Still on half life, trying to get strong enough to return to physical routines. Ed is better but coughing a lot and keeping me awake. May have to move to spare bedroom tonight. Cats doing okay with all this, but Brunswick hangs out with me, and Max does too, although he likes to hit me on the leg now and then to show me who’s boss.

My gtf , Nadine, also sick. I have stayed away from her so I know she didn’t get this from me.

Ed was going to teach a couple of Nadine’s friends, French-speaking, and very slow to assimilate language-wise, and he said he couldn’t consider it for another month and they have decided to wait for him rather than get another tutor through the literacy program. He refers to them as Nadine’s munchkins.

TV programming over the weekend was ghastly. Yet another rerun of all the Godfather movies and after you have seen them all 30 times each, they wear a bit thin and the music gets tiresome. Also, I liked the mystique of it to start with but each sequel got darker and more corrupt and dispiriting, and towards the end I was really turned off when, Vito, tired and weak and no longer foxy, dies on a park bench. Was that supposed to be a moral lesson? Lots of good guys die that way.

There was a lengthy history documentary about the Civil War and Sherman’s march through George that I was never really aware of. It seems that Sherman invented total war, which was to bring the war to the civilian population and break the spirit of the enemy. They marched through George all the way to Savannah, burning all war-related buildings and some others too because the soldiers got carried away, and foraging all the food from the locals because they were traveling light. Slaves helped them when they could, tipping them off to buried valuables, and a whole group joined the march. Sherman didn’t want this and wasn’t all that unbiased, but couldn’t say no. This was after Gettysburg so, basically, the war was already won by the Union, but the South kept fighting on and the idea was to stress them so badly by devastating a key state and making them worry about their families, that they would stop, and they did.

No wonder so many in the South still hate the north. But, of course, that would mean they really knew the history, and I highly doubt that they do. I think it is more sour grapes and ego than any specific knowledge of what really went on.

I asked Ed what the result would have been if the North had lost. He is incredibly well read in history. Ask him anything. He said we would be two countries , the Confederacy, and a Federal union, with two presidents. And we wouldn’t be living here, I said, and he said, you got THAT right.

The grammies were on and pre-empted CSI Miami, which, to my mind, was totally uncalled for. I didn’t watch them because I don’t give a rat’s ass about what recordings got a prize or not and what new hopeful is now on the way to super stardom.

I like movies a lot better and I don’t watch the Oscars either.

Maybe I’m writing all this because I’m still not up to snuff (whatever that means) and feel like growling. You are all, by now, familiar with my growls. Please indulge me for Valentine's day if no other reason.

Xx, Teal