The Goodbye Party

Tonight it's "Remember! Work!" The story from today at the office is the goodbye party we had for the business manager, the top elected official at the local. He's retiring in about a week. So the support staff chipped in for some barbecue or made food and brought it in. There were shrimp, ribs, hot links, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, vegetables, fruit salad, a huge voodoo cake, cookies, etc. We ate in the first floor meeting hall. There was very little levity, just enough so that it wasn't entirely funereal. This wasn't a bad thing. Most people there have worked together for a long time. There's no reason to bullshit one another. By and large people ate and chatted quietly. It was all about the food.

A couple of realizations about the soporific nature of these goodbye rituals: 1) a form repeated to the point of gross familiarity will put a person to sleep, and 2) eating a lot of food at midday will have the same effect.

Finally, at work don't look too closely because you just might see something real, like that asses are made for shitting.

This weekend I listened to a lot of The Last Waltz (1978), which might be the topic of Friday's Hippies vs. Punks. This evening walking up the hill in the sun on my way to the library I was treated to two excellent back-to-back tracks from Georgia Anne Muldrow's Seeds (2012), "The Birth of Petey Wheatstraw" and "Best Love." I was feeling good.