Monday 2/10

Bulgaria: Worshippers of Haralampi, Orthodox patron saint of beekeepers. The jars are filled with honey. Photo by Nikolay Doychinov/AFP/Getty Images:

A long time coming — headline from nypost.com: “Trump announces he’s instructing Treasury Department to stop producing the penny: ‘This is so wasteful!’.” I wonder if we’ll come to think the nickel a nuisance.

Excerpt from an NYP editorial concerning the Department of Education: “One of the leading advocates of creating such a department was the Ku Klux Klan — which made its creation an ‘explicit goal.’ The Klan sought to send every child to public school to ‘re-Americanize’ the nation. Nativists thought foreigners and ‘religious diversity — especially Catholicism’ — threatened Protestantism.” Although I believe the DOE is worthless, as are most government agencies, I know it’s no longer under the aegis of the KKK, but this was too damn amusing not to cite.

It’s taken four-plus years, but Dems are finally concerned about inflation.

Yesterday MDS was added to TDS. There is a third derangement syndrome: SDS, as in Taylor Swift. Just thought of a fourth HMDS — Harry and Meghan. Stop already.

RIP master wordsmith Tom Robbins, 92. Born in North Carolina, his family moved to Virginia. He dropped out of Washington and Lee University and enlisted in the Air Force. After his discharge, he settled in Richmond and attracted a following through his poetry readings at coffee houses. He enrolled at RPI, which later became Virginia Commonwealth University, and served as editor and a columnist for the school newspaper. He also worked nights on the sports desk of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He moved to Seattle in 1962 and worked for several publications and in radio. He began writing novels in ’67 and also contributed articles to Esquire, Playboy, GQ and The New York Times. In all he published eight novels, a novella, a collection of essays, reviews and short stories, and two works of non-fiction. I had the privilege of reading his first novel, Another Roadside Attraction. The writing was the best I’ve ever experienced, capturing me despite the baffling storyline. In 1993 director Gus Van Zant adapted Even Cowgirls Get the Blues to the big screen, in which Robbins served as narrator. It was not successful. Two of Robbins’ other novels are in the planning stages for filming. He has six credits as an actor at IMDb. Writer’s Digest magazine named him one of the 100 Best Writers of the 20th Century. He has received other honors including a Literary Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virginia. Married since 1994, he was a father of three. Awesome, Sir. Thank you. Facts from Wiki, photos from Google Images:

Gorgeous day, hardly a breeze, plenty of sunshine, fine for selling stuff curbside. It looked like the Anti-Inflation Book Shop was going to suffer a goose egg, then three customers stepped up in the final half hour. My thanks to the woman who bought four photography magazines in Russian, and to the one who purchased Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, and four pieces of costume jewelry; and to the gentleman who took home a piece of 3D art.

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