Here's Why I Hesitate to Blog

In the entry above, I said Mother died in 1978--no, she died in 1985. Nineteen seventy-eight was an entirely different story. I also never learned to type properly, and I catch my typos the minute after what I have type becomes indelible bits and bytes. Good for humility, I guess.

Age: 61

I have been teaching reference information-seeking) for 21+ years and have never blogged, simply because I suspect there may be something undignified about it, especially among my friends who haven't learned the need for personal boundaries, and God knows, we live in a confessional age, when celebrities have no secrets anymore. Money and fame have made strumpets of the TV public. There was a day when "Queen for a Day" was the nadir of tackiness, but compared with the Jerry Springer zeitgeist, Jack Bailey's old show seems almost restrained. A lot of other things are changing for me now: I gave up smoking on December 7th with the aid of Chantix and the belief of my doctor that I could do it--this after smoking almost continuously for 40 years. I've managed to stay about the same size all of these years, but I can't even haul my skinny frame around because of my emphysema. So, it's a trade-off, unless my genes prevent me from blowing up into a toad frog, and this is just vanity talking because after the age of about thirty, no one notices what you look like anyway (but they start paying attention to your clothes).

My mother died in 1978, my father died in 1972. I only have two sisters left, one in Connecticut, one in Texas. They have two sons and a daughter between them, all grown. I don't think I will ever be able to afford to retire. I started rather late, and I belong to the league of grasshoppers as far as money is concerned. I don't think this bothers me, but I do hate debt.

So, that's all I have time for today. It is end of semester and I have papers to grade. I am sure the cats would like to be fed before I go to a meeting tonight--the extent of my social life for nearly twenty years now.