The Winds Shift

Winds to the north pushed the toxic smoke cloud out of Buenos Aires and into the north. Good for us, bad for Rosario. Here's the view of the Obelisk from my corner on Saturday and on Sunday. (By the way, depending on your browser, you should be able to click on photos here to make them a bit bigger.)


Feeling quite well, I took a trip to the Botanic Garden and sat there reading for a while. Martha gave me some extra books including one that she taught in a book group at the Cervantes years ago. So far it's fine--a very readable account of a powerful newspaper editor who controls every aspect of his life strictly except for his obsessive voyeurism of a woman half his age. But the best part is Martha's annotations, which are plentiful, explaining (in Spanish, natch) many phrases she thought might be unfamiliar to her students (she was usually right). So it's like reading with Martha sitting there beside me, which is lovely.

Here's a street scene of the sort I like.


And finally, lest I seem too ready to forgo my refunfuñando, I'll add that I was strolling past one of my favorite signs in the city, for a hardware store not too far from my apartment. I found it about two years ago and sometimes walk a block out of my way just to see it. Well, I hadn't been by that corner this year and...well, here's the sickening evidence.


Yup. Ripped out the beautiful old neon sign and replaced it with an anonymous metal rectangle. I know I shouldn't get too attached to these things, but this one hurts.