Recent visit & activity

Well FINALLY the new book is done and is out to Wiley for copy editing. Allan Tasman tells me that it is the easiest project he has ever done with anyone. Perhaps that is because I had no ego tied up in it and I did the majority of the work. Victim of my own competence. So, we will see now how it sells.
Shannon and Jon and twins were here during the third week in March. Tara and Mike came up for a day during that time and it was so very cute to see the babies playing. Sophie and Alina hit it off right away. Jacqueline was a bit more demure, but she soon joined in on the fun. Photos on my facebook page. So, Brian and I are reading up a storm. I am in the home slide of a biography of Madame Chiang Kai Shek. What an extraordinary and despicable woman she was. As for Chiang, he was just as bad as Mao.
What I am learning is that the U.S. wasted countless taxpayer dollars arming him and he simply hoarded the weapons. Mao couldn't help but win because Chiang was so pusillanimous and Mao actually had an ideology that he could sell. What did Chiang have? Militaristic nationalism, corruption, and opium. Arrgghh. We had McCarthy hearings over all of this. A pox on both the communists and the Chiang Kai Shek crowd!
Life continues apace and well. We are thrilled about health care reform passing, although we would like to have had a public option. But policy is incremental and the GOP and their tea party lunatic fringe have been so obstructionistic, that we were lucky to get what we got.
I am sort of disappointed in the press in that they simply don't hammer home the realities of what is going on with health care and the fact that we have such a dismal track record when compared to the rest of the world. Just look at our infant mortality rate! It is disgraceful for the so called "best" health care system in the world. They don't talk nearly enough about the other health indicators. They also don't bother to point out to the nay sayers who talk about the waits in Canada and other public option countries that we have to wait here as well. People with HMOs have to wait -- I did for 48 hours before I had an MRI because the morons wouldn't approve it for my back pain. AND if one has no health insurance you wait forever. And die. At any rate there is so much for the press to argue. Perhaps they don't because the GOP-tea partiers simply do not listen and refuse to engage in any discourse that makes their position untenable. I found it interesting today that the NY Times pointed out that the tea partiers were > 80% Republican, many were out of work AND ON GOVERNMENT subsidies. But they want smaller government. Go figure.
So we saw Antony and Cleopatra this past weekend and then met the Tulmans for Thai food. The opera was interesting, but I don't need to see this one again. Far too much recitative, the tenor was weak, the soprano was the size of Precious (the movie) although she had a great voice, and the staging was really odd. It just did not work for me. Back to the more classic operas.
We attended our last lectures on cubism at the Museum of Art and they have left Brian hungry for more.
He will have to take an Art History course. I think he may have missed some foundational concepts since he had not ever taken art history and I had. Next year when I turn 65 and no more UMDNJ (bye-bye!) we will be able to audit courses at Bucks County Community College for free under their seniors program.
His new bee in bonnet is that he wants us to take Spanish to get ready for our trip to South America.
We had Alina for an overnight. What a joy it is to have her with us! When she runs through the meadow after Brian yelling "Dzia Dzio!" it is very touching. Her fun thing to do is to help him chase the Canada geese away. They are the bane of our existence during mating season.
Today we are meeting our Doylestown group for a class on pairing chocolate and wine. There goes the diet again, and next week we have two plays (how did THAT happen?) and another museum lecture on Indian art.
Ken and Bill are planning a belated birthday dinner for me and we are headed out to North Carolina to visit the twins, Shannon and Jon after that. Whew. Having fun is exhilarating and tiring.
I was friended on facebook by one of my neices who lives in Warsaw. What a cutie. Facebook can be both inane and a lot of fun. I think that it works well if one ignores and does not friend the purveyors of inanity. It is great when linked with goodreads. And I have learned a lot from my Polish groups that I have friended. Most of it has to do with what I have to learn and read before next year's trip to Poland and the family reunion.

The ongoing project

Whew it has been a whirlwind month. How refreshing it is to step out of our usual repertoire of reading choices. The book clubs have forced us to stretch and read things that neither of us would read -- for example Brian is reading some great fiction and I am reading more history. Now there's a reversal! But both of us are enjoying the ones that we read together. We had a blast reading Water for Elephants and both adored the book.
I so feel as if I am on a senior slide. It is an effort for me to get to the computer to finish up works in progress. But I finally managed to complete the full manuscript for the Tasman-Mohr collaboration. Yay! Luckily, being the important personage he is, Allan is not too timely so he did not notice me dragging my feet in the last few months. At work I find that I could really not care what is going on and I basically read a book through meetings. Always hated those anyway as they are such a waste of precious time.
Time -- ah yes -- what a precious commodity and more precious every day. I was reading an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a gambler. The guy is unemployed (lost job) has a wife and two kids and goes to the casino in Chester several times a week to -- as he puts it -- "kill time." Why would anyone want to kill time. Time is to fill with interesting things to do and things to learn -- not to kill. I wonder how many people out there (gambling addicts and others) are living lives of quiet and gray desperation where it is so dismal that they have to kill the precious commodity of time.
This past few weeks we met one of our "art of cooking" groups at a Venezualan Restaurant. Oh Yum. I've had a lot of cuisine, but never Venezualan. It was great! This group is run by a chef and he does interesting activities such as visiting the Terminal Market and the Italian Market, cooking classes, and sampling interesting fare across the city.
We attended an all Brahms performance at the symphony. The performance was wonderful, but Brahms is really not my favorite. I prefer more Romantic rather than Baroque and then my favorite, Berlioz, who was a true character, is always a treat. We attended the Picasso and the Avant Garde special exhibit. It was very well done and on Saturday we will be taking the first half of the course in cubism at the museum, so that will enrich what we saw. The last course we took (last month) was on the Renaissance and it was great. The U. of Penn. art history professor really brought the art and architecture to life, placing it in the context of what was going on historically and economically in Europe.
We visited Jon and Shannon for 4 days and took the kids to Gymboree and other kiddie activities. Jacqueline sure does like her Dziadzio, while Sophie seems to favor Babcia.
We watched Alina for a weekend while Tara and Mike went to the beer festival and she wore us out. The child has soooo much energy and she is always up and happy. What a temperament! She loves her Dziadzio, favoring him over me. We met the kids in Philly for lunch earlier this week for their anniversary and when she saw him in the restaurant, she yelled "Dziadzio!" at the top of her lungs and ran to him, throwing herself into his arms. It was truly a Kodak moment.
On a final note, sadly we had to put Wookie and Bevo down today. Wookie was almost 18 and Bevo was 15. They both had arthritis and had trouble going up and down the stairs. Wookie was in renal failure and drinking and peeing everywhere. Bevo was spraying to cover Wookie's scent. It became an untenable situation. This is the first time that we will be without an animal in over 30 years. Very sad.