Labor Day 2011

A day not to work while contemplating work and labor and efforts that bear fruit. Clear the centers. No herons to report. What is the central nervous system?

Gotta Love This Crazy Market and CCTV 115(degrees)

Fila delphia today and snapping Sleepymobile pictures along the  way, beginning at Chick-fil-a in Exeter/Mount Penn area proceeding along 422 east toward Pottstown to the GAS FOOD LODGING signs. Today is a four day and the end of the summer vacation month of August. There was a Thomas school bus 31 on Green Tree. Before my very driving eyes goes a brief flash of vanity in the form of auto tag GETSBRG, why not? I saw men in green painting the bike lanes along the parkway in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. GOTTA LOVE THIS CRAZY MARKET! was the clear lettering on a freestanding sign near a Douglassville agency. I saw a blue heron sketch on the white Hay Creek Watershed sign in Birdsboro on the way back. I saw a hard-hatted man digging a ditch near city hall; his hard hat was dotted with stickers and so was a nearby lamp or sign post. After presenting a coupon and tapping into a free coffee at ING Cafe on Walnut – where the Free Library Banner is purple and reads Prosperity (good Feng shui!), I tried some things on for size, as if Superwomanmodel, in dressing room 11 at Lucky Brand jeans, where Taina works. Short time and distance up block in the hereafter find a heads up penny on the sidewalk: glee ♣! I see a sign outdoors near city hall that has been slapped with a fine heart sticker with the word Lucky printed in cursive inside. I picked up trash with some urgency, including an evanescent fluorescent orange poster that has the permament writing: Can you please make a donation toward our football team…Saints family football THANK YOU #1 QB. Bought blue anchor notecards at Paper Source to send to Massachusetts. Paper Source is positively intoxicating. Alyson rings up my sale, giving the purchase a nice striped bag in which to ride home.  A Triune Color (paper * mailhouse * bindery) panel truck was parked out front. Carr & Duff Going Green employees worked along the Schuylkill expressway beneath the solar panels. The writing was on the cement walk near the PMA. One of the bronzes out front of the PMA seems to be missing its left arm and the whites of its eyes are pronounced beneath a streaky patina on its tresses. On Elm, a man exited an apartment building called the Nightmare. A hawk cried out from the peak of the garage roof between 519 and 520 this morning – that is not a time, that is a partial address – and one of the big tits of litter I scarfed up is a Hawk box. After the hawk and before Exeter, trainspotting in Wyomissing led to JBHunt Intermodal, Clipper Worldwide and the fascinating term controlled logistics. The drive-up ATM at Wells Fargo was tight-lipped, allowing for no card insertion, keeping all accounts intact.

linky linky linky linky:

http://www.thomasbus.com/

http://www.papersource.com/

http://www.luckybrand.com/

http://www.sleepys.com/

TrES-2b

Sounds like part of a Caesarean selection, the name of a dark planet to replace delete.d from heavenly roster Pluto. Morning walk through corporate center route, where a heron flies east just a minute before six in tucked pistil and stamen position. As the sun glows over Mount Penn and Reading’s Fire Tower is a silhoutte against the orange yellow tangerine sky, two more large birds flap in the distance it is open to debate what kind. Picking up the mail that has been accumulating in the box. Landscape improvements have enhanced the mail cove. Money to pay the bills, income and growth are important features of today’s terrrain.

n.c. Fries

n.c. Fries by Allison Huyett

The Sleepymobile turns into the Smokeymobile Tuesday morning. I am without wheels Tuesday night  and walk to The World’s Cleanest Grocery Store to fetch food for the cats, who only had a small bite of leftover hamburger all day. Pick of the Litter: a corrugated box, dry although showing the effects of having been wet or rained on, approximately 4 x 2 x 6 inches, flattened. Near that find a small fries container having been emptied of its Wendy’s natural cut fried potatoes with sea salt, wedged in the storm drain grate along Meridian Boulevard. I put these together with the sudoku puzzle I worked on earlier in the day and finished at dinner time.

Afternoon provided one fake heron sighting about 2:15 p.m. at the location of the former Waterfall gardens in Cumru township. The blue-grey plastic decoy bird was raised up and seemed to peer out from within the confines of a palisade type wooded fence that separates the merchandise and parking areas.  I was taking the road to deliver the car to garage for diagnosis and repair. It was Cindy, the cook at the restaurant, who figured out at once the water must need replenishing. She was right.

Red Del Tote

Red Del Tote by Allison Huyett

 

Some train cars bear the marking REBODY. Today is the Fourth of July.  A few have chosen to begin with fishing along the Tulpehocken creek.  I have found Pick of the Litter in a red, green and black folded Unilever brand enclosure. Part of the delivery address shows up in an arc of white lettering: P.O. Box 19007. I like to accept it as is.

The path contains many sycamore bark pathlings from recent rains. Some are flat and some are three-dimensional curled leaves of bark.  The path also has flourishes from decorative bike riding: circles and stops and curlicues.

Early into my walk, the bird chirps and soft flow of water are interrupted by an outburst.

“I had a big rainbow swipe at it,” says a man in wader boots. “I mean a big one.”

I keep walking. I take a picture of a dead mole. The fishing buddy of the man in waders is an upstreamstanding man in waders, holding a net with the bottom rounded out.

“First catch of the day!” says Upstreamstandingman. His hand is in the net. The fish flips around his fingers.

The screen on my cellular telephone indicates 7:10 a.m.

