Why I was not here

A few days after my last post a good friend [actually my best friend] had a leg amputated due to gangrene. She seemed to re doing fine by the weekend and then went downhill rapidly and died on July 20th.

I then helped, with several others, to call mutual friends and tell them about her death and 2 planned memorial services. It was hard as I was re-connecting with other old friends with whom I lost contact over my last 2 moves and we had long conversations about past present and future.

Why does it usually take a death to make people who like each other re-connect? And now I am planning a trip to visit these old friends.

Of course nothing is normal weather wise this year so we in Portland where 90 is a rare event had a 10 day stretch of a brutal heat wave and I get heat exhaustion...and during those days me, the dog, cat and computer were all laying low and being very still. I don't have AC - very few in the Pacific Northwest do. Hard for me to get my political brain working under the conditions of grief and heat...

Stay tuned - I will resume as there is so much to say!