November 30, 2015

Sunday morning found a dead baby raccoon in the driveway, It had been gutted, but whether that was the cause of death or the result of scavenging I don’t know. I felt bad. Left it, though, to see what would happen. Today there is significantly less of it.

Finished reading through my 50 students’ forty page journals. Some were barebones; others were full of keen insight or deep thought or pleasing humor. I’m pretty much a hit as a teacher. The best in the program, according to rate-my-professor, which I know not because I ever looked but because some of my students revealed their reasons for selecting me. Those who don’t like me fall (this time) into a single category– those who are more worried about their grade than they are about learning anything. It is true I’m not helpful to them, preferring to say “pay attention in class” or “wait for it all to fall together” rather than holding hands or handing out study guides. I do not make Powerpoints. I expect them to listen, and if they don’t know how to listen, to learn how. College is about learning new things. The boy/girl J hates me–and said so–largely, I think, because I did not take her/his grade anxiety seriously enough. Seldom have I felt such anger burning from a page. But THAT much anger is pathological and beyond redress, so one moves on. Most say they are thankful to have had me for Humanities, and I agree with them, for I loved what I did and presented it to them as an act of love. Something still must happen to punish The Boy. He's a little Caligula with the will but not the imagination of evil.

Many Christians in the class (revealed never IN class but always through the safety of the journals) and many of them remarkably ignorant about the faith they profess, to the point of not knowing the difference between the Old and the New testaments, of thinking that Jesus had written the bible, of not realizing every bible they have ever read has been a translation.

Student academic presentations in the morning. I divided the time between listening critically and looking at the back of K’s head, imagining making love to him. Probably approximately what goes on in that seat every class period. . .  with a change of personnel.

Remarkable continuity of rain. This is the last evening at home for a very long time.

November 29. 2015

Much singing at church (Advent One), then much singing in rehearsal for All Is Calm. The second went far better than it had the last time, so my stomach rested easier inside me. It is considerable comfort not to be the worst.

November 28, 2015

In dream I had a desperate need for white cyclamen, to plant in the cement planter I brought over from 62 when I was feeding DJ’s fish. In a later dream, I had come late to some task. I was paid for it, but the payment was bitter because I had not really done the work. Then I had to carry a stepladder from the downtown Y in Akron all the way up Market Street.

Ordered odd peonies, which they said I could plant as long as the ground wasn’t frozen.

How the writing is bringing back memories of Hiram!

Searched, and there were no white cyclamen to be had, despite the dream. Planted huechera against the turning of the season.

Harry and Jan and their friends came by on their bikes. They caught me sleeping. I caught myself standing in the lawn in my bare feet.

Bought a bed.

November 27, 2015

Blazing egg shaped moon when I rose, which seems to have rounded before pale morning.
   
Rescued cement planters from 62, which Will seems to have moved to the periphery.
   
Working nonstop on the Hiram novel. The writing is beautiful. The gatekeepers will hold that against it.

November 26, 2015

Moon and glittering stars at rising, moon and glittering stars when I lay down again to sleep. Writing in between. Writing and TV, lest I give myself too much credit. I scattered bread so the crows could have their Thanksgiving.

November 25, 2015

Fully suited for my freezing study in P-coat and toboggan.

Harry sees WP, complains how he fell in love with the actresses and then I killed them off. MM praises WP, says it “has legs.” Didn’t expect him to see it, actually.  My cup is pretty full regarding that production of that play.

First rehearsal at NC Stage. It was awful, but actually not quite as awful as I expected. Nor was my throat as raw as I anticipated afterwards. Even the backs of the heads of the actors are handsome. Stopped at Southern for a drink (and a kale salad, as it turned out) on the way to my car, and met Hap, a friendly bearded guy from Chattanooga who’s been here for a couple of days looking in on the music scene. He saw my music for All Is Calm and said, “except I don’t really have to READ music.” He does singer/songwriter gigs around, and will be having Thanksgiving with his family in Waynesville. Half the places he knows in Asheville I never heard of.

John Bridges is dead. Squirrels have gnawed gaping holes into my pumpkins

November 24, 2015

On the radio yesterday with CF-M for All Is Calm. Always pleased when I don’t cough or cuss.

Playwrights dazed at the end of the semester, much gossip, little art. I was the same.

