Karma determines rank

I'm not sure what that means in the latest list of definitions I'm quoting from in the already-written-in journal I'm using of some student's history notes, but it doesn't really tell you what karma is, does it? Though really, I didn't know either ... the first time I heard/read the word was as the codename of one of Marvel Comics' New Mutants, Professor Xavier's third attempt at forging a team to live up to his belief that super-powered mutants and baseline humans can peacefully coexist. Karma came out of Vietnam and she can possess another person's mind (or several at once, but it's draining) and act through them. Anyway, Karma's with the group for a few missions and then drops out of sight for a few years real time; she gets possessed herself by a psychic entity and becomes ... eh, I should let you read it yourself. I still don't quite decipher what karma IS so much as what it does.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_(comics)


Got to work after my six-month checkup with Dr. Albertson at Trinity regarding my diabetes and the meds I'm on for it. She may be the easiest doctor I've had (since I moved to North Dakota at least) to work with, which may say as much about her easygoing -- for a doctor -- manner as my willingness to keep track of my blood sugar levels and take my meds without feeling forced to do it. That, and I may have another person interested in my books, the nurse who took my blood pressure and had to do it twice because my first count was way absurdly low. And actually got in just after I dropped the kids off at school ... but I'm afraid I was not very good with them, especially when it seems Jeffrey's pairs of pants keep moving about even when we know they're in the dryer for we'd done the laundry last night!

"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."


Anyway, Sarah and Jeffrey are on the next to last day before a long four-day weekend (they get Good Friday and Easter Monday off as well)! And Palm Sunday having been our church choir's big singing program for the year -- oh they'll sing at Easter, but not quite so monumentally to impress -- the lead-in to Easter (Holy Week in Churchspeak, or is that Holyweek?) is going to get followed, at least for my clan, with an Easter dinner and egg hunt at my in-laws' house. Jeffrey's really looking forward to this! And likewise I look forward to helping Sarah and Jeffrey with their reading, though they're getting pretty self-guided on their own, Sarah with the first Percy Jackson and the Olympians book (we watched the movie this weekend) and Jeffrey with a Battle Bugs book.


"But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything," howled Loonquawl.


Which my son will tell you is the chapter book he will (he says this with such confidence) finish! And as for myself, last night I finished Robert Fulghum's book True Love (ISBN 0060187840) where the Unitarian minister and author of All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten presents stories he's collected from people who wrote to him or sat down at his booth in a Seattle coffee shop and was willing to share their story. Whether they shared their names with him or not, whether their stories themselves had a happy ending or not ... it got me to thinking as I was reading this over two and a half weeks how I'd love to hear how my wife Martha would tell our story. Obviously I know how I would, and I could share it sometime. Going through some turn-of-the-century photos this weekend did bring back some memories, and maybe even good karma.


 "Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what actually is it?"


(My thanks to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for filling in.)

David