Yesterday I further messed up every closet in the house, looking for more of a certain fabric.
In No Strange Land
The kingdom of God is within you
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air--
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry--clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!
By Francis Thompson
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| Detail of a Jacob's Ladder quilt |
I have mild incomplete webbing between my long and ring fingers.
Yesterday morning the phone rang, and the man said he was with the Medicare office. As always when confronted with Authority, I thought, "What have I done now?"
"We're getting ready to send out the new Medicare cards, and I have to verify your name and address. Are you Joanne R. Cage at [my address]?" etc., until he got to, "What is the name of your bank?"
The key word is morning. Still in my morning fog, I said, "Regions."
"Is that the Regions bank in Leeds, Alabama?"
"Uh huh."
The man said, "We have to be absolutely sure we're sending this card to the correct person. Give me your routing number and account number, printed on the bottom of your check. Do you need a moment to get your checkbook?"
Finally my brain kicked in and began to work.
"Why do I need a new Medicare card?" I asked.
"We're issuing new cards to all seniors entitled before [some date]."
"Well," I said, "you have my address, so you can mail it to me if you want to." And I hung up.
I thought, I need to report this, for the benefit of people who may be even stupider than I am. But I couldn't think where to report it.
Part of me hopes I receive a new Medicare card, proving that I'm not any stupider than average.
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"New Medicare scheme falsely claims new cards are being issued"
I found this online, so apparently everybody knew about it except me.
For dinner I made what the English call passties. I rolled my biscuit dough out thin, put canned corned beef hash between two layers, pinched the edges together, and baked them brown. They were good, which was a surprise, because my messes don't always turn out so well. They were better than the ones Jenny and I tried to eat in England, not so rich and greasy.
Sunday, I watched "Looking For Lincoln" on PBS, then Downton Abbey episode 6. It seems impossible that next Sunday's episode will be the finale of D.A.'s season 3. Tempus fugit.
As always when studying Lincoln, one is left with contradictory feelings about the man. Lincoln was a lawyer, with a deep respect for legality. He made seemingly contradictory decisions, always based on the law, such as protecting a black woman against the claims of a southern plantation owner by finding that the woman was a legal resident of Illinois, then finding that a slave who had run away to Illinois must be returned because he was "legal property."
Faced with deciding murder charges against a group of more than a hundred American Indians, he had about 30 of them hanged (I'm not certain of these numbers, but the proportions are about right).
Lincoln was also a 19th century white man, with his share of conventional flaws and prejudices. He did not believe that Negroes were mentally and physically equal to whites, but he always said that slavery was wrong.
Doris Kearns Goodwin co-hosted the show, with Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. Goodwin's book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius Of Abraham Lincoln, was one of the best biographies I've ever read about anybody. It pointed out that Lincoln chose Seward and other political opponents as his closest advisors, because he knew he needed them if he was going to win the war. The PBS program also illustrated this point.
In spite of recognizing his defects and disagreeing with some of his opinions, I am left with admiration for his insight, personality and power in winning the elections and the war, and with profound pity for his personal life. With a contrary wife, the loss of two young children, and a country tearing itself apart, it's no wonder that his originally depressed psyche dropped lower and lower, until the end.
I bought a new dress. Since it's the first time that has happened in many years, I thought it worth mentioning.
I'm not exactly sick and tired of waking up in the morning and spending the next two to four hours at the computer. But it slowly dawns on me, that doing so is not the wisest use of my time.
I hereby limit my computer time to one hour in the a.m. and one hour before I go to bed.
Unless I get a good idea for a story. Even then, I won't write for more than two hours a day.
Starting tomorrow.
A disturbing dream:
This guy kept following me around the house, and I kept yelling at him to get out. I had already succeeded in making all his buddies get out, but he kept grinning and making jokes, while I was trying to lock all the windows. It was an old house with about a hundred windows, with those old-timey latches at the top, and some of the locks were missing. And some of the windows were just glass panels set in that wouldn't open anyway. The man finally left, and I locked the door behind him.
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I guess the groundhog saw his shadow this morning. But I forget the significance of that. Will spring be late or early?
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| Four Seasons Miniature Quilt |
