short blog today

Dear family and friends,

I am too sad to write much today. I just found out this morning that my friend Evy's 48-year old daughter was killed in a single-car auto accident, evidently caused by her serving to avoid an animal. Accepting the death of those who have had a chance to live through the good years, up to and including the 80s, and for many even more, is easier than accepting the death of one who had so much more to offer her family and friends, including her partner, Chris. Like her mother, she was a PhD in English and a college professor.

Evie and I bonded through our interest in medieval Scottish literature. I switched to Shakespeare after hearing an eminent scholar at a conference (that Evie and I attended in Strasbourg in 1976) announce that there was a need for work on John Barbour. Since I had written my dissertation on Barbour (it's a long story) and had published several articles about this poet, a contemporary of Chaucer's, I realized that to these Scottish folk no outsider could be considered able to write about their foundational medieval poet. After that international conference, Evie and I met each other fairly often at the Medieval conference in Kalamazoo, where I started sessions on "Shakespeare and the Middle Ages."

***

I went to the new physical therapist, yesterday, and I think I will like him a lot. He is young and friendly. Only trouble is that he wants me to put to rest my "no pain, no gain" mantra. I should feel pain only when walking or doing something necessary. As for exercises, he has cut those to the bone and I am not to use the stationary bicycle or walk up hill. Also, he said I was using the cane incorrectly, and I have to re-teach myself a new awkward way, holding it in my left hand as I step with the right.

Satyaki and I spent some hours on hamletworks.org. He's learning.

My hamletworks.org colleagues will arrive around 2 p.m. tomorrow. Until they leave two days later, I probably won't be writing much if at all. See you soon.

Love,
Bernice