“Snow going off very gradually under the sun alone.” 
                             --The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 17 March 1856

     War and weather, the two topics of the 10 o'clock news last night and then this morning, squeezed in during public radio’s fund raising. (“Why don't all the stations do this at the same time?” I asked Paul. “Because they are following us,” he said.)
      On the war front, I keep imagining a reprieve, but it grows less likely every hour. The fund raisers just announced that if anything happens on that front, they will actually interrupt the fundraising to let us know! The Iraquis are lining up for gas to try to drive away; U.S. citizens in Israel, Syria, and several other Middle East countries are being called home; Blix has been told to bring the inspectors home. Bush has said this is the last day. Hussein says he will take the war to anywhere in the skies. 
 I've been thinking of Sarah's journal. Is nature an escape from it all, and should it be? I definitely agree with her that there is a balance to being in nature, including our little very public beach back in Lynn. I remember being 10 years old when the Cuban missile happened. I was staying overnight with Grandma Young, who was very addicted to the evening news, especially Huntley and Brinkley, and how we watched it together that night, how afraid I was, how totally outside my ken all that was and new, while in other places, now and then, children live with the fear and the fact all the time.
Here, with my email and the TV and radio (basic network, no CNN), the world is right here with me. Not the Globe today, though Paul says that Helen Caldecott in the Globe has the idea for the one set of brakes that could be applied to inexorable march to Baghdad, and that's to send the Pope there. 
       I wonder if there is any real nature at Camp David or if it is all manicured grass and trees.  It would be nice to think there were deer and wild turkeys there—I have my doubts. I have been so oblivious to wild turkeys all my life, but here are two passages from Thoreau:

“For two or three or three days, I have heard the gobbling of turkeys, the first spring sound, after the chickadees and hens, that I think of.” (March 20, 1856)

“I hear turkeys gobble. This, too, I suppose, is a spring sound.” (March 19, 1858)

      So far, I have only heard one report of a sighting. I’ll need to keep my ears open. Daun used to do a great imitation of a turkey, but I think hers was the domesticate kind, need to see if the wild ones sound different.
      I am assuming that I will get out for a walk today, although I feel terrible. Several people on staff were sick last week, and I thought nothing of it till I felt the stabbing pain in the throat, the heavy hurting chest yesterday. I cant tell if it is allergies or virus, but I feel terrible. I am drinking tea and boiling the Saturday turkey carcass to make broth for soup, always a comforting smell/sensation and fact. Like sausage and haddock.
      I didn't really get out yesterday, though it was glorious, temperatures up to 69 degrees, which the weather woman said is 23 above the average for today and warned, “Temperatures will cut back next weekend [cue eight day forecast: 29 degrees on Saturday], so let's appreciate it while we can.” The St. Patrick's Day parade in Cleveland and Boston should have good weather. Paul just called to say he had breakfast on the porch, jacketed but still.
       Meanwhile, in Hinckley, where the buzzards were due this weekend, the report is that the birds arrived two hours earlier than ever before. 
 

Friday, 20 March 2003, morning

“Despite all these activities, Thoreau was not well. He records few details of his illness but it may have been related to his lifelong battle with tuberculosis. Some recent biographers suggest that the illness may have been psychosomatic. Whatever it basis, it had a devastating effect up on his journal, and we find both far fewer and much shorter entries for months on end.”
               -- Walter Harding’s Introduction to Vol. 8, The Journals of Henry David Thoreau
 

      I just sort of disintegrated this week. I had been taking an allergy medication which made me feel crazy and not sleep for days on end, then the allergy kept me wired and awake. I felt miserable but because I couldn't sleep, I was getting a lot done, typing up kids’ poems, leading all my sessions. I even stood out by the pond in the woods dressed as the moon to greet children on their night hike. Of course that, and then being up all night Wednesday night with the horror of the war beginning probably didn't help so that by Thursday, I had such sinus pain that I asked directions to an urgent care center. The PA and doctor seemed nice, seemed convinced it was the mold in the park. (Of course! Mold! My worst, and here I had assumed it was the down comforter. ) Ah, wilderness. She prescribed antibiotics, which I never take, a decongestant, and another allergy medication. Within hours of beginning with those, I felt a bit better, though the amount of infection I continue to expel (and now I am being much more discreet than in my personal diary) has been prodigious.
       Troubling incidents that came up along the way have mirrored similar ones I have had in the past year, seem to me a disturbing patter of being asked, coerced, or worst, being tricked into signing forms that simply do not state the truth. When I was leaving the care center, I was asked to sign a form that stated the care center was going to send a request for charges to my insurance company and whatever they would not pay, I would pay for. My problem in signing was that the center had told me they would not send the charges to my insurance company. When I pointed this out, the young woman with the form hit the roof and spat that the form was merely showing that I had paid. I read the sentence aloud to her ("I understand that Urgent Care is submitting this to my insurance company," but she was fuming so that she didn't hear. The PA came out and informed me that I could send it to my insurance company. I said I understood that but that the form they were asking me to sign said they were sending it in: were they, or weren't they? They weren't, but they wanted me to sign it anyway. I was sick, I was exhausted, they were holding the prescriptions. I signed.
       Moments later, in the pharmacy, the clerk asked if I had ever gotten a prescription there. I said no, that I was out of town. She handed me a form asking for address, phone, email and more, saying if I filled it out, I would be able to get prescriptions at any of their stores. I told her (honestly, very nicely) I didn't want to give out that information and that I wouldn't use their stores because I had my own drugstore. As with the previous woman, this one flew into a tiff, said I could not get my prescription without it, they needed the info, all the info on their computers is covered by federal law, cant be accessed (boy, lady, you got a lot to learn). I was sick, I was tired, and I filled it out, only to find at the bottom a box that said, “Check here if you prefer not to fill out this form.” It was too late to unfill it out, but it made it clear to me that I had just been coerced. 
       But that wasn't all. When I paid with a credit card, another pharmacist gave me one of those  etch-a-sketchish credit card plates to sign. I did, but after I did, I saw him check one of two boxes above my name that I hadn't seen. It said something like, “I have refused consultation with the pharmacist.”
      I am heading off to Canton for the weekend. If they can get out of the Denver Airport (which had 4 feet of snow), Beth, Jim, and Bessana, are coming home for spring break.