Present & Past

Adieu Interessant (orange) by Danish artist Tal R will be part of an ultra-contemporary London art sale. Photo from Google Images:

If you’ve been disciplined enough in these tough times to avoid looking at your retirement accounts, don’t read the following headline from newsmax.com: “401(k) Balances Plunge by 23 Percent in 2022.” Or this one: “Homeowners Lose $2.3T in Value Since June.”

Nothing else in today’s news seemed fresh, so here’s an excerpt from my Curious Sicilian collection of short works titled Sister Thomas, approximately a two-minute read:
As I lay in bed early this morning, a memory from either 1962 or ’63 visited. I was an eighth grader at St. Mary Mother of Jesus. It was report card day. I was a less than mediocre student. In fact, I could have easily been left back in the third or seventh grade. As I scanned the card, I saw that I’d received a 60 in reading, surely an error, as it was one of the few subjects in which I fared well, and I’d received an 87 on the most recent test. I was devastated. I felt as if the one thing I was good at had been taken from me. I approached the throne reverently, pointed to the red mark and said: “Sister, I…” She made a curt, nasty retort that I don’t recall exactly, along the lines of it was what I deserved. I coiled in frustration, tears flying from my eyes. Mario Ricchiuti, seated in the front row, later said he’d thought I’d gone berserk. Sister Thomas was an ace at verbal humiliation, unlike our seventh-grade teacher Sister Grace, whose blows I endured more than once. I felt sorry for my parents, who had such a dumb son, although they did not love me any less for it. I let it go, perhaps in cowardice or simply overcome by futility. I remembered Mario had said, when the class secretary was recording the grades of the test in question, which we announced aloud, that it sounded as if I said 57. Maybe I considered the situation my own fault for not having followed up. I’m glad I didn’t. It was a great life lesson, although, of course, I didn’t know it at the time.

Given the fierce wind, it was dumb to set up shop at my usual nook, but I got lucky. I spent most of today’s session of the floating book shop in my car. My thanks to the two ladies who donated a bunch of marketable titles, and to Wolf, who bought two hardcovers in Russian; and to the young man seeking to improve his English, who trusted my recommendation of YA and overcompensated me for Dave at Night by Gail Carson Levine and Number the Stars by Lois Lowry.

The wind is often blowing along this stretch of Brooklyn USA, Avenue Z & East 13th:

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