Saturday

Promptly on schedule at seven o’clock last evening, Kristen arrived safely home from college for Spring Break. While she was on the road, my Friday afternoon was a total mental diversion and distraction, reviewing HNES school year 2012-2013 financial aid applications, recomputing each one, discovering and correcting errors, and preparing briefs for the Financial Aid Committee session the end of this month. 

My initial examination as soon as each application arrives from SSS takes about thirty minutes apiece, but this final process takes an hour or more each, so that five were completed during my Friday afternoon purgatory. It’s productive stress management actually, keeping the mind on the task, the imagination off the highway, and the eye off the clock. When nature suddenly called, it was six-fifteen and impossible to focus again, so the final three-quarter-hour was spent on the back porch swing with the iPad and watching the intersection of 9th Street and Calhoun Avenue until her gold colored Saturn Vue swung round the corner and into its customary place, and an extraordinary week was lifted from an old man’s shoulders.

NYT  Theater section this morning is about the March 15 Broadway opening of “Death of a Salesman” including question and discussion of whether it’s tragedy or pathos. No theater pundit and easily manipulated on this, but maybe it couldn’t be tragedy unless there was the possibility all through of Willy Loman having the victory or at least ending up a hero. My vote is pathos, it’s totally depressing, Loman a devastating failure right down to the beat up 1937 Plymouth business coupe that my mind visualizes Linda Loman riding home from the cemetery, gazing out the car window and thinking, knowing, “what a shame.” 

But the only shame this lovely dawn is that everyone can't see and enjoy another beautiful day.


Tom