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

                                                                                 It is not a cliff,  it is not the end of a continent 

it is, instead,  an abstract idea- the cusp of the horizon

We consider it at the beginning or end of long trips,

headed out or headed home

"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.