Considered making an application for a Rockefeller Foundation residency, but stopped because of having resolved long ago never again to enter to apply for anything that requires letters of recommendation.

November 23, 2015

Wake-up call, that all the music for All Is Calm is done not only without accompaniment, but without renewed pitch. If we sink too low my Bflat is goners.

Students wishing me well at the end, saying I’m their best teacher, etc. I should have learned to make more of this.

November 22, 2015

Sleep damaged by Irish creme for the second time. It won’t happen again. Strange dreams in the intermittent unconsciousness. I had been writing all day about Hiram, and so I dreamed of Hiram. I dreamed of the ground behind Centennial Hall covered in gigantic peonies, pink and red and white. I had returned to Hiram after a sojourn in the far country, and I was very tired and relieved. With the unexpected coherence of dreams, my “far country” is usually the University of Nebraska, to which I flee for more money or because things aren’t working out, or something. I never thought of this when I was actually in Nebraska. For it I have no explanation, other than to imagine my dream mind thinks it’s the last place on earth. It was night in Hiram and I was looking at the peonies,  waiting for Denny to come meet me, and I was profoundly happy.

Washington Place last night was done as well as it has ever been, and the crowd was mesmerized; I would even say astonished. We have set a new standard for theater in this town. Of course we can fall back, or we can move forward. The second of these will involve hard choices.

This is the day I usually think Thanksgiving should be. It must have been November 22 once in my impressionable youth.

Looked online at the Boy’s student evaluations. They mostly hate him, which is a relief and a confirmation. Many of the evaluations end with “he is not a nice man.” One wonders, therefore, why he is suffered. They also sense he thinks of himself as a Christian, sensing at the same time the cringe-making irony of it.

Hard wind, cold in the corners of the house. Cold is maybe the only thing I fear.

November 21, 2015

Malaprop’s last night to hear Jimmy read from his book about fracking in north central Pennsylvania. Tried to be more interested in the topic than I was, but Jimmy is such a man I like to be with him whenever I can. Asheville is a different town every time you look at it. I remembered few of the shops. Had a cappuccino in a café where I was alone. I thought this strange with all the activity outside the window.

November 20, 2015

Returned to the Magnetic for the show last night, gratified that the actors still put their all into it, still expend the necessary energy. Wish the cues were faster, but that’s about all. Met tall H who, after seeing the play, wishes to work with me. He smelled sexily of beer. The Ks. JL said, “I figured it would be OK, but I didn’t expect it to be Good. Half moon over me returning home.

Exhausting class yesterday, and the same one to do this morning. This looks to be my last Humanities class ever. In a way, good riddance. Calling in the vanguards and the outliers. Peter talked to me long yesterday about retirement options, and I listened.

November 19, 2015

What if I were President? I’d let as many Syrians as I could. Mercy and compassion should win the day, but even if they didn’t, reason should come to the same conclusion. Who vetted Timothy McVeigh? He was a Veteran, a Christian, a fine upstanding specimen of American manhood. Put him near the top of a list of dozens, all red-blooded gun-totting American terrorists. Every shred of evidence testifies that were are at greater risk–by levels of magnitude–from American citizens than we are from anyone who ever came here for any reason. There is no proof–though there is supposition– that any of the Paris conspirators came with the present influx of refugees. And he would have gotten where he needed to get anyway, driven by hate as his fellows were driven by desperation. There is no reason to suppose (by “reason” I mean reasonable reason, not the familiar stab of right-wing hysteria) that ANY person we let in will become anything but a useful and grateful citizen, the way my ancestors did when they came from Ireland–which, by the way, had a similar (and more earned) reputation for sending thugs and criminals. And there is something worse than the danger of one or two hateful immigrants. That is the perpetual fear that is stirred up, mostly groundlessly, by devious and reflexive reference to our “security.” Consider who it is that wants to make us afraid of everything all the time, and what they stand to gain from it.  W’s warning of “perpetual war” with terrorism was the nearest any recent American has come to suggesting a totalitarian state, where we must obey unthinkingly because of reasons of “security.” The Patriot Act is an un-American horror that it will take generations to erase. Even now we pass like sheep through airport “security” that every single person knows is pointless, or at best a piece of laborious theater. What’s next? Turning in our neighbors for suspicious activity? Closing down Taco Bell for being un-American?  Casual surveillance? Peremptory arrest without explanation? Why not? It’s all for our safety. It’s all to give us the sense of security we didn’t know we needed until politicians and media began to fear-monger. Listen, we are the most secure nation that has ever been on earth, and one of the most fearful. How has that happened? Is that the legacy we want to pass down?  Paris is doing it right by going out even now and eating in the cafes, and opening her arms to homeless Syrians. This makes her a hero. She has not been driven into a bolt-hole by fear. Racism and xenophobia are the real reasons for deflecting the needy from our shores, and both of those are a form of cowardice. Those who know how to stir up our latent xenophobia with a threat dropped here or a warning dropped there are in fact the single great threat to the American Way. Open the golden doors.

