as to make myself seem honest and self-effacing.

I tell people I’ve never been out on a date, but it’s not true.  [I was on a date once.  My friend set me up with a woman who had given birth to a child three days before and had to give it up for adoption; she was on the verge of suicide.]

I have often wished drunk drivers would die, and never so much as on late-night rides home on my motorcycle, with one growing large in the rearview mirror. 

I secretly hope that people will like me.  I very secretly hope that some of them will love me.  On a much deeper level—but never mind.

I find much in common with people with whom I disagree.

I get embarrassed at sex scenes in movies.

I’m middle-aged and funny-looking.  Previously I was young and funny-looking.  I appreciate it when people say otherwise.

I am anti-abortion.  I would never think of having one.

There is a girl I love that I can’t seem to tell about my feelings.

I steal things from other people’s trash cans.

My secret desire is to own an anvil.

I wish I could weld.

About half my dreams are nightmares.  Most of these involve having to get out of bed.

I am still afraid of the dark.

I never see a weed in anybody’s yard but I think I should yank it out.

It gives me satisfaction to see bad people fail.

I wish I was still a probation officer, quite often.

I am utterly convinced that women are superior to men.

I wish I could live forever.

I suffer from excessive pride about exercise.  Today I did an hour on the rowing machine, by the way.

I’m fifty-one years old and cannot do long division on paper.

I have no idea why women wear makeup.

I have the same problem when they wear high heels.

If I were rich I would own a farm and a place for injured dogs.

I like earthquakes.

I like tornadoes, too.

I spend a good deal of time constructing alternate worlds in which I redesign many of the earth’s current features.  I have completely de-populated Long Island and turned it into a vast wildlife refuge; several west coast marinas have been converted into riparian habitats.  This is what I think about at boring meetings.

I don’t know how to work most of the features of my cell phone, and it doesn’t bother me.

My Christmas gift to myself was 200 toad eggs.  They should arrive in March.

I view adulthood as a sort of failure.

When I work in the garden, I pretend it is my job.

I wish I owned a sword, but it would be hell on the furniture.

My favorite music is silence.  Other than that I’ll take anything.

Sometimes I wonder if the government is paying my wife to stay married to me.  There doesn’t seem to be any other explanation.

I think of seed catalogs the way most men think of Playboy.

I often have fantasies of owning my own orphanage, complete with hundreds of children.  I would assign each of them a dog or cat to raise.

I sometimes fantasize about having a home for lost animals.  I would assign each of them a small child to take care of.

When I see pictures of naked women, I imagine them wearing clothes.

When I see pictures of naked men, I wonder why women bother.

The reason I bought the toad eggs is so that I could raise an army to take over the world.

One of these confessions is a lie.  I think it is the one about the toads.  I really just want them to eat garden slugs.

So much for last year.

Michael McGrorty

Okay, gardening fans.  I know it isn't even 2008 yet, but out here in southern California we're already planting things for spring.  What you see in the picture here is a very large planter, about eighteen inches diameter across the top.  In nursery parlance this would be a fifteen-gallon tub.  I've used a hole-cutting bit to make the 12 cuts you see through the sides.  In a few days I'll plant seed potatoes in this. 

The way this is done is to put a layer of growing medium (soil and amendments) down, then deposit each seed potato near one of the holes on the bottom level.  After that, the potatoes are covered with soil to the next level of holes, where another layer of spudlets is placed.  The top layer is permitted to grow up through the natural soil line.  Altogether you get a triple layer cake of produce.  I will show pictures of this as the planting is done and the things begin to sprout.  The nice thing about this sort of arrangement is that you can turn the pot around to let the sun hit all sides.  What potatoes will I plant?  I'll let you know.

Michael McGrorty, urban farmer

From today's New York Times:

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the long-time director of the FBI, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans that he suspected of disloyalty.

Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons.

Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage." The FBI would "apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous" to national security, Hoover's proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under "a master warrant attached to a list of names" provided by the bureau.

The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. "The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven percent are citizens of the United States," he wrote.

