Journal of a Sabbatical

January 18, 2000

hot beverages

Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society

Today's Reading: Winter from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake, Beach Grass by Charles Wendell Townsend, The Purple Land by W.H. Hudson

I sometimes write about how because I live "Back East" I live in the past - the past of family members, friends, and acquaintances who've moved west. However, I've discovered you don't have to move across a continent for the past to be a geographical place. Apparently Dean is living in my past. Our Lady Help of Christians is the parish where I went to high school. I went to Mass in that church nearly every morning before school. It's recently been renovated, so Dean's seen a brighter more spectacular version of the main sanctuary than the way it looked in my past.

I meant to include the six principles of nonviolence in yesterday's entry but forgot about it. So here they are today:

 

Another MLK Day related thing I thought of writing about for yesterday was Freedom School, but I wrote about it before. I'm not any closer to a thoughtful well-researched essay than I was then.

I got a free coffee at Starbucks on Saturday for answering the trivia question:

What 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner was born on January 15, 1929?

I asked the baristas on duty if I got anything extra for actually having heard Martin Luther King speak. They marveled at how I'm older than I look. Previous trivia questions have been things like "How many fireplaces are there in the White House?" I'm not sure Martin Luther King is in the same category. History as trivia. And when you're living through history, you don't know it's history. It's just your life.

The Antarctica preview weather continues. I stopped in at The Blue Cow on the way to my therapist's office to get a huge coffee to get me through the session. No heat at The Blue Cow. The cashier was setting up an array of little ceramic space heaters when I walked in. There were no other customers. No heat at my therapist's office. She already had the electric heaters set up. And I had my coffee to keep my hands warm.

On the way back to my car from therapy I stopped at the Earth Food Store and got a combo plate with some real good hijiki, an incredible carrot-apricot thing, and some dish with whole grain pasta and beans. It was stone cold by the time I got to my car. Tasted OK cold though. I ate it at Starbucks with a grande latte - not free this time as there was no MLK trivia question (actually I don't think there was any trivia question) - and plenty of company.

I ran into Tom on my way to Starbucks and invited him to meet me there. Dan and Geri are back from their trip, so they came in for the first time in like 3 weeks. Hussein showed up and joined us. The one sort of big table was getting pretty crowded when M&M showed up with fresh baked bread, but we made room for them too. They kept saying I was going to the South Pole, but it's really only the Antarctic peninsula. Everybody wants me to take plenty of pictures of penguins. It was good to do coffee with them all before I leave.

As I was heading out the door, Right Wing Anne and JoJo came in. JoJo asked a lot of questions about Antarctica and the boat. He was particularly interested in whether there would be hot beverages on the boat. I told him of course there would be coffee, though probably not Starbucks. "Any other hot beverages?" "Will they have chicken noodle soup?" He's 5. He says just the word Antarctica makes him feel cold. He asked a lot of questions about safety as he is very worried that I will be killed in an avalanche or fall into the freezing cold ocean and die. I assured him that I would be back to show him pictures of penguins.

Nicki sat in my lap for a big part of the meeting being all cozy and cute and cuddly, which she is with humans.

The dryer is still broken so people took plastic bags of wet laundry home to their dryers. Since I do not have a dryer (no, I haven't tackled making the basement suitable for electric appliances yet), I took none but promised to spend an extra hour or so tomorrow at the laundromat.

I wound up the evening with petting Chloe on the chin as long as she would tolerate it. I think she even purred a little for me. She has a very soft purr so I couldn't quite tell with so many people and cats around. Chloe really is coming around to enjoying humans rather than just tolerating them. She'll be a good pet for somebody who doesn't want a lap cat.