In Stitches in Everyday Ramblings

The view from the Faculty Dental office yesterday. My place is just out of frame to the left. I have to cross all those freeways to get down to the clinic. We have pedestrian bridges. They tore down some wonderful neighborhoods to put those freeways in. And now everybody is talking about less car (and truck centric) city centers. I have something to say to all those city planners and decision makers back there about now. I bet folks will have something to say to us 80 years from now.

I made it through my surgery, lots of stitches. I go back to two weeks for a post op appointment. Then I heal for 4 months.

Diego had a bad morning yesterday. I contacted the vet and got an email back at 7PM last night as I was in bed with my trusty ice pack saying I could come down this morning for a med and diet for him. It is not going to happen. We’ll figure it out. They are closed today. The vet tech, who is in working with the boarded cats was going to make an exception for me and I appreciate that.

We just need to get him stable. It will happen. But the process is no fun.

I had a good speech therapy session on Wednesday. She gave me this device called “The Breather” that I will use to build specific respiratory muscles to help with supporting my voice. There was a research scientist in the room too. She was lovely. I feel privileged and grateful to get this kind of attention to improve my vocal quality.

At the end she had me read this printed sheet with some text about rainbows. This was after I had been practicing the breath support for about 40 minutes. Because I have a lot of practice reading poetry publicly and I took voice acting class for that back in the day and I had seen this material before I glided through it.

I was totally chuffed when they both said I read it better than they had ever heard it read before. You don’t get much chance at 68 to excel at things, honestly, and they have patients read this every day. Go me.

It means the work is paying off. But I still have a way to go. I will never have a melodious voice, for teaching but I can have an effective one.

Then when I got home, the very well know actor facilitator guy that runs the old man’s book group and the Shakespeare in the Prisons program locally had sent me an email asking if I had an idea about what we can talk about and read to each other in our meeting tomorrow.

I replied that it would be cool if we could read and suggest writings about hope.

In the email I mentioned a couple of poems I had read recently to my students and about this idea from the assistant attorney general, Venita Gupta, that hope is a discipline. He forwarded my email to the whole group. Eek. Anyway, that is what I will be doing tomorrow afternoon.

And yesterday, a quite well-known poet, that I have taken a couple of workshops with and had the privilege of being paired with at a bookstore reading about 15 years ago sent me a friend request on Facebook.

The universe seems to be pointing me in the direction of more visibility in the broader world. Double eek. I need to make the time to write poetry again.

Oh, and I suggest the profile of Bill Nighy, “Master of Indirection” in the New York Times. It is wonderful. And he is dating Anna Wintour??? Who knew.