Random Thoughts - The Busy Week Edition

I love it when a plan comes together.  You can all pat yourselves on the back... all of you who made the call or wrote the letter or sent the email or the tweet.  The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the first piece of President Obama's gun control initiative, making straw purchasing (the buying of guns on behalf of those who are prohibited from owning them) a federal crime.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, voted with the ten Democrats on the Committee. I'm stopping off at his website to thank him for his support.  It seems like the polite thing to do.
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Sen. Grassley's home state saw ads on responsible gun ownership in the days leading up to this vote.  Americans for Responsible Solutions, Gabby and Mark's PAC, must be feeling pretty good right about now; their dollars paid for those ads and they seem to have made a difference.
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I wore the same blouse today that I wore to the press conference yesterday .  It's a pretty salmon color, and several people commented on its loveliness.  Of course, most of those people remembered seeing it on television, too.

There's a lot more to being a faux-celebrity than meets the eye... or the wardrobe... it seems.
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Thucydides is describing the collapse of Athenian democracy, as my Humanities Seminar wends its way through the Peloponnesian War. We're up to the Melian Dialogue, wherein the Athenians explain to the inhabitants of Melos that negotiations can only happen between equals, that Athens will crush them should they resist becoming a colony, that feelings and religion and the rightness of their position were immaterial, that might makes right. The Melians choose to fight, the Athenians win, and then, as Thucydides so succinctly puts it, the Athenians put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves....

This led to our professor's startling (to me, at least) revelation that there is a branch of scholarship devoted to the logistics of annihilating the population of an island.  How many Melians could an Athenian slaughter before his arm got tired?  How long did the process take?  How did they dispose of the bodies?  It's an island; was there room for them all?

As Little Cuter said when she heard of a friend's college coursework on Modern Norwegian Fiction, "Some people have too much time on their hands."
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I had the opposite issue today - too little time and too many events.  I threw up my hands and went to lunch by myself.  Sometimes self-comforting is in order.
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I visited the newest addition to sheltered care for the demented in our neighborhood this afternoon. It is bright and clean and thoughtfully appointed.  The hallways are broad and well lit and long... very very long.  There are a few private rooms; most are shared bedrooms or adjoining to a shared bathroom.

The pod-castle looked a lot better to me as I left that shiny new building. I walk into a foyer and a living room when I visit G'ma; the new place has a generic waiting room and a locked portal into the living space.  I drove over to hug my mother and congratulate her on raising a daughter who managed to find the best place in Tucson for her to live, but it was Movie Afternoon and she was busy.  The shades were drawn, sodas were poured, popcorn was at hand, and the residents were enthralled, watching a movie the way movies are supposed to be watched: together.

I didn't disturb her.  I refilled her bowl of chocolate and slipped quietly away.
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I'm taking Amster's kids to the Tucson Festival of Books tomorrow, and I'm concerned about the weather. Only in Tucson would a mid-50's-and-occasional-shower forecast be considered stay-home-and-stay-warm weather in early March.  Of course, today we were in the mid-80's, so I'm kinda sorta spoiled.

Don't hate me .... move down and join me.
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All our teams lost this week; none of them were even close.  It was a dismal way to end the regular season, and a less than promising way to start the run-up to March Madness.  Still, it's fun to see the recipients of our tuition dollars on the television screen.

I'd write more, but neither of the kids wanted to talk about it and that's where most of my chatter originates. Poor babies, they had to hide their sorrows in silence.
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I just called Senator Jeff Flake's office to confirm that he had voted against the straw purchasing bill in his committee meeting this morning.  The lovely young woman who answered his phone in Washington had no idea, had no one to ask, couldn't direct me to anyone who could answer my question, and offered no guidance on where to turn.

She did take my address so that she could get back to me with the answer.  Of course, that doesn't help me much for this post, now does it?
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Little Cuter is breaking down and buying herself an ereader.  She's feeling guilty about abandoning her physical books, but the weight of them is becoming an annoyance on her daily commute.  I tried to reassure her, to console her, but I think that Dana Stabenow said it best: they are complementary tools.  You use a pen and a pencil and a keyboard, after all.