Black Friday – the day when stores can hope to recoup their slagging sales for the year. When sales on long awaited items are so tantalizing, people will rise in the middle of the night and wait long hours for doors to open. This year an employee for Walmart was trampled to death by crowds that mobbed in unrestrained in frantic search for ...who knows? Unheard of sales? Once in a lifetime opportunities? Life and death material needs? It’s sickening ... and very black indeed...

Nearly two weeks ago someone dumped an old sofa on our street near our apartment building. Somehow in the middle of the night someone else carted it over to another building that is currently empty. It now sits forlornly in the rain and the mist and the wind pointedly working as a reminder that we are often at the mercy of people who don’t take responsibility for the most ordinary of tasks – disposing of their own garbage. Now as it sits there – looking sadder every day – the question arises as to who is responsible now to see that it gets taken away. It costs to have a company pick it up and it’s a street of apartment blocks that refuse to acknowledge ownership. It’s become a metaphor of our times where everyone seems to be dropping the ball and cuttin’ out fast. The Couch on our Street....the saga continues...

Okay, so this is NOT what you may be thinking...My post is actually about a clothes closet. One that stores seasonal clothes. You know. The one you brave to discover what clothes you’ve kept from last year. The ones you deemed (ahem) worthy of another go round this winter? With winter tapping it’s foot waiting to get on with it’s bluster n’ all – I’ve got to find out what I have on hand and what I may need to buy. As usual I’m a little slow getting started. This is in part due to the fact that we live in a part of the country where the term ‘winter’ is a joke to other areas where the snow comes early, stays late and parties with a vengeance. I know. We lived in those parts for a good many years. Nonetheless, my blood runs thinner now – and I shudder weakly at even the thought of snow, ice and a killing frost. I still need a few layers of insulation to endure when the temperature takes a dip – no matter that our mail delivery personnel insist on wearing their shorts throughout the winter months as some kind of badge of honor. So the question remains – What remains? – I’m off to discover...