Better late than never

Is Joan Rivers writing BOLOs now?

An underrated aspect of the Alabama jailbreak story is the psychological damage wrought by looking yourself up in the middle of a Bonnie-and-Clyde style caper only to find papers asking the public to keep their eyes peeled for a person with a “waddling gait.” I’m not sure there was ever any coming back from that.

How do people stay in touch?

Options have so proliferated in recent years that I’m honestly not sure how normal people stay in touch anymore. Is it different channels for different correspondents, or everything through one channel and whoever doesn’t use that channel falls off the list? Did everyone but me stay on Facebook? Is there some other network that has supplanted it for general use? Do people still text, or is that old-fashioned? Is writing an email like showing up in a horse-drawn carriage? When your smartphone actually rings, do you fling it across the room in surprise?

How do you contact the people you are most in contact with? I am curious.

500 days walking

This past Saturday, I celebrated 500 consecutive days of walking. And by “celebrated,” I mean that I… walked. A local Girl Scout troop did hold a mother-daughter tea in my honor, in a gesture as puzzling as it was kind. While some might argue that said tea was not held in my honor, the fact remains that it took place at a community center along my usual route, at my usual time for passing, on the 500th day. So, what else could they have meant by it?

What, do we believe in mere coincidence?

I like to imagine that 500 days of walking, always from the same starting point, makes me not just a local but kind of a hyper-local to the couple square miles around my house. I know the potholes and the sidewalk cracks and the birds and the houses and the histories of individual yards. Not the most useful knowledge, I’ll grant you, but you have to pay attention to something if you’re trying to walk the same routes over and over in a phones-down, distraction-free way.

Something Was Wrong

While researching a local grifter, I discovered that the first few episodes of Season 5 in the podcast Something Was Wrong concern a prominent pastor in my city.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

It was 92 degrees here yesterday. In honor of my likely-imminent summer shearing, here are some hair-related status updates from my Facebook days. It has been a bit of a fixation for me, it would seem.

• My hair is out of control. If I slept outside, I’d awake to find it inhabited by a family of squirrels.
• My hair is long and bushy enough now that I have to run past barber shops so they don’t catch me.
• If you think about it, is the best barber likely to be the one who has invested all his time and energy into having the nicest, most comfortable shop in the best part of town? Or the one who has been too busy mastering the real art of barbering to pay all those superficial niceties and markers of success any mind? This is why I only allow hobos to cut my hair.
• Is this description of how I want my hair cut too abstract? I never know what to tell them. “Meditative and whimsical, like you’re stomping through a dense thicket of trees and find yourself suddenly hushed by the appearance of a shimmering blue pond, beside which you find Merle Haggard casting a line as Huell Howser looks on, captivated by all he sees. As drawn by Dr. Seuss.”
• I’m not really a religious person, but “let go and let God” is the basic approach I take to styling my hair.
• Single-handedly bringing back Michael Landon hair. Or perhaps reminding everyone why it went away in the first place.
• I try to style my hair in a manner that suggests bald people aren’t missing out on anything.
• My hair. One star. RIYL: Gene Simmons, Albert Einstein
• One of the benefits of having comically poofy hair is that it’s impossible to seem threatening. Everyone says “hi.”
• It has been pointed out that, when wearing my knit cap, with hair billowing out from sides and full beard, I look like someone who works on a fishing boat.
• Warm out there? A bit cooler under here. It’s like a patio umbrella of hair.
• I have the hair of a broccoli floret and the posture of a mashed potato.

Mothers

Belated thanks to all the mothers, including mine.