I'm more aware of my mortality as I get older. Uncle Bunny died last night. He was in his mid-eighties and we heard at Christmas that he was not doing well, suffering from Parkinson's disease. But he is at rest now.

My students sang well today on their first attempt at Von Ewiger Liebe (Brahms arr. Raines). We are doing it in three classes. We spent some time in preparing the chromaticism, making notes before trying it, but they handled it well and got through about half the piece successfully.

I think about trying to run again. My feet are so much better than they were a few years back that I might be able to jog around a bit. Hmmm. It riases my blood pressure to walk uphill these days.

The preznit must be happy to have Alito hearings to take the heat off him for Iraq, gas prices, spying on Americans, torturing captives, no WMD's, FEMA, Abramoff conviction, DeLay indictments, widening scandals, and on and on. I can't remember this much angst about the government since Watergate. I guess Iran Contra was close to this intense. Has the congress ever sunk so low? Or the president been so dictatorial. I think that democracy seems close to failing, being overtaken by a totalitarian executive.

I walked to work today.