and in today's local news
in about half an hour, former president reagan's body will land at andrews air force base, and he will soon lie in state under the capitol dome. as a local, i'm listening for traffic updates.
who says i don't write about current events?
i keep an occasional thread going in my paper journals about why i don't note the (so-called) noteworthy events of the day as they break around me. mostly i conclude that i'm not a newspaper reporter and that if i don't think the big happening is effecting me personally in a way i really need to explore, i stick to jotting down the stuff of my personal life and mind. maybe it boils down to solipsism - my feeling that i'm ultimately unable to know much of anything except myself so in a way, my self is the only existent thing. or somesuch.
why, i didn't even write about the transit of venus or the brood x cicadas. and they overlapped. and i saw the transit and was deafened for over a week by the cicadas.
the washington post rooted out a scientist who suggests that the last time the cicada emergence was concurrent with a venus transit was 22 may 797. the time before had been 23 may 921 bc. talk about something once in a blue moon. why hasn't a rare thing like that found its way into our common tongue, i wonder. oh, yeah, well i guess that it is easier to toss off that blue moon thing in conversation than, "well, you know a president only lies in state every once in a venus transit - brood x cicada concurrence."
book your seat for venus transit (technews.com)
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