this week i

published on the policyholders of employer-sponsored insurance plan coverage of young adults

saw sindhu vee in a suburban northern virginia high school auditorium after grilled burgers on homebaked buns, jazz in liz's garden next afternoon


listened to chief statistician of the u.s. et al. at the umd marriott.  psid allows income, wealth, & consumption poverty calc., nlsy27 coming soon

 redesign doesn't happen in a vacuum -stas kolenikov

the tens of people who want to look at our code -jonathan rothbaum

 


 

 

read the house of spirits by isabel allende.  trueba family tiger figurines in holiday manger scenes, as namesake antonio did for rosemarie and rocco

i remembered her perfect face and cursed my luck

to cure the child's muteness with the same remedy she used for hiccups

with topiaries fit for versailles

 they met every friday to summon spirits and exchange recipes and premonitions

 playing chopin with the lid of the piano shut

clara arrived at her daughter's door and tried to open it, but it was bolted.  she knocked, and when no one opened it she turned around and ran outside the house, where she saw the window wide open and ferula's hydrangeas trampled.  in a flash she understood the color of bianca's aura, the bags under her eyes, her listlessness, her silence, her morning sleepiness, and her afternoon watercolors.  and in that instant the earthquake began

tiny figures for the family's christmas manger, not only the three kings and the shepherds, but a whole crowd of every kind of people and every type of animal - african camels and zebras, american iguanas and asian tigers - without worrying about the exact fauna of bethlehem

 harvesting poverty like everybody else

 old pedro garcia died a few days before the presidential elections..at his feet was his great grandson esteban garcia, who was by that time almost ten, driving a nail through the eyes of a chicken.  he was the son of esteban garcia, the only bastard offspring of the patron named for him

the spectacle of a gigantic balloon suspended in the clouds would be an irresistible form of publicity for almost any carbonated drink

inside its jar, shrunken into a fetal position, wrapped in tatters, and accompanied by its wretched necklaces of teeth and a handful of rag dolls, the mummy looked like the pit of some exotic fruit.  they were far more highly prized than any other objects that were brought out of the tombs, because private collectors and a few foreign museums paid very handsomely for them

 in daylight the mummies would be in no mood for clowning

at dusk he escorted them as far as their street.  when they said goodbye, blanca and pedro tercero kissed each other on the mouth.  it was the first time alba had seen that in her life, because no one around her was in love

"your uncle jaime is putting bolshevik ideas into your head!"  senator trueba would roar, sputtering with rage.  "do you know what would happen here without a patron?"

after all those years without speaking, we spent her final hours lying side by side in the sailboat of the gentle blue silk sea, as she liked to call her bed

land is all you have left when everything else falls apart

"better a dead father than an absent one," blanca enigmatically replied, and she never mentioned it again

"don't ask me questions you don't want to know the answer to," alba replied, looking him in the eye.  they never spoke of the matter again

the only ones in the whole world who had discovered love

far away from my country i would be like those trees they chop down at christmastime, those poor rootless pines that last a little while and then die

 

10/24