Why is it?

That whenever I get up from the bed, no matter when or how briefly, I return to find the cat has claimed my spot?

Hot times

I generally don't pay a lot of attention to the weather forecast, beyond checking around Wednesday to see whether to expect rain on Saturday. In this case, the prediction was for a low in the mid-50s, high in the mid-80s, so I brought a flannel for load-in and didn't think anything more about it.

Come Saturday morning, a number of regulars weren't there, and the booth lottery seemed surprisingly light. Didn't think much of it, until my neighbors starting talking about 100° weather. Wait, what?

Yeah, the predictions had definitely evolved over the week. The weather app on my phone was predicting a high of 99 around 4 pm, right at load-out. Yikes!

So the first thing I did was call Denise and tell her not to come down. She had some errands to run before and after, so combined them into an inconvenient bundle (one stop was off River Road at Railroad Blvd, the other at Beltline and Coburg Road. Not exactly adjacent.) The second thing I did was thank my accidental stars I'd brought both coolers and a frozen half-gallon of water with me, to keep both my Farmer's Market produce and myself cool all day. Third thing was to post my most tropical pattern to Instagram: a flamingo plate.

My booth isn't too bad in hot weather; it gets a lot of shade from a big magnolia tree, and there's usually a breeze in from the back. Brandy, my neighbor, can sometimes have problems, though. Sunlight is great for highlighting her lampwork glass beads, less great when it makes them too hot to actually touch.

We had the weirdest... heckler, I guess? In any event, a hipster in a vintage white Cadillac, whitewalls, gold wire wheels, rag-top down and an abusively loud stereo system kept circling the block during set-up. Don't have any idea what he was playing. All I knew was that the sub-woofer was rattling my rib cage from all the way across to 8th Street. Did three or four laps before he finally left, then came back with a buddy for an encore around lunchtime. Nice car, except for the a-hole in the driver's seat.

Had a nice chat with a Wisconsin fellow in a Waupaca t-shirt showing the chain of lakes. Not my part of the state, but for many years, Denise's folks had a cabin on King Lake. They offered it to us, but it wasn't practical to manage from Oregon, so they sold it to children of the neighboring cottage when they retired their RV.

Saw the creepiest tattoo ever: a flayed arm. His entire right arm was showing, muscles, blood vessels, phalanges and cartilage. Probably would have been even more effective in winter; the sun tan muted the colors a little. Still glad he didn't stay long in the booth; I'd just as soon keep my lunch where I'd left it.

Had a much nicer tattoo experience a little later: a young woman in orange dress had a number of small tatts, including the words "Swing and turn" on her upper arm. Is that from the song? I asked? "Swing and turn, Jubilee, live and learn, Jubilee." (Yeah, I sang it. Love that song.)

You know the song? she asked. Yeah, I had a folk music radio show for twenty-five years, used to play it regularly. A woman sings it, though I can't quite place who. (It's Sally Rogers, from her album, The Unclaimed Pint.)

Turns out she knows it from a more recent cover, by a women's duo called The A's. It's a lovely version, and a nice, subtle message, couched in Folk Music Rhyming Slang (is that a thing?): Swing and Turn = Live and Learn.

Jubilee!

Journalism

Denise sold her last coptic-bound journal last Saturday, so had been working on new ones all week. Here are the two that were ready for Market yesterday.