Took the Facebook “Most used words” test, and my most used word is “one.” I remember from my concordance days that both Yeats and Blake used “all” more than any other word.

Beer and cheese soup lingers in fond memory from last night. . . .

November 18, 2015

Wally Bowen has died of ALS. He was my first friend in Asheville, a relationship that started when I was interviewing for the job. I remember standing on the library steps, looking over his head at Pisgah gleaming in the distance, wondering if this was the place for me. I would remember that moment even if I’d never come. He asked me to share his house once. I don’t remember what I said, but it never happened. He had an affair with a student, and though I backed him all the way, vicious gossip said that I didn’t, and I lost his friendship, on his side because he doubted my loyalty thereafter, on my side because he ever could have believed that of me. Once he gave me a birthday party. A vibrant, beautiful man. Adieu.

Wasted the afternoon. Thought I’d work, but I lay down with the rain on the window and never got back up.

November 17, 2015

Didn’t mention that R brought his handsome head and his charming daughter to my studio during the stroll. Showed him how I’d been using his discarded canvases.

Video of white men encountering members of a certain tribe–somewhere–for the first time. I wondered at fifty thousand years of living exactly the same way– rather like the elves of Middle Earth. Noted secondly that the boldest of the natives was–not withstanding the bone in his nose– handsome.

Handsome (that word again) black beetles with orange geometric markings have been clustered at my front door, probably because the porch is white and faces south. When my sister was here, a dragonfly fluttered and shone at the door. Wonder where they go in the cold. Some few of each tribe must survive it.

Here is a note from She-ville, a local feminist paper:

 Magnetic Theatre takes on tragedy with 'Washington Place' 
 
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on New York City’s Lower East Side in 1911 has become one of the most notorious tragedies in the history of industry, but no one knows much, if anything, about the lives of the young women caught up in the conflagration.
Magnetic Theatre’s production, Washington Place, imagines those women, “bringing us their passions, hopes, songs and laughter in an effervescent, moving world premiere,” according to a press release.
"The audience around me were looking around at each other as though we needed to give a standing ovation but none of us could move at that moment...we didn't have the heart." Jean Cassidy

    After lecture yesterday my student Rees said, “I want to shake your hand.”
    Shaking, “Why?”
    “Because I saw your play. It totally changed my mind about the theater.”

Briefly chatted with Peg on campus. Mentioned that I had been hurled into the outer darkness Humanities-wise.
    “Who would do that?”
    “B.”
    “Oh. I’ve heard nothing good about him.”
    Nor was she going to, from me.

Completely re-invented my Christianity lecture in light of Paris, focusing on the historical moment when religion turned exclusive, when it became ponderable to kill for worshiping the wrong god. No other Humanities prof would have done this. What a fool that man is. An imp and a fool about whom one has heard nothing good.

Trying to find a cure for the perpetual throat-fog. It affects nothing but singing, but singing is all I do these days.

Sensational playwrights meeting last night. Two of them are already masters of the craft of dialogue. Another has the high seriousness of O’Neill.

 Cough, drink coffee, cough.

November 16, 2015

Hours in the studio for the studio stroll were, of course, mostly wasted in everything but that fact that I got work done, work that nobody much, apparently, is ever going to look at. All the fine artists say this, while the craftspeople prosper. It is that world. Worrying about sales and presentation does violate the reasons I took up painting, so I’ll try to keep the flood at ebb.
   
Shoulders so raw it was, after a while, agony to lift the brush. Talk about sacrifice.
   
