I took a picture, sat down on the balcony and read for a while. When I looked up the red moon was gone.

A quiet night at Fred Base One. The rain is pattering on the metal balcon now, a staccato counterpoint to the omnipresent whoosh of the Seagate factory. I have just abandoned a Bogart movie because A) I realized I’d seen it, and B) it’s one of those 40s movies that deals with PSYCHOLOGY. I’m sure there’s a big treatise out there somewhere about the effect of faddish psychology on movies of the era, how all the buzzwords and cliches and absolutely settled scientific certainties infected the plots. People staggering around with manias and fixations and split personalities and the like, with some smart shrink explaining everything with unbreakable confidence.

I did this movie in B&W World eons ago, but I don't think I paid attention to this:

You always wonder about these uncredited walk-on roles, where someone has the chance to work with Bogart. Did they slip quickly into obscurity, and spend the rest of their life telling everyone who'd listen that they once did a movie with Bogey? Sure dude, yeah, right. Was it one of those stories he'd tell his daughter's suitor on the first time they all had supper, because she insisted that he tell it, and he did, with a self-deprecating smile? Some guy who'd spent a life as an insurance salesman with this one glamorous moment? Well, let's see . . . he did one other movie, that's all.

Oh, and he directed an episode or ten of every single TV show ever made, it seems. At least I think it's the same guy.

Birch is sitting on the rug, and in a few moments it will occur to him that it’s time for his late-night snack. He declined the walk again tonight: too dang hot, chief. He wanted to go poke around the area 'twixt Fred and Finch. We found a young woman and a pup in the pen; she was training the dog, who was very good and attentive. We chatted a bit about the importance of training, and I let Birch in to play. He’s bad at it. Never knows quite what to do. But he was off the leash with another dog, something that doesn’t happen in his life anymore.

I have to get him a yard. I have to throw the stick without worrying that he will bolt off after a rabbit.

I have to get a house by January.

Hear me out. Part of this is driven by my extrapolation of morning PPPSR (Perfect Poop Place Search Routine) come the winter. As much as I try to get him to do his business in the field close to the Fred, he insists on going deep into the field, through the abandoned sand trap of the old gold course, up to the plateaus. This means stomping through the tall grass, a treacherous expanse whose soil has deep ruts of the vehicles that ripped up Sunderwood Park last spring. Every morning I think I'm going to sprain my ankle. He has to go far to find le spot juste, and when it's 0 degrees it will not be fun.

I want to open the door and let him out and wait, and let him back in. As it always was. Before she sold the home from under us.

We were walking along the perimeter this afternoon when he came across some birds in the grass, of all places, and he lunged and snapped, and that was that for one of the flock. Suddenly there were twice as many birds, shrieking, flying around, landing on the fence, tweeting in terror and anger and warning. Birch stuck his head in a bush and another bird flew out, screeching. The literal bird in a bush. Wonder if there's two

. They assembled on the fence in numbers twice again as great and at this point I’m humming Risselty Rosselty until we can clear the area.

Poor bird. Wouldn’t have happened if I’d left the apartment ten minutes later. You may recall my secret for getting hot pizza: order it for a 6:30 pickup, then show up at 6:22. But! I’d left early to go to Lundsnbyerly’s for a new Hot-Cold bag to replace the one he destroyed. I also thought I would pick up some stuff to make pico de gallo. When I priced out the ingredients I realized it would be cheaper to get it pre-made at Trader Joe’s, and thought: there’s another resolution forgotten.

You see, I’d included homemade Pico De Gallo as one of the things I’d do here, back when it was the Hip New Place, and I was envisioning all sorts of things to make the single experience better. I even bought an electric chopper. No matter. I have no problem abandoning the old resolutions. They were scaffolding, nothing more.

I ended up buying one (1) jalapeño and an enormous Hot-Cold bag. My receipt said I’d saved $1.40. How? I looked, and the bag was $4.99, but I’d saved $1.40 off the price they could have charged, but never did. Okay.

Off to Trader Joe’s. Ahead of schedule. Bought the coffee for the week: the TJ dark blend, which I mix with the Aldi’s Bustilo Pretender brand, and some toaster waffles. I have a theory about these things: They all come from the same manufacturer. They’re all the same. Aldi, TJ, CUfB, wherever: they are stamped out by the hundreds of thousands every day. They’re all Eggos. Why don’t you get a waffle maker and do your own? This is possible, but previous experience has taught me that I never make them. The thing just sits in the cupboard, because the end result is practically the same as the frozen item. You have to make the batter, pour it, tend it, and in the end you have a crunchy delivery vehicle for butter and syrup. That’s what we remember best about waffles. Butter, syrup, strawberries, whipped cream - the foundational structure is the least of it all.

Ah, but French Toast, pain purdu, that’s different. That’s my Sunday morning breakfast. Perhaps with Janeberry syrup this week.

What?

