We are getting to be like old people.

Diseases and annoyances that I have discussed with friends today:
hot flashes
Hepatitis C
bipolar disorder
breast cancer
reaction to HPV vaccine: recurring rashes
chlymidia
strep throat
MS
polycythemia vera
fibrocystic breast disease
HIV-AIDS

Not as many as I thought.

It could be worse. It could always be worse. Everything, everything could be worse. Tonight K and I were walking down Broadway (New York) and right around Lincoln Center we saw (and heard) a line of 15 or so cop cars speeding down the street. It turned out to be a routine terrorist drill. I was walking by a fire station yesterday and saw a plaque with pictures of fire fighters who had died in 9/11. B read about a young girl who died from the HPV vaccine, and her mother's remorse at having urged the daughter to get it. How could she forgive herself? But it wasn't her fault. J said she loved Joan of Arc when she was young. B said she was fascinated by the story of Tamar in the Bible. She is also fascinated by temple prostitutes. J worked for Eliot Spitzer and said he was arrogant, just like people said. I went to St. John the Divine and it felt taller than European cathedrals. Arches (and probably naves; I always forget what they are) and bright bright stained glass. It's the first time I remembered seeing the American Poets' Corner. Molly Peacock is the poet in residence.
B met me across the street from the cathedral at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, where I first went about 15 years ago with A, whom I had contacted because we were researching the same person. She had had breast cancer and was a breast cancer activist and I wasn't sure what that meant. I didn't ask her because it sounded boring. She had been to the statehouse. L was downstate today, and stopped in Bloomington to interview the workers at the David Davis Mansion. Why would someone give a kid a first name so much like his last name? At a party years ago we met a guy who said his father changed the family name when the son was a teen, so that his name became Henry Henry. He did not forgive his father for that. And why are there so many men named "Dusty" Rhodes? Does each think he's the only one?