space heater joy

"We see people on their worst day," the district attorney said to me today as we meandered through the tight halls of the DA office, surrounded by color codes, thick files, filing cabinets full of more files. I wondered where I had seen that phrase before.

Walking down the wide courthouse stairs, I remembered I had seen those words in the mouths of journalism texts, journalism professors, journalists, police cars, cops on beat, nurses, caregivers, and receptionists in hospital emergency rooms. And I'm sure next I'll hear it from somewhere obscure and wonder why I didn't expect to hear it from there as well. It's all true, too. So it makes me wonder, does humanity ever have a good day if, in all our professions and preoccupations, we all manage to see each other on the worst day.

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Here's today's story: Rohne boycotts pipeline briefings.

In so many ways the story isn't that important. At least, from where I stand now, it isn't. By important I mean: it's not changing, moving, breaking, making, shaking anything. It just is and it Is because it came up in public meeting and it was about LNG pipelines, the Satan/Savior of this area. It's a piece of the huge shifting mess and so by virtue of being another brick on the building, it's important.

I was nervous about it because it is just a piece of a much larger issue, an issue that has been raging for some time now and the most illiterate person in town is more knowledgeable than I am.

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BIGGEST NEWS (I can't believe I didn't post this first...I held back...Go me).

Anyway.

BIGGEST NEWS: I have a library card! I've been anxiously dancing up and down in front of my little iron mail slot for days now waiting for DEQ to send me my change of address label for my driver's license and they finally did yesterday. It was beautiful timing after all the disappointment surrounding dinner and I could hardly wait for my lunch break today. 11:30 struck and I flurried out the door, down across the street to the library--it's oh so conveniently located kitty corner from the newsroom. The quiet-faced, straight-haired, sensible-shoes-wearing librarian was maybe a little confused, but she took my crazy grinning face in stride. Probably because I was so appropriately dressed--I had a meeting with the DA later and was striving to look professional.

I have this stack of books now, by which I mean I have contentment.

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My sister, kindly child, brought me "Howard's End" by EMF. I'm on an EMF kick. I think I finished "A Room With A View" in about a night and an afternoon and I need more.

More reading on the docket and in progress (thank you library, you sweet thing):

a) "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard, which, I suspect, will put me into some sort of coma sensory overload.

b) "Essays Presented to Charles Williams" containing essays by Sayers, Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield, Mathew, and some other Lewis (the W.H. variety as opposed to the C.S.). I'm especially excited about Sayer's "A Note on The Divine Comedy" and Mathew's "Marriage and Amour Courtois in Late-Fourteenth Century England".

c) "Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer" by C.S. Lewis. His way of writing is a little obnoxious sometimes but the man is amazingly clear, which I like. I think it will be good.

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Also, you may observe, I love my space heater.