We voted. Actually, we already had, via absentee ballot. The occasion was mostly a primary, but voters approved a Medicare extension, so that was cool. However, early indications are that barely 30% of eligible Boone County voters exercised their right. I hope to be corrected on that percentage.
We’re also both on tenterhooks waiting for our schools to decide on an opening. With the kind of planning that goes into days, weeks, months and semesters of hour-by-hour teaching, August 4th (make that 5th) shuts the window to a bit of a crack. I know these decisions are difficult, but quality education should be a high priority, y’know?
The two big reminders of my own mortality this summer has presented me pushed me to get in for a check-up. Also, I’m changing physicians, as my last one seemed to be just checking me off the clipboard and couldn’t even keep my medical history straight. I attempted to return to my previous physician, whom I’d left after he scheduled me for a colonoscopy, where I heard the surgeon tell me right after I came out of anesthesia, “Hey, I know you love this procedure, but you didn’t have to come in for another two years!” Smart ass! BUT I was chapped off that I spent some money I didn’t need to and wasn’t even given a choice. According to the receptionist, who asked me to explain why I left the clinic in the first place, my previous physician is “conservative”–I don’t find that word perfectly comforting, but if it means he’s not into taking chances with my health, OK, I get it. Anyway, the receptionist had to check on a couple of matters and call me back, which she didn’t. Gripping reading, eh?
I started what promises to be a great book, Lawrence Wright’s The End of October. Wright’s one of my favorite nonfiction authors–his The Looming Tower, about the historical run-up to 9/11, is a classic–but this is a novel–about a pandemic breaking in Jakarta with a 70% lethality rate. I needed some light reading after the events of the last two months.
Streaming for Strivers:
“Trad jazz” sounds boring, but not when Sidney Bechet’s in the house.
The Overeem Farewell Tour: Dispatches from the Public School Trenches 