Gotta go

While waiting for the Trader Joe’s to open a while ago, I walked around a new neighborhood, and apparently poop is a thing there.

Within a couple of hundred meters, I saw both these signs:

But evidently the dogs don’t read:

As an aside, I cannot count the times I’ve seen little plastic poop bags, neatly knotted at the opening, left along sidewalks. Like people feel they’ve discharged all their responsibilities by picking up their dogs’ detritus, so they’re not obliged to carry the bags with them to the nearest trash bin.

Well, I suppose it would interfere with their texting.

An apostrophe too far

Whenever I come across some mailbox with something like “The Johnson’s” on it, I want to park my car, walk up to the front door and ask the occupant “The Johnson’s what?” Because the plural of the preponderance of English nouns is formed by adding an S; it never involves an apostrophe.

But I don’t, because I don’t carry a whiteboard around with me. Also, I don’t fancy getting into a fight over it.

And I know it’s pretty much a losing fight—the barbarians are winning this one, and it’s getting worse.

Viz. this sign found at a grocery store in California:

I hope it’s someone taking the piss, but I fear it is not.

Frozen

Here’s how cold it’s been in the environs of the District They Call Columbia: I noticed this frozen puddle of water on Monday’s walk:

I thought the pattern was kind of pretty.

What I do not think is pretty is this:

I’ve seen this person/sleeping bag along the W&OD for a while, and it’s appalling and outrageous that in the jumped-up People’s Republic, there folks sleeping rough even in these miserable temperatures.

Roadside fare

Some time ago, on my usual egress to the W&OD bike trail, I came across something interesting.

It was a couple of months after Halloween, and the pumpkin hadn’t been carved. I wondered if perhaps it had been put out there for squirrels, woodchucks and other critters, but if so, they hadn’t been particularly interested. Viz. the half-hearted nibbling.

Well, a few weeks on—and a couple of snowfalls, freezes and rain—and here it was yesterday:

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Still not clear to me whether anyone’s actually eaten it, but I’m guessing it has far fewer seeds than it should have, so maybe…

Gratitude Monday: a dream

Today’s the day we in the United States commemorate the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., a black man who had a dream of equal opportunity, and who was murdered because there are people (many, as it turns out) who viewed—and still do—that dream as an abomination.

Having a racist, ignorant, corrupt, misogynistic kleptocrat in the White House has encouraged and emboldened white supremacists to emulate his vile willie-waving in ways I have not seen for decades. Maybe that’s an upside to this dystopian nightmare—that the façade of progress we’d seen in the courts and legislature of the country has been revealed to be just that: a veneer covering the same old nasty, rotted wood of fear and hate that’s festered ever since the Confederacy went down in fire and dust.

Maybe this is something to be grateful for: that we can see the termites scuttling about in rages and stained tee-shirts, and that we can take action before they eat away at the foundations of democracy. We once had giants of strength and compassion, like King; men and women with moral compasses and courage to do the right thing. We can hope there are more to carry us forward, while still there’s an earth left.