snippets_of_memory past the teacher left the classroom and came back with a blue recycling bin full of small red keyboards, with even smaller screens that could show only a handful of characters of text. "remember children before keyboarding always do your stretches!" she led our small hands in silly little stretches of our wrists and fingers, "this will prevent strain," she said kindly. then she distributed booklets, directed us to enter the appropriate alphanumeric code to launch the lesson and sat back as our tiny hands went to work. at the end of each exercise the little screen popped out accuracy and speed scores, that once were so important to securing certain jobs. 220814 ... past the blank line used the sideways triangle brackets that blather ate and said: "a sad lad had a salad..." those exercises often focused on one line or one hand only, to foster touch typing, i guess. 220814 ... past the same school, a few years later. probably my first crush. we were in the same class throughout elementary school (there was one class per grade, barely) and amongst the smallest three (a steady grouping but the exact order of the three of us rotated), and when we moved to the middle school we'd walk up the hill and wait in the formal front hall of the edwardian-era elementary school for our younger siblings, sitting side by side on the benches and looking at a mural, details of which i can barely remember but that definitely included the face of a premier that came from our town half a century or so earlier. 220815 ... past a high school assembly, a drama class was putting on some kind of sex ed play that played a bit too suggestively for some of the teachers. 221009 ... past grad club was crowded for the show even though it was a terrible venue for that sort of thing. an old house, barely standing, pieces falling off now and then. nq and his band stepped on to the make shift stage near the kitchen, dressed the urban cowboys that they are. this was towards what may have been the tail end of that alt country screen on six shooters records (though nr could probably speak to its current state better than i). the guys from elliott brood were also there, in the middle of the crowd, dancing and living their best life in the dingy graduate student bar with cheap beer while in the midst of recording an album in a nearby studio. 221027 ... past (makes typos) alt country SCENE not screen 221027 ... past (provides context) (this would have been march 2014, because nq was selling hand labelled CDs as their last record had not yet been released -- the future happens anyways. i did some searching and cross referencing and this concert was not blathed about by me at the time.) 221027 ... past sitting in the shadow of nelson at trafalgar square in the heart of empire, reading the summary report of the truth and reconciliation commission. 221107 ... past early december 2016, glasgow. i was walking to the university from maryhill along the kelvin in a fall jacket with light gloves and a ball cap. the few scots out were bundled in their heaviest coats, shivering against the barely freezing weather. kelvingrove was beautiful. the trees draped in hoarfrost, the green grass sparkling as the sun struggled through the clouds. an abandoned bridge footing stood against the shore of the meandering stream. i was listening to the "second decade" podcast episode about the last london frost fair (the last time the thames froze solid). it was perfect. 221210 ... past rolling across a bridge into manhattan, my first and only visit to new york city. the day had seen a heavy snow fall -- it was a few days after christmas maybe 10 years or so ago -- and the streets were abandoned. i drove through the empty metropolis, the entire width and length of the avenues to myself, floating on snow tires and watching fair weather urban car owners struggle to figure out how to unbury their rides. this, i have been told, is not most people's first taste of the megalopolis. 221217 ... past sitting in a geography class in the late 90s, the teacher put on a vhs for the day on weather patterns, the water cycle, and the urban heat effect. the narrator described how urban areas sometimes get more rain because of increased evaporation due to the space dedicated to roads and parking lots. "so remember," the voice said as a video of a downpour transitioned to a sunny beach scene, "don't cancel that trip to the lake or river just because it's raining in town." 230810 what's it to you? who go blather from