Monday 07/19/2026
Channing House in the NYT
Today the New York Times published a story that features Channing House and some of my neighbors: Senior Living Facility in Distress as Immigrant Workers are Forced Out.
Back to the boring diary part
I start the day with an early standard walk and a coffee. At 10:30 I join the Event Coordinators meeting in the newly refurbished Board Room, which has been given an absolutely ghastly new carpet. I decide on the fly that I will take August off as far as Contemporary Music Exposure. It’s a tradition at CH that regular meetings are suspended in August so why not that series also.
As soon as the meeting is over I grab the carry-out lunch sack I had ordered, and drive Fred down to FOPAL where 11 boxes of books await my disposition. I end up sending 5 boxes to the bargain room and another box to the high value group, so I suppose I priced and shelved four boxes worth.
Back home to zone out and nap for an hour. Then supper, this time with David and Helen and Kathleen. Much talk about cataract surgery, everybody at the table except me has had both eyes done. My right eye is getting close to needing replacement, but not yet.
Tomorrow is the writers meeting, and the cue is “describe a food item, its look, its taste, etc.” A couple nights ago I inaugurated a new jar of Skippy and decided to write about that. So I did that tonight.
Changing of the Jars
The new jar rests massively in my hand, smooth and slightly resilient. It drops onto the kitchen counter with a solid, meaty thump. I bring the old jar down from the cupboard, so light and flimsy, like a plastic bubble in my hands. I easily unscrew its blue lid and set it aside; then rummage in the drawer for the rubber spatula, unused since that jar was itself new.
The lid on the new jar resists at first, and I welcome the grip of its intricately serrated circumference. Cap off, I am faced with the metal dome of its seal. Using fingernails and then the edge of a paring knife, I tease out one of the three little flaps, and carefully roll the seal away from the rim. It begins by peeling away cleanly, but then of course the last third sticks. I am impatient; I yank it off, leaving the glued remnant of aluminized paper around a third of the rim. Anyway, I can now see the perfect brown surface of the peanut butter, lightly studded with chunks like a brown terrazzo floor.
I take the old jar in my left hand and the spatula in my right, and begin the cleanup: rotating the jar while holding the spat at first one angle, then another, to gather every remaining ounce of peanut butter from the shoulder under the opening, down the smooth sides, and around the inverted dome of the bottom of the jar. Several times I unload the spatula by scraping it across the rim of the new jar. I am pleased that when the old jar is completely clean, there is still a bit of room in the open top of the new jar. I was not too precipitous in the changing of the jars; just right in fact.
I return the two blue lids to their helical threads and put the new jar—so satisfyingly solid—in the cupboard. I toss the old, depleted jar in the recycle basket and begin licking the spatula clean. The ceremony is complete.
Codgerville 