Weekly Journal 2024-04-07

It was a punk week as far as weather goes. Rain and snow kept me mostly indoors. My exercise log shows more indoors workouts which are never as much fun as walking on the state park trail. I managed as best I could.

Women’s Basketball

Sunday I turned on the television and found ABC which was carrying the NCAA Women’s Championship basketball game. Iowa lost to the University of South Carolina 75-87. It was the first time I tuned into a college sporting event since I watched the Iowa football team get shutout by Washington, 0-28 in the Jan. 1, 1982 Rose Bowl. The moral of the story is I shouldn’t jinx the luck by tuning in.

Our high school class reunion planning group was talking about women’s basketball at our meeting this week. I suggested we find one of the women who were leaders in high school to lead the formal program we have planned. One person asked if we had a women’s basketball team. Perhaps there would be a leader from there. We didn’t. We graduated high school before Title IX was signed into law.

Editing the Book

I finished the final rough draft of the first 38 of 62 chapters in my autobiography. This thing may not drag on until summer. My conclusion is I have been over the text so many times, it has become the story. There were some chapters that needed work, but it is a much better draft than what I finished last year.

One lingering concern is including long passages from my journal in the narrative without editing. Some of that writing is a bit rough. When I started journal writing in 1974, I was not very good at it. My argument to myself is that it is better to show the work than sand off the edges in a new narrative. In part, that is to show my progress as a writer in a work intended to showcase my writing. The long passage I wrote in France was particularly rough, yet it serves as an example of how my journal writing started. For now, I’m leaving it in.

The other question is about passages written about long ago events since I started this blog in 2007. There may be a case to just rewrite these. At the same time, they capture a moment in time that would vanish should I re-write them. I left them in at this point.

End of Life Planning

I read Mary Ann Burrows new book, The Last Hurrah: A Living Workbook for a Happy Ending. The book is about end of life planning, but not the kind I expected. She defers to others the tasks of financial and legal advice and writes mostly about how to turn our last days into a celebration. If someone knows me, they know I am not a big one to celebrate moments or have a big to-do about life’s events. The biggest events in my life were our wedding and its two receptions, and our child’s high school graduation. We had gatherings for them. So many of my good friends have died already, I’m not sure who would be left and in good enough shape to travel for a celebration. I started keeping my own obituary a number of years ago. It is pretty bare bones, and that’s the way I like it.

Clear Organic Juice

I went to the grocer to find clear organic juice for my spouse. She wanted organic apple juice, which wasn’t available. In typical (for us) form, I started sending images of various ingredient labels and products. I offered to get non-organic apple juice. In the end, I phoned her and said, “I’ve been waiting in this juice aisle and am starting to get thirsty.” We gave up and I brought home boxed vegetable broth instead.

It was unsettling to be unable to dig in the garden because of inclement weather. The seed potatoes appear to be doing well, and the seedlings are growing. Here’s hoping the coming week find me spending more time in the garden.