And A Happy Sunday To You

There is not much going on in the home of Utah today. Saturday was spent refitting the traps and drains beneath our kitchen sink.

I need to remodel both our kitchen and upper bathroom. The first step will involve a trackhoe if I have my way...

The weather has closed in with a surprising spring snowfall mixed with rain. I believe the chances of actually getting any work done tomorrow are slim but I don't know if there are other things to be done besides my subdivision. Time will fill.

There was an anti-war protest here in Happy Valley yesterday. About twentyfive protestors set up shop right in Orem City Center and occupied the street corners surrounding Center and State streets. They waved signs and solicited honks for peace; newspaper accounts described the responses as "mixed". I wish I had known about it. I am not able to make it up to Hill AFB today due to the tax document roundup we have to finish TODAY in order to get it to our tax preparer in time for BAG day.

Mrs. Utah has acquiesced to replacing our clapped out AK in .223 with a more reliable firearm. Woot! I am leaning toward an AR style rifle but may end up with a Mini-14 in deference to the goddesses and economy. I have the M1 for long work, anyway.

I have been following the Schiavo case from arm's length. My mother spent a decade in a nursing home after her stroke. My intention is to not suffer the same fate should accident or illness ever put me in the same position. I have not yet put my specific instructions in writing in the form of a living will, but that, like so many other pressing legal chores, is on the list for this spring.

Gerard Vanderleun runs the American Digest. I first discovered him via Roger L. Simon's comments and put his blog on the Purser's List when I inaugurated TRB. Mr. Vanderleun has a long history of literary and publishing credentials. His essays often remind me of a Forrest Gump- like flavor of synchronicity (without the simplicity, of course) but that is merely the result of a professional life spent among the circles of pop and literary scions that I could never know.

The Schiavo case prompted him to write an essay about his personal and political evolution since 2001. I agree with his opinion that the divide in this country, and beyond, is brought into stark relief by where people align on the toughest questions:

"There is a fire in the minds of men now as there was at the beginning of the 20th century. Terri Schiavo's predicament is but one of the smaller flames in this continuing conflagration that pits, like some strange civil war, brother against brother and friend against friend. And so they go, as the other things of life that were once good and have now turned bad, away along a path of life that you no longer can share."

In this one instance of state involvement in the fate of one individual, we are grappling with fundamental questions and stresses that far outstrip mere partisan bickering. (Update)The fate of a woman we have never met has invited us to examine ourselves, and many of us are coming up short on neat answers.(end)

Read the entire essay. Bring a lunch - you will end up miles from where you started.

Have a fine week.