Near Miss, and A Ways To Go in Everyday Ramblings

Here we are turning towards fall. In a few weeks there will be the whole array of fall shots but for now we are in the last dry dry days of summer.

For next week’s photo in the Sierra Club Engagement calendar the photo is a new one, almost magical, a close up of a chicory blossom here in Portland.

This strange disturbing thing happened yesterday morning, Charity took me to the grocery a little after 8:30AM. By car, to get into the lot one tuns quickly into a narrow drive just past this very complicated busy intersection.

We chatted and caught up and walked into the store. We shop separately and then meet up back at the car. It is always a joke because I am a focused shopper and I am always done 1st even though she shops way more often and gets less.

When I got back to the car I looked up the slight incline to the street and right smack in front of the turnoff into the parking lot we had come through not 15 minutes before was an overturned white Honda with most of the front end missing and the acrid smell of burning.

There were 3 fire trucks, a number of police cars and an ambulance speeding away. The driver’s side door was closed and crumpled. Charity came out and we talked to the few other folks standing there looking. No one had a clue how it had happened and how the driver could have survived.

I had heard a woman in the store a few minutes before telling another woman about a plume of fire and thought she was talking about an accident in her neighborhood.

Other than a couple of pictures of the intersection from a traffic cam on Twitter I have still not been able to find out anything about the crash. It is like it didn’t happen. I posted on Nextdoor to see if anyone knew anything and one woman said she saw some of the later cleanup but did not know what happened.

It never occurred to me to take a picture. I am not sure why. I thought it was a huge big deal and it would be on the news but all we have is this polarized local press talking either about the ongoing protests and sports.

The local press is critical to the functioning of a democracy.

Maybe the car was already damaged and fell off a truck? It could have been anything.

Charity and I both were counting our blessings as we took a long scenic alternate route home. We are going for a walk on Friday when it finally cools down and will exchange what knowledge we have gleaned then but until then it remains this bizarre near miss mystery.

Mrs. Sherlock was bike riding this morning. She picked me up some fresh tomatoes which I will get on Saturday.

I recorded another class yesterday. I learn things each time I do it. I close the bathroom door when I record because it looks odd and when I watched the playback yesterday I saw that Carlo spent about five minutes trying to figure out how to get the door open behind me and then walked around me in a circle and hopped up on the pillow I was going to use for my knees and went to sleep.

He stayed there on his own for about 3 hours. The cats have both been gorked out by the heat.

I tested using the iPhone instead of the webcam and still need to work on placement, so I did the actual recording on the webcam. It is attached by a cord to my laptop and I need to fully train myself not to look at the laptop but at the camera. Progress is being made. The sound was good with the iPhone so that means I don’t need to get a mic.

Of course, all this watching of myself is problematic from a self-image point of view. It is a camera and of course I look bigger than I am but even with that the thickening around the middle and the weight gain…

I’d like to come to a place in my head where I feel strong and powerful and enfranchised but that seems to be the work of a lifetime and apparently I have a ways to go…

Last updated August 20, 2020