We dawdled so long in a couple of galleries, they almost didn’t let me in the cathedral. Pat does a good fast talking routine, and I got in to do some light studies. Thank Goodness! So when we came out, I took a few photos on the square, because I love the visual beauty of the Cathedral on Jackson Square.
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Tomorrow begins the 800 calories for four months. I got the call today while playing bridge. Guess I’ll have a bowl of cereal before bed because 1) I’m hungry, and 2) I will not be able to eat real food now for four months. Yitch!

I woke up this morning realizing why this has had me so scared. I’m not afraid of hunger in and of itself, actually. It’s the feelings I bury under the satiety of a good meal. I don’t want to admit the hungers that dare not be spoken. So I’ll spend some time in the hungry places and have to face the feelings I don’t care to face. Not going to be easy. But when I had myself on 1200 calories a day, I was a bit hungry then. However my blood sugar was well controlled. This is something I must do better with than I have.

Medically they asked that I quit with the diuretics, and take only half of my Actos, the drug I take to induce my cells to use the sugar in my blood. That’s a tiny little pill, but I’ll try to figure how to half it.

So another little adventure begins tomorrow.

Now, Just one Minute helps me sort the difference between agitprop for the sake of agitating, regardless of truth, and propagandizing, but with facts.

I read a great deal of the right sphere. And I enjoy some of the agit-prop. But I am also glad to see mendacity called for what it is. Speaking of mendacity, Elizabeth Warren running for Senator from Mass as D, is being referred to as Fauxchahontas in the comments of JOM. Now that’s rich. Humor in the service of truth. It seems every where the diggers excavate in her vitae, they come up with serious veracity shortfalls.

Let it be said that JOM has risen in my esteem over this last weekend.

Then the are the occasional chances to truly improve your education. I believe it is in the context of a call to arms against the current White House that I ran into this. Classical education is not lost. Here is a translation of the dialog of men standing proud but doomed, trying to rationally convince the Athenians that as neutrals in an ongoing conflict, they need not be annexed. Heard of the Melians lately. They lost the argument. Worth the time to read if you have such.

Have I mentioned that I really like churches and spaces designed for worship? We show a lot about ourselves in those big ornate buildings. But well done they are calming, pointing to the timeless, and can pull our distracted heads into reverence.

Looking at these buildings, there are several styles that are very denomination specific. There are some Presbyterian designs that I can spot before reading the signage. Methodists have some architectural details that shout, “son of Wesley!” Maybe I’ll look for them and photograph them through the summer?

Time’s up for me tonight. I’m just tired and hungry, though it’s pretty early. I missed the nap today, and have been going pretty much full out all day long. (Full out for me looks pretty slow to a disinterested observer!)

In the everybody loves a list category we have, 14 daunting books every man must read. TG it’s not about women! Reader that I am, I’ve read one of them, and that in something of a reader’s digest form. Oh well. There is much to be read, much to be learned, but so many quilts needing finishing too. I prefer my reading in the non fiction realm.

Ok, so the hard/interesting bit of my life. My oldest child is 38 this year. After she was born, I lost the weight and promised she would never know a fatty boombalatty mommy. Not the only promise to myself I’ve broken. After #2 I never lost the lbs. Nor #3. Now I’m way fat, and old and the old broken pelvis is whining now and again, and I do like to walk and move about some.

Pennington, a medical research outfit in Baton Rouge contacted me through my insurance provider and said they are doing some weight loss research and would I be interested in participating. Never figured to make it through the initial screening process, but hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to BR I go Wednesday morning, fasting to do the medical screening and first interview. There were two options, one a lap band sort of surgery and the other dietary control. Given those choices I chose the second. I don’t go under a knife unless I’m pretty miserable without the surgery. And obese is not a misery. Socially not cool, but like Popeye, I am what I am. However if I’d thought about this restricted diet a bit, I might have chosen surgery. Four months on liquid dietary substitute. The calories will be tightly controlled. And I’m going to be a bit of a bitch for a while, cause I don’t do hunger well. I can’t imagine but that I’m going to grow to despise the stuff I gotta drink, but maybe it’ll only be boring, not flat out obnoxious. Losing 60 lbs in four months isn’t out of reach. Should make stairs a whole lot easier to deal with!

So, I’ll try to not write about politics for the next four months, because I may be crankier than average. But before I dive into the hunger place, what in the world is going on in Europe? The grand experiment is about to either fall apart or be rebuilt by something on the scale of the Civil War. I don’t see the Germans spending enough in debt guarantees, but maybe the rest of Europe can be brought into a functioning EU by force? That’s a little far out on the probabilities scale. So the grand EU experiment is going to fail. France and Greece will have some sort of loose governance, but not much. If the Germans just want to take it all over now may be the time. The economic spill over cannot help but destabilize shaky Asian markets, and we’re, in the US living in a house of cards. Won’t take but a breeze for our markets to freeze up again as the next bubble gets wobbly and poof! So what’s a fat and lazy retiree to do? Guess I’ll have time to contemplate that in the time I might have spent hunting down meals.

This seemed to approximate the lighting in the room without going too yellow. So I saved the setting and tried it in the cathedral. It seemed adequate to my eye.

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Tonight was the quilt bee. These months are running together. And I enjoyed the time we were together. Unfortunately for the hostess, the termites are swarming. I have some around my house, but the hostess really had quite a lot of termites in her house. By 9 or so, we couldn’t sit still any longer, and packed up and headed to our homes.

