Dormant

Sad to have to take a week off work to catch up on personal business, but so it goes.

Today's task was at long last closing my mom's estate account. There was money in it, but just waiting to pay myself back for a variety of expenses - my share of the funeral expenses, the lawyer's fees, some medical bills.

In looking over the papers before I went to the bank, I saw where I was supposed to have done all this about a year and a half ago. But how could I, when it took this long to make sure all the clerical errors being made by the insurance company and the nursing home got cleared up?

(Example - insurance company sent me a check. I deposited it in the estate account. Then, a few months later, the insurance company said it was a mistake, so send it back. Since I set up the account as a savings account rather than checking, I paid out of my own pocket. Another example - the nursing home mistakenly deposited a check in my mom's resident's account after I'd closed it. I told them to return it to Social Security, but a year later they sent me another update of the funds in the account and the interest earned. I did my best. I ignored them.)

Anyway, more than two years after she died, I'm closing business. But when I tried to have the bank transfer the closed estate account and into my open savings account, there was a problem.

My savings account was "dormant." I hadn't added to or withdrawn from it in a long time. Why should I? It doesn't earn any interest to speak of. Might as well just leave it all in my checking account.

It didn't take much effort for my banker to reactivate the account. But it made me think about all the things in my life that have been left dormant, de-activated by neglect. Example - I passed through my childbearing years without incident, which seemed to have brought menopause to a very early resolution. (Thank goodness, by the way!)

Another thing I've noticed during this "staycation" - my list of minor little "homework" tasks to attend to this week are just as easily interrupted as my work tasks are. Example: needing to go to the hardware store for a new vacuum cleaner and fluorescent tubes for the kitchen instead of doing the second of two banking businesses (having the credit union drop my dad's name from our joint account - he died almost three years ago).

It seems an inescapable truth... life is what happens while you're making other plans. And the rest of it lies dormant.

love, hosaa
dealing with dormancy

Louis and Wynton

Just back from seeing an extraordinary show at the Strathmore: Silent film LOUIS accompanied by Wynton Marsalis, Cecile Licad, and a smoking jazz ensemble.

The film is a fictionalized rendering of the childhood of Louis Armstrong in corrupt, decadent old New Orleans, but it is also an homage to the redemptive power of music. Aesthetically, think Francis Ford Coppola meets the Keystone Kops. The transformation of the turn-of-the-century villainous politician from Snidely Whiplash into Charlie Chaplin (City Lights, Modern Times, and Great Dictator references) was a fun touch. And the young boy who played Louis, Anthony Coleman, was a wide-eyed charmer, totally convincing as a young Satchmo.

The music had me smiling all night, melding 19th-century Gottschalk with 21st-century Marsalis. At first I didn't recognize Wynton sitting in the band - of course I know what he looks like, but I was pretty far back. He is an icon but didn't march on stage separately from the other musicians, no spotlight. Then he played: The music IS the light. Wow. It's been 25 years since I saw him perform at the Kennedy Center (oh please bring back the Jazz Festival!) and he still blows me away.

It was a sold-out show, according to the signs at the box office, but there were a few scattered empty seats. Three boisterous standing ovations filled in those gaps.

love, hosaa
wishing the gift show had been open

U.S. Immigration Policy

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

(from "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus)

...oh, and could you also make sure they have a PhD in engineering before they get here? You know, like these guys:

(Big Bang Theory, CBS.com)

Oh, never mind. The key is under the mat.

Love, hosaa

not huddling, a little tempest-tost, breathing free