Three Beautiful Things 06/18/20: *Tom All-Alone's*, Mrs. Hitzel is Unimpressed, Preoccupied BONUS A Limerick by Stu

I created this blog on October 1, 2006. Today, I am posting entry number 5,000.

1. After completing a couple of acrostic puzzles, I began reading Lynn Shepherd's detective novel, Tom All-Alone's, published in 2012. It's set in the physical world of Tom All-Alone's, the most impoverished neighborhood of Bleak House. The story occurs in Shepherd's version of London in 1850. Already, the story is dark and grisly. So far, all I know is that the story's central character, Charles Maddox, a detective, has been hired by a villain from Bleak House, Edward Tulkinghorn, to track down someone who has left Tulkington vaguely threatening messages. I'm already trembling a bit just at the prospect of reading another book that, in any way, features Edward Tulkington. In Bleak House, he was one of the most cruel and predatory characters I've encountered in fiction.

2. I had a very quiet day today. One thing I had on my mind was a dream featuring my third grade teacher, Mrs. Hitzel. In the dream, I encountered her and I was a young adult, as many as fifteen years after she was my teacher. I gave her some writing I'd done for school -- these might have been Freshman Comp papers or papers I wrote for literature classes. She told me they weren't worth reading and returned them to me without further comment. I'd given them to her because I thought she'd be proud that I was a college student, working hard to learn how to write. She wasn't impressed.

3. My preoccupation with this dream and some troubling memories of London that surfaced while reading Tom All-Alone's distracted me while doing simple tasks today. While mixing Debbie a whiskey drink, I poured gin in it instead of triple sec and had to dump it and start all over. I had also mistaken a bottle of brandy for the whiskey I was going to pour her. I was sober. I didn't drink any alcohol today, so it was just a matter of trying to function while my mind was traveling far away from tasks at hand. Later, I started making popcorn for Debbie and me and, for no good reason, I turned the burner under the popcorn off. I actually didn't remember doing it and was taken aback when the popcorn wasn't popping and I discovered I'd turned off the heat. Eventually, I succeeded in making some really good popcorn. I also made Debbie a very good drink on my second try. But my mind was on vacation. I was not focused at all on the present moment.

(Sometimes my entries under Three Beautiful Things aren't that beautiful, but are more about wanting a record of things that happened. Entries 2 and 3 are two examples.)

In April of 2019, Stu wrote the following limerick and today he's making it public:


If people don’t learn from the past.
They could sadly repeat those things fast. 
This date marks the end,
Of shame you cannot defend.
Juneteenth’s actions should forever last.