Maybe I am starting to prepare myself. Talked to the accountant and broker today, started cleaning out closets I haven't seen the back of since 1981 (maybe that's because my sister will be staying here with her family during the first part of my month in Italy and I don't want to be dissed about the apartment anymore than I will have to be when she follows me over for the second half.)

I just finished a novel, Glass's Three Junes, that spoke in part to the aspects of New York City that I'll be a touch sorry to leave. But not that sorry!

I am so tired of the political scene here! You wouldn't know it from my weekly cover to cover concentration on the latest issue of The Nation and my regular perusal of the Truth Out website, but even with fingers crossed for a Democratic Party victory here in November, there's a kind of masochism about it all. I want to be in a place where there are some serious leftist opinions on at least the local level in spite of the opera buffa that is the national political scene. Social safety nets may be eroding all over the world, but ours haven't even been given a fair chance- so much so that there is little left to erode. There's a sour Calvinist core here: compare "American Gothic" by Grant Woods to Henri Rousseau's "Carnival Evening" and you get a little of the contrast I entertain about the two continents.

We shall see.

posted by Joanna @ 3/27/2004 03:59:00 AM