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No idea if Wretch’s essay today is too political, but you can decide for yourself. Today in You’d hate to be Me he explores hatred of self and identity. There but by the grace of God go I. I spent a lot of years feeling like the best thing about the places I grew up was that they were great places to be FROM. Now it seems a dream state, long ago when I loathed so much of who and what I was. Some bits remain however. Excising that foolishness is part of the work needed to continue becoming….

But for now, it’s time for bed. Home from Bee, and I started cutting squares as per the Scrap Therapy design. I didn’t hardly make a dent in the lights and neutral bin of scraps I have. And I’m busy trying to design someing but only in my head. So for tonight, I’ll let those dance in my head.

So, good day to show photos from today, right? Well I’ve been futzing with cameras and trying to find google docs for 30 minutes now. I’m all about instant gratification. If I can’t get my photos from today, download from the camera, upload from the net and share with various and sundry in 20 minutes or less, well dahmmmmmm… what is this 1990?

Microsoft’s camera wizard renumbers the photos and loses some of the camera information that I want to keep. So trying to work around that has taken a great deal of time. I still don’t have a list of the 1000+ photos on the memory card uploaded to my computer. What will happen next is the camera’s battery will melt down from the strain. Done! A mere 45 minutes.

Sadie Jane Mulligan, in one of the few clothing items she is first to own. Sara sent her a cute onesie. She’s taken up smiling at people in a most engaging way, but being a coy one, not for the camera, thanks!

Cameron came running off the school bus with a little green cord around his neck. He had a little plastic box that contained the tooth he lost on a grape in the cafeteria. Sweet mystery of life!

And from a year ago,

During birthday celebrations (starting soon again) Darryl came to go to and Ethiopian restaurant with all my clan, and Cameron was clinging on him as he’d not been able to be with them a couple of days. Darryl said it really made him feel like all the Dad work was worth the doing, that the boys miss him when he is gone a day or two.

“Where two or three are gathered together in My name…” Folks fantasize about the difficulties of the early church and the persecuted Christians. Well, we have difficulties now. Time to dig in and do the work. For me, for tomorrow, the work consists of signing the checks for the workers in the Learning Center.

RR is complete, and a bit of work on Sadie Jane’s quilt is on tap for tomorrow.

Yesterday Q– got a start on a school day when some of that destructo energy came out. He and some fellow had a running war of words going, and finally pushes and shoves came into play. So guess who is home for a few days? D– was just here dropping the little brother off at the bus, which is totally routine. But he stayed until Tara came, so they both have to go meet with the assistant principle, the disciplinarian. I never had boys don’t know this drill at all, but Q–’s story is that the other kid has been provoking him for a good while.

I do remember my little brother living in fear of the son of an uncle who somehow decided the family problems were related to my brother, so the kid was looking for a chance to beat on my lil’ bro.

Maybe I need another boy project around here. Getting a garden put in may be good for tomorrow.

I’m sure this was bugging me because OC has been discussing a similar (though not apparently so) question. His big question of the hour is more like, “when did man become essentially human?” My intuition is that these are variants on the mathematical axiom of choice. Or the parallel postulate.

Ok, what am I rambling about? Let’s see if I can explain a little. Formal logic reigned as the foundation of mathematics until it was noted that for example the beautiful Geometry of Euclid assumed a parallel postulate, that was completely independent of the rest. A different parallel postulate, and you get a different geometry. So mathematicians tried to patch up the logic, there. Some fellow even published a catchy little title, “Euclid vindicated of every flaw,” which instead of achieving it’s aim, stepped deep into the sticky of the parallel postulate. Then in set theory, there was need of a set formed of one element selected from each of a group of non empty sets. It was elided and assumed until someone decided it needed to be stated as an axiom, the axiom of choice. But there is more than one possible statement of the axiom, and the alternate statement generates an alternate set theory. Hmmmm

So the mathematics and mathematical logic worried some of the greatest minds of logicians. Godel seems to have put something of a cap on the discussion with his theorem. He stated and proved that a logical system could either be complete or consistent, but not both. Consistent logic cannot reach all true conjectures.

The greatest minds of men have also tried to nail down what is essentially real, where can we hang our hats? I only wish that every time I run into difficulty with these questions, I didn’t either run to the kitchen or run toward some other distraction. I flee the field every time. But today I decided that the Platonic ideals are one way to express the real. Human nature is not a constant, as humans evolve individually and as a species. But the best of our ideals… those may be constant. The I AM that Moses encountered in the burning bush is some sort of parallel statement of those ideals, as a godhead. What’s the opposite of maya in the Hindu tradition? I know too little of that to even try.

Here ends my dive into the deep end. I’m now dog paddling to the edge of the pool, and then to the concession stand.

OC’s blog today ended,

…the psychoanalyst W.R. Bion described a kind of “trinity of psychosis” revolving around aggressive stupidity, contempt, and triumph. Watch for it, because it is all around us.

To be continued….

And apropos of nothing, a picture. It just struck me funny. Near Broad and Esplanade. Most likely a derelict building.

C– and her friend are about to open a quilt shop in Slidell which will be a wonderful addition for us. Our little quilt shop got flooded out by Katrina and B–, the owner, has never had the heart to work on a quilt again. How many people have I heard say, “I wish I could open a quilt shop.” I’m glad one is coming, and very surprised by which one actually made the move!