Crazy Old Lady in a Small Town Diner, June 8, 2024

There's a little-remembered 1937 film entitled, Sh! The Octopus, in which the little-remembered but solid bit-part player Elspeth Dudgeon undergoes a memorable, mind-bending transformation from kindly old lady to evil hag in the click of a frame.

On our way to Toronto, we stopped for brunch in a familiar small town diner about a half-hour out. It has the expected trimmings: friendly service, humble but home-cooked food, and small town characters. A booth away, a grandmotherly woman was speaking with a young man who was taking his breakfast at the counter. His dog had been sprayed by a skunk, and he was wondering about the best way to remove the scent. The waitress chimed in: it doesn't have to be tomato juice, but a homespun mixture of common products which she rattled off. The old woman narrowed her eyes to repressed schoolmarm stern and said, "I had a dog who was skunked twice. Not once but

"I will stick to Christ as a burr to cloth."

- Last words of Katharina von Bora, widow of Martin Luther,
on her deathbed, December 22, 1552.

"When people are impoverished, of course they can become thieves, but sometimes they randomly gather together and violate the law. Then they ride tigers that they can't dismount, so they brave death and conduct plunder."

- Chinese

"Kronk" is the name of a candy bar sold throughout Central America, and which I encountered in Costa Rica. According to the packaging of the bar I have in front of me (and which I have been carrying for over two months), it is made by the Marisela company, although the actual manufacturing is by the Bimbo company, a large bakery brand across all of Latin America. I am not sure which company owns which or is a brand of which. To be honest, this is the first time I have thought of it.