New Year's Eve!

    HAPPY NEW YEAR to both of you! 😀

    Well, I did it! Registration is complete for the Old Folk's Home New Year's Eve party. It's the one that begins at 6:00 and ends at 9:00. Truth be told, it's just my speed. We'll munch, chat and apparently suffer through the chicken dance, which I could certainly do without. The other option for the evening was a quiet evening at home reading. But, there will be time for that. The fact that the Vikings are playing at the same time may cut in to attendance. Because I think football, especially professional football, is morally bankrupt I wouldn't watch anyway.

    With an operative TV in the OFH apartment I did watch a couple of women's college basketball games. Indiana beat Illinois and Nebraska beat Maryland in the Big Ten. That is a very competitive league with several excellent teams, four of which played today.

Takk for alt,

Al

Did I list the Dominican Republic as one of my international destinations? Joanne and I visited, this is a statue of Christopher Columbus there.

    

Proof!

      Some of my neighbors are not fond of me calling this the Old Folk's Home (OFH). When asked if they prefer "Rest Home" they are not amused. 😀 Now there is proof that this is in fact the OFH. Daily schedules of events and other notices of coming events are posted in the elevators.

    Recently there was a notice of a New Year's Eve party for residents. The poster said it would conclude at 11:00 p.m. with the dropping of the ball in New York City. This notice was up for a couple of days before it was replaced with a new poster. This new one announces that festivities will end with "lights out" at 9:00 p.m. Why the change? Inmates were not signing up after the first posting because 11:00 was too late. Is any further proof needed that this indeed an OFH?😀😀😀

   Yesterday's post about international travel omitted a 2019 Road's Scholar trip to Portugal. What else may I have forgotten? 

Takk for alt,

Al

                       In the fish market in Lisbon, Portugal, 2019

What now?

     In recent conversation about this blog a friend asked if it's difficult to write a daily blog,  I said it is on those days when a subject does not suggest itself. Often there is material at hand and then the writing come easier...today is one of those days with a question about what to write.

    Recently I've been reflecting on my international travels. They really added up without me giving them much thought. The recent one to Greece was my first trip since returning early from Thailand in 2020 becasue of COVID.  It was my second trip to Greece. Doing was much more my thing than recording so to determine exactly the international travel I'll need to do some research.

   While I was in the Marines we were stationed on Okinawa, technically a prefecture of Japan. We also spent time on the main island of Japan for cold weather training. For some weeks we were ashore in the Philippines and we made port of call in Hong Kong. Shipping from America to Okinawa we made a stop in Hawaii but that's not foreign.

   In South America I was in Argentina and Peru. In North America visits were to Canada and Mexico. Africa accounts for two more countries when we climbed Kilimanjaro, Kenya and Tanzania. Five times I've visited Norway. On our Baltic cruise we visited Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia and Finland. Joanne and I travelled in Romania and also Hungary and Austria. We also spent some days in France.  Intending to visit Belgaum we spent a week in the Netherlands. 

    Then there's SE Asia...20 times maybe? There I've been to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam most of them several times. Once I went to Australia. So six of the seven continents have been visited. Sometime I'll try to count the trips to SE Asia.

   Perhaps it is time I stay home.😁

Takk for alt,

Al

                            Joanne in Budapest in 2008.

About Time!

       The gist of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning play Our Time has long been familiar to me. Emily's return to the village after her death is often cited in literature. MJV sent me a copy of the play as a prelude to reading Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, which she also sent to me. (Thanks MJV!) The play, so familiar from literature, led me to think that perhaps I'd read it years ago...wrong.

      This was my first reading. Patchett is one of my favorite authors and Tom Lake is her latest novel. Friends who have read it recommend it. Patchett, owner of Parnassus Bookstore, Nashville, TN., has a first addition book club to which I subscribe. She should have selected Tom Lake for the book club but did not. When Lake is completed a 676 page, small print, book awaits, good wintertime activity.

Takk for alt,

Al

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    Sitting in the tent at cold weather training, Japan, 1961,  I'm writing a letter home, which I did every week.

That was fun!

      Mostly I read serious stuff, novels and history primarily. Once in awhile it's fun to read just for fun. The Thursday Murder Club mysteries by Richard Osman is that.  Michele lent me her copy of the 4th and latest of the series, The Last Devil To Die. Intending to read a serious novel first resistance was weak so I went to the fun one.

   The Murder Club consists of four denizens of an English Old Folk's Home. Their hobby is solving murders that have stumped the police. Elizabeth, the leader of the group is a retired secret agent, there's Joyce a retired nurse, Ibrahim a retired psychiatrist, and Ron a retired labor organizer. The books are fun 'who dunits?' with the added intrigue of four senior citizens sometimes working with police and other times beyond the police.

   This last volume had very tender moments as Elizabeth deals with her husband dementia and death. There are poignant scenes when her husband, Stephen, has enough lucidity to recognize what he's lost. Osman shows that he understands the nature of grief.  While I'm not a fan of mysteries this is delightful reading. Osman reports that  more are forthcoming after he writes something else.

Takk for alt,

Al

          Escaping the Marine Corps without a tattoo perhaps it time I get a map to the OFH. 😁

Rain

     The rain that began Sunday afternoon ended this morning. Apparently we received something over an inch which will soak into the ground because there is no frost. Minneapolis had a record high temperature of 54 degrees yesterday. This moisture would have created much snow had the temperatures been normal. Personally I do not miss ice and snow. Snow shoveling is pretty much a thing of my past which is fine with me. Remembering the days of shoveling out the farm yard suffices.

Takk for alt,

Al

                           Today's random picture is view looking up the Tokyo Tower, 1961.

Hope

     Hope? Is that what the feeling is a winter solstice? Hope? Hope that daylight will return? No, I don't think so. We know that daylight begins its return then. It is more of a promise. Daylight is returning, that's fact. Not observable to casual observation, but just wait a few weeks and see.

   The L. K. Hanson piece below giving Ernst Bloch's take on the effect of hope on persons treats hope as an emotion. Hopelessness is a terrible thing. To have given up hope is tragic. Is a factor of our blessedness that we are people of hope. Hoping for things both large and small?

   For what do you hope? How does that hope shape you?

    

Takk for alt,

Al