"In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus," it said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/washington/23habeas.html

----------------- 

Michael McGrorty

My dog Rosie wishes everybody the best of holidays and adds, "There's nothing like a rubber chew toy."  Her cap is fashioned from a shredded pair of thrift-store pantyhose.

M. McGrorty

Greetings Friends,

Here is the holiday greeting from this particular address.  I really hate writing something like this, but I hate getting them even more, and figured I could use this as a sort of revenge against the people I know who insist on sending these.

Every year I get bunches of generic family news notes, not uncommonly on dark paper with weird decorations and blurry pictures.  If I could say anything, if I felt like taking the time to respond, it would be to say something like this:

------------------------------- 

Happy holidays.  I see that your evil spawn are a year older now.  I dearly love children.  You seem to as well, because you’ve run about a dozen through your wife and the local school system.  Those kids will be a terrific burden to the state, increase levels of pollution, and probably not rise about the average level of social contribution.  God knows, they’ll likely start sending me generic holiday message letters as soon as they’ve decided to marry some other like-minded idiot.  By the way, I don’t have children.  I have had something called a ‘vasectomy.’  It’s a little operation undertaken by responsible people, but never mind.  In civilized places they require them for pets. 

Speaking of which, I see your dog figures prominently in your note.  I have two dogs.  That is all you’re going to hear from me about the subject.

I see also that you’ve had a promotion.  I can tell because you now own a really big SUV—a sort of dreadnaught of the roadway.  It’s there in the picture, blotting out the skyline behind the family portrait.  In the navy, I served on destroyers that weren’t that big.  How many tugboats does it take to get you onto the freeway?  Let’s see—my thirteen year-old, six-cylinder truck has 153,000 miles on the ticker.  I only drive it when I have to, but hell, I don’t have sixteen kids to take to soccer practice.  I guess you need a battleship for that, eh?

How nice that you vacationed in Europe last summer.  I knew you went because you sent me a postcard of Florence to an address I hadn’t lived at in a decade.  Hey, we have something in common:  last summer I read a book about Europe and drank some German beer.  Did the travel broaden you?  It sure looks like it. 

And it’s really great that your second son is doing so well at Duke.  Let’s see, if I remember correctly, he was doing pre-med but fell in love with humanity and changed his major to Sociology.  That’s okay, I couldn’t do chemistry, either.  But isn’t that a lot to shell out for Max Weber?

And the girl who was at Cal—she’s not in this year’s huggy family shot.  I think she was the one who told me I was a fascist because I had a mutual fund.  Did you have her killed?

Speaking of vehicles, your wife certainly has a lot of miles on her.  I bet she’s shrunk half a foot from bone loss already.  Isn’t it time you ran off with a sexy younger colleague like last time around?  By the way, my wife and I have been together 25 years.  Actually, we’ve been married that long, but she hasn’t paid much attention since our honeymoon, when I told her that space aliens would one day make me king of the world.  She doesn’t believe in monarchy.

I said I wasn’t going to mention the dogs, and I won’t.

To tell the truth I sometimes feel like I should have a big family picture here like the one you sent me.  Instead, you can see a photo of one of my hobbies.  From time to time I drive the old truck up through the San Joaquin Valley.  There’s lots of bugs out there.  When I get to where I’m going, I take a picture of the ones stuck on my radiator.  They make interesting patterns; sometimes there are more wasps than beetles; sometimes the other way around.  I’ve developed this theory that the presence of particular insects is strongly related to the use of pesticides, all other things being equal.  But then, so much depends on size; the smaller ones tend to remain in the airstream and just flow into the windshield.  I’ve got a lot of charts developed, but there’s a lot more work to do.  Maybe by next Christmas I’ll have something to publish.

I see that you don’t have any advice about the elections this time around.  I thought it was very helpful that you provided me with a bumper sticker from your candidate a few years back.  Wasn’t he the guy who ended up getting nabbed in that airport men’s room?  I kept the sticker—it’s holding the muffler together on my truck.

