Category: Daily Life in the USA

False Alarm at Nazareth Home

Tonight about 8:35 PM, the Nazareth Home fire alarm went off. It is LOUD! Protocol here is if you call in any alarm, go out to meet the first responders. I didn’t know what was going on but went out to meet the fire trucks which arrived in three or four minutes and then showed them where the fire annunciator panel is located. Nazareth Home has three buildings and the alarm was going on in all of them. It took ten or fifteen minutes to find the annunciator panel in the main building because it was a Saturday night and staff were gone and offices locked up but finally they found it and were able stop the alarm. The firemen were a delightful group and while waiting, we taught each other about the organization of the fire department and about life with deaf people in Cambodia. An interesting evening! But we still don’t know why the alarm went off!?

Working on it…

In March I injured my shoulder in a freak occurrence. I thought it was just a bruise or a sprain but when I went for a medical exam on arrival in Louisville, my new doctor said that if it was still hurting seven months after the injury—it was, I should try therapy. I have been going to KORT therapy now for 9 or 10 sessions. Today Betsy was trying some pressure on muscles they say need to be strengthened to take pressure off the hurting shoulder area. There is progress but I’m getting resigned to the fact that there is going to be some pain the rest of my life.

Boxes galore…

I came back from Cambodia with just two suitcases so I’ve been replacing many things I couldn’t bring back with me–everything from a printer to LED clocks to a toilet brush. I try to buy local but because I was making so many short trips on my bicycle day after day, I finally got Walmart+ which provides free delivery even if the order is under $35. That has helped a LOT! One drawback is the large number of boxes I’ve accumulated. I can recycle them but have been saving some just because they’re really good boxes(!) and also too with limited storage space, I want to see if I need some boxes before I discard them. Right now they’re piling up in a corner. The big box on the wooden filing cabinet is a new (actually refurbished) desktop computer that arrived today. I hope to get it set up in the next day or two.

Fratelli Tutti: Kindness

Kindness frees us from the cruelty that at times infects human relationships, from the anxiety that prevents us from thinking of others, from the frantic flurry of activity that forgets that others also have a right to be happy. Often nowadays we find neither the time nor the energy to stop and be kind to others, to say “excuse me”, “pardon me”, “thank you”. Yet every now and then, miraculously, a kind person appears and is willing to set everything else aside in order to show interest, to give the gift of a smile, to speak a word of encouragement, to listen amid general indifference. If we make a daily effort to do exactly this, we can create a healthy social atmosphere in which misunderstandings can be overcome and conflict forestalled. Kindness ought to be cultivated; it is no superficial bourgeois virtue. Precisely because it entails esteem and respect for others, once kindness becomes a culture within society it transforms lifestyles, relationships and the ways ideas are discussed and compared. Kindness facilitates the quest for consensus; it opens new paths where hostility and conflict would burn all bridges.

Pope Francis, in Fratelli Tutti, §224

Louisville Changes

Sunday I took an early morning bike ride to Louisville’s South End where I used to live. I couldn’t believe how much it has changed since I resided there! Particularly my attention was caught in what used to be a lower moderate income residential area–and now is a HUGE parking lot for the University of Louisville which has take over a couple square miles of real estate. This is a view from a brand new overpass (named for Denny Crum, famed UofL basketball coach) on a brand new major thoroughfare through the area.

The view of the other side of the overpass is of a new L&N Stadium adorned with all the advertising of the big corporations that helped build it.

Coming off the overpass, I turned north and went along the main entrance of the stadium. U of L is a basketball school but they did all right by the football team, too!