ish yooz

since i've mostly been struggling to stay on the mechanical bull that is my emotional self this week, rather than birding or reading or blogging, i don't have much to report today. but i did get to see family friend Beauvais Lyons, printmaker and artist extraordinaire who is director of the Hokes Archives at the University of Tennessee. Very inspiring artist who is steadily gaining notoriety and who, i think, will likely be viewed as a very important artist in the American intellectual landscape.

AND

They are tearing down the Milwaukee Avenue White Castle!! this is huge news for:
--the pigeons and seagulls of the parking lot which is about to be churned to asphalt dust to make way for whatever luxury condo/luxury car dealer/luxury office building they are going to build;
--the grizzle-bearded, raggedly dignified and silent shopping cart man who lives in the tiny, illegally occupied vinyl-sided shack in the middle of the sidewalk three feet from the White Castle front window;
--the crackheads of the alleyway behind the Congress Pizza across from the White Castle, for whom White Castle is their non-pizza binge alternative. I had to step over one of them yesterday, which I haven't had to do for almost a year, so i can tell they're particularly depressed about these developments.