20160215.0609

Today would have been my maternal grandmother's eighty-seventh birthday. As I have noted, however, she passed on last year. I have marked the day in this webspace several times before (here, here, and here), and I have written of her elsewise (here, for example, and I still have the bookmark; it is tucked into one of the display copies I keep on a prominent shelf, marking the beginning of a particularly moving story). But other than making a note such as this, and maybe calling my mother to talk about the matter for a little bit, there is nothing else to mark of her this year. She is gone, as the rest of us will someday be; there is no changing it.

Hers is not the only death that comes to mind at the moment, of course. I have not heretofore commented about the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia--or about the ridiculous conspiracy theories that have sprung up surrounding that death, or the inanity of demands that a sitting President not nominate candidates to fill the now-vacant seat on the nation's highest court, although perhaps glancingly about the rapidity with which those demands began to be made (here, with some ripe language)--and, at this point, there is little if anything I can say about the matter. How I feel can be guessed at, I am certain, but whether or not that feeling matters is a different question altogether. (The answer is "no." I am not in a position to influence events.)

It remains only to move forward and see to the ongoing business of living. To that end, work continues; I spent yesterday pushing through a 5,000-word write-up of a popular novel, one I mean to plumb for information for another, ongoing project. I have not attended to said project in entirely too long, and I was supposed to have help with it; the help has not been in place, more's the pity. Still, perhaps I can drum up some support. Teaching will be going on, of course, not only the four classes with which I would normally meet on a Monday, but a bit of outside tutoring, as well. (The tutee is a different one than my Tuesday/Thursday meetings, as well as either of my previous tutees in the midst of Pokes country.) Whether or not I will have time to attend to anything else, other than Ms. 8 and the Mrs., is doubtful, but they provide me enough to do that I will be far from bored.

What else, then, is there to say? I have things to do; it is time I attend to them.