Hi Mom and family,

Monday morning I did some housework, and dug some more in the remaining garden beds, but not enough to start planting them yet.

The tomatoes have grown several inches since I put them in!

I walked up to the Boys & Girls Club with a stop at Starbuck's. It is about five miles, and it seemed very easy.

I had a really good practice with the kids who were there. This Friday I absolutely must drive up to the club and call the parents of those kids who have not been attending!

As we had arranged, Dale Sr. picked me up at the Boys & Girls Club at 6:30 PM. We went to the "Rodeo Lounge", a small bar attached to a Village Inn motel in Gold Canyon, the ritzy suburb just to the east of Apache Juction. We were goingto hear Terry Foy and Eddie Jeff Cahill. They are both from the Renaissance Festival, and they play ever Monday evening at this cozy little bar.
They were so good, I really enjoyed it. They had another guy with them adding touches on the concertina, which added to the mix.

Elliot, the guy who hosts the Monday morning music jam on the festival site, showed up and I invited him to join us. It turned out that he is an enthusiastic fisherman, so he and Dale Sr. had something to chat about. Elliot has a home in Duluth, and the fishing is good up there.  I realized that don't think I have met another Jewish person who is enthusiastic about fishing. It may be that I have, of course, but that hobbies or religion did not come up in conversation.

Elliot, at 73, is going through something that many of the people who make their living through the Renaissance festival must face as they age. He is realizing that a) traveling every year and living in a trailer is getting difficult, and b) their Renaissance Festival lifestyle does not give them any security for their retirement, and less social security income because their income was not that high.

In another decade or so, Chris and Peter may be facing the same thing.

I found out from Elliot why the festival grounds have been so much more dusty than previously. The pump on the well broke, so they have not been making the usual weekend morning rounds with the water-spraying truck. (I had to ask someone if they had a throat lozenge part of the way through the day, because my throat was so choked up I could not sing.)

Last night I closed all of the windows and doors, so we wouldn't have to breathe the smell of whatever is being burned in the middle of the night. The culprit is some unknown neighbor, probably someone who cleans yards for a living and does not want to pay the fees at the dump.

  But Dale Sr. left the cooler on, and it sucked in the outside air. I woke up at midnight smelling that awful smell. Whatever they are burning, it is not just plant matter!

Unfortunately, Dale Sr. feels the heat much more than I, so even though the temperature has only been in the nineties, he wants to run the evaporative cooler at night. Maybe I could start wearing an air-filter thing over my mouth andd nose at night, like they do in Beijing!

However, it's possible that the evaporative cooler filter, while letting in the smell, does catch a lot of the harmful particles that go with it. I hope so.

About five years ago I had a security screen mounted on the bedroom window, for the express reason of being able to have the bedroom window open, and have that fresh air at night. No more. (If the windows are closed at night, we don't have to breathe the pollutant, because by morning the smell has dissipated.)

I was rather in a hurry when I did yesterday's blog about the weekend, so I neglected to write about something which happened Friday morning. I was walking through the living room while Dale Sr. had the TV on, and I saw and heard my first Trump advertisement. It was aimed toward those who have a fear of crime from illegal immigrants.

 My blood pressure shot up so high I had to go outside and sit down. I finally calmed down, and went to get some earplugs to put in my ears. Ever since then, when he turns on the TV, I surreptitiously put those ear-plugs in. (I know my husband well enough to know that if he had an idea that the TV bothered me, he would not turn it on, even if he wanted to).

The add was similar in message to that notorious Willie Horton ad from George W. Bush's candidacy. I felt sick at heart all day, it was like, "Oh no, this is really happening." In the evening I called my friend Merrill, though many of my friends feel as I do, she's about the only one who is good to discuss politics with.

Tuesday I felt extremely tired. Not surprising, as I was very tired the two days after Lyssa left, a full weekend at the Renaissance Festival, and then Monday I'd walked five miles, coached the drama club, and then had the evening out.
 
I am so very upset to hear about the bombings in Brussels, and to hear mentioned the area I stayed in, Schaarbek. Sad for the victims, and upset because anything like that helps Trump's candidacy, and because it's my opinion that a Trump victory would make Isis's recruiting so much easier.


I heard on NPR also a disturbing quote from Ted Cruz, that the US should consider cordoning off Muslim neighborhoods in this country. So I can no longer cling to the hope that the Republicans will somehow avoid choosing Trump, as it looks like his runner-up is just as xenophobic.

I had to get the house tidied up because Chris and Peter, the glassblowers, were coming that evening. I kept doing a little and then wanting to sit down and read and/or eat.

Mid-day, I went to my computer tutoring lesson and then went to vote in the primary. I was sure that I'd re-registered in 2012 as a Democrat while volunteering on the campaign, but they didn't have a record of it. I did get to fill out a provisional ballot.

Maricopa County had huge long lines at the primary polling places because they had estimated that few people would vote in the primary, and trimmed their polling places down to sixty from two-hundred. It was quite the scandal, the Maricopa County Recorder came on and publicly apologized. She said that because of the large number of Independents in Arizona, and the large number of people who had asked for early ballots, that few would turn up.

Part of the problem is that if someone thought they were mistakenly left off the list of those who had registered Democrat (like me) they still had to give them a provisional ballot which would be counted only a) if the election were really close, and b) if the person actually did turn out to be registered Democrat.

 Luckily, I'm in Pinal County.

I got the rest of the house ship-shape in time for Chris, Peter, their daughter Gena and their son Gray to come over. Dale Sr. had done all of the cooking over at 5th Avenue, and he brought a pot of beans, deliciously tender smoked chicken, tortillas, guacamole and two kinds of salsa. All I had to do was heat up the tortillas.

It was a lovely evening.

Love
Lennie

P.S. A funny poem about the limited usefulness of a spell check on your computer:

Eye have a spelling chequer,
It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss Steaks I can knot sea.
Eye strike the quays and type a whirred
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am write oar wrong
It tells me straight a weigh.
Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your shore real glad two no.
Its vary polished in its weigh.
My chequer tolled me sew.
A chequer is a bless thing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right all stiles of righting,
And aides me when eye rime.
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The chequer pours o'er every word
Two cheque sum spelling rule.