Observing Salmon Croquettes

 I'm reading more Mass Observation journal compilations...
---OH! A wild turkey is walking across the front lawn!
How's that for An Observation?

I'm not sure what changed, but more wildlife comes into the city now--foxes, deer, raccoons, etc., and––most extraordinarily––these big, ungainly birds walking around. Like peacocks, but very not beautiful.

It may have to do with the Greenway bike & walk path that runs from the Mississippi River to the chain of lakes, and onward.
Animals use it as a trail too. But it used to be railroad, so wouldn't that have served them as a trail too?
I don't know.

I. Everyday Observations

Anyway... I've mentioned this before:
Mass Observation (MO) was a social-research project that asked hundred of ordinary people to keep and send in journals of their everyday lives.

Humphrey Spender's People on Bench, 1937/38, via

Started in England in 1937 after the abdication of Edward, MO was in place, perfectly positioned for gathering eyewitness accounts of the World War II homefront.

How many of us bloggers write with the historical record in mind?
Do you?

Sometimes I do--but mostly for my personal record--"I will want to remember how this went down," I thought during the uprisings of 2020. I made myself blog a little: "helicopters overhead."

But I'm not a political journalist or a historian, and that's not what I want to read about all the time either.
I like the everyday stuff that passes by--if we're good at observing, we might be rewarded with the oddball turkey.

MO diarists wrote more about food than about politics and war.
Isn't that the way for us too?
Everyday life revolves around everyday things. Unless something tears it apart, and even then, things will settle down again, if they can.

Covid, for instance.

"Today marks the 836th day since the first Covid case was confirmed in Minnesota on March 5, 2020.
The percentage of Minnesota's population with at least one shot: 70.5 %"

I took a sewing class the other evening at Rethink Tailoring--this re-user of "preloved clothing" is another reason I like this neighborhood.
They still require masking to enter, AND for classes, showing your vaccination record.
I couldn't find my vax record, but I'd taken a mending class there last year and had showed it then, so they let me pass.

Almost no other business around here requests much less requires masks anymore.

I've snapped back to pre-Covid practice and mood: I don't think about it much more than I think about any other illness.
This is the norm among people I know––many of whom have had Covid already. Some people still wear masks in public, and I think that's wise, but I'm just taking my chances...

That normalization of danger (the normalcy cognitive bias, or regression toward the mean) shows up in the MO journals from the London Blitz too:
people got sick and tired of sitting in bomb shelters and some went out into the street to watch the dogfights.
"May as well die with a little excitement," one of them records.

II. Hot Weather Food

What I am thinking about is, indeed, food! And weather, and their intersection.
It's hot and humid this week--already this morning at 9 a.m. it's 83º "feels like 90", heading toward 100. I'm sweating, just sitting here on the porch.

A couple days ago, knowing hot weather was coming I made a mess of salmon croquettes. When we got a donation of canned salmon, a coworker had told me how.

Loyd's Salmon Croquettes

"Crush some saltines,
mix them in with a can of salmon and one egg,
and fry them up a couple minutes on each side."

From this recipe, I got the idea to add
mayo + a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce,
and some sautéed veg.

What I had on hand was celery, red bell pepper, and fresh corn.
I used bread crumbs, so I added salt and pepper too.

The croquettes were good hot, but even better cold!
A perfect hot-weather meal, served on greens.

(Michael, if you read this--is there a version of this for sardines?)

III. Observing Work

I like when people are in the background of photos I take for the store's IG, though I don't post them there if the person is identifiable and I haven't asked.
This photo is borderline, but I love the accidental red, white, & blue and I feel it's fine to post here, where no one from the neighborhood will see.

Ass't Man sets up great end caps. He mixes and matches by color, not theme. Before he came, no one did them.
He's a designer and this is his strength, not human relations. But he and I keep talking about how to be better at humans, and it's helpful to both of us.
I wouldn't have expected that two summers ago, when he was such an asshole to me.

At the end of last week, Big Boss asked me,
"What are you going to talk about at the next staff meeting?"
(I'd talked about conflict resolution at last week's meeting.)

Surprised, I said I guessed I could talk more about team building.

On reflection, I don't want to.
First of all, it's pointless--there's no follow through on our meetings.
Second, I don't want to get set up as The Professor, as he called me.

I emailed Big Boss this morning explaining the second:
"My father was a professor, but I'm not:
I don't want to lecture my coworkers."

There's already enough class differences between me and most of my coworkers--I don't want to hot it up.

I'm biking off to work now--2.5 miles. I'll soak my head in cold water, and it'll be dry by the time I get there.

Stay cool, now! Or warm, depending on where you are.