An Unfocussed Day

Hi everyone,

It's been a good day here, if rather unfocused.

Day started with a foggy drive to work (that is, actual fog and mist, not me not thinking clearly).  The morning at work got absorbed mainly by a somewhat involved water licensing issue that goes to court next week.

Lunchtime had another interesting moment: I kind of got sidetracked by the free books that archive.org  puts up.  In short order I downloaded PDFs of two of the more revolutionary tracts of seventeenth century England: Abiezer Coppe's A Fiery Flying Roll (1649) and the anonymous A Door of Hope (1660). Some of their ideas seem more timely now than ever before.  For one thing, the core Ranter belief (that is, Coppe's) was that a member of the Elect was incapable of committing a sinful act: if it was an act of the Elect it was inherently proper.  This has an oddish analogue today in the idea that if someone "is a good person" then it's not right to criticise their acts on moral grounds.  Hmm.  The other interesting notion was that the Ranters especially seem like part of the same  'no rules' culture that leads back to the Dutch painter Torrentius and through him to the 1629 Batavia massacre off of Western Australia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(ship)).

There you have it: my life is a shambles, but I can stil find time to ponder abstruse point of seventeenth century philosophy..

After work I went to the hospital.  Happy to report that mum was in good spirits, although she did seem tired.  It was good, though, to have gotten there in time to watch Letters & Numbers with her.  She loves solving puzzles and to the extent that she was off her game tonight I think it was due to tiredness rather than illness.  She still feels she's making progress physically. Progress is progress even when it's slow.  Fran came in while I was there. Will be interested to get her take on it all.

After the hospital I went to the gym for my first workout in a week.  I went in hard and had a good session.

Sisters are coming up this weekend.  Will be good to see them for sure.

Hope all is well with you!