One of Bob’s favorite stories is about the woman who asked her sister to take care of her cat while she was on vacation. One day, she called home to check in and asked about the cat.
“The cat’s dead,” she was told.
“That’s a terrible way to tell me,” the woman admonished. “You should have said something like, ‘The cat’s on the roof.’ Then in the next call, you could have said, ‘The cat’s still on the roof and she’s not eating.’ That would have prepared me to hear about the demise of darling Fluffy.”
The next year, the woman again went on vacation. This time, she asked her sister to care for their mother.
Again, the woman phoned from the road. “How’s Grandma?” she asked.
“Grandma’s on the roof.”
Does anyone but me think that the drip, drip, drip of bad news from Havana is a sort of “Fidel’s on the roof” message to the world?
Off to the National Conference of State Legislatures this week. Assuming I can find a business center, I will post from there.
Kris, please let us know what the nation’s state legislators are thinking about Homeland Security’s plan to spend a huge portion of its anti-terrorism grants in places like Wyoming instead of the Washington area and New York.
Kris,
You should go to the Nashville Public Library for your internet access needs. If I’m not mistaken, the NCSL Conference is at the Convention Center, in which case the very nice public library is two blocks away. They have ample computers that one can use, though you’ll need to get a visitor’s pass to log on to them. Also, there’s an excellent French bakery next door, Provence. Nashville is my home town! Have a blast.
The lovely people at NCSL have set us up with email stations right here. We are staying at Opryland, which is worthy of a post all on its own. But the Tennessee people are warm and welcoming. Off to my first workshop on how we can work across partisan lines to solve real problems for real people. Hmmmm . . .