Family up to see Washington Place and do a power of eating. People tell you they liked the show (how could they tell you otherwise?) but you wonder HOW they liked it. My nephews are not theater-goers, so did they perceive the conventions? The adaptations of the conventions? Could they follow it? Was the topic alive to them? Did it please the mind or the heart? Both? Neither? Was it too foreign? The opening of a door into a new world? You don’t know how to ask; they don’t know how to say. Lunch salad asserted itself and I had to leave in the middle of Act I, praying that one time to be invisible. King James pub afterwards, where we caught up on months of separation. D is muscled and burly to the threshold of TV wrestler. L is happy, and somewhat surprised to be. Must stay off the topic of politics with my new brother-in-law, whose existence refutes my assertion that one cannot be a Republican and intelligent at the same time, or at least provides an exception.
   
Two nights of freeze have killed off the last hopes of the garden.
   
Woodfin Y this AM. Karl had seen the play and said it was “good.” I don’t think he realized that I’m the author, so I’ll take that “good” as meaning good. More buildings going up on what was a beautiful wild hillside, barking with foxes.
  
Worried about Sam in France, though he is 100 miles from Paris.

November 14, 2015

Paris in nightmare. It seems worse there, somehow.

Late singing for the Cantaria Christmas program. Spikes of rage issuing from my head at each stupid question or ox-faced “Where are we?” J notes that it is kindness to respond to his every “Where are we?” but not that it is consideration to pay attention.

This day is way too full. Off to the studio in a few minutes to take a stab at the River Arts Studio Stroll. Expect family some time today. . . . .

Bought a lovely antique lamp shaped like lilies, realize that there is not one corner of this house unlit.

November 13, 2015

Wriggled out from under the Presbyterians in Marshall by the (true) revelation that I have a conflict on every single rehearsal night until Christmas. I had this week a rehearsal or other commitment every night of the week. It will be this way until two days after Christmas.
   
Went to WP last night to see a smooth and lyrical performance. SS called it “sweet.”  Yes. More true believers exiting the door.
   
Kevin writes from Omaha, “This makes my week! Your beautiful, soulful play is moving out into the world. What could be better?! Congratulations, David!!! “
   
Bought sport coats that do not come down to my knees.
   
Scooped the Venus flycatchers out of their muck and put them in a pot for winter. Sank the pitcher plants in deep water. Harvested the last of the roses– an orange bud, a purple bud, a pink bud, and one red full-blown.
   

November 12, 2015

    J produces a lovely review of Washington Place:

Theater review: Washington Place by The Magnetic Theatre
Posted on November 12, 2015 by Jeff Messer   


Set against the ominous horrors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, David Brendan Hopes’ new play, Washington Place tells a story of hope and inspiration about the workers within that doomed building. The Magnetic Theatre has something special on its hands in this great play by a local author.

WHAT: Washington Place
WHERE: The Magnetic Theatre, themagnetictheatre.org
WHEN: Through Sunday, Nov. 22, with performances Thursdays to Saturdays, at 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. $18-$22

At the start, it seems like just another day at the factory. Allen T. Law’s Avi arrives and tidies up the work space, wide-eyed and hopeful for the long life that is surely ahead of him. Law is perfect as the bright young man with a lust for life.

Arriving early to work are two Jewish women, the reserved Gussie and the outspoken Yetta. They prepare for a 12-hour shift behind locked doors and a constant contempt and suspicion that falls upon them. Valerie Miess is Gussie, who has accepted her lot in life. Samantha Stewart’s Yetta is fiery and rebellious, spending her free time attending socialist meetings. The two actresses hold the audience transfixed for the first 20 minutes with an elegant discussion of their different perspectives while they’re seated at their work stations. It is mesmerizing in its intimacy and honesty.

Another Jewish woman, Essie, arrives, as do Italian immigrants Lucia and Rosaria. Devyn Ray’s Essie is somewhere between the more pronounced opposites of Gussie and Yetta. Emmalie Handley’s Lucia has a secret that must be kept hidden from her employers, and her young sister Rosaria, played sweetly by Sophie Yates, pretends to not speak English in her delicate courtship with Avi.

Terry Darakjy plays Providenza Panno, who oversees the work of the young women. She herself started where they are, but rose to middle management, and now watches them with an eye of suspicion. Darakjy shines in a role that would otherwise be unsympathetic, yet holds her own in a powerful confrontation with Yetta.