I guess that’s about all I’ve got to report, except for the news about the dogs.  I promised not to say anything about them because they have their own little letter that will be going out in January.  By that time Tulip will be done with her dissertation and Rosie will be back from her junior year abroad.

Much love, Michael and the others

“On March 20, 1935, readers of newspapers across the United States were greeted with news of an unprecedented event: the outbreak the previous evening in black America’s cultural capital of what the elder statesman Adam Clayton Powell wryly called Harlem’s “first great riot.” As Powell recognized, what made the event a “first” (if not “great”) was its inversion of the structure, omnipresent in a burgeoning American modernity at least since Reconstruction, of white-on-black violence. If the widespread destruction of white-owned Harlem property that ensued was not exactly payback for decades of white aggression and mob violence from Brownsville, Atlanta, and Houston to Tulsa and Springfield, Illinois, and many points between, it was a form of notice to white America that the old dispensations had become a Thing of the past. Powell’s sense not just of history but of precedent being made—“first” implies iterations to follow—is prevalent in journalistic documentation of the event, particularly in its prominently featured photographs. How is this new fact of American modernity to be imaged and, by implication, managed or imagined?

In considering that question, we might usefully focus on one widely reproduced image of the 1935 outbreak, an image at once representative and suggestive. The photograph features a paddy wagon full of African Americans (all those visible are men; some are obviously injured) who have been taken into police custody. Shot at point-blank range, exploiting in its handling of light and tonality a certain shock effect, the image nonetheless conveys something of the social complexities attendant on its making. Tightly framing its subjects with the receding horizontal lines of the vehicle’s interior and the diagonal patterning on the doors’ protective grillwork, the composition emphasizes the orderly containment of black men’s bodies in postures of resignation and distress; note the formal regularity established in the play of the men’s folded hands and headgear. Absent a directive caption, the shot tenders uncertainty about their status; they are booked as looters but imaged, at least potentially, as victims. Yet in the context of an interwar mass readership (presumptively white), this uncertainty is itself pointed. Whether its subjects are read as criminals or potential objects of sympathy, the image emphasizes the power of modern social agencies—not least the documentary camera—to manage social disorder.”

Excerpt from HarlemCrossroads: Black Writers and the Photograph in the Twentieth Century by Sara Blair; Source:  http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i8510.html 

Blognote:  Here is a book I'll be reading when I can get my hands on a copy.  The pictures are not from the book, but were actually on sale at on online auction; they were once in the possession of the San Francisco Examiner. 

Michael McGrorty

International Labor Defense seals, 1932. 

An offering from the same organization, 1935.

See also:  http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/eam/other/ild/ild.html

Michael McGrorty

To all my friends and those out in cyberland whom I have not met, a holiday greeting.  This is my 2007 card, which in the spirit of the times is constructed entirely of recycled materials obtained from the thrift store.  This is an advent calendar for people of all faiths or none.  Every day you can slide open one of the little compartments and receive a dose of happiness.  The box is constructed of a medication box; the contents, obviously, are old buttons.  Some of them are quite old:  you've got genuine mother-of-pearl, celluloid, wood and metal items there.  Best of the season to you, and remember to save your buttons.

Michael McGrorty

I was fumbling through the old menus at Janet Jarvits' cookbook store over on Hill Street in Pasadena and discovered a few that I thought would be worth saving.  In fact, they seemed nice enough to frame, so I did.  Here are the pictures.  The first frame of each series shows the whole framed piece, and then the detail shots follow.

As the dates on them reveal, these menus are from the period 1830 through 1910.  They were produced for individual guests at private dinners, each handwritten by a servant of the house.  On the reverse of each is written the name of the guest.  The guests likely took them home as remembrances of the party.  It goes without saying that this sort of thing was an indulgence for the wealthy classes.  As to design, you might note that the first set of cards contains the same menu on different stock--apparently each guest had a different picture on his or her menu.  Also see the detail on the last set of cards-- simply exquisite.  In olden times the rich did not call out for pizza.

