Lab Assistant

I hesitate to show this photograph in public, because some of you know, or will guess, what it is we are looking at in the scope. I cannot resist, however, showing off my little science pal, whose lab duties include--but are not limited to--flipping the pages of the phone book, pounding my glasses on the table six or seven times, smiling at his mother, grasping for the microscope, the sharp glass slide, the hot lamp, my coffee...all of it.
We found what we were looking for, but we still don't know what it is. Nothing "in the literature". We wait for culture results.

Thinking at the Baltimore Museum of Art

Matisse, Picasso, and Rodin all made the infant "A" list. Rembrandt's portrait of his son Titus riveted us both for several minutes, as did Gaugin's Woman of the Mango.
Motherwell made him cry.
Then we went out to the sculptures and had a bottle of milk under the wisteria.

Credit Union

One waits at the Credit Union. An older man takes your name, then asks again, then asks how do you spell it. Then he asks what your business is today, then asks again, then looks at you skeptically. He writes this down. Then you wait.
I sit down next to a man, older, who is probably a cop. It's a city credit union, so most of us here are cops or teachers. Next to him is another cop--confirmed when he makes a quick call to someone to talk about the information he sent on to Homicide about that guy, and he's waiting to hear back.
We sit, waiting.
From somewhere a boy, nine or ten, is now sitting on the far side, beside the telephoning policeman, whom he asks a long series of interesting questions about sports, money, his family, his profession.

"How old are you?"
"Forty-nine."

"How old were you when you were younger?"

The three of us, older, laugh gently, remembering and trying to remember.