bastetmax's Xanga

Murder in the Midwest

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:31:12 GMT

Here's the Debut of my review at www.Blogcritics.org, a division of Technorati.
I will also be doing blogs for Technorati. The technical hills to climb were a bit steep, but I'm here now.

Here's the book review:

“He was a quiet man. Reclusive, really. But he didn’t seem capable of this.”
“Kept to himself.”
“Come to think of it, he was a little odd…but all this…”

The stories after horrific mass killings are nearly always the same. While circumstances and locations differed — students in Colorado or Virginia, federal workers in Oklahoma — all the victims were killed, targeted without mercy by loners no one would have noticed the day before.

Television and radio pundits have waxed eloquent discussing the recent slayings at Ft. Hood, Texas, by a heretofore unknown Major Nidal Malik Hasan. This signifies the topping off of unrelenting pressure in society, they shriek. We’re at a node in time where everything is going haywire, opines another. Millennial madness!

Arnie Bernstein of Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (University of Michigan Press) knows better. He’s written an harrowing account of the first American school bombing, which took place in 1927. It was that long ago that a seldom-noticed, odd, but harmless-seeming man began planning the deaths of 38 innocent children and nine adults in the town of Bath, Michigan.

There’s no modern explanation for that. No "end times" or Mayan prophecies. Maybe total havoc just pops up in American DNA from time to time.

Bath Massacre is almost like a look into the mind of total psychopath. While not quoting perpetrator Andrew Kehoe directly, Bernstein takes the reader on a journey of strange “accidents” in his family, minuscule slights from neighbors that he doesn’t forget, and an all-out hatred for the Bath School’s superintendent that has no rhyme or reason.

The reader watches as Kehoe orders large amounts of dynamite from Lansing, MI (perfectly legal — and normal for farmers who needed to blow up tree stumps). He learns the intricacies of electricity and wiring. When he becomes the school’s treasurer, he also becomes the handyman. People bumped into him at the oddest times And something was askew in the basement:

"Smith (the janitor) wasn’t sure, but in the fall of 1926, he had a feeling there was a leak in one of the basement pipes. While Superintendent Huyck shined a flashlight along the ceiling, Smith followed the length of pipe with his eye. Nothing. No leak, no rust, no loose joints. He didn’t notice something else in the ceiling that was out of place."

Compare this with 2009’s Major Hasan buying civilian guns (perfectly legal) even though he works in a job that was rife with guns every day. He also paid for a six-month lease up-front. Not illegal, but not the usual way of renting.
Each man had plans, probably months in the works, that made such simple actions deadly.

Because the killers were methodical, for the best of what we know, they had no remorse. (Hasan is still in an Army hospital and the Army is not making him available for comment.) This draws many to the popular conclusion of psychopathy.

In the Bath Massacre, which took place when psychiatry was in its infancy, the general public had all sorts of fancy explanations for why a grown man who want to blow up a school full of children. However in today’s world, Dr. Robert Hare has created “The Hare Psychopathy Checklist,” which has become indispensable for psychologists. In his long list of traits a few stand out in many of the killings we have seen: the ability to lead a double life, lack of empathy, failure to accept responsibility for actions, and lack of realistic long-term goals. Kehoe, the child killer had them. Maybe so does Harlan.

There even is a test, the fMRI, or the Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging procedure that lawyers want to present in court to prove that their clients are psychopaths and have no emotional connection to the crimes they commit. Right now, defense attorneys for Brian Dugan, who admitted to raping and killing a young Illinois girl in 1983, tried to get the DuPage County courtroom to accept Dugan’s unusual fMRI test results. The trouble is that juries don’t seem to care much if the defendant is mentally impaired. Mostly they vote for execution, if it’s a choice. Dugan was sentenced to death.

Test or no test, Bernstein’s grueling but personal Bath Massacre shows us that violence on the level of the Ft. Hood shooting is no sudden show of modern derangement. There probably have been wild-eyed killers back in the days of the Mayflower, only there was no CNN to record it all back then.

While not the most comforting book, it’s a fascinating look at how resilient Americans were in the face of tragedy then and now. It brought out the best in people. Then people were opening up their homes to be makeshift hospitals and morgues. Today, soldiers ripped up their uniforms to serve as makeshift bandages.

"It's the same as it ever was", as the old Talking Heads song goes. But somehow, it’s more interesting to go back in time to see how Americans handled such brutal violence just shy of 90 years ago. Bernstein does that with beautiful prose and deep reverence for his subject.

