This morning I went for a walk across Hamilton, past a looted business, long since closed but looted again, for practice I suppose, past the library, three men reinforcing its once again kicked in door, down to the dollar store.

The hip I was trying to loosen was freezing up as the dark clouds took over the blue morning sky. Very few folks were about. Traffic was light. A man at the dollar store asked me to recommend a frozen dinner to him, with that gruff innocence that seems to assume that 'White Daddy' knows best. I told him, "The Salisbury steak is better than the meatloaf, but that's just two patties and bad gravy, what mothers feed their children. Now, that, up on the next shelf, the Hungryman dinner, that's what mamma feeds to her man. You want that."

"Ma man!" he exclaimed, as he declared that he started a new job this morning and wanted to have plenty of energy from his meal. As we came to the register, manned by a mild-mannered young fellow who looks like a tattooed gangbanger but seems gentle, the man credited me with advising him well and is childishly out the door in good spirits.

After ringing out I turned to go and my leg wouldn't move, just caught with a burn at the hip. Perhaps my 8-mile walk yesterday was too much. It had taken me an hour to walk a half mile to the store. The boy asked me if I was okay and I said yes and hobbled off, dragging the leg.

Deciding to walk back through the narrow, one-way streets with their array of nice country houses buried in a warren of poorly-maintained asphalt ways, I found that something more general had happen to my nervous system. My left arm was shaking and my face was twitching. This brought some dismay as the clouds rolled in. It was probably just the barometric pressure I reasoned and headed home for about an hour and a half, finally walking normally as I turned the corner to my place. Along the way I passed a big, smiling man who called me brother, asked me how I was doing, cheered his favorite basketball team and wished me a good day.

Very few others were out—sirens sounding in the distance for two hours now.

I was feeling kind of grim when I returned here to this desk. Taking from 8:29-11:28 to walk to the corner store and back, a total of 1.5 miles, was a walk to be ashamed of.

Then I checked the back end to see if we had sold any copies of Your Trojan Whorse and saw that Solveig had made a large donation.

That brought a smile to my face, remembering how she had corrected me over the phone when I called her a "smart chick," and insisted that she was now a graduate, a chick no more, but a full fledged "broad."

So Solveig, your a great broad and thank you.