The play is a day in the life of women who are not allowed to dream of more, or aspire to better lives. Some accept it, some protest it. There is no sense of their impending doom, which makes what is to come all the more unsettling. We get to know, and develop an affection for, these women and their plight under of the deft direction of Steve Samuels. He guides the audience along a path that has us hoping that somehow today is not the day of the fire that will take all the lives we have become so invested in.

The show is powerful. It reminds us of the sacrifices of those who died over a century ago. It is also a cautionary tale to warn us that such struggles are still playing out in our world today. This is what theater can and should be.

So, on that account, I am for the moment content. Even greater contentment came from a call from Marco that he had seen and loved the play, and was not even nagged into it by me. I napped afterward, and had a revery that we were lovers, from which I woke pure and joyful, a state not entirely mitigated by the recognition that the things that hurt me are real, solid, objective, and the things that save me, for those golden moments, I have made up out of hints and hopes and empty air. That is a skill not wholly beneficial.

November 11, 2015

Morning cool and bright.

Croaked like a toad at rehearsal last night.

Review of Washington Place in the Citizen Times. It is predictably ignorant and useless, and I should, therefore, let it roll off my back, but it’s the one review we’ve had so far, maybe the only one we’ll have, and it’s wrong and not fair and though no one reads the CT, this one particular hurt was completely unnecessary. A gratuitous cruelty.

But then, Hidden One, what isn’t?

November 10, 2015

Met my son in the dream before waking. Held him. He was six or seven. His little striped shirt. He looked nothing like me, but he felt like me. I knew him. He wouldn’t let go of me even when I thought he must be tired of embracing. When I woke I remembered that he had never been born. Sat on the edge of my bed howling until there was no more in me. Amazing the depth that grief can come from, a dark red place deeper than all depths. It is not alone there. Grief isn’t. What is with it I did not recognize. The well is empty for the moment. Put on your shoes. Get ready for work.

Playwrights here last night. Too much talk of the economics of theater. I want something to be pure, just once. Paradoxically, you have to be very, very rich for the theater to be pure. Or anything. Or so poor nothing matters.

November 9, 2015

Ferocious and unceasing rain. Went by the dark to the Y, where I had to find exercises that didn’t aggravate my twisted shoulder, gotten yesterday from simply getting up too fast from a chair. Cardio, for the most part. It is better than it was, for I can push in the seatbelt clip or reach the top of the steering wheel with my right hand this morning without shrieking in pain. Dull ache calls for pills, which in turn make me dull. Perhaps my dull self can still talk about the Age of Augustus.

Tom says WP is the best thing he’s seen in Asheville.

Back to church yesterday after a long theater vacation. Hadn’t changed. Excellent new perspective on the widow’s mite. Two rehearsals where I tried out my low B flat, and found it there, and resonant. Jim said “You were shaking my chair.” Will fight hoarseness, though, to the end of winter. In a dream I thought I discovered a cure for hoarseness, which was limes. No reason not to try it out.

November 8, 2015

Unforgivable hell of downloads and verifications and entry of passwords. Hours wasted and no work done. I wish all Microsoft had but one neck.

November 6, 2015

Went to buy flowers for the opening. Happened upon a place run by handsome young gay men, which was a plus. They were friendly and cute and stupid, which was neither a plus nor a minus as far as concupiscence was concerned, but rather amusing, or would have been had I not been having a bad morning.

    Him: So, where do we send these?
    Me. The Magnetic Theater, 375 Depot Street. (Disturbance in back, so he doesn’t hear me)
    Sorry, where do we send these?
    The Magnetic Theater, 375 Depot Street.
    Now, where are we sending them?
    The Magnetic Theater---

This went on for quite a while. Turns out he was looking for a name, and what I was giving him didn’t sound like one.  At one time I was actually turning on my heels to make for the door, but at last we got it worked out.
  
To the Magnetic then for the premiere of Washington Place, going alone, as if creeping in hoping not to be noticed. I need a gala in my life, and this wasn’t it. The house was sparse but contained quality people. And, in the moment, all was most and exceedingly well. The acting was excellent, the set and costumes and sound and lights flawless. May well have been the best opening night ever, including New York. I sat there taking it in, hearing laughter at the right moments around me. The play does not need even a touch. Proud, happy, came home and slept the sleep of the righteous.

Excellent session at the studio this AM. A whole painting in one sitting. The bitter sadness of the first of yesterday was not quite washed away by the satisfaction of the second half, so I had little skirmishes of that war to fight today. Theater again in a few hours.

