Slight Detour: Saturday Slight

I can't decide if this building or the old junior high/new Sandpoint Events Center is the prettiest Sandpoint landmark.

It's okay for Mick Duffs, which has served as the old post office and, later, the city library, to share a tie with the Events Center.

Both buildings are historical, breath-taking and comforting, as a result of their respective restorations.

Our family enjoyed Friday Night Dinner at MickDuff's last evening.

Twas quite a wait, along with dozens of other diners who stood, sat on the grass or on benches outside the restaurant, but, as always, the dinner was worth the wait.

While we were having our dinner, we received some reports and photos from Annie who was attending the Portland Fire-Indiana Fever game in Portland.

She had the opportunity to sit where she could watch Willie's friend Alex as he coached the Fire, a brand-new WNBA team.

She also saw WNBA great Caitlin Clark set or tie records in the winning effort for the Fever.

The game was a sell-out with nearly 20,000 fans.

Annie Love

That's Portland Fire head coach Alex Sarama explaining a play. Alex is a friend of Willie's. Annie Love Photo

🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀

From today's New York Times Morning Newsletter:

The genius of “Errands” (I watched every episode in one feverish gulp) is how it provides a window into the personalities and preoccupations of its subjects.

A stranger appears and announces today’s errand. Then we’re privy to their internal monologues as they carry out the mission, the serendipitous run-ins and pit stops they make along the way.

The episodes are just a couple of minutes long and waste no time on introductions or establishing scenes. We’re passengers for typically private expeditions, instantly thrust into someone’s personal life.

Even when his subjects don’t accomplish the errand, Blau told Alex, the concept still works. “The show is about: I set out to do something, and did I accomplish it? So as mundane as the errand might be, everyone understands that feeling.”

When visiting friends, it’s a treat to see the highlights of their hometown, but I always find it more interesting to run errands with them, to see how they live when I’m not around.

What do they listen to in the car, what’s their hardware store like, who do they run into in the produce aisle? Other people’s errands are revealing of their actual day-to-day lives, not the performed existence — our best restaurant! — that gets presented for company.

On the other hand, I have a friend who loves errands because they’re “excuses to not be with other people,” a rare break from family duties.

She praises the “soft-touch socialization” you get while out and about: the salesperson you chat with before going on your way, the neighbor you catch up with when you run into them at the dump.

I cherish the connective tissue of errands, when you’re between stops, driving or walking. Bursts of activity followed by respites of solitude, each stop its own tidy episode.

Errands get us out of our own homes and out into the world. It’s tempting to hibernate on weekends, to stay in and recharge.

But the errand allows us to, as Virginia Wolfe wrote, “become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one’s own room.”

These paragraphs from the newsletter spoke to me. I totally enjoy doing one or two errands each day.

I've oft repeated that I could spend most of each day perfectly happy in the solitude of my own piece of heavenly peace here in Selle.

Nonetheless, I look forward to a run to the post office or, like yesterday, a trip to Co Op Country Store to pick up some grain and salt for the horses.

Both trips are often short and sweet, but more than enough to satisfy my needs for a quick connection with the outside world.

If I have a brief interaction or two with humans while on these runs, all the better.

Plus, I come home with a new perspective and a renewed desire to enjoy being home.