At what point would insurrection be an acceptable response to a totalitarian regime? And who would need to accept that response to legitimize it? I think about such things far more frequently than I would like. Today’s world makes thinking about such matters compelling. When the idea of being killed or imprisoned for participating in an insurrection becomes more than an imaginary fear, choosing to act in response to the boundary between freedom and bondage becomes deadly serious.
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We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
~ William Inge ~
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After days of frustration and changes in plans to address the causes of those frustrations, I may have finally addressed the primary cause of one of the matters that have disturbed me. Unless things change (as they are wont to do), I will not need to be in Houston earlier than planned, simply to have someone determine whether my chest port (from which blood is drawn and chemotherapy drugs are infused) will work. The story is too long and boring to explain in detail; it is enough to say I have received assurances that the staff at M.D. Anderson (MDA) that my port will work just fine. MDA technicians and nurses should be able to access it without any problem. The other concern, just how [and the extent to which] I will be reimbursed for my travel and lodging, has not yet been clarified. It’s looking like next week’s visit to Houston will still be considered a “screening” visit, which is not reimbursed. Oh, well. I can use some of the little remaining in my retirement accounts (after 47’s brutal attack on the mental, physical, and financial well-being of everyone but the richest Americans) to cover the expenses of the visit. It is comforting to know that crickets and kittens and camels share my perspective on the nature of the current leader of the free world. Tongue-partially-in-cheek.
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The Japanese language includes words that are not directly translatable into English. Other languages, too, contain such words that speakers of English cannot utter with a single English word. Japanese comes to mind because I frequently encounter such Japanese words: kyoikumama [a mother who pushes her children to achieve academically]; tsundoku [buying a book and leaving it unread, usually surrounded by a lot of other unread books]; komorebi [sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees, creating a dappled appearance; sokaiya [a man with a few shares in several companies who extorts money by threatening to come to the shareholders’ meetings and cause trouble]; and many more. A few other non-English words that have no words of direct translation include: utepils [Norwegian for sitting outside on a sunny day and enjoying a beer]; culacinno [Italian for the ring left on a table from a moist glass]; gökotta [Swedish for waking up early to hear the first birds sing]; and gluggaveður [Icelandic for weather that looks beautiful but is unpleasant to be in]. I have come across these foreign language words online, so I cannot be sure they are real. Whether they are or not, though, I like the idea of single words whose meanings encompass broad concepts or emotions.
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Another night of angrily emphatic bone-jarring thunder and jagged flashes of blue lightning that illuminated the sky. I write in the past tense, as if the storms have come and gone. In fact, they continue to roar through before 5 A.M., proving forecasts of a day or two ago wrong. The NOAA weather radio howled warnings of tornadoes and flash floods more than once during the night. Spring weather has intensified during the eleven years I have lived in Hot Springs Village. Just last year, a tornado tore through the Village, uprooting huge pine trees, splitting the trunks of massive oak trees, and otherwise leaving arboreal carnage all along its path. We were fortunate, in that the worst of the wind damage only took down two big pines near the house. Roughly the distance of a city block away, long and wide swaths of forest were leveled. Streets were blocked, power line downed, and houses damaged along the miles-long route of the tornado. Mother Nature seems to be responding to our arrogance…our assumption that we are stronger than our environment.