Moving meditation

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:34:53 GMT

While I continue to wait for Technorati to send me their instructions on how they want me to format this blog, i thought I'd discuss an interesting turn my life has taken.

My avocation has been tennis. There was a time when it was tennis just about every day of the week. It didn't matter that I reached a plateau and never got any better, I just kept on playing. I was hooked. There were a thousand reasons, but mainly I got the endorphin rush from the exercise and I also never became bored. Running and hopping on treadmills always bored me to tears. In fact, except for lifting weights, there really wasn't any other kind of exercise that I liked. It all bored me silly eventually.

Except for t'ai chi. I took that about fifteen years ago and truly enjoyed it. I had learned more than half of the Yang long form (which takes forever to learn because the style is so exacting), and then the whole school fell apart. The person running the place had little business sense and he had a meltdown. The students scattered far and wide and I was too busy with my job to figure out where they went. So, I never continued.

Now, I've found a new school and started up again and I must say it's just as wonderful as it ever was. The teacher is completely different. The style is totally new (Chen, not Yang), so the movements are new. The studio is smaller and has no mirror. Everything should feel foreign, but instead it all seems like an old friend. The studied movement. The slow, disciplined action that transitions from one shape to another in seemingly effortless fashion--it's all there. And I just love the way it looks so beautiful and easy, yet it's a killer on your muscles. Our teacher introduced one new move last Wednesday and my neck and back haven't been the same since.

Yet it's productive movement. If you believe in the movement of chi, which I do, it's beneficial to the body. I've already experienced that in the reduction of various symptoms I've had. This made me curious about chi gong, the cousin of t'ai chi that is performed almost standing still. It is almost completely dedicated to meditation and the movement of chi. Very difficult to learn, it is also extremely powerful when done correctly. I remember being in a Japanese restaurant and watching a man bend spoons with nothing but chi gong. And, no, this was not a Yuri Geller trick. Chi gong masters have done things much more impressive than little parlor tricks than that. But it takes many years to learn such skill and I doubt I'd ever have that kind of patience.

Still, it's been interesting to put down the tennis racquet once in a while and move slowly and smoothly, thinking of nothing but the present. I still do run around the tennis court, pounding my legs and knees, banging my arms and shoulders, and I can really feel the difference now in the way I use my body. The Western way is all about power and winning. The Eastern way is simply about being.
I think I like the Eastern way much more.

Lynn Voedisch,
t'ai chi,

Missing the Rings

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:33:33 GMT

I'm terribly sorry for starting this blog and then ignoring it for so long, but there are reasons for everything. I was waiting to find out if Technorati (the powerful blog service that distributes blogs just about everywhere) would accept me as a general info blogger, based on my past newspaper experience. And I'm in! So, perhaps starting today I will be a dual Xanga/Technorati blogger, although I'm sure I'll have to get all the coding down.

OLYMPIC MISS

While everyone was taking potshots at President Obama (wrongly, because the Chicago bid for the Olympics was never his project), few stopped to consider what Chicagoans were thinking. They believed ridiculous polls that claimed most Chicagoans didn't want the Olympics or that the numbers had pulled even by the day of the decision. Actually, the official poll conducted by the Olympic committee showed that 70% of Chicagoans wanted the games--and that certainly made sense when I considered the many people I talked to in the days leading up to the vote. I'm not going to get into the "Nolympics" people, because so many of them had individual oxes they believed were being gored. There was a general confusion about taxes--the funding was to be taken care of by donors, with only over-runs going to taxpayers. However, the influx of jobs and increase in property values would have been a major shot in the arm for an American city, if not the entire region.

It was horrifying to see the far right standing up and cheering when Chicago was bounced out on the first vote just because they don't like Obama. I remember when conservatives leveled the anti-American label at liberals. Well, now they've claimed it for themselves. They'd rather see another country get the prize, and the economic benefits, than see the president get a dubious honor. (One wonders if they'd slam Obama if he hadn't gone to Copenhagen and we didn't get the Olympics.) But they aren't really trampling Obama, they are stepping on Chicagoans, hard-working urban Americans who have never questioned their own patriotism. And we don't like it one bit.

I'm not going to belabor the reasons why Chicago lost the vote. International Olympic Committee politics seem more fraught with danger than our country's. Members of the U.S. Olympic Committee have been on the outs with the IOC for years and the U.S.O.C. members say there are myriad reasons the fix was in from the beginning.

