COLUMBUS OH

Oh-oh! We thought we had posted in January, but cousin Michael wrote and said there was nothing up for this year. So we checked, and sure enough! - Michael was right. We were very sure we had typed out a note in mid-January, but it is nowhere to be found. Sorry to one and all!

So here we go, trying to make up for last time, and hoping that at least a few people still look at this blog.

Last entry us dated 22 December - so from there:

Throughout this whole period Smokey has remained a tremendous hole for both of us - still brings tears to the eyes. We fear that that hole will remain forever and color the rest of our lives. On top of that, in February the vet told us Saphire's liver carcinoma has recurred. She is an old, old huskey and we have been expecting it, but that doesn't make it easy. To our tremendous surprise, she continues to trudge along as if nothing is happening, less hobbled by arthritis and the other inevitable consequences of aging than most other dogs her age. Of course we are grateful for that, and will enjoy her to the max as long as we have her. And as a corallary, of course that means that she will be spoiled unmercifully.

Christmas was kind of anticlimactic. Of course we did church, but our church really is not very celebratory. At home, Lew's gift was put off until after his birthday do everyone could combine and get him something he truly wanted (instead of socs and ties).

What we did have this year was snow. In recent years it rarely has snowed in Columbus with all the snow passing us by to the north - last year produced only one small dusting. But if anyone has been watching, this year we have been having the blizzard of the week. We had spent all autumn getting together all the documentation for our various insurances along with other documentation that one needs to travel. There also were a series of small material items that we had to repace or acquire. By Christmas we had everything, and were determined at least to make it down to Florida to visit with our grandchildren (and their parents). That really is a very easy trip, just down I71 to Cincinnati and then down I75 to Lutz and Wesley Chapel. But we do less than 200 miles a day, so it actually takes us 5 days - and since Christmas we have not had 5 promised days of safe weather. Columbus has seen a storm every week, with never enough promised clear for us to feel safe about going through the mountains.'

While we have waited we have continued to watch NHK and read exhaustively on the history of religion in the broadest sense. We continue to marvel at the beauty of Japan, with mountains everywhere, visible from any point in the archipeligo and covered (mostly) with conifers. Even more remarkable are the people, with the absence of violence, obsessive-compulsive cleanliness, obsessive-compulsive determination to do everything best, unprecedented artistic taste, and more that I just can't come up with right now. Totally different from China, which is grubby dirty and unsanitary. However is it possible that the Japanese culture is derived from the Chinese, or that the Japanese are able to work with the Chinese commercially? Since so many of Lew's ancestors, uncles, and cousins have clergy, the gleanings from our religious reading will be incorporated into the history of the family. (Did you know that Pope Adrian VI is on the family tree?)

Medical report (morbid but necessary): Distinctly lame, we nevertheless continue to hobble along. Lew's heart problem appears stable for the moment - how long, of course we do not know. So he has decided to go back to business as before - which is why he intends to visit the family in Florida. If he survives that, he will go on elsewhere - maybe see you all again.

Bobbi too remains status quo. But since that means she does not lose weight, further disability remains a tragic certainty.

Enough for now.