1. Soon after the clinic uptown opened, I called to see if I could get in for a quick appointment with my primary care provider, Linda Jo Yawn. I wanted to talk with her about ordering me a new prescription and about an order for a PPD skin test for tuberculosis -- I am required to have this skin test performed annually as a part of maintaining my medical record as a person on the kidney transplant list at the U of Maryland. It all went well. I will have the skin test done next week when we return from our trip to Oregon. I would have had it done today, but I have to return after 48 hours to have it read and we are leaving on Wednesday.
2. I got in a lot of reading today. Before going to the clinic, I had a half Americano/half steamed whole milk at the Bean. The coffee house was abuzz with people coming in and out and I heard stories by a boss about guys not showing up for work, a guy's motorcycle trip from Kellogg to somewhere deep in Montana and back, and reports of people who had encountered snow over the weekend while out in the mountains.
As I dive deeper into Elizabeth Drew's Washington Journal, an impression I've had for years about Richard Nixon returns and Drew's reporting deepens it. It's nothing new. Elizabeth Drew's book portrays Nixon as intelligent, a fighter, a man of great resilience, and a politician with keen instincts and a ton of savvy. He could also be very sentimental, especially when it comes to family and patriotism. But his inward demons sabotage his strengths. His bitterness. His resentments. His thirst for revenge. His dark insecurities. His paranoia. His demands for loyalty. His largely friendless and too often solitary life.
When we read or go to a play or when we read fiction, those portrayed are called characters because the story brings their inward life, what we call their character, to life. The invisible traits of character become the character we experience developing in the story. So, I tend to read Elizabeth Drew's non-fiction account of Nixon's last ten or eleven months as president the same way as I read fiction. Plot is character. A person's character shapes his or her story. It's painful to read the details of Nixon's presidency unraveling because it is so closely paralleled by the unraveling of his inward life. I take no pleasure in bearing witness to anyone's self-destruction. Having the collective pain of witnessing something like the downfall of Richard Nixon washed away or cleansed by the story's inevitable conclusion, a conclusion of defeat, is known as catharsis. I'm at that point in this story of Richard Nixon where the collective desire in the government and the public for it all to end is palpable. As the spring turned into summer in 1974, the people of the USA yearned for catharsis. It's coming.
3. Shawn's birthday was Sunday and so Christy, Everett, the Deke, Teresa, and Shawn had a celebratory round table at the end of the work day. I bought bombers of Arrogant Bastard Ale, Scuttlebutt's Hoptopia Imperial Ale, and Elysian's Split Shot and Christy brought over a bottle of Prairie Organic Gin. She also brought smoked salmon, crackers, cream cheese, and pickled asparagus. We drank small samples of the beer and gin. Gin and tonic was also available. We talked about all sorts of things -- the remodeling project, international trade, Canada's scenic beauty, and the songs of Ian Tyson and Gordon Lightfoot. It was a fun way to bring the work day to an end and to send Shawn off into his next year of work and travel and good times.
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