I walked out of the UPS store this afternoon with a paper slip in my hand and a feeling of melancholy. It didn’t help that the sky was gray and the wind was blowing. a few moments before, I walked in the store with a neatly taped box to mail off to a guy in Miami: inside a protective cocoon of Kraft paper lay my Steinberger bass guitar, something I’ve owned since college and carried with me since then. It’s been sitting in the corner for years, and every year I would take it out and play it, but after I bought the bargain Jazz bass and compared the two, I realized how much more I enjoyed playing the Fender. I’ve shopped it around to several stores in this area and gotten lowball cash offers for it, so I put it up on Reverb at a price that seemed to be reasonable for the market and waited. That was four years ago.
Last Thursday an offer popped up from this guy in Florida, and after some back and forth we settled on a price that I felt OK with. It’s lower than I was asking (after having reduced my initial price once) but still much more than I paid for it, and at this point in history I feel better about having cash in hand than a bass collecting dust in the corner. Strangely though, I’m not as bummed out as I thought I would be; I think I came to terms with selling it a few years ago, and was just waiting for circumstance to catch up with me.
So the bass will make its way to Florida, and when the buyer takes possession, I’ll get my payment from Reverb. I feel better about rolling the dice this way—eBay was never an option—and I’m hoping it all goes smoothly.
In the Yale Review, Chris Ware looks back on the author/illustrator Richard Scarry:
The Busytown books, as they came to be known—with their dictionary-like visual presentation paired with lightly slapstick situations and the presence of recurring, memorable characters like Huckle Cat, the Pig family, and my favorite, Lowly Worm—grew into a real-feeling big world that Scarry seemed to be letting little ones into.
As a kid, I spent countless hours poring over our collection of Busytown books: There was a welcoming simplicity to them, and they described people and places in a way I could understand easily.
I also picked up on something Ware mentions in his essay: a markedly European feeling to each book. There were cars and buildings and words that weren’t like the ones around me in Massachusetts or New Jersey and I was smart enough to notice the differences. So it made sense when he mentioned that Scarry lived in Switzerland after 1967, and during the period when his most popular books were published. There’s also an approachable quality to his artwork I always appreciated. His early work is technically excellent, but the loose style of pen and guauche artwork in the later Busytown series influenced my drawing style in ways I hadn’t really realized until thinking about it.
We had our first real snowfall in something like 700 days, so naturally we had to get out there and get some sledding in. I sanded and waxed the rails on our wooden sled, dug out the car, and we headed over to the local community college to meet up with the Geblers and get some runs in.
Greased Lightning did not disappoint. I had an envious kid ask me if our fast wooden sled steered; I told him to hit an antique store and get one for cheap.
On my third run or so I ran into a jump someone made, and the sled stopped while I kept on going. Laughing, I picked myself back up and walked back up the hill. Later I realized that landing on the snow had broken the zipper on my jacket and shredded several of the down pockets at the bottom, as well as popped one of the lenses out of my glasses that were in the pocket.
A few runs later, Finn drove our plastic sled directly into a tree and gave herself some mild abrasions on her chin. We returned home to get some hot chocolate and attend to the patient. I went online and found The North Face Renewed, where they repair and re-home used gear. I got a replacement jacket for $100, which is half of what a new Patagonia is going for (and from what I’ve read those don’t hold up very well). I’ve had this jacket for (5? 6?) seasons and it’s been great, so I figure it will be the new work jacket.
The St. Mary’s County Oyster Festival has been a tradition Jen and I have upheld since the earliest days of our courtship; the first time we went together was the first time I met her parents. Our previous visits have been chronicled here, and it’s one of the yearly events I look forward to with the girls—partially because of the event, and partially because of the food. Southern Maryland cooking is a unique little outlier, and I look forward to fried oysters and St. Mary’s County ham with anticipation.
It was, then, with some unhappiness we found ourselves without any ham. There were a ton of people there, and a wide variety of oysters prepared in different ways, but we walked from one side of the fair to the other looking for a sandwich or a platter without success. Apparently the local grocer who used to make it and supply it to the fair went out of business? The price of oysters has gone up somewhat, which made me glad I’d withdrawn $200 from the ATM and not the $100 I originally intended to, but they were just as delicious as I remember—there’s something specific about the breading used in St. Mary’s County that is better than anywhere else we’ve tried. We tried smoked oysters, served with gouda, bacon, and onion, and Finn and I found them delicious while Jen didn’t like them. We also tried a quartet of fried Oreos, which were good but heavy on shortening.
The rest of the fair was much the same as years past, although the carnival rides are gone, replaced with a huge craft beer tasting tent and more vendors. We brought Hazel with us for obvious reasons, and she did very well walking through the fair—but I suspect that was also aided by the fact that she’s got the bonnet back on: her right ear has opened back up.
When we left the fair we headed back to Bob’s house and visited for a little while before taking him out for some dinner. By the time we got home, we were all stuffed and about ten minutes away from falling asleep.
I stuck my old Nikon 1.4 manual lens on my Fuji XT-10 today and set it up for focus peaking so I could have some fun with a camera I don’t drag around anymore. Hazel was kind enough to sit for a picture.
