What to think about when what's in front of us doesn't make sense.

In the 50s TV show, The Millionaire, the protagonist, Michael Anthony, gave away a million bucks in each episode. It was a dramatic show, but one with a wink to the audience. In one scene, the week's nemesis says to Anthony that he never trusted anyone with two first names.

If a bad guy dislikes you for what you are, then, in my opinion, you're on the right track. The Massachusetts Democrats have four first names at the top of this year's ballot - Deval Patrick for governor and Wistah's own Tim Murray for lieutenant governor.

I was on hold on Tuesday while calling the insurance company that is handling my disability claim on Tuesday. The phone system offered an instrumental version of Handbags and Gladrags. Mike D'Abo wrote the song in the 60s and Rod Stewart recorded it in 1969. A few years ago, it became the theme song of the UK version of The Office. I thought of the song often while the customer-service representative was telling me that unless my doctor sends a form with updated medical information about me by Monday, my benefits will be cut off. My doctor is on vacation and won't return until Monday.

Please accept my deep gratitude for the gestures of comfort, kindness, and encouragement during these unbalanced times. I owe many personal responses and I will reply soon, for sure.

And now for something completely different, My brain hurts. (You'll need sound on your compute and a somewhat fast network connection.)

The light stays on, even in the darkness

The sun rises around 6:30 in the morning, In a balanced world, the sun would rise at 6AM on the equinox and set at 6PM; the equinox is on Saturday morning. We have time zones, though, that shift the actual sunrise and sunset by a few minutes. In addition, the sunlight is refracted by the atmosphere, so the sunlight is visible a few minutes before the sun breaks the horizon and a few minutes after the sun sets.

By all of this, I mean to say that it's still dark when I go out to the driveway to get the morning papers. I'm still in the habit of glancing up to the window in the room that was my mother's. She would wake during the night, for several hours at a time. She used that time for reading and, most of all, writing.

The room has been dark in the mornings since, but we can still see the light as we continue to celebrate what she said and wrote and was.

RIP, TJL.