Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Sarah and Christian arrive
In bed On the BL until 2:30 when I awoke with moderate pain in my left shoulder, right wrist/hand, and both hips. Took a short walk around the house to get some movement in my joints, especially the hips. Around 4, I loaded the dishwasher and started a load of laundry. I let Lilly out at 4:15 (second outing; first at 11:30).
Pain, etc. Both hips have become pretty arthritic but the normal pain on standing and walking after sitting for a while decreases with the walking. Also, I've noticed that the pain in my right wrist is localized more on the right side of the wrist, i.e., the side opposite to where the severe degenerative changes in the wrist are.
I'm grateful for modern household conveniences, the dishwasher and the washer and dryer. I'm pleased too that our washer and dryer are on the main floor of the house, off the kitchen, rather than in the basement, where there are stairs to deal with. I'm thinking back to my childhood home in the basement at 7303 S. Emerald. Our front door was in our kitchen, in a depressed stairwell space. Our back door led into the apartment building's main basement area where there were storage lockers, a furnace area, a space for old-fashioned wringer washers, and the space for hanging wet laundry to dry, right outside our back door. In those laundry areas, I learned to like the nice, clean smell of bleach and of wet fabric drying. At some time my mother acquired a more modern washing machine, i.e., a top-loading cabinet without wringers on it, and it was located in our small bathroom. I assume it drained into our bathtub though I don't remember. My mother also acquired a fancy (to my way of thinking) Electrolux Vacuum Cleaner to replace our old push-pull carpet sweeper. I assume the vacuum cleaner was a gift, perhaps a hand-me-down because the only carpet we had was a small one that fit into our dinky living room. The only cookware I recall were two cast iron skillets, one small and one large and a coffee percolator, although we must have had a couple of pots and maybe a baking pan. There were no built-in cabinets in the kitchen, just one wooden cupboard which along with the kitchen table and chairs comprised the kitchen furnishings. I have no recollection of sitting down at that table and eating a meal with my mother or my father, only with my sister, and I suspect we had only two chairs. I still remember finding World War II food ration tickets on top of that cupboard. My addled memory tells me there was also a very small pantry but as I recall the layout of the kitchen (and the rest of the apartment), I can't imagine where it could have been. It was 60 years ago that we moved out of that tiny basement flat with the cockroaches and the asbestos-wrapped steam pipes running along our ceilings and moved to the three-bedroom, second-floor apartment next door. For us, it was like moving from the old Bowery to Park Avenue.
What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain? is an article in The New Yorker online. It's a tale of tremendous decline marked by two main forces: austerity and Brexit. It's clear to me that the kinds of terrible results experienced in Britain will be experienced here in the U.S. when the Republicans win complete control of the government.
A voicemail from Ed Felsenthal let me know that he had received a text from Anne about Lyn's death. He wanted her phone number so he could call or text her. I'm not sure he's into texting or he'd know he could return her text from his phone without knowing her number. I know he doesn't do much if any emailing. In any case, I called back ad got his voicemail and left her phone number. (Perhaps it was a voicemail he received from her, rather than a text.)
The Oven-Bird
There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.
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