Musing for therapy

It's been a long slow slog since Thanksgiving. The weather here has been putrid; my wife has had health problems; Haiti has been destroyed, and the political and economic climate continues to fester. Nothing seems to function on a macro level.

You turn to micro local accomplishments to keep your sanity. Yesterday I managed to get a new under the counter light installed in the kitchen and fix a drawer in the study that had a broken track. Both of these items had been waiting for completion for some time. Now they can be filed in the completed bin. There is something nice about the relaxed exhalation that accompanies the end of a small task long posponed.

We heard a fine lecture on Martin Luther King by Joe Angotti (a former NBC news VP) at the college. Strange how the old clips of the Cicero riots of 1968 seemed to have the same people in them as those who populate some of the "Tea Party" rallies. They haven't aged a bit or maybe their kids have simply taken up the cause. King was a commie and provocateur who did not know his place they shouted; the new guy is labeled a Socialist, not even an American, and a consorter with terrorists. The common thread then and now seems to be a virulent uncompromising hatred of the man himself as much as his racial identity. These folks don't just seem to believe that the path of their enemy is wrong or that he is mistaken; they find malevolence in his intent.

To cool down we had a glass of wine with the Blums at the Barnstormer while listening to the duo called Surprizingly Hip. Apparently we got too cool because today we are totally iced in with the lights flickering forebodingly every once in a while. Started The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Andrew McCall-Smith. That is always good for the equilibrium. Small and local with spot on observations about life and love on almost every page. McCall-Smith is a retired medical doctor. I wonder if he were a banker would he have titled the book the Unbearable Tightness of Loans.