However, I'd have loved to see Chicago get the games if only to revamp its image with the rest of the country. That's because after I read comments after news stories, I realized that much of the country still thinks we are the city of mobsters, housing projects, slums surrounding downtown, sleaze, constant cold weather, and, oh yes!, Al Capone! I thought that we had finally shed that Al Capone thing when I went to Mexico and the residents said, "Chicago? Oh, Michael Jordan!" Yes! Michael Jordan! But now we are back to Al Capone again.

Let's take this one by one.
1. Mobsters: They haven't run rampant since the end of Prohibition. Do you realize how long ago that was? The 1930s. This also was the end of Al Capone. (One benighted soul even said White House adviser David Axelrod was a political crony of Al Capone's. This is not only impossible, but Alexrod was never a politician, just a former newspaper reporter.) There is something called the Outfit, but they are hardly high on the police wanted list. The Sopranos they are not.
2. Housing projects. Torn down in the 1980s. 'Nuff said.
3. Slums surrounding downtown. This is patently absurd. Yes, there are slums, but they are off in neighborhoods that tourists are never going to visit--the South and Far West sides. We own property in the South Loop. If common thinking were true, we'd be slumlords. Instead, we have a little slice of a rapidly rising chic neighborhood.
4. Sleaze. Confined to City Hall. Cleaned out of the governor's mansion.
5. Constant cold weather. Gosh, we actually have four seasons! We have a summer! (well, last summer hardly counted, but still.) It does not snow year round. We grow flowers! We go to the beach! We have swimming pools! We play tennis outside! If we had an Olympics, people could actually see this.
6. Al Capone. See #1. Dead.

We have a gorgeous lakefront, wonderful outdoor art, the playground (for all ages) of Millennium Park, The Willis (formerly Sears) Tower, which used to be the World's largest building, but is still the tallest building in the Western world. And I'm looking at you, New York. Great shopping, terrific restaurants, world-famous theater, the Joffrey Ballet, the Art Institute of Chicago with its well known Impressionist collection...well, I'll stop bragging now. But the idea is that for some people we are still flyover territory and they haven't bothered to do much more than change planes at O'Hare Airport here.
The Olympics would have changed all that. So stop cheering, Richard Steele. Better yet, why don't you come out here and take a look at the changing leaves? You actually might like them.

Technorati tags:
Lynn Voedisch,
Chicago,
Olympics

The dream lives on--and so does the hate

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:43:09 GMT

The morning after Ted Kennedy died, I was perusing the online version of the Chicago Sun-Times and went to Lynn Sweet's blog. There she had several quotations from many famous people talking about what Teddy Kennedy meant to them. Some were inspired, some were short and to the point, but each one made me want to read on. So, I was scanning the screen, and suddenly I came to "Mary Jo, you can finally rest in peace."
Wait? What? Where did that come from?
I realized that I had read straight through to the readers' comments. Some jerk saw fit, less that 24 hours after Kennedy died, to put that at the end of a story about his legacy. Nice touch. I suppose he takes all the handicapped seats on buses, too.

But it turns out this creep was not unusual. The far, far right was all ready with the cheap Mary Jo Kopechne references before the body was even cold. Why should they wait? When have they ever been gracious or thoughtful?
For those who are either too young or not particularly up on political history, Mary Jo Kopechne was a young worker for the Robert Kennedy presidential campaign who, about a year after Bobby's death, was at a reunion party for the workers in Massachusetts. Late at night she went for a drive with Ted Kennedy across a bridge leading to Chappaquiddick Island in Martha's Vineyard. Kennedy's car flipped off the bridge into the water. He managed to get free, but she died. Details were never clear about the event. He said he repeatedly dived to save her. Detractors said just about everything...up to and including cold-blooded murder. The inquest never solved what really happened. He received a two-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident.
In retrospect, the worst that could have come out of it was an involuntary manslaughter charge, although it was chalked up to negligent driving. Murder was never even considered. The people of Massachusetts overwhelmingly elected him to a new term. Grousers never forgot the event.

It was the worst blot on his career, and many say it was the reason he lost his challenge to Jimmy Carter for the presidency in 1980.

