Waiting for Friends to Join Us

In the blog entries, Those Handel Friends, I am bringing some of the characters from my book The Handel Letters to life again, along with some newer characters, in a continuing endeavor to see what our thinking about Handel and his times might inspire in us today.

From Katherine:  I disciplined myself to wait a bit before sending out any further correspondence. This was not easy, as I was eager to hear from all of you again. So far, I have heard from Alison, Peter, Clara, CD and Ross.  I also heard from Angela, who continued to help Forella with some correspondence and technical tasks until about a year ago. She will join us when she can.  I look forward to hearing about what has transpired in the lives of everyone in our group as time goes on, but for now I will try to model some of that process with my own account of what has happened in my life over the last ten years. 

I will wait to send out any responses I get until I hear from a few more of our number. And I will send out a reminder in case the email has been lost in the recently overwhelming flood of political donation requests. Of course, some of you have probably eased off on using email as being just too old-fashioned.  I accept the label.  I am officially old enough to be old-fashioned.

So, to begin: a brief recap of my life over the past ten years. First, I am in pretty good health, I am happy to report.  I have been diagnosed with osteoporosis and have to take medication for that, but I have not broken any bones.  It is just something I need to stay on top of.  It would be nice if they came up with a cure. I also have some vision issues, but again, things I am able, so far, to keep under control.  I do crosswords and walk every day, so let’s say my physical health is doing pretty well for a person late in my seventh decade. I would say retirement agrees with me. More on that later.

For now, let me share that I still live here in Bloomington where I was living ten years ago. The pandemic was a blow to many of us who depended on interacting with people face-to-face. Some things have never quite recovered from that. I still go to campus to hear the wonderful music, but I admit that I often now rely on their streamed concerts rather than driving over to campus. But of course the music is still the excellent bonus it has always been. Bloomington is a great place to be! More next time.