Human limitations...

I received a number of good suggestions for a better Thanksgiving adjective -- all in essentially the same spirit but I especially liked this one from my friend Jack: have a reverent Thanksgiving! To support this nomination Jack included a couple of quotes from Paul Woodruff's book 'Reverence: renewing a forgotten virtue.'

• "Reverence begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control -- God, truth, justice, nature, even death."
  
• "Reverence is the well-developed capacity to have the feelings of awe, respect and shame when these are the right feelings to have."
  

The floor remains open for further nominations, but for the time being I hope you are all having a reverent Thanksgiving weekend (though I am not so sure justice or even truth lie outside human control...both seem to be human aspirations and constructs but that is another story for another day).

Had round II of CHOP today and it went pretty well -- I was home by a little after one. For some reason, I am feeling OK physically today but am really down psychologically. Strangely enough I think it is the hair thing...folks tell me lots of people go into this treatment thinking they'll be lucky and dodge the hair loss bullet though virtually nobody does. Kaylinn, one of my nurses, told me to expect noticeable loss of hair starting 19 days after my first round of CHOP and sure enough Wednesday it started to fall. Today I am shedding like a yellow labrador after spring's first swim. Glad I had it cut short already but afraid my flat-top will be a bald-top very soon.

My parents are in town helping out with James -- Mom is at the library with him now -- and tonight we are planning to go downtown to watch Bemidji's annual 'Night we Light' parade (follow the preceding link to see Auntie Kathleen playing her bagpipes). It is quite the extravaganza and had a huge turnout last year despite sub-zero temperatures and near blizzard conditions. Tonight's weather promises to be much more pleasant so it should be fun. My friend Frank is making a campaign event out of it and running his dog team down the street so that could provide some real entertainment given all the sleighs and horses...good luck Frank! /dps