1. I had fun today walking the loop from The Beanery, west on the Trail of CdAs, uphill to the clinic, east on McKinley, and down Hill Street back to the Camry.
While walking, I listened to another episode of the podcast, This is Jeopardy!, featuring the extraordinary story of Ken Jennings and his mind boggling streak of 74 consecutive wins on Jeopardy in 2004. The people in charge of Jeopardy had decided, starting in 2003, to do away with limiting Jeopardy winners to five game winning streaks. Until Jennings' streak in 2004, the most games any one player had won in a row was seven.
My walk today was fun anyway, but walking with Ken Jennings made it even more so.
2. Debbie and I met at The Beanery after school today. For the third time in the last two weeks, Debbie's students had an outdoor school day which meant Debbie, too, was outside for most of the day. Miraculously, the weather all three days was moderate, the temperatures in the 60s and 70s and today, as on the fishing day, breezes helped keep the day comfortable.
Debbie and I had a long talk about Debbie's students and what she's learned about the specific challenges of teaching elementary school in Pinehurst, in Kellogg's school district. As it turned out, the three women seated at the table behind Debbie were also Kellogg school district employees, working at the high school. Debbie talked with them a bit and it's clear that with the school year winding down, professional adults working with young people have a lot of debriefing and reflecting to do.
3. Back home, I fixed a HelloFresh spaghetti dinner featuring a sun dried tomato sauce. It was delicious. Debbie and I returned to listening to the podcast, The Debutante, and learned much more about the circle of people in Timothy McVeigh's orbit, people ready to perpetrate violence upon the U. S. government and eager to live in a United States free of Jews and people of color. On the face of it, this podcast is a portrait of former Tulsa debutante Carol Howe and her role as a government informer living in the separatist compound of Elohim City, OK. But the podcast's host and creator, Jon Ronson, has been researching Neo-Nazism and other forms of extremism in the USA for decades and his work in this program extends far beyond looking just at Carol Howe.
Listening to this history on this podcast is intense, emotionally demanding.
We agreed to take a break from it. We watched Monk figure out whether a sniper was or wasn't acting on behalf of a trade union during a strike. The sniper killed a tow truck driver who had crossed a picket line and when the truck driver lost control of his vehicle, it caused an accident that seriously injured Captain Stottlemeyer's wife, Karen. This episode had a lot going on in it!
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