Eileen returns tomorrow!

 

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Eileen comes home tomorrow night. She will get on an early plane in Beijing.She arrives in Chicago 10 AM local time. But she is planning to take a train to Holland which means she won’t arrive until late in the evening. The train departs Chicago around 6 PM and arrives here around 10:30. I feel a little guilty for not driving down and picking her up at the airport. But that’s how she decided she wanted to do it, to spare me drives back and forth on top of my regular schedule which is full these days.

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Yesterday afternoon, after rehearsing for around three hours on the new Pasi, I came home, made a martini, and sat in the back yard and read. The pics today are ones I snapped between drinks.

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I think I’ve done okay in Eileen’s absence. I spend a lot of time alone anyway: practicing, reading, studying. But I do miss her. I was thinking of contacting my doctor today about my elevated BP, but of course it wasn’t that high today (135/100). I will keep an eye on it and if it does become elevated again for any length of time, I will contact her. I was thinking of doing this online since Spectrum Health provides a pretty good interface. I think I can leave a message for Dr. Fuentes there.

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This evening is an AGO meeting at my church. Martin Pasi will give some sort of presentation. I have to provide coffee, plates and napkins. Today sometime I will drop by and ask how to make coffee at church. Hopefully the secretary or someone knows.

“Mother” from Tell Me Again how the White Heron Rises and Flies Across the Nacreous River ... – Hayden Carruth – Google Books

I am systematically working my way through several books of poetry, a poem or two a day. One of  these is Last Poems by Hayden Carruth. It’s kind of a clever collection. The editor went through Carruth’s many volumes of poems and chose the last poem in each volume.  Yesterday on Mother’s Day I coincidentally began reading the poem, “Mother.” It’s a long one. I have linked the google book hopefully to open at this poem if you’re curious.

I’m still reading this long poem and did not finish it this morning. The first section of the poem, “The Event,”  is a wrenching description of the death of Carruth’s mother (Happy Mother’s Day!).  She seem to have completely lost her mind as she was dying. At one point Carruth bemoans how medicine has improved so much and is giving her a lingering death. When I read the following line, I had to laugh out loud.

“For every technological advance, intelligence makes a moral regression.”

Heather Ann Thompson Thinks the Justice System Is Unfair – The New York Times

Short interview from yesterday’s NYT mag. Thompson won the 2017 Pulitzer in History. She’s impressive.

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 Where Anti-Tax Fervor Means ‘All Services Will Cease’ – The New York Times

As with so many things in the US right now, it’s complicated. People get used to one level of contribution subsidized by timber harvesting on local public lands. Plus income is down. One local says conservative is one thing, community is another. Public services cease, but in one case cited budget tightening resulting in a creative use of the combined county Park department and the juvenile department. In this case, the result was positive. It’s complicated.

I believe strongly in paying taxes but also I see greed consuming our government and business community (Is there a difference?) usually at the expense of people barely making it.

Perfect dinosaur fossil found in Canada makes public debut – CNN.com

Not a skeleton, a fossil. Wow.

For Liberals, Is It Time to Move to Norway? – The New York Times

This author staying but not after some consideration.

The Republican’s Guide to Presidential Behavior – The New York Times

A list of President Trumps misbehavior (madness?). Bookmark for future reference. More instances cited in comments.

Thanks to Mom, the Marxist Revolutionary – The New York Times

Another author talking to his dead mom, learning stuff from reading her diary.

 

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