The Vet

Today my cat didn't die, and neither did I and neither did you, so I am pretty happy overall I'd say.

Pictured is Tasha, a long-dead cat who exemplifies the Cutcher penchant for seal-points (which spans generations), who belonged to my grandfather, and who looks like Mercatroid, (who lives to meow another day).

Little House

"When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, 'What are the days of auld lang syne, Pa?'

'They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,'

Pa said. 'Go to sleep now.'

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, 'This is now.'

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago."

-from Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Photograph: Two dear friends on my old street in Flossmoor, a long time ago

Viable Alternatives

I am impatient today, and lonely, and I can't help feeling as though maybe I am just spoiled, and have a taste for country drives, coffees, and postcard-buying. Maybe I am just restless, and have been curled up too long in the very same spot.


I am moving my pillow to the opposite end of the bed tonight, and maybe it will feel foreign. If it doesn't, I will tape up every one of my photographs tomorrow, and cover a whole wall, and maybe it will feel familiar.




Photograph by my sister, Kylie, taken in "historic" Mt. Airy, on an adventure in North/Central/Western Maryland (NOT Pennsylvania)

Mo' Kittens, Mo' Problems: On Getting What You Want

Photographs from a long-ago outing to the Hirshorn, where for a moment I thought my mother was having a nice time, when she said "You know, this is interesting". This inspired a little spiel on the merits of modern and contemporary art for the museum-averse, and its ability to provoke reaction, and thus conversation, versus the old-guard institution and its halls of hallowed oil paintings. Her reaction is visible below.

Genus Malus

It's the season.

Digital Photographs courtesy of my sister, Kylie

What Should Johnny Do?

Today, I just wanted to curl up and watch "Really Rosie" (based on a book by Maurice Sendak, and featuring little songs by Carol King), which I have been watching my whole my life, on VHS, more times than I can count, and which does not cease to make things a bit better. Wathcing it on VHS is important, too, because of this:

Of course, as is obvious now, you can find it all on the internet, but I went down in the basement and dug it out, and came to the conclusion that at present things were just about like this: