After a lovely visit with the folks in Vermont there’s nothin’ better than a chest cold to make you really feel like going to work. I thought I had successfully fought off the girls’ colds, but the day I got back I started feeling that nagging sore throat that herald’s a day of illness for me. Being sick isn’t fun, but I managed to get a lot of reading done this time. Here’s a report of what I took in while I was out:I went back over the 9-11 commission report after watching the two sets of 9-11 families giving dueling press conferences about the lack of a serious bill before congress. Two important recommendations made by the commission were the call for a national driver’s license and tighter border security. Both issues seem to be integral parts of better "homeland security" but neither are addressed in the only bill before congress. The driver’s license issue is critical because that’s how you rent cars, hotel rooms, open bank accounts, do business - its basically used as a national ID already, but there’s no standardization and no coordination between the motor vehicle associations. Border security is critical because as we begin to tighten up the visa requirements (and start to keep out all the folks who want to study here legally) we will leave the only two remaining ways in wide open: Mexico and Canada. Left unaddressed, this issue could become a major achillies heel.

I needed to read something more soothing, this line of study was not helping my body to heal at all! Having caught only the tail end of a show on the History channel the night before about ancient English kings, I decided to grab my favorite college history book: "The Making of England 55BC to 1399" by C. Warren Hollister. (Its one in a series on the History of England, I have fourth edition from 1983 DC Health and Company). Its really a fantastic overview type book, but you can’t expect too much detail on the earlier half of the time period when you cover the first 600 years by page 37 (of 300). I originally grabbed it to read more about Henry the 2nd and his wife Elanor of Aquataine. Elanor had apparently gotten divorced from the French king and ended up with Henry somehow and I that interested me enough to grab the book, but I ended up spending more time in the ancient history sections. From the earliest Roman invasions, through the fall of Western Empire, the Saxon invasions pushing the remaining Britons back into Wales, the invasions of the Scots Irish into northern England, the rise of the Heptarchy (the seven Saxon kingdoms) the Christianizing of the saxons, the last pagan kings (Sutton Hoo), Celtic Christianity with funky haircuts that after several isolated centuries didn’t look like those on the continent anymore and when the Christians of the continent met up with them again they were appalled! Great stuff, really. I was already feeling better - swords and honor always make me feel better than bombs and terrorism, but I needed a break from reading.

On the trip home while listening to the radio I had caught some of Schubert’s Unfinished which had brought back memories since I was probably one of the few kids my age that actually had some classical records (yes, records) of my own and would play them alot. I had Schubert’s 8th and listened to it tons of times, so I scrambled on Gnutella and pieced together the two movements and spent some time listening to that again. This got me thinking about how I need to start building a more complete classical library. A lot of the pieces I like were ones that I had played in the youth orchestras I was in, like Shostakovich’s 5th and Sibelius’ 2nd. Others to grab might include a Samuel Barber, Mozart’s Clarinet in A, Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, Respighi’s Pines of Rome etc. I have a list tucked away, I just have to get on Amazon, or perhaps pick through my parent’s CD library when I’m up next.