7/17/2026

 Friday, July 17, 2026

1917 Royal Proclamation by King George V changed the name of British Royal family from German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor

1959 Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey discovered the partial skull of a new species of early human ancestor now called Paranthropus boisei, which lived in Africa almost 2 million years ago

1962 The Senate rejected Medicare for aged Americans

2025 The British government announced it would lower the voting age to 16, allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in the upcoming general election

In bed at 9:15, on La-Z Boy from 9:35 till 10 (low glucose alarm), up at 5; 0515 203.0 136/83/63 108, 0525 114/77/62?!?

Morning meds at 9:10 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 9 a.m.

Trump's election security speech last night.  Old lies were repeated, with claims of non-existent proof, evidence, facts.  He is setting the stage for massive interference in and subversion of the November election and the 2026 election.  He had powerful members of his cabinet in the room as he delivered the lies, and they gave him a standing ovation at its conclusion.  His administration is a den of thieves, a cabal of criminals, a confederation of anti-democratic conspirators.  My country is in deeper shit than it has ever been in my lifetime.  Stand back and stand by.  

Tell Me Everything.  I finished this novel at midday today.  As is so often the case, I am not quite sure what I think about it.   A novel is just a long story, and Elizabeth Strout tells a good story, and this one was surely a good story.  I was already pretty familiar with Lucy Barton and with her first husband William from reading Strout's 4 previous novels about her, but I was not familiar with Bob Burgess or Olive Kitteredge, not having read her earlier novels about them.  I'm now inclined to go back and read those earlier novels to learn more about what made them the way they were.  We did watch the HBO Max 4 part series based on Olive Kitteredge, but it left me scratching my head about what made her tick.  There is no way a movie or TV series can get inside a character's heart and soul the way a good novel can, and Elizabeth Strout excels precisely at getting inside her characters' characters, what makes them tick.

Tell Me Everything is more about Bob Burgess than any other character.  He is a lawyer, indeed a criminal defense attorney, as is his brother Jim.  He is a good man, a mensch, and much of the tension in the story arises from his never-realized desire to have an affair with Lucy.  He has been married to his second wife, Margaret, a Unitarian minister, for 15 years, but he has a serious crush on Lucy.  Bob is a compassionate guy, as is his creator, Ms. Strout.  So are Lucy and Margaret. There are no pure villains in her stories; even the bad guys have reasons for their badness.   A telling scene in the novel is when Bob chews out his nephew, Larry, for treating his father, Jim Burgess, as an evil person.   He instructs the nephew that his father is not evil, but rather a broken person, and that we are all broken.  

“These are broken people. Big difference between being a broken person and being evil. In case you don’t know. And if you don’t think everyone is broken in some way, you’re wrong. I’m telling you this because you have been so fortunate in your life, you probably don’t even know such broken people exist.”This is a central point in Strout's novels.  That, and that we never really understand each other.

This is a central point in all of Strout's novels that I have read.  This, and the fact that we can never really understand and communicate with each other. 

“Lucy said, looking at him now, “My point is that every person on this earth is so complicated. Bob, we’re also complicated, and we match up for a moment—or maybe a lifetime—with somebody because we feel that we are connected to them. And we are. But we’re not in a certain way because nobody can go into the crevices of another’s mind, even the person can’t go into the crevices of their own mind, and we live— all of us— as though we can.”

She writes that we are all lonely people, yearning for real connection, communication, understanding one another and being understood, but never quite making it, even with those to whom we are closest.

Her stories also always subliminally raise the question of to what degree our actions are the result of free will.

 “We like to think that our lives are within our control, but they may not be completely so. We are necessarily influenced by those who have come before us.”

I enjoy her writing and her focus on questions of free will & determinism, how difficult or impossible it is to really know one another or even ourselves in some ways, and loneliness as a part of the human condition.  Although I'm glad I read the book, I thought it was not as well-written as the other 5 books of hers that I've read this year.  It seemed kind of forced or contrived, especially the conversations between Lucy and Olive and even the weekly walks taken by Lucy and Bob.