The apartment across the hall from where we're staying in Minneapolis is undergoing extensive

renovation walls being moved, floors torn up, and every day, last week, the noise from

there was seismic, volcanic, like they were throwing pickup trucks into a giant grinder. And when

I walked out of our place and saw a workman, I asked him how long this racket would continue,

and I used as a modifier to racket a word not seen in your family newspaper, or heard on the radio,

not yet, God help us. Though I've heard it used by small children, and New York attending

schools named for saints, kids grow up faster in New York, I guess. I felt bad about my cursing,

I still do. I'm trying to give up anger, it's poisonous, and it has no effect other than to make

the anger feel bad, and perhaps do something truly stupid. You sit in a traffic jam, yelling at

other drivers, and where does it get you? You read about Kevin McCarthy online, and in your fury,

you hurl your laptop out the window, and how does this change anything? I didn't do that,

just considered it. So I'm skipping the front page, and enjoying reading the angry comments on

the editorial page, and the obits, and stories about minor crime. And from this, I learned that

one, Americans are not adept at cutting people down, like whoever said of Endocott Peabody, that he

was the only Massachusetts politician to have four towns named for him, Peabody, Marblehead,

Athol, and Hyannis. We tend to mutter. Secondly, good obits are few, and far between, they're

over the top, laudatory, and they leave out the delicious details. Minor rock musicians die, and

you read that they had a profound effect on music at the time, when what you want to know is

exactly how many hotel rooms did he destroy. And number three, there's a great deal of

outright stupidity in the world of crime. Last week, I read about a bearded man wearing a mask

and dark glasses, gloves, and tan sweater carrying a handgun, who walked into a bank in St.

Paul, and demanded money from three tellers in turn, his pistol aimed at them, and he followed

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