Sharing a great deal of random today:
1) On Monday the Boyfriend left after a long weekend visit, taking a very early train because of my grand jury summons (which, as it happened, didn’t actually begin until the next day). So of course I got up before dawn and prepared the breakfast he likes — yogurt, blueberries, Grape Nuts, English muffins with Irish butter and jam, and coffee — served in the dining room on the good china, because the good china is almost identical to his mother’s from when he was a boy.
1a) A pre-dawn dining room breakfast took me back to July, 1977, when we set off on our “Roots trip” to meet Mother’s family in Minnesota for the first time. Daddy liked to get on the road early, so the trip started before sunrise with breakfast next door at Granny’s house. This was surprising enough — we’d gone on vacations before and never been sent off this way — but so was actually eating in the dining room, and off the good china.
1a.i) I sat at the foot of the table, and what I remember most was seeing Granny at the other end in her thin pale blue flannel bathrobe and thin pale pink nightgown smiling as broadly as ever. She loved to have a lot of people around, and she loved especially when it was family. That’s what happens when you grow up with five sisters and a brother in your mother’s boarding house with 20 or 30 college students and no internet, television, or radio.
2) Grand jury service on Tuesday, to my surprise and relief, was concluded by 1 PM. I showed up early at the Moakley courthouse, of course, got checked in, listened to all the instructions, videos, and the interminably oratorical judge, and then got sent up to two courtrooms. In each I failed to be impaneled since my name was near the end of the list. Everything was handled efficiently and courteously, and I celebrated getting sprung with lunch on the waterfront.
3) Since the pandemic started, ye Ynstagrym has really become my preferred social media platform; you should be following @etiquetteer1 if you aren’t already. But . . . it is doing a very poor job of corralling and eliminating fake accounts. In the last week I found three using my photos for profile pics, and yesterday I found three more using photos of a follower. It is almost an obsession now, tracking down and blocking fake accounts (also on ye Twyttyr).
4) Spring has sprung in New England, and I can tell because the star magnolia in front of the house has started blooming. We now begin the three weeks of the year when my home looks its best.
5) Obviously travel takes on a new significance now that I’m dating someone in another city, and I will be back in mad Manhattan near the end of the month for a few days, during which I’ll get to witness the Boyfriend record a podcast episode and also attend one of his public programs. He will then head up to Beantown for the Gibson House benefit and BBC’s Brahms Requiem. It’s time for me to start maximizing every possible points program!
6) A quagmire of unfinished books is building up around me. I am near the end of Maiden Voyages by Sian Philllips (women’s experiences as passengers, crew, and refugees in the golden age of transatlantic liners, fascinating), The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders (how the Victorians became engrossed in gory public murder trials, etc. — a Christmas gift from Oldest Nephew Who Must Not Be Tagged that I brought to Palm Springs and didn’t nearly make a dent in), and now The Age of Decadence by Simon Heffer (British imperial history and culture from 1880 to World War I, just what I love).
7) Thinking about Etiquetteer content for the spring. What would you like to hear Etiquetteer comment on?