isoglossia

Total damage: one UV filter

File under Things I Am A Fan Of: seatbelts, helmets, and lens filters.

I’ve owned three Pentax SLR cameras in my life, and now, as of Easter Sunday, each of them has endured catastrophic accidental droppage. The cameras have always come through fine, which is a testament to the solid build-quality of Pentax’s products, or my luck, or both.

In a bizarre coincidence, my friend Erik had the same damn thing happen just a day or two later, but was also saved by the filter’s sacrifice. I guess it’s going around.

Be safe!

By the hour the acid-yellow buds of the forsythia emerge and expand, even as the scrawny shrubs’ spindly branches are whipped and battered by horizontal rain and keening winds tearing down from the Alps. This wind, locally called the burja, has been clawing at the eaves for nearly a week now. While it’s undeniable that things like the buds shown above are becoming more of a reality every day, more typical of the last week has been this:

If the burja were photographable, it would be dramatic, I can tell you. I’m told that if you murder your spouse while the burja is blowing, that’s considered mitigating circumstances. While we’re not on the verge of murder, we are getting a bit stir-crazy. Yesterday Magda said to me, “If I’m able to go outside tomorrow, I’m not sure I’ll be able to breathe out there.”

So it’s been a whole lot of nothing. We’re left to deal with the cognitive dissonance of watching the slow-motion fireworks show of the annual blossoming of fruit trees as the katabatic battering of the wind ebbs and roars, bringing stinging rain and occasional flurries and even hilltop dustings of snow. Spring seems both impossible and inevitable.

Adam has learned to sing. He writes his own material. Latest hit: “Finger Monkey Moo”. The lyrics run something like this:

FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO!

until you are 80 years old.

We may have to rethink this whole xylophone-for-Christmas-present idea.

This autumn would be better with less antibiotics and more almost anything else besides antibiotics. Tacos, for example.

Sorry, can’t talk now.