Urban Notes

Weekly Observations

January 4, Sunday

One of my friends posted this WhatsApp status… “Anyone who did not wish you a Happy New Year did so not by accident. It reflects that you may not matter to them.” Of course, I had not wished him, or almost anyone else, a Happy New Year.

I Hate People. This is what I read on the front of a young man’s shirt. He was wearing a wedding ring and having a friendly conversation with a woman who was probably his wife. I guess I should have been wearing the shirt myself, since clearly, according to my friend’s WhatsApp status, people don’t matter to me.

January 5, Monday

“Turn in your skeletons,” I overheard a teacher telling her students at a school where I substituted today. “I laid my skeleton on your desk already,” one student said.

The technical high school where I worked today offers training in fields such as health, business, technology, and construction.

I stepped into the staff restroom in the school office and was hit by a powerful wall of perfume. It was so strong it made my throat burn and my eyes water. A large sign on the wall read, “For the health, comfort, and consideration of those with allergies, please refrain from spraying perfume in this space.” I don’t even have allergies.

I watched a teacher demonstrate to her class how to change the bed sheets while a patient is lying in the bed. The room was full of real hospital beds. Life-sized plastic mannequins lay in the beds like sick patients, their mouths formed into a grimace. “Start with the first step and knock on the door,” she said. The students knocked on the beds, pretending they were doors.

She showed them how to fold bed sheets while keeping them from touching the floor. “If they touch the floor,” she said, “they need to go to the laundry.” One bed was filled with broken mannequins. Some were missing a head, some an arm or a leg. An arm and a hand lay alone on a desk.

Another teacher showed her students how to check their pulse. “Practice checking your pulse every day,” she said. “Ask your friends and family members if you can check their pulse. If you have a cat or a dog, check their pulse. They might not like it, so you have to do it when they’re sleeping.”

One 15 or 16 year-old boy sat in the cafeteria rocking back and forth in his chair and saying, “Sorry I ate Takis instead of apples. Now my mouth is on fire. It sucks.” He didn’t modulate his voice at all, just spoke in a monotone as if he was a robot. Each time a person walked past his table, he said this. No one responded or paid him any attention.

When I walked into one class to help a middle-aged teacher, she was sitting at her desk eating yogurt. Her hands shook so badly she could hardly eat. “I’m eating this so I don’t pass out,” she said.

I overheard some girls discussing how their moms act at home. One girl said that the scariest day of her life was when a guest took a second serving of her pasta but not the pasta that her mom had made. “My mom looked dead into my eyes, and I could tell she was furious.”

Another girl said, “My mom says ‘This is my house, you can’t just run around doing whatever you want.’ Then when she wants help she says, ‘Why am I doing all the work around here, this is our house. All of you should be helping me with the work.’”

January 6, Tuesday

Here’s a paragraph from a news article I read…

“A woman using an outhouse in Alaska got more than she bargained for when a black bear took a bite out of her backside. ‘I got out there and sat down on the toilet and immediately something bit my butt,’ Shannon Stevens told the Associated Press.”

January 7, Wednesday

This afternoon I saw a squirrel jump up onto an outdoor ashtray and seize a cigarette butt in its jaws. I wanted to know how it was going to use it, so I followed, but soon it disappeared out of sight.

Since I worked for FedEx today, I delivered two boxes to an upper-scale ice cream shop in downtown Columbus. The owner was happy to see me. “Finally,” he said, “I’ve been waiting for three weeks instead of 2 days like they promised.” Just as I was leaving, he held up his hand. I thought he was trying to give me a high five, so I high-fived him back. It was the most awkward high five I ever experienced. I realized too late that he had been reaching his hand out to sign my scanner, not give me a high five. What made it worse is that the palm of my hand was black from the grime of handling boxes all day. I’m guessing that as soon as the door closed behind me, he washed his hands with an industrial-grade soap.

January 8, Thursday

“Honk if a kid falls out,” this is the bumper sticker I saw on a school bus.

Another sticker on a gray Toyota Corolla said, “Please tailgate, it makes me feel needed.”

January 9, Friday

There were 1,043 traffic fatalities in Ohio in 2025, compared to 1,077 in 2024, according to Ohio State Highway Patrol data.

“Couples with fur babies looking to tie the knot may want to include their dog as part of the wedding day festivities,” I read in the Columbus Dispatch. “Some states like Colorado allow dogs to use a pawprint to serve as a legitimate signature when serving as a wedding witness or even an officiant. Always double-check with your local county clerk to confirm whether a paw print can serve as a legal gesture ahead of the wedding day.”

January 10, Saturday

A year ago, Rachel and I bought this painting of the three magi in Puerto Rico from the artist who painted it.

In Puerto Rico, the Three Kings are celebrated on January 6. On the night of January 5, children gather grass or herbs and place them in a box under the bed or by the door for the Magi’s camels. By morning, the grass is gone and small gifts or sweets appear in its place.

The day itself is marked by church services, family gatherings, and community festivals. Towns host parades with people dressed as Melchor, Gaspar, and Baltasar, the traditional names given to the three Kings accompanied by traditional music and food like arroz con gandules and pasteles. Homes often display Three Kings figurines or folk carvings, and the celebration signals the official end of the Christmas season.

T. S. Eliot, “Journey of the Magi”

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times when we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wineskins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Source: Collected Poems 1909-1962, © 1963 T. S. Eliot