point and shoot

Sometime just after Christmas, I’d gone to my office and left my ring of keys somewhere there, on Bascom Hill. In the period immediately after, I recognized that perhaps the most serious loss for me was the missing mailbox key. I have spares to my condo and someone always has spares to the office, but U.S. Postal Service will not cut you any slack if you don't have a key to their little box. Come back when you've found it. Thanks, USPS. I'm glad you're protecting my property. From me.

And so when I returned from Chicago last Thursday, the first thing I did was walk over from the bus to the Law School on Bascom Hill, to search for and to reclaim my ring of keys.

I’d forgotten that it was a furlough day. The building was locked. I circled it twice and banged on all accessible doors and windows in the hope of finding someone who would have the guts to flaunt the mandate not to work – but no. We are an obedient lot. No one wanted to flex their muscle and show up for added work hours. Shocking but true.

And of course, the building was locked on Friday as well (holiday). And Saturday (another holiday). And Sunday (ditto). You could not find a soul on campus during those four days if your life depended on it. Truthfully, my life did not depend on it, but I was missing my keys and, too, my CSA spinach – delivered to a campus building late Wednesday, stuck behind the barricade of locked doors until, well today, Monday.

So of course, anxious to find my little ring of keys, this morning I took my car out of hibernation – you know the 93 Ford Escort? – and drove my many boxes of now graded exams to campus very very early, so that I could emerge victoriously with my keys, retrieve my spinach, and my mail back home,  and breathe a final sigh of relief.


But, it was not to be a smooth ride. For one thing, the door to the 93 Ford Escort now officially refuses to open. I would have been stuck in the red taped up car for a good spell, except that I have great climbing skills and I managed to extract myself over suspended seat belts and boxes of exams and make my way to the one workable door on the other side.

At the Law School, someone had come across my keys and turned them in – thank you, kind stranger, you cold have robbed me solid and you didn’t, so thank you tons – and so in good time,  I regained access to my office, to the spinach up the hill, and to my home mail (such as it is).

Except there is still the matter of the broken car door. If I yank it hard, I am afraid that a good part of the front body will fall off.

I had intended, on my way home,  to stop by the lake and admire its incredible slick, frozen surface once again, but the idea of climbing out, then back into the car was so stressful that I merely drove up on Observatory Drive, rolled down the window, pointed and shot and left.





All this to say that today’s photographic contributions are quite meager. My apologies.