Job Security

My real job security is the number of hours that I'm the only staff member in the building. Peaked today as most of the afternoon I was the only person at the museum because the receptionist, Bev, went home sick. I just sat at the desk and read about the Renaissance. I was thinking about the vernacular, and the problems that early printers confronted in codifying the language. The triumph of the Vulgate Bible is that's in the vernacular. An interesting question came up (Mac, in SW NY state, always one for specificity) about what that channel of white that sometimes occurs in a page of text is called. I call it a river, and I called four other printers today, and they all call it a river too. There probably is a technical term, but I honestly don't know what it is. It's easy to avoid, hand-setting type, because you can increase or decrease the spacing, and presto, the line disappears. Often I add or subtract a word and the problem disappears. Em quad spacing is like that, you change one thing and everything else follows suit. Chautuaqua needed an image for their publicity, and I had TR shoot me, so we could send a photograph, as if it was the real thing, me in front of the vault door. I take a nap, I'm tired, and wake up to rain at two in the morning. It's the annual Tennessee Walker horse show on Mackletree, horse trailers and campers from all over the region, they pretty much close down traffic, but there isn't very much traffic anyway. I can go out the other way, the long way around, rather than killing a horse and rider. I'd feel bad about that, a skittish horse or a stupid rider, so I'll just avoid the issue, go the other way. I turned on the radio and it was the Jimmy Hendrix show. Manic Depression, then Hey Joe, then that great cover, Dylan and the Dead, All Along The Watchtower. It's a transport of joy. I think the rain has sufficiently cleaned the roof that I can put out a couple of buckets to collect wash water. Life is a series of small steps. Listen to the rain.