Three Beautiful Things 06/06/18: Making Things Right, Plumbing Day, *Washington Journal*

1. I suddenly realized that it was possible that when I closed Mom's estate checking account that possibly the check I had written against the account to our attorney hadn't cleared. The statement came today and, sure enough, that was the case. I buzzed up to the attorney's office and found out that, indeed, that check had very recently been returned. I then asked if he had arrived an amount for what we owed for the final filing, I found out, and I wrote a new, and solvent(!) check that covered everything and brought my business, as the now former executor of Mom's estate, with the attorney to an end. All that remained was to divide the funds that remained from Mom's estate between my sisters and me and I wrote them each a check this evening.

2. Today was a major day in the life of our remodeling project. The plumber, with some help from Shawn, removed our leaky water heater, installed a new one, and set our toilet and sink in the main floor bathroom.  Once Shawn gets the trim in, touches up the paint a bit, puts up a grab bar, and improves some of the grouting in the shower, I do believe we will have a finished remodeled bathroom.  We are very fortunate that we have a bathroom in the basement to use while this work has been going on.

3.  I am now tackling one more book about the presidency of Richard Nixon. It's Elizabeth Drew's Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Nixon's Downfall.  Elizabeth Drew wrote regular dispatches, written as diary entries, for The New Yorker starting in the fall of 1973 and these pieces are collected in this book.  Elizabeth Drew has been one of my favorite writers for about thirty-five years and early on, in this book, she's doing what I admire her so much for: she's a tireless reporter with access to multiple sources of information and she is an astute political philosopher, particularly when it comes to the nature and the history of the U. S. Constitution and how the Constitution's principles were challenged and threatened by the abuses of power of the Nixon administration.