November 5, 2015

Set the wrong foot down on leaving bed, and the morning has been, so far, odd.
   
Received the DVD of Washington Place from GPTC on the same day it opens at the Magnetic. Forgot to buy flowers for the opening. Maybe chocolate is better.
   
All Souls choir expanded since I left it for the stage. I still have the only low D.
   
Pissed off at an editor for admiring and admiring my poems and then not taking one. He should trust my judgment rather than his own. Really. I’d say that to his face. Follow me where I am going. Someone.
   
Great quantity of bread strewn on the yard for the crows.
   
My yard guy stood on the porch yesterday, considering with me as to whether the lawn needed mowing. We agreed that it did not. But I longed for him in a way that was beyond physical; it was metaphysical, puzzling– unassuageable.
   
Indian ragas on Pandora.

November 4, 2015

Rose exhausted from yesterday. My humors were out of balance, sure, but also it was a day of extraordinary turbulence. Fought a dead WiFi router; after melt-down realized I could unplug the computer from the router and plug it directly to the cable and get on with my life. Conference with a student whose fecklessness is exceeded only by his puppy-like sadness. He really has no clue that he has no clue. Headed out to the radio station for a live interview with J about Washington Place. Couldn’t hear it, of course, but felt it went well. Didn’t have to say much. Directly from there to a three hour All Is Calm rehearsal in the distant fringes of Fletcher. Came home, slept about an hour, rose precipitously, vomited heroically, sat in front of the TV until the sickness and the acid subsided. Rose finally in pale light and cleaned the litter box. Lovely day, all in all.

November 3, 2015

Voted at Saint Eugene’s. Received a doughnut.

Humanities debacle yesterday. Will talk it over with the class. The theme was “Disability as Diversity,’ which has nothing to do, they admitted, with our study, but provided a day which didn’t have to be planned. My belief is that a person with a severe speech impediment should probably not take up public speaking. To replace speechmaking with writing or painting or teaching or any other thing in this world is overcoming the handicap. To take up public speaking is to impose it.  If I were a bad actor, would I expect to be cast anyway on the basis of my wanting to be an actor? Should my bad acting be taken as noble defiance of the gifts which were dealt me, and the others which were withheld? Or just a test of everybody’s patience? Just willfulness? Our speaker could barely be understood, and much of his testimony– about forced sterilization in the 30's-- was lost. Nor could I quite understand why it was scheduled in the first place. The topic is not provocative, for not one person in the room could be expected to disagree with him or have another reasonable perspective. Another opportunity for easy indignation? He couldn’t mention the perps without identifying them as “white men,” a buzz word that sank immediately into everyone’s receptors, whether it was relevant or not. He victims he spoke of were white women. But if you didn’t know about eugenics, now you do, if you had the patience to unravel the smear of sounds.

Three nail-spitting blaspheming meltdowns already, and the day is little more than half over.

November 2, 2015

Truly remarkable downpouring from the heavens. Lakes shimmer in the dark under the streetlamps. Soaked between my car and the door of the Y.

Put The Weir to bed yesterday afternoon, a good experience which I am not sad is over. The drive– too much. I think we’re up on the “success” wall. Huge attendance for a “drama.” We were talking in the dressing room about how the play is not quite as good as some people seem to think, but then decided it might be just that we were doing it badly, and it was better to shut up about it. As a playwright, I see missed opportunities on every page. The interplay between the characters is better than the monologues, and yet the monologues are the meat of the play. Our Haywood County reviewer observed that men’s stories are not particularly scary.  The test is, did we slip in our own vomit? And we did not.

November 1, 2015

Our best performance yet last night, with a responsive and attentive crowd worthy of it. As an actor I find I cannot be completely “in the moment,” for if I am, I miss lines, because the lines are not always what one would say if one were fully in the moment. It has to be a compromise between being “in the moment” and reading the script at the back of your eyes. Hit that compromise last night. L was in the audience, said it was the best thing he’s ever seen me in. Of course, one takes that not as meant, but as a judgment on all that came before. They handed me a check, a big one, which was a nice surprise. For someone like J, it makes all the difference in the world.  E keeps her mind in the game by not speaking to any of us from the time she walks through the door to the time she leaves. Hope it’s working for her.
   
Dark morning slick and gleamy with rain. I slept the extra hour the Time Lords gave us.