Hat Lady

I was riding the Culver City bus this afternoon when I spotted the hat lady waiting at a bus stop on the other side of Beverly Glen.I had not seen the hat lady all winter and feared she was no longer around.She is not a street person but an elderly woman who wears homemade hats.The hats are unusual because they are made from plain old paper grocery store bags.I first noticed her on the bus about five years ago but see her all over and have had a few upclose looks in Ralphs grocery store a large chain here which is where I suspect she gets her material.Firstly(is that a word?) she has to turn them inside out so no printing shows.I can only describe the shape as like something you would see a rich brit wearing in those newspaper pics you see of spring horse/dog/polo shows one sees in the papers.The sort of hat a young girl might wear on Easter.She shapes that bag and then decorates it with ribbons a bow around mid center and flowers.Sometimes they are fresh sometimes plastic.I have seen her with a fresh rose and one Saint Patricks day fresh green carnations.They really are quite impressive but I do not know what gives her the muse of making these paper bag hats.

Cab Ride

I took a Cab to the office last week.It was the company I usually use but this driver I had never had before.At first I thought he was Russian.He had thick blond hair and he brought to mind llya Kuryakin from"The Man From Uncle"He was a talkative cabbie and turned out to be from Sweden.Said he was also an actor which I think most cab drivers in Los Angeles claim to be.We started chatting about Sweden and I mentioned how Denmark and Sweden were once Imperial powers in the past and I told him about the wonderful novels of Icelandic Author Halldor Laxness about his countries misery at the hands of Denmark.He'd never heard of him but then I said there was a series by George Macdonald Fraser with a character named "Flashman" who is a scoundrel but who always comes out looking like a hero in this series of historical novels.He cut in right away that "I have 9 of those novels,I love Flashman"I told him that the second one involved him impersonating a Danish Prince while being blackmailed by Bismark and a fan dancer named Lola Montez who actually existed and is buried in NYCity and the theft of the Crown Jewels and he said he had not read that one but talked about how he had taken in much history reading Flashman.I have heard that from others and it's why I love the Flashman series besides the fact they are very funny while being bawdy and teaching history at the same time in a way that sticks.So he was excited about reading that Flashman novel.It's not often one gets a Cabbie in Los Angeles that is a big book fan so it was fun to talk to this guy.

New Arrivals

In the past week I have gotten a copy of Russel Banks new novel"The Reserve" and from the History Book Club "The Discovery of France" by Graham Robb described as A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War.I also have the first of Beverley Nichols original trilogy"Down the Garden Path" which is about the restoration of a cottage and Gardens as opposed to his second trilogy which started with"Merry Hall" about the restoration of a much larger house and grounds. I really liked the Merry Hall trilogy.They may not be for everyone but he has that great dry wit of the Brits.I also found at the bottom of a pile of cards and other things on my dining room table the last unread Alan Furst "The Foreign Correspondent".Make that two Furst's.I have one in my to read pile next to my bed about five books down.I think you either love or hate Furst.His novels all take place on the cusp of WW2 in Europe and read like a Bogart movie would.Great atmosphere though the plots aren't terribly deep.Only two involve the same main character and several involve pre war Paris, some to a good extent.

Kindred Spirits-Asher B. Durand

I think it's Time

On Thursday night I was unable to get online through my MSN dialup.It dialed but then dropped the connection right away.I kept getting the same 691 error message and it has happened before but always was back next morning so I assume it's a problem at MSN'S end.This morning it was still going on so I played around changing numbers looking at my LAN ,my default location only to fix it so that I was dialing my own phone number.Every time I went to dial up my phone rang!.So I did a system restore with the same result only that it messed up my McAfee anti virus.Then I switched back to todays setting then played around did another system restore,cursed a whole lot on Good Friday.Totally teed off I went out to buy the NYTimes and had a tuna sub at Subway.Came home and turned the Computer back on and now it tells me I need to use the Connection Wizard to reset all my settings and numbers.Do that and it just keeps dialing and then redialing without connecting.I run yet another system restore I think I'm back to last Feb on this one and get the 691 error again!.I'm looking at the window by now to see if it will take a computer when I throw it.Undo the restore yet again and now I click the Connection Wizard and see that I can reinstall my internet.I click some buttons and it never asks for my MSN Disk but then downloads something and now tells me windows money or something has installed!I'm just laughing at this point so I click finish then dial up and I'm online again!I'm convinced that all the stuff I did meant nothing and MSN fixed it's problem from the other end but I'm afraid to do a restore back to what it looked like before.I'm sure my phone line is now going through dialers in Singapore and Columbia and I'm being charged 25.00 a minute for access but I'm online!Three neighbors have wireless and whenever my record industry friend visits he picks up signals no problem on his laptop in my appt so my neighbor who has been telling me for two years to go wireless says he's going to do it for me.we'll see but I feel like a tech tonight until I log off and try and get back online on Sat.

Here that Lonesome Whistle Blow

In one of my early posts here I mentioned that the sound of a Train Whistle in the night is one of my favorite things.That the sound is soothing to me is a minor or maybe a major miracle. It;s all because of my dad and his frugal german side that wore off on two of my brothers but not on myself and the other two.I'm not sure what year it was but I think it was 1969.Starting in 1967 we had taken the family tent camper for two weeks at Easter from Rochester,NY down to Florida.The Easters before that we had always wound up in D.C.for the trip.So 69 would have been our third trip driving down to FL the Ford Wagon pulling the trailer.I-95 was still partly finished then especially in the Carolinas so one still took long stretches on US Route 17?.Anyhoo one night we were in South Carolina around dusk near Francis Marion Natl Forest near the I believe little pee-dee river when my dad spots a mobile home park.He pulled in and talked to the owner and the guy told us we could stay the night and pointed us to the very end past the big trailers of residents to a small clearing at the end by some railroad tracks.On the road to FL. it was early to bed so we could get going early and we popped up the canvas roof on our tent trailer and were soon snug in our bags three to a side with my brother on a cot in the middle on the floor.Around 9:45 that night I wake to hear a train whistle blowing and in seconds the roar of a train full out is coming through our trailer.I really thought the freakin thing was going to take us out.After it went through there was much talk and then off to sleep.An hour later here comes another train doing the same thing.This time we are all laughing and I think eight trains went through that night and by the amount of time they sounded all like freight trains.Since we were out in the country they all came through full speed and since there was a dirt road crossing less than a mile away we found out next morning the whistle sounded each time.

Sad Times

I just found out today that Duttons Books in Brentwood is closing the end of April.Duttons was a wonderful little group of four bldgs. around a sort of courtyard each bldg. holding a different section like fiction,non-ficction and everyone who worked there not only knew books most were either minor writers or poets or wanted to be.The area where they are is really upscale and they leased so I'm surprised they held out this long.Duttons has survived two other closures in the past ten years but not this time.The funny thing is this Duttons is an offshoot of a family feud years ago between brothers that led to this store seperate from another Duttons in North Hollywood which I am not sure is still there or not never having been there.First my local used bookstore down the street now this and two other big real bookstores in Los Angeles have closed in the past year.Soon only the chains will be left with their marketing and tracking of reader habits stocking only the drivel of mass market.As Kerouac said at the very end of Lonesome Traveler"The Woods are Full of Wardens"