My mother Carol is sleeping most of the day away in the living room. She slept through last night in this chair, me on the couch. We talked at around 4 AM. I sent an email to Alex and went back to snooze mode. She knew it was her birthday at that point. I'd also wished her a happy birthday at midnight.
As the day has gone on, she has had well wishers come through. Eileen Gannon, Beth Read, Lucinda by phone. Julie, Carol's daughter, is here for the occasion.
I'm on the hook to dive into numpy and pandas this coming week. I'd started out hoping I could warm up with my 8th graders, but when they say "algorithms + data structures" they mean CP (competitive programming). Anyway, I've filed my flight plans elsewhere, like on edu-sig.
Carol has been a lifelong peace activist, ever since she found out about radio-toxins in the milk (Strontium-90?). Her life, like mine, was against a background of endless wars. Being a peace activist feels like working against the gain, and yet humanity seems to yearn for an opportunity to express itself with greater glory. Maybe not against the grain of human nature after all.
I inherited a belief in non-violence as a way to go. I stayed with Quakers, although I resigned membership in Multnomah Meeting at one point. I wanted to pioneer the role of attender, and took it all the way to clearing people for membership.
I left a message with Sonya Pinney regarding it being Carol's birthday. She called back a few minutes later. We had a good talk. The Pinneys and the Urners were among the original families to express themselves in the form of Multnomah Meeting, some generations ago. The meeting overlapped with Electroscientific Industries (ESI) in terms of facilities: ESI sold its old factory to the Meeting for a dollar.