Because my forebearers broke the plains and set down roots in North Dakota, I have farmland, and because I have farmland, I have someone who rents it, my cousin, and his business sends a Christmas gift every year: North Dakota jams and syrups. I’ve been working through the Janeberry bottle since I moved. They’re juneberries, but a poor font choice makes the U look like an A, so I call them Janeberries.) They’re also known as saskatoons, or serviceberries. The latter is too utilitarian and the former too Canuck. (They’re not named after the city. It’s the other way around.) Wikipedia:

The original word is misâskwatômina (pronounced mis-sack-qua-too-mina), which translates roughly to "the fruit of the tree of many branches”.

Not the most exact taxonomy.

I will never sell the land, by the way. It will pass to Daughter, I hope. She will be able to go to a place in the middle of the continent and plunge her hand into the earth and know that it is, for a span, hers, just as it was her father’s and grandmother’s and great grandmother’s and great-great-grandmother’s.

Thus it must be. Unless I get a really good offer because someone wants to build a data center.

Weekend breakfast includes proper hash browns, every other week. I have a recipe for some smoked Gouda hash browns, and if you will indulge me, let me pass it along;

One bag hash browns
A lot of grated cheese
Mix
Put in in the pan
Remove when smoke detector goes off

Plus an omelette and a small sausage. That . . . sounds like a lot, I know, it’s not. Reasonable portions of everything. It makes for a good morning, but it needs something else.

Shared, comfortable silence

That would be great

Not constant conversation. You need time to let the coffee do its work. Ideally, one person makes the breakfast while the other reads the paper and sips the first cup, and perhaps after the coffee has done its work, notes an article that pertains to ongoing interests and matters of importance. Or someone notes that the music’s wrong. Too early for Bruckner, there ought to be a law you can’t play his second movements before noon. Can you find some mild rote tootling Baroque? And so on. The problem in the modern era: couples no longer read the morning journals in comfortable silence, then say are you done with the metro or can you pass me the A section. Tapping and swiping now, tapping and swiping, no rustling pages.

To be honest I wasn't much for conversation after the second cup if it consisted of what needed to be done that day.

I talk to Birch a lot, and he listens, waiting for key words, but he doesn’t have a lot to say. I expect I will never again hear funny piece, great breakfast, you look good, what are you working on, what do you think about this? ever again.

Pity, that.

Well, another week ahead, and lots to do. I've laid out a lot of the Bleat and it's going to be a robust and diverse series. Anything else to look forward to? My new glasses should be arriving soon, and I hope the prescription is right. It will be startling to have sharper vision, and of course there will be headaches and that odd disorienting feeling. They're never quite right.

It's all my fault. I said something was better or same when I wasn't sure it was.

But haven't we all, at some point.

Say, are you sending coded messages to the Ex here? Nope. She doesn't read it. Never did.

Now to write the Substack column about the most delicious thing you can have on a hot summer day. You may disagree. Comments will be open for all, because it's Monday.

In keeping with our Monday tradition, which became a "tradition" for reasons I can't recall and probably don't matter, we continue with our Monday trademark. For this year we'll do 1936.

		Google says "Historically recognized for producing over-the-counter (OTC) dermatological and hemorrhoidal treatments— they were formerly headquartered at 225 Varick Street, New York, NY."

Good to know, I guess.

I have no patience for a bad copy of an early talkie drawing-room murder mystery. People in a house on a rainy night, everyone dressed like swells, camera bolted to the floor, bad sound, stagey production - there are a million of them.

But I’ll give this one a chance, for two reasons:

Powell would be a great Vance, if he played to the original character. Philo Vance sounds like an insufferable, tiresome man:

Vance was what many would call a dilettante, but the designation does him an injustice. He was a man of unusual culture and brilliance. An aristocrat by birth and instinct, he held himself severely aloof from the common world of men. In his manner there was an indefinable contempt for inferiority of all kinds. The great majority of those with whom he came in contact regarded him as a snob. Yet there was in his condescension and disdain no trace of spuriousness. His snobbishness was intellectual as well as social. He detested stupidity even more, I believe, than he did vulgarity or bad taste. I have heard him on several occasions quote Fouché’s famous line: C’est plus qu’un crime; c'est une faute. And he meant it literally.

"It's even worse than a crime, it's a blunder."

In subsequent radio adaptations, I seem to recall Vance was butched up a bit. Unlikely to say "old thing" and other such endearments. Powell brings likeability, and I suppose we have to have that.

Dine was the pen name of Vance's creator, an avant-garde art critic.
As for the screenwriter:

Cormack seems to have made his move in 1927 with a play called The Racket, which had Eddie G in his first gangster role. He was a newspaperman as well. Best move he made: "In 1923, he married Adelaide Maurine Bledsoe, the daughter of Samuel T. Bledsoe, who was a president and board chairman of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad."

Then there’s the promise of the opening, which describes the Wall Street Crash. The best of silent-movie era montage at work:

And that is about all there is to that. There’s probably tech to bring this one back to life - make it crisper, better audio - but it may be a while before someone gets around to restoring the non-essential movies. If ever.

That will do. Matchbooks up, and free column at the Substack around 11. See you there!