A widow's story

By Joyce Carol Oates.  Looks like I'll have to get this.  From the NYTimes review:

She has lost more than her husband of 47 years. Oates has also lost her own sense of wholeness. 
. . .
Oates is nonetheless an expert at pacing as she approaches this “sinkhole,” her term for “places fraught with visceral memory, stirring terror if you approach them.” 

I can relate to that.

A voice out of time

I found Romas Sakadolskis' presentation for a.p.p.l.e.'s tenth anniversary, and extracted this bit from Vaiva.  It looks better in the PPT, the export to movie strips out most transitions. I think that the full presentation is too long to post here.

Reagan's 100th birthday

Ronald Wilson Reagan was certainly the greatest President of my lifetime, and in my opinion was the greatest of the 20th century.  Democrats will argue for FDR, but Reagan was equally transformative, achieving far more progress for more people on the  planet in much less time.   Only Washington and Lincoln rank higher in my estimation.

I was going to go into more detail, but I see I've already done several posts, so I'll just repost the links.

Liepa posted the letter Vaiva sent as head of the LAC upon Reagan's death.

Here's my post of my encounter with Reagan.

Finally, thoughts on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the man who triggered the pushing down.

America needs another Reagan, but there is no one in public life today who compares, who comes even close.

Books

I've been reading one of the new books I got for Christmas on the bus for the past couple of days, and this morning I got mad at one of our garbagey travel mugs for leaking a drop or two of coffee on it. But then I remembered what Mamutė taught me, Devėta knyga yra mylėta knyga: A worn out book is a beloved book. So who wants a book with no stains on it anyway?