Moving right along...

Last weekend, you will recall, my main project to work on while on Retreat was a Filemaker Pro database-based library checkout system for Backstreet Arts. Since I quickly came to realize that the best approach would be to merge the sign-in database and the library database, I had to wait until I could get down to Backstreet yesterday to do that. (I don’t have remote access to the desktop computer there.)

Importing data and scripts is a snap, but there’s no way to simply merge one database’s tables/relationships/layouts with another. I had to rebuild the layouts piece by piece, then patch all the broken links in the scripts. Not a problem, though it took a while.

And the good news is that by last night I had wrangled the beast into submission. I have a few details to polish and double-check today, but any further bells and whistles can come later.

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And now for something completely different. When I went to put away the execrable 50-year-old children’s fantasy tale I discovered during the Great Study Reorganization, I rediscovered a cache of similar blank books from around the same period.

I am delighted to report that at least some of my writing from that period is perfectly cromulent. For example, I wrote a handful of cautionary tales à la Hillaire Belloc, and this one I think is quite charming.

The Story of Kate,

who would not go to bed.

There was a child whose name was Kate
Who always tried to stay up late.
She’d scream and kick and sulk and shout
And usually she’d win out
And stay up late to watch TV,
Gloating with a fiendish glee.
The morning after, when her mother,
Father, dog, and little brother
Tried to rouse her from her bed:
“Get up! Get up! You sleepyhead!”
They shouted, and at last she rose
From out her sluggardly repose.

The trouble was (and this is what
Will the constitute the darkest spot
In this sad tale of ours) she’d fall
Asleep at any time and place at all.
Her parents warned her that she’d end
Most badly if she did not mend
Her ways, but she refused to heed
Or even recognize her need
To sleep a bit more every night.
And now we come to her sad plight.

One day poor Kate went out to play,
A warm and sunny day in May.
During a game of “Cops and Thieves,”
She chanced upon a pile of leaves
And, hiding in it warm and deep,
Immediately fell asleep.

Now here’s the sad part of our song:

The garbage workers came along.
“Look, garbage!” they rejoicing cried
And swept the bundle up inside
And drove the garbage truck away.

We have not seen Kate since that day.

Y’all probably not encourage me to write more of these. Fifty years has only deepened my cynicism.