Michael McGrorty

[Note:  first in a series of articles on the Green Library of the present and future]

Here is a test of your Green Library knowledge:

1. What is the best way for a library to maximize conservation of resources?

1. Promote the purchase and use of alternative-fuel vehicles for employee commuting.
2. Promote the purchase and use of electric no-emission vehicles by workers.
3. Provide incentives such as preferred parking for workers who drive less-polluting vehicles.
4. Provide disincentives such as less parking for commuter vehicles except those involved in carpools.
5. Encourage use of public transportation by providing discounts on passes.
6. Arrange library work hours to reduce commuting to a minimum.
7. Arrange library hours to match times of peak patron usage.

Answer and discussion to follow.

Michael McGrorty

Here's another classic for you cookbook fans:  All About Home Baking, produced by the Consumer Service Department of General Foods Corporation in 1933.  This little number is a sort of recipe puff sheet for the products of that particular company; this is not at all unusual of course.  The recipes seem to assume absolutely no knowledge or experience on the part of the apprentice baker.  Anybody who thinks that Grandma was born knowing how to fold in meringue should have a look at this book.  But then, how else would you learn if your own mother was working the swing shift somewhere, and just happy to have the job during the Depression?

Of course, the recipes are heavy with sugar, butter, cream and the sort of sex roles you'd expect from that time.  See the picture below of the "Branded Rancho Birthday Cake," which I've removed to make a sort of memorial to the era:

The text reads, "Yippee!  Toy bucking broncos help Dad or Brother celebrate in he-man style.  The cake's a velvety one, three layers high, covered with "Lazy-K" Frosting chocolate brands.  Decorations for ladies:  Cowgirl rides atop pink frosting, and a few posies nestle at base of candles.  To make extra-large cake as in picture, double recipe for both cake and frosting given above."

I wonder how many girls accidentally were turned into cowboys when their mothers frosted the cake the wrong color?

[Book courtesy of Janet Jarvits Cookbooks, Pasadena]

Michael McGrorty

I have in hand a copy of the Better Homes and Gardens Barbecue Book from 1956, the year of my birth.  The book is a classic of its time; any historian desiring to know about American life, social relations and diet during the postwar years could crack this and read:

"All out for a barbecue roundup, outdoor cooks.  This is an easygoing, hi-everybody sort of fun.  Poke up a fire and re-lax.  For Dad there's all the how-to for those big, thick, charcoal-broiled steaks, plump barbecued chickens, and chef-style rotisserie roasts.  For the kids: Frankfurters, do-your-own kababs, giant hamburgers--and what's smackin' best to smear on them.  To keep Mom happy:  Ideas for specially wonderful salads, vegetables, beverages, and top-it-all-off desserts that are easy to fix, go best with guests and all outdoors.  Shuck off those little worries and start a fire for a fresh-air feast."

Presumably those worries would include the threat of nuclear war and the then-current recession, which had thrown quite a few Dads (and Moms) out of the steak-end of the barbecue life.  The reader will have noted that meat, particularly thick hearty portions, are for men to wrestle into submission, while Mom deals with the veggie plate and makes punch.

Words cannot do justice to the images of flesh within these pages.  The steaks are simply enormous, the size of ash can lids--any of them would have fed a European family for a week--if that family had the money to spend on such things.  It all makes one proud to be an American, or something.  Make mine medium, and hand me that beer.

[Book courtesy of Janet Jarvits Cookbooks, Pasadena]

Michael McGrorty

The ongoing riots in Paris have claimed another victim:  the Louis Jouvet library.  From all accounts the blaze was intentionally set by rioting youths. 

An indirect but rather efficient method of book burning, indeed.

Michael McGrorty

Okay friends.  I have a reference question for you--one which has stumped the libraries of many major U.S. Cities, quite a few university reference sections and the Library of Congress.  Think you're ready for this?  Willing to take a shot at immortality?  Here you go:

Question:  I have an antique shovel stamped with the number 7.  I know that shovels and scoops are numbered according to size, but need to know the origin and parameters of this system.

