Renewing My Passport, Heading To Europe This Fall

Though I blog here in the first person, I don’t think I write all that much about my life. The Periodic Fable tends to be my thoughts, not my journal. Today’s post is more like a journal – strictly about me and where I am hoping to head, and not as deep and thoughtful as when I blog about important stuff like comics, sports, mystery novels. (sarcasm)

At the post office, mailing off my old expired passport to be renewed

Yesterday I found my expired 1999 passport! Within two hours, I filled out forms and wrote a check and biked to the post office and sent it off for an expedited renewal. 

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Mom’s Art 1: Stockholm Drawings

Riksdaghuset (Parliament Building in Stockholm, Sweden), drawing by Marge Linton, done in the late 1950s, pencil on paper, about 8.5″x11″

Here are a couple of pencil drawings that my mother did during her junior year abroad in Stockholm. Margaret Gerhardt Linton 1937-2011, then Margaret Eunice Gerhardt – mom – was a junior at Occidental College, she studied abroad for a year, during which she traveled quite a bit through various countries in Europe. 

Primo Levi’s Partisans

If Not Now, When? a novel by Primo Levi

I am re-reading Primo Levi’s novel If Not Now, When? It’s a story of a band of Jewish partisans during World War II. The partisans tool their way through Russia and Poland surviving and sabotaging. It’s not my favorite Primo Levi book. Though it’s thoroughly researched and based on historic events and people… it comes off a bit as a sort of wish-fulfillment. For my personal perception it comes off as just a bit over-optimistic. Too many of the characters are just a bit too saintly; they all just get along a bit too well.