Journal of a Sabbatical

blue, green, and orange

July 22, 1997

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Well, well. The sky is actually blue today. Hey, can I predict 'em or what? I spent some time last night and this morning foraging around the web catching up on some of the journals I usually read, checking links, etc. Maybe I'm going to come out of my reclusive stage and rejoin the world. Maybe not. I went to therapy today. I told my therapist I feel depressed but I'm not ruminating, obsessing, perseverating or any of those things I don't know what mean anyway. We got nowhere. I got lunch at the Earth Food store, ate it at Starbucks -which was very quiet today - and came home to browse/surf the web some more. I discovered that Charla had been keeping an online journal since the beginning of July. How could I have missed this? So after a long session at the computer not accomplishing much I decided to go to the Peabody Borders. I now no longer remember what I wanted there. By the time I got there - forgetting that the reason I never go to the Borders in Peabody is that it is on the westbound side of 114 and impossible to get to from the eastbound side without passing it by and finding a place to turn around. I got lost trying to take side roads instead of turning around dangerously on 114. Dumb dumb dumb. - I'd forgotten what I wanted. Surely I do not need anymore books. I am accumulating vast piles of unread books. The fact that I don't seem to be able to concentrate on reading for very long has not deterred me from buying books, just from reading them. I now have such a backlog I'll never catch up. I'm still reading McLoughlin's Rhode Island: A History, which I started about a thousand years ago. I only have one more chapter to read. I came across one great quote he cites from a political scientist at Brown in 1909: "In certain respects the growing numbers of the Irish have contributed their share to social instability and accentuated certain social prejudices of a grave sort. The unfortunate historical environment of the race in its native land, and the systematic representation of Great Britain as a copious source of injustice and oppression, have unquestionably helped to retard in certain elements of the Irish people that distinctive regard for government, law, and order which characterizes the highest Anglo-Saxon civilization." -- William McDonald, "Population", in A Modern City, edited by William Kirk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1909), p. 50 'Nuff said! I was rolling on the floor laughing until I heard Chris Lydon on The Connection on NPR start his show on the IRA cease fire with "Would you buy a used cease fire from these guys?"

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