That's all.  The shovel is actually a scoop; a number seven, as stamped on the metal portion of the shank.  By way of reference, most modern shovels are number 2.  By the way, Greg Galer at the Stonehill Industrial History Center (the "Shovel Museum") doesn't know the origin of the system, either.  There is a federal specification for "Scoops, shovels, spades and spoons" (GS-S-11 of the Federal Standard Stock Catalog) but this shows nothing, either, at least that I can find of the numbering system.  Neither Ames Manufacturing Co. nor Union Tools know, and they are prime manufacturers of the implement; I've contacted both and they have no clue.  Frederick Taylor, who made an absolute science of shoveling and used his studies as examples of his Scientific Management, refers to numbered shovels on at least two occasions in his book Principles of Scientific Management, but does not state whether he or his people initiated the numbering system.  Nor does Taylor's biographer, Robert Kanigel, mention the origin of the numbering in The One Best Way, which does otherwise treat the subject with some depth.

I am aware of a study done by Andris Freivalds and Y.J. Kim (Blade size and weight effects in shovel design, [Appl Ergon. 1990 Mar; 21:39-42]) but have not seen this article.

The situation we have here is of a reference system for shovels currently in partial use whose origins seem lost in the mists of time.  I believe that the government may have established a numbering system or at least confirmed such in or around the First World War. 

References:  Shovel Museum:  http://www.stonehill.edu/archives/sihc/

Greg Galer:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/maisonbisson/146229951/

Frederick Taylor:  http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A03E6DD1E3EE233A25754C0A9609C946096D6CF

Online article on shovels:  http://www.doityourself.com/stry/insidescooponshovels

If you still think you've got what it takes, see if you can find the answer.  The winner gets praise beyond reckoning.   And perhaps more.  By the way, library students are encouraged to try, too.  Feel free to forward this.

Michael McGrorty

Here in America we have much to be thankful for.  Here's just one thing that comes to mind:  the Twenty-second Amendment. 

Michael McGrorty

With reference to the last post, somebody has asked about the bowling ball which appears to be a fixture in my front yard.  I can tell you now, those are not for beginners--they are quite difficult to grow from seed.  I have a pink one behind the house.  These tend to wander off--they way they reproduce is by rolling down the street until they find a suitable mate.

Michael McGrorty

Well, it's November and that means another springtime here in Pasadena, Ca.  We get two of them here--the usual one and another just before Thanksgiving.  You know--cooler weather and just enough tang in the air to encourage new plantings.

And so, I've been out in the yard working in preparation for this time of year.  The pictures below show what used to be a patch of lawn in my front yard, now with the sod removed, the soil improved and a border installed.  Also, you will see some large ceramic pots and one rectangular planter box there; the latter being transferred from the back yard.  And boy, was that square box heavy.

Eventually I will remove a good deal more of the front lawn.  We have a very large, wonderful old live oak next to the street, and I don't like the idea of damaging its roots, so I have to go carefully with the sod removal.  If you think that soil looks good, it does, Chief:  it has been sifted through a 1/8 inch riddle and then had riddled manure added as well.  Soft as flour.  Only took me what, thirty hours.  But that's what I enjoy the most--the doing, not the done-ness.  At any rate, I'll post pictures when the place is planted and things begin coming up.

Michael McGrorty

The initial response result from a poll of librarians reveals a strong preference for three candidates:  Democrats Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama.

Clinton received 25.5% of the votes, Edwards 23.1% and Obama 21.2%.  Following them was Dennis Kucinich, with 5.3%. 

The results were heavily in favor of Democratic Party candidates; when asked to describe their own party affiliation, 58.1% of respondents picked the Democratic Party and 11.2% Republican; 3.7% chose the Green Party.  Of special note:  21.9% picked Independent or no affiliation.

Respondents chose as the most important considerations for the 2008 election the Iraq War (35.8%), The Economy (12.1%), International Relations (10.2%), Health Insurance (9.3%) and Social Inequality (8.4%). 

