Bad Manners

If I had any sense at all, I would have realized that my encounter with the elderly lady on the corner of Forbes and Murray on Friday afternoon was a predictor of the sudden and wild change in weather from the temperate (albeit slightly rainy) summer that has made sleeping under a down comforter a comfortable necessity to the sudden and unexpected 80+ degree temperatures the city will swelter under for most of the upcoming week.

On Friday afternoon I sat on a seat in shelter, quietly waiting for a bus to take me back downtown. The stop was completely empty when I arrived, the passel of teenagers missing from the church steps, both the shelters devoid of humanity. I took a book (J. Martaan Troost's Lost on Planet China) out of my bag and commenced quietly reading.

The bus stop began to fill up with people. A woman sat down next to me. As we were sitting there, I quietly reading my book, she looking around, an older woman walked up to the shelter.

What transpired next was one of those moments in which I, humbly reading my book and minding my own business, suddenly become the target of an absolute stranger's ire because I lack the ability to read minds.

The woman beside me (WBM) offered the older woman (OW) her seat. OW refused offer of seat with expected comment about “age before beauty” and WBM needing the seat more than she does. OW then segued into an indirect harangue of indeterminate length (I really should time these things) about my rudeness in not offering her my seat first, before WBM.

I tried, very hard, to keep my mouth shut, my head down, my face expressionless, my eyes focused on the text of my book as OW expressed how “[her] children were raised better than that” and how disrespectful “the youth” of today were towards their superiors. But something inside me snapped at hearing OW snidely say “Here comes someone who really needs a seat. I wonder if she'll have one offered to her”.

I looked up from my book. I wished I had been calm enough to look OW straight in the eye, but I could not. I know it would have been more effective, but it took a lot of will to get the words out.

“Ma'am, I'm 20 weeks pregnant, I'm tired and I'm not moving”.

There was a momentarily pause as OW digested this information, suddenly aware that perhaps I was not the teenager she assumed me to be. Then she snapped back “Be quiet, I wasn't talking to you”, moved closer to WBM and lowered her voice to a mummer. I put my eyes back on my book. When the bus pulled up I waited as OW cut to the front of the line, boarded the bus and sat in one of the seats near the front.

Then I got up, hauled my tired, pregnant self onto the bus, walked to the back and sat down.

J's response when I told him this story: “What are you doing to attract these people?”

Handmade Cutting Board Blues*

J and I manged to escape our house over the weekend and spend a day in State College, at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. It has not been easy to escape, as of late. J has been working long hours and too many weekends, a situation that is causing both of us frustration and some anxiety, as attempts to plan some sort of last hurrah as a childless couple getaway-ish type weekend have been thwarted by his work responsibilities.

After an early lunch at the Deli, we spent a happy afternoon wandering the streets of State College and portions of Penn State University's campus, peering into booths filled with prints, painting, pottery, jewelry and woodwork.

Midway through our tour of the tents we stopped to admire the blockcut prints made by an artist named Thomas Bucci. As we were studying the prints, the thunder we had been hearing for the past twenty minutes became louder, the wind kicked up and it began to rain. Thomas invited us to shelter inside his tent during the storm, assuring us that it would be strong, but very brief.

As we stood inside his zipped up tent, he explained how he created the prints. He pulled out his Blackberry and showed us some of the sketches he created on his phone, done with a piece of software and a stylus.

I was amazed. I loved the mingling of art and technology. As the rain stopped, J and I purchased two prints to add to our collection, most likely to decorate the walls of the alien's room.

We saw the artisan who made the jewelry box J purchased at the Three Rivers Festival as a birthday gift for me two years ago. J was thrilled to find him, as we owed him money. When we originally purchased the box, we asked if he could change out one of the sections. Since it could not be done at the festival, we put a 50% down payment and he agreed to make the change and call us before sending the box so we could pay him the rest.

Except that he never called. He packed the box up and shipped to us, without asking for the rest of the money. By the time we received the box we had lost his business card and had no way of contacting him to pay up.

It took a while for J to convince him that we still owed him money and J was only able to pay him back half of what we actually owed. But it was something.

I also experienced something like homesickness while talking to a weaver from Greensboro, N.C, my home during graduate school. She was sunny and bouncy and fun and caught me up on some of my favorite places in the city. I walked away with a matching mohair hat, scarf and shaw, which I plan to use while cuddling the alien next winter. She walked away delighted at the thought that the shawl would be used to keep warm a new life.

* Title inspired by the antics of a customer at one booth who wanted to make sure that she was shipped a cutting board without any knots in it. She did not like any of the boards he had available because they were "knotty".

Little League

With summer winding down, J and I headed to Williamsport, PA to visit my brother and sister-in-law and watch the International and USA finals of the Little League World Series.

I honestly can not remember the last time I had that much fun at a baseball game. Since tickets to the stands are difficult to obtain, we staked out a shady spot above the field and watched four teams of twelve year old boys play in 93 degree heat with amazing poise and discipline. At one point it felt as if I had entered a time warp, listening to to the crack of ball upon bat while watching young children slide down the hill on cardboard and adults try to create a breeze with old-fashioned paper fans.

We were also initiated into some of the LLWS traditions, such as the tradition of very grown men* buying and swapping dozens of Little League baseball pins from all over the world. Such men carry their bounty in cloth books.

*In his fifties, at least. He had statistics on all the teams and was predicting where some of the players would go to play college ball. Did I mention that these players were twelve year old boys?