A heron dips its bill into the water near Red Bridge. The heron stands on junky island and must stretch its neck down to sip.

Among the many people bicycling and walking, these tee-shirt words combine: New River Disney Nerd.

This man has a field day: A man sets a water bottle upright in the meadow. He distances himself from it.  He turns to sprint toward it like a barrel racing horse. He repeats.

At the far end of the trail I locate a small red white and blue produce sticker. It must be fruit, but not bananas.

When I try to look up code 4015 at the World’s Cleanest Grocery store, the self-serving terminal voice says “Help is required for this item.”

A store associate helps with the code inquiry. The result is Red Delicious (apple) tote (bag), abbreviated.

The garden at home contains an illicit extra garden ornament.The extraneous item is a blue hen planter that is broken into bits. Delaware’s state bird is not the red hen, but the blue. spending part of the day recharging exhausted camera battery and battery low warning on mobile phone. Carry on, hope you have a nice Fourth of July! Celebrate independence.

aChilles

      Items left out of yesterday’s report: dead red fox on the bypass ramp. spring peepers’ noises from the wetlands, and a homeless snail inching across the dirt path. The snail had those little nubbin points on its head. Having seen many images and drawings of them and so few in real life, it was amusing to see the genuine thing.

   Uneventful walk today. Rail falls. What stands out most to me are the replacement rails in the established split rail fencing and fresh saw cuts on some of the trees lateral: stumps and vertical: branches. The green unseasoned wood amid the weathered splints are evidence of someone having done simple and important maintenance tasks.

   I walk without much sense of pleasure. I feel unrooted. Ill at ease, I guess you could say. There is a big plastic drink cup with blue tattoo lying in the grass along the path. The lettering reads CHILL, with the company name Sunoco below it. A  white five-gallon bucket bobs upside-down in the creek. A gallon of gas cost $3.75 this morning at Sunoco, at Wawa, at Turkey Hill.

NS 9338

   Can’t say WordPress doesn’t have a sense of humor! Ha! What statistics administration!!! Thank you for sending my spirits soaring for a moment. This morning under the weather, uncharacteristic, onion snow? Walked in dark for coffee and to put a gallon of gasoline in snow mobile $3.59 and the pump only went to $3.51. April trifle, strawberry fool and thief!

20% Of(f)

   Pick of the Litter: white note containing three words. It looks to me like Frank, Puff and Trash. Is it a shopping list, a to-do list or a word list of another order?

   My walk leads east, is uneventful in the heron arena. When are the elk migrating in western Pennsylvania?

    In the parking lot I also found a silver filigree flower earring with sapphire center. It is pretty enough almost to make me wish I had pierced ears. Retrieved a piece of clear plastic water bottle label, entwined in leaves along trail’s edge, that could be used as ribbon. By the three marker lay a small candy wrapper Sua Ca Phe milk coffee. These bits of nothingness and light came home in my left coat pocket.

   Hewlett-Packard photocopied the elements against a backdrop of Coloraid paper from 1977 and brought the result to the library for a second opinion. They read the first word as Family. Then Puff. I think what is trash could be Tasha. It doesn’t matter. Bed Bath and Beyond 3.0.  I don’t like to put myself too much in other people’s way.

I Am Fluent

   Gingersnap day: if there were brown trout in the Tulpehocken creek today not even a heron could have spotted them. Lucky for me the sky was clear: a heron startled up near the Broadcasting road intersection, where the  vacant bench made from a tree trunk was covered with the confectioners sugar snow that lay stuck on exposed plane surfaces after Sunday’s drenching of our world.

   The puzzle number 37 in the wordoku book uses the letters I AM FLUENT, from which Fulminate is the mystery word and as I work it my brain picks out flute, metal, meal, fate, felt, fault and others. Half the time when I spout off associations I think, it’s for me, or for you or for anyone who reads and it jogs their mind. For example, UNTIME is found. We say untimely we say we time something but why not have a concept of untime – time without time, time when time is not measured, like in the moment. I wouldn’t say my drawing for today is especially pretty. I wish it were.

Sky Pilot

  Heron wafts overhead in controlled descent and loops to land in the creek about 10:25  Friday morning near the mill bridge.

    Pathling: a black Pilot pen I recognise as my own, dropped Thursday.

   Pick of the Litter: red Office Max “keep this” coupon ticket.

    In error go to Office Depot thinking it is Office Max. The handwritten vestibule sign I read as “office de Pot,” like it is a marijuana hot spot.

   Browse the stationery section, paper junkie that I am. New Leaf notebooks are cool. They put a new black and white leaf on the cover of standard composition notebook. The Mead notebooks are sturdy and reliable. I am interested in the glass crayons, too.

  In storage solutions area find useful storage bins with moveable clip fastener. You can look through rose, clear and blue colored plastic and see the world in a whole new way – with the honeycomb bottom design.

  I am the proud owner of a Rand McNally parchment paper map of the United States. Brumby and I can use it in our travels. It is a handsome thing, rolled up in its transparent yard-long box.

   Ulta begs me to stop in and discover how much I could spend on hair repair products. The answer is twenty dollars or more!

   The World’s Cleanest Grocery store invites me to twirl my new map in their magnificent aisles. A new kind of globally responsible cat chow that contains less corn meal and more chicken and oat meal jumps off the shelf and into my waiting arms. I read last year that if the whole world lived the way Americans do, it would take four earths to support us. I read this week that we would need the amount food of the previous 8,000 years to support the world population between now and 2050. Can you believe everything you read? What if it is true?