That was in 1969. One can hardly find space to list all the accomplishments this man had in the Senate since then. If people believe in second chances (and you should have seen the responses I got when I doubted that Michael Vick deserved his), then Kennedy certainly took advantage of his. His passionate leadership for civil rights legislation, his defense of blue-collar laborers, his angry challenge to those who stood in the way of an increase to the minimum wage ("Where does the greed end?"), his support of women's rights, and his life-long hope for universal health care--all of these things add up to a man who was larger than a callow young man who drove off a bridge. He had made a grievous error, yet spent a lifetime making up for it, and then going further. There is such a thing as rehabilitation. Good Christians are supposed to believe in forgiveness. I believe Ted Kennedy earned his.

As he said when he endorsed Barack Obama for president, "the dream lives on." Sadly, so does the hate. The hate of the Kennedy family may never leave this country, and we are a smaller country for it.

Lynn Voedisch
Ted Kennedy

Strange Days

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:51:27 GMT

I didn't really believe this story. Well, I had to, since my sister swore it was true. However, I looked it up anyway to be sure. As Chicago was enjoying temperatures in the 80s (and I say enjoying, because much of our summer has been more like a cold spring), the lake suddenly cooled off to the 50s. Swimmers went to take a dip and bolted out of the water freezing. Dogs, used to playing fetch at the dog beach, refused to jump into the water. People, used to the summer-warmed water, couldn't figure out what was going on.
It turned out that the surface water took off and went eastward to the state of Michigan. Here's the Chicago Tribune's explanation of what happened. Some other people say it was a seiche. Whatever it was, we want our water back! My nephew at his day camp can't go to the beach anymore and it's highly unlikely that the water will warm up before school starts on Aug. 31.
A total bummer ending for a total bummer of a summer. And if I hear another person say they liked this cool summer, I'm going to slap them. Summers are supposed to be hot--or at least warm. That's why we endure the winters.
###

Setting up my son in our downtown Chicago condo was great fun. He's really calm and ready for the new law school semester to begin tomorrow. No jitters or anything. He's matured so much and I can't help but be so proud of him. What a great young man. What a great lawyer he will make.

He's coming back!

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:12:07 GMT

A quick one today, because I'm beat. Anyway the news is brief but exciting.

My son, who had really tired of Florida and wanted out, called this morning and said he had been accepted at a law school here in Chicago. So, he will be transferring here. This is where he wants to practice law and where he wants to take the bar, so it makes sense. He plans to toss clothes and necessities into his car and drive up this week, because classes start Aug. 24!

Then he and my husband will drive down on Labor Day weekend with a U-Haul to get the furniture left behind in his old apartment. Not sure what we are going to do with much of the furniture, since he will be living in the condo we have (and where he lived when an undergraduate student).

There are other issues, but I'm staying out of them...

All I can say is that I'm thrilled, absolutely thrilled. The only downside is that now I have no one to visit when it gets nasty here in the winter. But I'm sure I can come up with some other kind of trip.

On another note: I finally get down to the nitty gritty on what editing mistakes I left in my manuscript this week when I meet with my writing professor friend. Nice to get that project moving again. One big raspberry to the post office for losing the manuscript.

Lynn
Lynn Voedisch

Anything but the dog days

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:19:39 GMT

Things have really been hopping around here. I've hardly had time to sit down as one thing after the other happens around here. Most of this stuff involves my family, and I promised I wouldn't write about them online. But suffice to say that it involves a sudden change of schools, lots of tension, very close deadlines, and the possibility that we will have to make a sudden trip to Florida to grab everything and head back to Chicago. Whew! It it all works out, it will be for the better.

All this has left me feeling completely anxious, and now, completely drained. I did have quite a few projects I was working on, but everything had to be shelved when all this came up.

Next week, barring any emergencies, I'm getting together with my editor friend and we'll be going over my Egypt ms. AGAIN, and then I hope I can get the damn thing out. Although I do know that I should wait until after Labor Day, since no on is around in August anyway.

I read a story today about how no one is buying back-to-school items and everyone in retail is freaking out. However, I certainly never remember my family buying me much for back-to-school. Some notebooks, crayons--all the stuff that was on my teacher's list. But a new wardrobe? You have to be kidding. We wore last year's stuff until we were growing out of it. If we were lucky we got a new pair of shoes. Was it that way for you? My parents didn't have the most money in the world, so maybe that's the way it was on the po' side of the tracks. But somehow, I don't think too many kids got the whole wardrobe, electronics, Mt. Blanc pens, etc. by the beginning of school. Heck, it was still hot when school started. What was the use of fall clothes then? My parents bought us cold weather stuff as we needed it. Was I living in an alternate universe?

