30 January 2011

Notes - Home again & the nightly news

         Home by seventeen hundred hours. Busy weekend with Kim, Paul and Owen in Cleveland, Ohio. Geraci’s Restaurant for take out pizza and salad, Friday night; Stove Oven, Saturday noon, Happy Buddha Chinese for take out supper and First Watch for breakfast this Sunday morning. Lunch with Mary Lou at Potbelly’s at Polaris north of Westerville on the way home. Saturday night you rented “Social Network” from Red Box and while the four of you began the film after Owen was put to bed, Kim fell asleep before it was over. Paul has one more week with cardio at the main branch of the Clinic then a week off before two months at the pediatrics branch in Akron. Kim is busy this time of year with Case grad students checking out careers before graduation.

         Watching Owen at one is both fun and challenging as he is walking and independent and wants to do what he wants to do at the moment. I have forgotten how it was – busy is the operative word. No wonder you blink when the baby is born and the next thing you know sheorhe is looking forward to grade school, high school then college, and blink again, and parenting moves to the side track. I am so glad Carol and I had our summers off and vacations during the school year for good family bonding as she grew. No regrets.

         Time to relax, old man. One of your focuses in Cleveland was a quick trip to the Apple Store and you spent time checking out the new computers. You were hoping to wait until summer when OS Lion comes out, but you got the bug and are desiring a thirteen inch MacBook Air with a flash drive rather than a hard drive.

         I don’t know what happened, it just hit me, ‘I can get this now rather than wait,’ but I am still debating. Carol just said we might have an ice storm on Tuesday. Have to wait and see. Masterpiece Theatre tonight. It was nice to head north and it is nice to be home. Nothing better than sleeping in your own bed.

         Post, orndorff. – Amorella. 




        Upon watching NBC Nightly News, you realize the dangers in Egypt and other middle eastern countries that support the United States. Your immediate overall concern is with the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, but beyond this you wonder how the average people are faring. Vigilante squads. The need for civil order. Looting, protecting the antiquities. Students, with additions of poor and average citizens wanting better human rights and a better sense of democracy.
         I watched the soldiers as well as private citizens protecting the museums. The destroying of mummies. Sacking/destroying some of the Tutankhamen treasures. Why would people do this? I do not understand. Anger, from many sides, no doubt. When I heard some of the prisons were opened and criminals escaped I thought of the national motto of the French:  “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”  Shades of the much earlier French Revolution. And, the American Revolution before that as well as Rousseau’s Social Contract even earlier. It seems to me that human civilization should follow a social contract. Certainly in the Merlyn books I would assume so, even among the Dead. Human beings are social creatures first. This is how we survive. Gallows humor does not work here. I am at a loss of words.
         Good. I am not about to put any in your mouth, orndorff. As for the books. Indeed, a social contract exists among the Dead and eventually among the Living too. Fiction has its uses. Humor stays intact though. The Dead see through the humor, to more humor. Post. – Amorella. 

No comments:

Post a Comment