Five days to go -

And I've at least done my part, by sending off an absentee ballot, adding to what is becoming a flood, according to the elections department.

I used to vote in person, but that was when we lived in a suburb across the lake, and the polling place for almost everyone was the school you could see from the deck.

Now that I live in the middle of the city, the polling place for my precinct is a couple of miles away. Go figure.

In the midst of election anxiety, I got a good laugh from this post on Peter Pereira's blog.

Read it and giggle.

Juke box Saturday night...

It's actually the Bose radio that's pouring out those classic "Golden Age of Radio" songs, on "The Swing Years," the Saturday-night program on the local NPR station. If you're out of range of KUOW, the program streams on the web.

It's a good playlist. A little Spike Jones ("The Black-and-Blue-Danube Waltz,") some better-than-average Rosemary Clooney (a knock-out version of "There Will Never Be Another You.")

Now if Amanda, the host, will only play some Blossom Dearie, my evening will be complete!

So much chaos out there that it's hard to settle to a blog post. At choir the other night one woman said her brother-in-law, in Massachusetts, can't decide what is causing him more anxiety - the election, the economy, or the Red Sox!

(As of tonight, the Red Sox are doing just fine. Any good news is welcome!)

Z. reports fall foliage in Connecticut is lovely as advertised. As a New Englander born and bred, she will also be happy about the Red Sox.



Weather is beautiful here, too.

Facebook is much too fascinating at times. Although the fragmentary posts make the average e-mail message look like a full-fledged essay, they can be informative, incisive, amusing, mysterious, or just bracingly silly.

Silly gets you through a lot.

Family is scattered this weekend. Z is at Wesleyan, I and L are in Portland, D is holding the fort on Vashon.

And my brother, a retired nuclear engineer, just called from SeaTac, where he was about to board a plane for London, on the way to Mumbai. His group will spend 2-1/2 weeks working at an orphanage in a smaller Indian city, returning Election Day.

On the way home they have a layover in London that's long enough for an express trip into the city and a bus tour.

In the past couple of years he has participated in projects in the Ukraine (once) and Argentina (twice.) Before that, he and his wife went on a number of church-building trips to Mexico. Now she stays home with the kitty and listens to his stories when he returns.

Here above the lake tonight, it's Sparky the cat, Mae West (singing "Come Up and See Me Sometime") and me.

R. I. P. Marpessa Dawn and Breno Mello

Who knew Eurydice was born in Pittsburgh?

Certainly I didn't, when I first saw "Black Orpheus" in the 60's. Here's more information and lots of links.

At the time, true cinephiles (and self-important student movie fanatics) dismissed the film, preferring Cocteau's "Orphée" (if you can sit through that one without falling asleep, let me know. Even the motorcycles woke me only briefly.) "Black Orpheus" won a prize at Cannes in 1959, and the music never went away - thanks in part to Vince Guaraldi's jazz version. In a later capsule review, Pauline Kael called the film "greatly admired in its time," but concluded that Marpessa Dawn was worth a trip to Hell.

A couple of years ago, I went with two 30-something film fans to see a refurbished print of the movie at the Seattle International Film Festival. From the first scene, a crowd of samba-playing carnival goers departing a ferry in Rio (why can't Seattle ferry trips be more like that?) the audience was caught up. At the end, one of my companions said, "You could live in that movie."