A big thunderstorm went through here last night, terrifying the poor dog. (He has a new 'safe place' he goes when he's frightened -- our bedroom, Dr Skull's side of the bed.)
This morning it is wet and significantly cooler. We went to the dog park and he tore around, leaping in all the puddles. Now he is wet and filthy and I have banished him to his crate until he dries off some.
The kid has friends visiting this week, so they are going to museums and restaurants and playing games. They'll be here on Tuesday for dinner which is going to require me to cook (Dr Skull is going to tell me what to do).
I'm still reading biographies, but I did gobble down an epistolary novel yesterday, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, which meant I had to read Helen Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road again. Now I am hungry for more epistolary novels. Please give suggestions if you have them!
I am currently reading both a biography of FDR and one of Eleanor Roosevelt. The two authors are both disdainful of the spouses of their subjects -- that is, H.W. Brands sees Eleanor as as one of FDRs problems, and David Michaels has a great deal of contempt for FDR.
Did you know Eleanor Roosevelt was bisexual? If not straight up gay. They didn't teach us that in history class. FDR, on the other hand, had a number of affairs, maybe partly because Eleanor didn't really want to sleep with him, despite how hot and handsome he was. (This is Brands, but Michaels admits FDR was a hottie too.) Anyway, Eleanor apparently had seven children for FDR (six survived to adulthood -- FDR wanted six kids) and then refused to have sex with him anymore. She moved into a cottage with two other women, and eventually hooked up with Lorena Hickok, her lifelong companion, as they say.
She stuck with the marriage, though, and tirelessly worked for FDR and his political aims.
The political world of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s reminds me quite a bit of the mess we're in now -- white nationalism, eugenics, hatred of immigrants, the concentration of wealth among a very few families at the top and desperate poverty elsewhere. Also, of course, systemic racism. In an odd way, it gives me hope.
Also, today Lindsey Graham died, and apparent Mitch McConnell is on the edge of death. What a shame.
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