This has been a tough week. Earlier there was the medical misadventure. Today our gas has been shut off because a number of leaks have been located in the house lines. (We live, I should note, in a house which is over a hundred years old. The infrastructure always needs tweaking.) So, no heat, no operating stove, no hot water. Until, hopefully, the plumber and gas Co. resolve things tomorrow. It will, I suspect, be at no little expense. Sigh. * I've been thinking a lot about the current political situation in the US. (NB: I work in Public Health, am a union member, and an hourly wage earner, in the great state of Ohio.) I've been thinking, too, a lot about fascism. Do we really want corporations to run things? Do you really think corporations are people? And if they are, are they the kind of folks you want to hang with? Is spending money how corporations talk? And how come when they talk they only seem to want to limit what peeps who think differently from them want to do? I, for one, love most people. I can't say the same for most corporations. * I've been thinking, too, a lot about the New England transcendentalists. Am reading right now Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia by Richard Francis (Yale, 2010). It's a pretty wonderful book about a very specific quest for perfection which was always already destined for failure. It's a great evocation of an intellectual/emotional milieu. Bronson Alcott and his family, Emerson, Thoreau and a great cast of others figure in the story. * So, have been feeling pretty down lately, but keep trying. Dug up some deeply rooted hosta plants and removed as much yard waste as I had energy to do. I'm trying. *