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February 20, 1997
It's 5:40PM EST. The sky is streaked with thin delicate bands of pink, a pastel sunset. I'm finally up and about a little today. I even made it to the store for kitty litter. Wilbur will be grateful.
Yesterday as I lay in bed drifting in and out of sleep, I listened to various news shows summarize the career of Deng Xiaoping. You know when they talk that much about someone on the news, he's gotta be dead. And so he is. The news is full of Deng again today. It's odd to hear American politicians trying to say just the right thing to note the passing of a great man and yet not condone human rights violations. It's equally odd from an American point of view to realize that Deng was 92 years old. His successor is 70. What will happen when all the old communists die off?
Also in the news: James Earl Ray asking for new tests to prove his gun was not the murder weapon that killed Martin Luther King, Jr. The King family is participating in this hearing. They want to get to the bottom of the mystery before Ray dies. It is kind of odd that only now is the court looking into this, when Ray recanted his confession something like 3 days after he confessed. He's always maintained that there was some guy named Raul involved. Ballistics tests have gotten more sophisticated since the introduction of the scanning electron microscope so I suppose retesting the gun is a good idea either to prove once and for all that it was the murder weapon or to prove it was not. Are we going to see an Oliver Stone conspiracy movie about this? I hope not.
And in local odd news: the old let's build a casino to revitalize the community ploy is coming to Salisbury. The proposed casino and 5-star hotel complex is part of a comprehensive casino bill before the Massachusetts legislature. The local state senator thinks a casino is just what Salisbury needs where its honkytonk waterfront is falling down. The thing that cracked me up in tonight's paper is the claim that Salisbury really needs a 5-star hotel because people from all over the world (especially Italy for some reason) are always calling up looking for a 5-star hotel on Salisbury beach and we have nothing to offer them. Huh? Europeans in droves want to visit Salisbury and the only thing holding them back is lack of a 5-star hotel?
Meanwhile I'm still sick and have begged off my auntly responsibilities for tomorrow. Sigh. I don't like to let anybody down but that's the way it's gonna hafta be.
Something I forgot to write about: one day last week I walked out of the ladies room at Bruegger's Bagels and a woman looked at me and screamed "Oh my God!". I mean screamed. Not said, not muttered, not stated, screamed. I thought maybe my jeans were unzipped or I was somehow suddenly naked so I asked the kid who was making my sandwich if I looked ok or had two heads or anything. She said I looked fine. I have no idea what provoked the screamer but I've been really cautious about going to Bruegger's for several days. Actually with being sick and all I haven't had a chance to buy sandwiches there anyway.
The whole thing shook me up more than I thought because immediately after that I started to think the new neighbors were watching me ever since I accidentally set off the alarm on the rental car. They rush to the front door every time I open my front door to check for mail or see why the outside door is open or whatever. They rush to the window whenever I park in my parking space. I don't think I would have noticed that if I hadn't experienced the terrified scream of the woman in Bruegger's. I'm not nuts, really I'm not. It just really shook me up to have someone that scared of me.
I've had people scared of me before but not like that. Once Nancy and I were eating ice cream outside a little shop in Jamestown, RI. We weren't doing anything remotely sexual but we were obviously together. A woman called her children urgently away from us: hurry up hurry up come see the jelly fish hurry. There wasn't any jelly fish. She was looking right at us. We had a good laugh over it.
So although kids and dogs and small animals of all species love me, grown women are frightened of me. Go figure.