On it goes.......
Did I promise to say nothing more about my dental problems? Hmmmm. No more until Tuesday. Just a little more work and this will no longer be a root canal, it’s going to be a lobotomy.

Topics left untouched.......
Missed out on the details of the death of Senator Wellstone because I couldn’t hear the radio in the dentist’s office. This is sad. The loss of any life is sad. But I can’t talk for too long with Rick about this because the conversation disintegrates into a debate over energy policy, Democrats/Republicans, Minnesota, fear of flying, liberal politics, too many hot buttons.

Shall we blame the artists?
We have been trying to find a gracious way to decline an invitation to spend Thanksgiving at the family ‘farm’ in the UP with Rick’s family. There are 101 reasons not to go.
1. Driving five hours with the whole family in the van would be too.......(fill in the blank)
2. Can’t afford the gas.
3. Van probably couldn’t make it.
4. Some nicotine addicts would have a hard time hiding their habits from Grandma. Hiding behind the barn is unpleasant in the cold November weather.
5. Eddie would drive everyone insane.
6. Brother-in-law is a strict anti-TV person and won’t allow his children to watch. (I don’t like TV too much, but I’ve rolled over on this issue.)
7. There is nothing to watch on TV up there if we were allowed to turn it on.
8. We would bring the total to 18 - we doubt if the house has 18 places to sit.
9. Many of us must work on Wednesday and Friday.
10. I would spend the whole time fighting the urge to say what I really think. I feel that I am being baited sometimes and after so many boring hours in the middle of nowhere, I just might take the bait.
.........the list goes on.

Rick doesn’t want to make his parents unhappy. The way I see it, they will be made unhappy either way. The unhappiness caused by our participation in this debacle would be more ‘colorful’ and memorable.

Yesterday, Rick tossed the new Lands’ End catalog in front of me. (And he wasn’t offering me a new coat) He said that the cover explained it all. The cover has a Norman Rockwell painting of family holiday reunification. It’s all Rockwell’s fault for planting this delusion in my in-laws’ minds that having everybody locked in a farmhouse for a long week-end would be the ultimate in family happiness.

My first reaction was that he was being absurd. But I thought more about how art has influenced my outlook on life. There are plenty of occasions when I have attempted to have a Norman Rockwell moment. And I must admit times of discouragement that my spiritual life has none of the, well, ecstasy of a work such as Bernini’s St. Theresa in Ecstasy. (If I’ve looked like that, it probably wasn’t religion at work) There is a hazard in wanting life to imitate art. Why didn’t any of my art history instructors warn me? [WARNING: Do Not Attempt to Recreate this work of art at home]