And with that I sign off.

Lynn
Lynn Voedisch

Tea for twenty?

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:46:12 GMT

It looks like I quit newspaper reporting too soon. Every now and then i come across a story that is so poorly covered that I want to scream and can't do a thing about it. I know my old editors at The Chicago Sun-Times would have raised a ruckus over the last story I encountered and surely would have wanted me to dig deeper. But those were the days when newspapers had money and there was actual space in the paper.

I went to a health care rally in downtown Chicago last week. It was huge, covering the entire Federal Plaza (where all the federal offices and courts are). Speakers included the governor (no, not THAT governor, the new one), several important congressmen, a candidate for the Senate race, all sorts of state functionaries, and people representing Senators Durbin and Burris. The only bigwig who was absent (curiously) was Mayor Richard M. Daley. I was looking around for press people I knew and noticed that there were protestors there, a ragtag group of about 20 people. However, the Chicago Police made them stand across the street, probably because they didn't have permits. They tried their best to holler and scream just like all the other groups that have been disrupting town hall meetings all over the country. However, their numbers were way too small and the traffic noise drowned them out. At several points they were completely obscured by buses.

The rally went on with much success and was very loud. I schmoozed with many of the people I knew there. No one knew who the protesters were, but no one seemed to care since things were going so well. This is, after all, a Democratic city.

So, my eyes bugged out of my head when I turned on the local news to see a report of the event that gave not only equal time to the protestors' complaints, but the cameras shot the group to make them look as numerous as the Federal Plaza crowd. I was totally amazed, but I figured that's local TV for you. It's always been bad.
The next day, I purchased the two newspapers and found that the Sun-Times didn't have a story at all (no room). However, the the Chicago Tribune ran a very small story that gave equal coverage to the huge rally and to the tiny group of protesters. Then it ended with a quotation from a Republican who is running for Senator--and he didn't even deign to show up at the event. There was no mention of the tininess of the protest group, no mention that the cops pushed them across the street, and only a fleeting mention of their leader.

For the first time in my professional life, I wrote the reporter and asked how she could have left out so many important facts, asked what the heck the Republican Senatorial candidate was doing in the story, and wanted to know if she tried to find out who the protesters represented. There was only one clue in the story, she gave the name of the leader, Eric Odom, whom she called a community organizer.

While I was getting no response from the reporter, I did one mouse click in Google to discover that Eric Odom is the founder of TaxDayTeaParty.org,, part of the larger national tea partiers who are joining such outfits as Freedom Works (run by Dick Armey) and Americans for Prosperity. All these groups are reported to be heavily funded by the insurance industry. Some will admit it openly, and others won't. The Tea Party outfits are definitely in collusion with them. Their tactics have been to ambush town hall meetings and shout down everyone there. Some have caused real trouble--one group hanging a congressman in effigy. So, this is not benign material.

Eventually, the reporter wrote back with the boilerplate language about "I stand by my story." About Odom, she said, "I said he was a community organizer." A guy who runs a food pantry is an community organizer. This guy is fighting health care on a grand, national scale. Had I been writing this story, I would have delved deeper into who was funding his efforts and what groups he connected with. No chance now.

The weirdest thing happened the next day. I had written the reporter using an e-mail address I only use for newspaper editors when freelancing or to correspond with reporters. It's been pristine and spam-free for a long time. I opened up my mail and I had right-wing spam, about health care, sent to that address. Where did they get it? The mind boggles. Does the reporter's computer have some spyware she's not aware of? Or could the Tribune be in the pockets of...no, let's not think that.

All I've got is this blog and maybe a few alternative places to send this info. I wish I could turn it into a bigger deal. But the story doesn't pass the smell test. Not by a long shot.

Lynn

Lynn Voedisch
health care

Fizzled out

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:27:53 GMT

While Iran was embroiled in yet another bloody protest, generals were pondering whether to just bug out of Iraq, and Democrats were quivering and falling like bowling pins over the health care bills, the nation decided to focus on four guys having beers in the White House's Rose Garden. You all know the story about the black professor and the white cop who got into a tussle that ended up with the prof in cuffs and under arrest for disorderly conduct--arrested in his own home. One of my former colleagues at the Chicago Sun-Times, Lynn Sweet, asked about this event at the end of a press conference devoted to health care (and with rather peculiar timing, I thought), and President Obama waxed eloquent about what blacks and Hispanics face every day when it comes to racial profiling. The problem: he didn't have all the facts and he said the police acted "stupidly."

Skip over a night filled with blustering pundits and the prez is suddenly suggesting that Prof. Henry Louis ("Skip") Gates of Harvard University and Officer James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department talk it over some beers. Beers? Here we have one of the smartest men to hold the office of president, and he wants to throw alcohol on this fire? Well, okay...
The talk leading up to this event was truly bizarre, with one Fox News blowhard deciding that bi-racial President Obama is a "racist" for saying the Cambridge police acted "stupidly." How is Obama a racist? Does that mean he hates half of himself? Did he hate his mother and grandparents? Obviously not, judging from the pictures we have seen, and by the touching way he flew to Hawaii just before the election to say goodbye to his dying grandmother. His White House staff is largely white. And one of his closest friends is the very white David Axelrod, who also managed his campaign and is now his advisor. Heck, most of his beloved Chicago White Sox are white. Give this racist stuff a rest, will ya?

Everyone has this thing all wrong. The mess-up in Cambridge isn't about race, it's about class. As anyone who's been to Harvard (or is close to a Harvard grad) knows, the Cambridge Police Dept. does not like the university. These working class guys, who mainly tend to the city, which is also working class and filled with Harvard cafeteria workers, maintenence workers, technical staff and other regular joes, do not mix well with the intelligentsia in Hahvahd Yahd. Harvardites are seen as snobby, rich, overbearing, and too intellectual for their own good. It doesn't matter that some of the students are there on scholarship (some on huge scholarships). Harvard means trouble to Cambridge. Town vs. gown. We've all heard about this sort of tussle.

The university knows this and has its own police force, the Harvard University Police Dept. (affectionately known as Hup-da). Unofficially, students are told to run away from a Cambridge cop and head straight for a Harvard cop if they want to be treated fairly.

Is this universal? No. Are there cops who are decent to the Harvard community? Probably. But the word is out. Don't call Cambridge P.D. if you are in trouble. In Gates' case, the 911 caller called Cambridge.
I wasn't there and I'm not going to make any judgments on who was at fault, but I think Gates' problems began the minute he pulled out his Harvard I.D. Race may or may not have been a factor. Gates sure seemed to think so. But being a Harvard professor may have been crime enough.
Some people back up Crowley 100% and that's their right. i don't see how a guy yelling in his own house amounts to "disorderly conduct," which is technically "inciting a riot." (Ask a lawyer.) But maybe all this looks more reasonable over a beer.

One thing this incident has taught us is that V.P. Joe Biden, thought to be the lippiest and most outrageous member of the administration, may have had the most sense of all. He joined in and had a non-alcoholic brew. Pretty cool, Joe. Now if he can only tell his boss to stop answering oddball questions that pop up at the end of press conferences. Love ya, Lynn, but that question had no place in the White House that night.

Lynn

Lynn Voedisch

Marching on

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:52:32 GMT

It turns out that the person running for congress *won't* be going up against my dad's favorite politician, since it seems that he's going to run for senate. So, I guess I'll wait and see what they want me to do. But, as usual, it's a mixed-up mess at the political headquarters. I have no idea why they have such a hard time organizing volunteers, for heaven's sake. I could just go over to the cat shelter and get an assignment much easier. (However, I'd get so emotionally involved with the little kitties that I know I wouldn't be able to handle that kind of work.)
Anyway, I'm going to go get my hair done, and maybe this will be the beginning of an emotional do-over, which I sorely need. I really feel awfully lost as to what my role is and who I am these days. Doing the re-editing will be okay, but I need more of a sense of purpose. I suppose more will be revealed to me in the days to come.

***
Some of you may remember an essay I wrote about a year ago about a shining, golden summer that came to an abrupt end when someone dear to me had to leave town. I meant every word of it, and it touched a lot of people. Well, I thought that this year, I'd be able to get a little bit of it back--despite the No Summer we've been having in Chicago. I had hoped for just a time or two. I wasn't expecting to repeat everything, because I know that people do grow and develop new interests. But I came up virtually empty. I'm not blaming, but that doesn't mean I can't be sorrowful over this. All I can say is that last summer was one of the best times of my life and it's too bad it's over forever. I will get over it. But I do miss everything about it.