We stopped at Starbucks en route to the Colorado Symphony concert last night, so blame it on the rare evening infusion of caffeine. When we arrived home, I jumped on the computer to read the Op-Ed pieces in Sunday's New York Times. As often happens, Frank Rich's column hit a nerve. As doesn't often happen, I decided to post a comment about the column on the Times' website.

Mr. Rich's column is at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08rich.html

If you sort the 600-plus comments on that column by Oldest First, mine is #365 on page 15. Or you can just read it here:

When I read that Timothy Geithner didn't bother paying his back taxes for 2001-2002 until AFTER he had been nominated as Treasury Secretary, I was infuriated. I didn't for a nanosecond buy his excuse for not paying his 2001-2004 personal taxes when they were due. That he didn't voluntarily pay his 2001-2002 personal taxes back in 2006 when the IRS notified him about the delinquent 2003-2004 taxes seemed, well, ethically challenged.

I also didn't buy Team Obama's claim that Geithner was the only man for the job. Another administration without a Plan B? Great, just great.

So I tried two avenues of communication to voice my concerns to that black hole otherwise known as Washington, D.C.

First, I e-mailed Max Baucus, head of the Senate Finance Committee, about my concerns. No answer, even though I clicked the "Yes, I would like to receive a response concerning my email" button on his website.

(BTW, Mr. Baucus, there are two (2!) periods after the preceding quote on the "Email about an issue" page of your website. Hire a proofreader! In the current economy, there are even more unemployed English majors than usual from which to choose.)

Second, since Team Obama kept sending me e-mails suggesting that I share my opinions about the transition and priorities for the new administration, I e-mailed that crowd about Geithner, too. No response.

Sigh. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," as my Belgian neighbors used to say. Moi, I'm going back to being an apolitical animal, and donating all my future time and money to the local animal shelter where I volunteer. At least the pit bulls act like they're listening when I talk to them.

Believe me, I understand how having a mammogram can raise a woman's anxiety levels. Ever since my mother died of breast cancer at 47, just 16 days after her diagnosis, the disease has loomed in my consciousness, charging up to the forefront as my annual mammogram approaches.

So I appreciate the idea behind the "spa-like atmosphere" that seems to be the rage among breast cancer screening centers. The center I visited yesterday for a mammogram looked a lot like the day spa where Ali and I had facials last October, right down to the New Age music and the subdued lighting.

But when I asked the technician how long it would take for the radiologists to read the film and get back to me with the results, her response was, "Two to three weeks." Two to three weeks?!!

I'd be willing to trade those lovely sofas, floral arrangements, and recent issues of Town & Country for plastic chairs, old National Geographics, and speedy reports from the radiology team. Ten minutes of pretending that I'm in a spa doesn't make up for two-plus weeks of worrying.

And the room with the Siemens Mammomat (a laundromat for boobs?), a high-tech digital imaging machine? It was colder in there than it was outside in the parking lot.

From an elderly gentleman I stopped to chat with while we were both walking our dogs—his a bouncy, white toy poodle named Abby—on Ralston Creek Trail, which winds through our neighborhood:

Watching the dogs excitedly sniffing each other and the fascinating-to-dogs-only smells around them, he gestured at the trail and said, "Yup, this is Abby's Information Highway."

There's not too many things in this world that scare our son, who started skydiving in high school. But when I described seeing skiers and boarders speeding across a mountain lake near Frisco, Patrick's response was, "Geez, THAT'S dangerous."

I don't know, paraskiing looked like fun to me. Besides, you don't need to buy a lift ticket.


More paraskiing pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Katharine.Gillette/Paraskiing

John Updike died today.

When I heard the news, I was transported back some 30 years to a small classroom at Case Western Reserve University. The building was so old that the afternoon sun shone on hardwood floors as Updike read his poetry to a tiny audience.

The writer was on campus to see an old friend, a professor at CWRU. I don't know why he read only poems that day, and not selections from his better-known novels or essays. Although I saw in the Times obituary that John Updike was a tall man, I remember his features as rather elven, his eyes twinkling, his skin flushed and rough with psoriasis. For a famous writer, he seemed shy and profoundly pleased by our response to his work.

I vividly recall Updike's tender reading of his poem "Dog's Death." This prosaic account of the sudden loss of the family puppy contained one hauntingly luminous line: