Off Topic

I am tired. My mind is dulled, and my eyes burn. Too many events have taken place in my life in the last eight weeks, and circuit overload is the result.

Though this is personal business, and perhaps not best mentioned here, I will anyway. As I tried to keep you informed during the computer crashes, when I wasn’t able to post, or only post in a very limited way, I’m keeping you informed now.

Very briefly: Late in the autumn I developed a problem with one of my feet. It is a condition I can do nothing about. It is extremely painful, but it does settle down for reasonable periods of time. It’s never completely gone, but I can live with it.

In early December a very strong wind storm passed through the region where I live. It was in fact associated with a tornado. We were very lucky that we were not in the direct path of this terrible storm which resulted in fatalities, and caused extreme damage where it touched down.

My home sustained damage from the winds. It was one of only two, in this immediate vicinity damaged. The insurance was not enough to cover the repairs, but anything is helpful.

In mid December I discovered that a friend had been murdered some time ago. I learned of it through the Internet…through news articles. There was no phone call to tell me of it, no softening of the story, just words printed across the screen like iced water being poured over me.

This past week, I had a flood in my home.

I had to call the fire department to come out to shut the water off, and while I waited for them, the water was blasting out of a pipe, soaking the floors. They are damaged to the point where they must be replaced, and they present a threat to me if I absentmindedly walk on a soft spot.

For a while now, the situation with Oh Ji Ho, and my recognition of the potential far reaching effect it could have, has dominated most of my waking hours while trying to encourage people to take a moment to send a card or note that will demonstrate we are behind this man. We don’t want to see him lose what he has worked so hard to achieve.

I am not the only person engaged in that activity; I suspect there are cards and letters addressed to him coming in from all over the globe.

That’s good.

I am so far behind in personal correspondence, I keep sending notes promising letters that don’t get written, or that are half written. It presses on my mind.

The upshot here is that I will only be posting photographs for a while. Of course if anything major develops, I will be here to let you know.

Some say, “No news is good news”. Probably more true than not. In this case though, there are many of us who have that bad feeling…and want to hear something or other.

UPDATE 1/31/07:I am now monitoring all comments. This simply means that I will be notified that a new comment has been added. I will then read it to be sure I am filtering out machine generated spam, or comments that are detrimental to myself or Oh Ji Ho, since this is not an open forum. It is a privately published blog.

I am reopening access to my e-mail address for the purpose of handling inquiries regarding contacting Oh Ji Ho. It is absolutely essential that we not stop sending cards or short notes of encouragement to him. He will need us for a good while. He has been through a nightmare.

You will not have to deal with the dread blue letters in order to comment or ask for the address. I hate that thing, and I can't stand inflicting it upon you good people. Monitoring the comments makes it unnecessary.

Right this minute I am seeing double images. I really need to get some rest.

Sit tight, stay healthy, and keep the faith.

Yours,
Hyacinth

I call this picture, "He sleeps..." I hope he does.