Taking This Week Off -- and Maybe Next Week Also

Dear Readers...

The demands on my time for the last several weeks have been more intense than I could have imagined. 

Though in theory I am officially retired,  the premises inspections of May and June; a rash of computer troubles; cataract surgery in both eyes;  the abysmal local bus service that imprisons me in my own residence if I am to fulfill post-cataract-surgery eyedrop-protocols;  publication of a monthly newsletter for my fellow tenants; involvement with the $15 minimum-wage campaign; the demands of this blog;  all of it has combined to keep me more busy -- and feeling increasingly more jammed up -- than ever in my life. 

Indeed I am busier than I was even as an impoverished undergraduate at the University of Tennessee c. 1959,  carrying a full course load, working three jobs (one full-time, two part-time), merely to buy my books and pay my tuition -- after which my enlistment for three years active duty in the U.S. Army was like an extended vacation. 

Lastly there's my increasing discomfort with what I am told may be the longest most relentless heat wave in Tacoma history. Though I've no problem with this new and seemingly endless succession of daytime temperatures in the high 80s,  the failure to cool off at night -- a new phenomenon in this region -- makes restful sleep impossible without air conditioning, and my increasing exhaustion is becoming decidedly wearisome. 

All of these factors contribute to my decision to take a week off from OAN -- maybe even two weeks. 

Meanwhile my most profound thanks to you for your continuing readership. My sense of you out there, literally on all the continents of this sorely troubled planet, reinforces my belief that in this era, we the oppressed should never forget that under deliberately genocidal capitalism, survival itself is an act of revolutionary defiance.  

Oh yes, the cataract surgery was apparently successful. I now have 20/20 vision in both eyes and, as I said last week after only the right-eye surgery was complete, I am rediscovering the exquisite sensuality of seeing.  

Back Soon,
Loren Bliss
3 August 2014 

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