Danny Caine, proprietor of The Raven Book Store, writes about an event the store held, just as the world was shutting down, with author Louise Erdrich.

He finishes:

As we walked over to the fire, the caretaker stood, unfolding his lanky frame. He nodded at us. Louise crouched and pulled some sage out of her bag. She crumbled off a few leaves and tossed them into the fire. They missed, landing on a cool spot away from the flame. She reached her hand right in there and grabbed the sage, placing it directly on top of the embers. She didn’t flinch.

Standing, she said, “thank you for tending this fire. What’s your name?”

“Junior,” the caretaker said. “Yours?”

“I’m Louise, and this is Danny.”

Junior reached across the fire to shake our hands. It was my last handshake.

The entire story is spread over two issues of Quoth The Raven, the store’s excellent email newsletter

• Quoth The Raven: On Community, Part 1
• Quoth The Raven: On Community Volume 2

If you’re at all interesting books, authors, reading, words, small towns or Kansas, you really should subscribe.

Remember back in the day when there was interoperability between messaging platforms? When the hope was held out that we would all be able to seamlessly chat, with a single app, a single account, with anyone, just like we can send and receive email with anyone, regardless of how and where they manage their email.

Remember?

Now I have this:

Skype, Slack, Teams, Android Messages, Telegram, Zoom, Signal. Oh, and email.

I have all the same apps running on my phone too.

Where did we go wrong?

Enjoy this video from #Vanlifer Yohei Murakami in Japan either in the original Japanese, or with YouTube subtitles turned on; it’s enjoyable either way.

Among those who survived the 1918 Spanish flu:

• Raymond Chandler
• Wait Disney
• Lillian Gish
• David Lloyd George
• Franz Kafka
• Edvard Munch
• Georgia O’Keeffe
• Mary Pickford

Also on the list: Woodrow Wilson, President at the time, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who went on to become President.

I started with The Beatles song In My Life:

There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone, and some remain

All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead, and some are living
In my life, I’ve loved them all

Walking across the street from 100 to 101 this morning, I remembered coffee shops and libraries and bookstores and friends’ houses and the forest and the beach and the movies.

Other places.

Remember ‘other places?’

Printed in 30 pt. Futura Medium (with its odd question mark), in red, on unbleached heavy card stock from Yu Yo in Halifax. Limited run of 32.

Email me if you’d like me to pop a copy in the mail to you.

World of Windows: pandemic-proof P2P to (re)build resilience, from Kirsten Dirksen and an international group of collaborators, is the best view into pandemic that I’ve come across.

I am convinced that the zeitgeist, which is shape-shifting at a dizzying pace, is going to make a dramatic turn this week; some of us are going to go to ground, some of us are going to flower.

My friend Henriette is going to flower:

It’s so weird that during this Corona Virus Isolation, it seems like everything is fucked up outside of the garden and in here everything is sunshine, grounding as well as birds chirping away. Occasionally the cat comes to visit on the little porch I have in the front.

I do very much still want to hear what Henriette has to say.

Six years ago this morning I was in the letterpress shop printing coffee bags for the late, reborn-as-Receiver, Row 142.

Oliver took this photo of me, about to blow out the candle on my birthday cake.

I turned 54 years old today.

The day started with calls from loved ones, followed by our usual Sunday waffles (I added some cocoa, because, well, it’s my birthday). After lunch I helped Oliver make me a birthday cake (lemon cake from the kitchen of Betty Crocker, with improv chocolate frosting using icing sugar helpfully provided by Catherine).

As the cake was chilling we had round one of gift opening, a nap, a little work, and then dug in to fulfill Oliver’s dream of cooking a “medieval vegetarian supper,” which ended up being navy beans and shallots stewed in broth, mushroom soup, and English muffins topped with cheese. Those medievals and their brown food!

We organized an impromptu birthday cake reveal Zoom at the very last minute, and had drop-ins from California, Ontario, PEI and Sweden (thank you all!). A second round of gifts were opened.

I’m now just coming down off the sugar shock and might tuck into a rousing game of “Set: The Family Game of Visual Perception,” which rode in on round one.

If you’re going to have a birthday during a fucking pandemic, this was a pretty good birthday to have.

Here’s Oliver’s take on the day.

Photo of Trubarjeva cesta 54 in Ljubljana by duncan c
Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)