The results are not unusual given the generally liberal bent of most librarians; what is most interesting is the fairly even division of support for three Democratic candidates, with none taking an insurmountable lead over the others to this point.  What this means is that the eventual Democratic candidate will be faced with gathering in supporters from at least two other strong candidates; this may mean sharing the ticket with one and absorbing platform elements from the other as the cost of an endorsement.

Latest results may be viewed at:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=bis829Rs47bbbv6RhcAm63gxPHR_2bH9vWUy42K3HUbI4_3d

Michael McGrorty

As I have done in previous years, here is a survey, intended for librarians, on the subject of the 2008 Presidential Election. Librarians who wish to take this survey can click on the link below; results will be provided as we go along.  Note:  The response order has been randomized; what you see is not necessarily what others will view.  Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Michael McGrorty

Everybody has a fantasy--a secret dream they turn around and around in the mind when things get dull.  I've got a few dozen.  One of them involves a particular set of products.  Want to know what I'm like, real deep down?  Take a look at these websites, but remember, this is real personal stuff.

http://www.wwmfg.com/product_category.asp?idcategory=1

http://www.garrettwade.com/jump.jsp?itemType=PRODUCT&itemID=107076

M. McGrorty

Today I had to do some gardening work; it is overcast and therefore fine weather for work outside.  As usual, I went to the fridge and grabbed a Diet Coke, dribbled in some lemon juice (so that it doesn't taste like Diet Coke) and put the drink on the porch.  After assembling my tools, I reached over and took a long pull.  And of course, swallowed.  And discovered that diet Coke has developed a new flavor:  citrus beer.  Which, by the way, is disgusting when you expected something else.  What happened is this understandable when you view the picture below.

Somebody tell me that the two cans look enough alike that I don't appear to be an imbecile.  Say this even if you don't mean it.  And I didn't tell you that the other day I put the milk in the closet and the cereal box in the refrigerator. 

Michael McGrorty

Today I had to take my terriers to the vet for an appointment.  One of them, Tulip, needed a blood test.  If you own any animals you know what it is to wait for the vet to see your creature:  the waiting room is a mix of dogs, cats and people, with an occasional reptile, too.  Most of the time there aren’t any significant problems—at least not among the animals.

While I was waiting, a fellow maybe in his mid-thirties showed up, carrying one of those cardboard boxes that copy paper comes in.  Out of the hand-hole I could see the white face and green eyes of a cat.

Sometimes people are upset when they come to the vet—animals can break your heart, especially when they are sick or in pain.  The fellow with the boxed cat looked like he was trying hard to hold something in.  After a while he couldn’t keep it down anymore, and growled at the receptionist,

“I’ve got this cat here.  He got ripped up again.  He’s all torn up.”

The lady at the desk said, “I know, Sir.  We talked just now on the phone.  It will only be a few minutes.”

The man gripped the lid of the box as though it contained a tiger, though the cat inside didn’t make a sound or a shiver. 

The man suddenly barked, “I just want this finished.  Sixty dollars to put a cat down!  Fifty dollars just to walk through the door!”

I asked the man if the cat had been attacked by a dog.  He sat there staring at the wall, then mumbled, “He got out.  Dog ate him up.  Full of holes.  All infected.”

After this there was a space of silence, then the man went back to griping about the cost of putting down a cat.  I decided that it would be better to go for a walk outside rather than risk an incident which would require my wife to throw money down for bail.  As I left the room I surveyed the faces of the others—it looked like I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to breathe the same air as the man with the torn-up cat.

When I was done with the vet, the man with the injured cat was still in the waiting room.  The last thing I saw was that pair of green eyes, staring through the hand-hole in the cardboard box.  On the drive home my two terriers were very quiet, like they get when they think something has made me upset.

Michael McGrorty 

Since you asked, yes, we've got some fires here.  The air in Pasadena is smoky and the moon last night was a stemless pumpkin, grinlessly glowing in an amber sky.  Happens here fairly often when the wind is right.

M. M.