It’s not that I read them anymore, but how much I once did. It, too, consists of thirty volumes, and attached as I am to all of them there’s five- Notes of a Dirty Old Man, Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness, Post Office, Factotum and Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (all held together by tape and spit a half century later)-that I’m conflicted about. They were difficult to part with (he’s been my pen-and-ink mentor), but not as hard as my Bukowski library will be. Crumb collection, thirty volumes that included biographies, The Complete Crumb Comics, various books he illustrated, Gotta Have ‘Em (Portraits of Women), his placemat doodles in France and (my favorite) a volume of letters entitled Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me. Saving the Planet: Value and Celebrate the Spiritual Mother.(I could go the yard sale route except Hobo’s lion’s cage is the only thing anyone would want and even that’s a tossup.) He was less amused than the Conformity Corner gal in the meanwhile I’ve gotta get rid of most of my belongings to fit in there. Even suggested we invite local teens to visit after I’ve moved in, show them where losers who don’t save or estate plan end up. My friend Luke’s building the cabin I’ll rent this Fall and the first time I saw its 12 X 20 dimensions I was shocked. It left me speechless, which was more or less the point I guess.Īh well … I’ll move a block west soon enough.

Then yesterday I came home from an afternoon and evening at my buddy Mungo Jerry’s place and what color has she painted her house? “It may be blue, it may be green, but it definitely won’t be grey.” “Don’t worry about my house,” she huffed.

She shook her head, returned to making sure everything in the yard was parallel to everything else. People are calling this ‘Conformity Corner’.” “Because I’ve gotta look at these places every day and the other three are grey already. “That’s me up the street,” I said, “which is why I’d like to ask you a favor.” I pointed to my house, peeking from the cedar trees a hundred yards east. I couldn’t read her expression (she was wearing a mask, of course, even outside in the middle of the woods), but she seemed friendly enough. “Say,” I said, “are you the owner of that home?” I stopped, dared to intrude on her OCD reverie. I was walking past yesterday when I noticed a woman straightening lumber in the yard. Then construction began on the fourth house a couple months ago. Why would anyone want their house to be the same color as a neighbor’s? Hell: why would anyone want anything of theirs to look like someone else’s? (It’d shame me to live there and I’m a wino hotel guy.) Lighter and darker shades of grey certainly … but grey nonetheless. The four nearest the street are all 50 X 100 feet, and the first three already have homes on them.Īnd they’re all painted grey. In “Little Pink Houses ,” Park talks about new homes in his neighborhood, downsizing, and past drinking years.ĭevelopers have cut down the northwest corner of the woods next to me and divided it into eight lots. Park’s column Risen Apes about being a 75-year-old boomer. The court presumably is, too, but with all the usual qualifications of entering a court building.

I'm not sure that Parliament House is ordinarily open to the public (but what do they do when Parliament is sitting?), but the library is open as you would expect. Politically speaking, The Bahamas has two Houses of Parliament - an upper and a lower house, each separately quartered in Parliament Square. There's a statue of Queen Victoria in front of the House of Parliament. There's also gardens and a Cenotaph to visit. You can walk around their quarter of Nassau to see all of these Government buildings - see under Parliament Square. The Bahamians must have heard that old John Cougar Mellencamp song 'Little Pink Houses', because all of their Government buildings are this dusty pink colour, including the Governor- General's house, which is not in the vicinity of the House of Parliament, as well as the court buildings and the public library which are near to this one.

Little pink houses