edison report

So Edison and I went to the vet yesterday.  Despite the fact that the vet suspects Edison of having some sort of chronic illness possibly cancer, Edison is flourishing. Our strategy is to monitor him closely and when he begins to slow down on the amount of food he is eating to take him in to the vet so the vet can look him over and give him a cortisone shot.

Edison climbed into the vet’s arms yesterday. She told me that they didn’t see that kind of behavior much in her office. Presumably because she tends to animals that are not very happy when they see her. She also said that sick cats can often have a “look” in their face showing their unhappiness. Edison didn’t have that yesterday.

I was able to report to her that although Edison was beginning to slow down on the amount of food he is eating, he has also been much more frisky since she last saw him. Edison continues to slowly gain his weight back. Weight loss was what alarmed one of the vets before and led to the working diagnosis that Edison is ill.

We have chosen to pursue a “quality of life” strategy for him. Our present vets have gone as far as they can in determining what’s wrong with him. To find out more, we would have to go to a cat oncologist in Grand Rapids. It would be expensive, but even more importantly it would mean a lot of misery for Edison.

The vet thinks we are approaching it the right way. And you can see from the photo I took this morning,  that Edison is very much himself.

organ practice

I was inspired by the excellent playing of my colleague, Rhonda, the other day to work on my own technique. I took a couple of technique books home from church:

Nilson’s pedal exercises and

Gleason’s textbook for organ. The first I used in undergraduate school and revisit periodically. The second I only used with my first teacher, Kent McDonald, in my early organ study. I used both in my practice yesterday. I do this with piano technique as well from time to time.

marking in books

I love to mark up my books. However, I don’t like purchasing books with highlighting and marks in them. My first book of Paul Muldoon’s poetry came in the mail yesterday marked up by the previous owner. I purchased it for a penny plus shipping and handling. Usually I try not to order used books that indicate they might have marks in them. I think since I didn’t know Muldoon’s work that well that I just wanted to read him at leisure. Now I am doing some erasing so that I can see the text of poems. Unfortunately some it is in ink. Yikes.

new book

I am very interested in Viet Than Nguyen’s new book of short stories. Yesterday he put up a link on Facelessbooks to one of the stories in the book. I read it and I think this dude can write. Here’s the link.

“Black-Eyed Women” by Viet Thanh Nguyen

There’s some very clever stuff in this story, but I refrain from discussing it too much in case, God forbid, you should happen to click on the link and read it.

Will We Lose the Doctor Who Would Stop the Next Flint? – The New York Times

Monna Hannah-Atisha’s name might just ring a bell. She’s the doctor who led the discovery of the problems in Flint. She is also a first generation Iraqi immigrant. She wrote this article which asks if we are stopping human resources with our fearful ban.