irizoris@hcommons.social

My next move may be full-time grower of lettuce. I love lettuce.

Some trees are making a comeback.

The tree + electricity challenge in Tennessee, home of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

Benito Bad Bunny Martínez Ocasio honored the linemen restoring power in Puerto Rico. I took a screenshot and am dedicating the screenshot to the linemen who've been working on Nashville's power lines since the vicious ice storm that started on January 25.

Peas

Just practiced Spanish at the bus stop with a man from Guatemala. He told me that in his region they grow coffee, bananas and cardamom. He also told me that he speaks Q'eqchi' with his friends and family. I just looked up this language, hitherto unknown to me.

Caturday

My kid and I exchanged pics of street crossing signs on January 1st. Hers: Seniors crossing (in Seattle). Mine: Turtles crossing (in Nashville).

I watched the video that Columbia University's new president Shafik made, addressing students. She seems to know nothing about Columbia, a pretty old institution by U.S. standards, with enormous amounts of baggage, bad and good.

(Editing this: I just read that Shafik is a member of a Coptic Christian church. Why does she say in the video that she grew up Muslim? Or maybe she means "surrounded by Muslims.")

Columbia: the only employer I've had in 40ish years of U.S. office life that made me sign an NDA. At least one lawsuit if not more that Columbia lost in matters of discrimination. Sooo many stories, sooo much gossip. And I only worked there for about 4 years total in the 80s and 90s. On the medical side? Broken elevators at the dental school. We laughed about the condition of the dental school with my brilliant dental student who treated me. Me, making sure I *don't* give birth at Columbia's hospital although I lived 12 blocks away. Good things too, but never neutral.

Someone tell Hilton Als & the @newyorker that Duchamp was from Normandy and gave what are known as "réponses de Normand" as documented long ago in Astérix.

Nashville is now crisscrossed by driverless Waymos. I see them every time I step out, especially while waiting for a bus.

This Waymo seemed to have picked up some of the bad habits of Nashville drivers: inching forward and blocking the crosswalk while the ped light is green and the Waymo is impatient to make a right turn on red.

After I retired in December 2024, I stopped also taking care of the garden at my then job and went off traveling here and there for six months. Then I came back and now I'm in the old garden again, with a little help from friends. It's been cool here in Nashville, and I have lettuce and radishes. Irises are blooming too.

Everyday the English word 'rupture' is moving a little closer to the French meaning of the word. (Manvir Singh, New Yorker,, March 16, 2026.)

At this church yard sale in Montreal there's a book by Graham Greene in Czech. Books travel.

No matter what your app tells you, "la rupture" in French only *sometimes* means "rupture" in English. It frequently means "break" or "break up" unless you *do* mean that "so and so's relationship ruptured overnight"

This Roger Chartier lecture ties together at least five or six things I am keenly interested in.

https://pca.st/episode/d1ad81ac-3a78-4cae-b62b-a8493979a465