Thanks to Jay and Nahlah  Ayed

The Bluetooth speaker Jay gave me and the CBC program 'Ideas', eased my way into this Sunday morning. I took an audio voyage from approximately 600CE to the present/future. Jay gave me the speaker just before he returned to Korea, and soon after that I downloaded the CBC Listen app. Since then I have used both to provide an alternative to the repetitive soundtrack of my mind while doing necessary tasks. 

This morning I did physiotherapy exercises first thing as usual; if I don't, there is little hope I will do them later in the day. 'Ideas' transported me back to Old English poetry via a programme, 'The First Good Poem in English'. I took one course in Old English at university, so had a limited introduction to 'The Wanderer', the poem referred to in the title. I was entertained so thoroughly that I frequently lost track of the only thing I have to do, keep count of repetitions. The scholars interviewed read extracts from the poem either in Old English or contemporary English and spoke of their interpretations of it or of the beauty of its language and alliterative style. It tells of an aged warrior, an exile lamenting the loss of his lord and land and the past. Most seemed to think that a few lines suggesting a Christian tone at the beginning and end of the elegy were probably added by the presumably Christian scribe when it was first written down in the Exeter Book long after it was originally composed. It's not a long poem, so I am going to read it again. The work of an aging poet who lived perhaps over twelve hundred years ago, an exile from the time, place and friends of youth, seems timeless and especially apt at this moment. 

Then as I made and ate breakfast I listened again to 'Ideas', the first of a series of CBC Massey Lectures from 2020 entitled, 'Look at that device in your hand.'  presented by Ron Deibert of Citizen Lab. It was Miriam who mentioned this particular series to me last Friday on our walk. She was a mathematician working for Irish Rail at the time when it was beginning to move into computer systems, a bit later but like the women in the movie 'Hidden Figures' who worked for NASA in the early 1960s. She was reminded as she listened to the series of how energized she had been by the fact that she was contributing to advances in technology that would eliminate some of the most boring and time consuming aspects of the running of an efficient railway system. Now she sees so many of the unintended consequences of these same advances, such as those pointed out in the 'Ideas' series. Her youthful enthusiasm has been thrown into question lately. I tried to assure her that the positive intended consequences can not be ignored. They allow me to travel in space every evening to S. Korea without leaving the house and in time from about the seventh century CE to 2021 between getting up and eating breakfast on an ordinary Sunday morning. 

A drawing of Jay done by one of his students last week

Aside from that, l'm reading a very good book, The Sum of Us, by Heather McGhee. It's a carefully researched and well written study of the roots and continuing growth of racism at the heart of the limited democracy that continues to struggle to survive in the USA. My back continues to improve, biking has started and I can walk farther all the time. I'm also waiting for rain. The forsythia and crocuses are starting to bloom, but things would be more colorful if we had a good rainfall. 

On Monday, March 29 at 11:50 I get the Covid 19 vaccination. Yahoo!