Holy Week musings

April 6, 2023

After a long silence, feeling moved to add some musings to this blog/journal/diary.

College craziness persists. Stanford, Columbia and MIT lead the way in recent examples of going very woke. Community college enrollments and smaller, low-level higher education institutions are shrinking to an unsustainable level, often just disappearing slowly into the night, unnoticed as they were before they closed.

Weather disappoints. Wisconsin spring is not visible, albeit with some brief, misleading. Today was sunny and clear, but the wind speed approached the temperature level for much of the day, both in the thirties.

My weight continues to creep upward.

Donated blood for the first time in twenty years, now that the red cross lifted its ban on those with long stints in the UK back in the 1980's.

Jane Qastin seems to be enjoying her "independent" living but she seems more dependent than ever, and at a very high emotional and financial cost. Abe seems to have accepted this new life and although Gaby rejects as "overly dramatic" my characterization of this relationship as much like a divorce, there is little practical to distinguish their relationship from the conditions of legal divorce.

I continue to regularly pursue alternative locations for the next step in our lives, probably after we find a pleasant way to separate ourselves from Jane and Abe, Dena leaves work, and we agree to a true retirement lifestyle, which to me means: A more sun-filled home, more moderate year-round weather, seasonal travel with extended stays, and a focus on improving our weight and fitness as we age. To date, no place seems perfect enough to warrant an immediacy or even a decision to move. Recent candidates have been Charlotte and Greenville (SC), but cities such as Austin, Tucson, Asheville, Johnson City (TN), Boise, and San Luis Obispo have crossed my mind.

Dena is in New York with Gaby after three days in Syracuse for Salelytics. This will be my third night as a "bachelor" in our Harrison home. I worked playground duty all four days this week, including three days with bone-chilling wind and cold.

Just finished my VIRTUS training and found the ignorance of Type II error to be unconscionable. One speaker dismissed the downside of reporting an innocent person by saying, of course, you can do it anonymous and "you won't get in trouble." Absurd. The problem is not you getting in trouble; it's getting an innocent person in trouble with hypersensitivity or, God forbid, a misunderstanding or actual malice by the person reporting the offense.

Even worse was the demand -- since recalled -- by Loyola that I pass a DEI test. I noted that I am not required to do same yet I asked for a chance to try the training. One four-minute segment of platitudes on diversity, along with a list of topics that included privilege and the mandatory woke claims of inclusion and diversity, caused me to click off this woke porn. I emailed Alli at Loyola and said, "Please de-activate me again."