I bought my Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5983 the day after Thanksgiving, 2009. About 31 months later, a message flashed on my screen, telling me the battery was nearly dead and that even when plugged in, it would soon stop working altogether. And it did. Anyway, yesterday I paid $99 for a new battery and let it charge up overnight. I'm pleased that all is now okay with Miss Toshiba.

Question: Is it common for laptops to be set up so that they'll eventually stop powering on when the battery is dead, or nearly dead, even when plugged in? This one is my first, and I hope it'll last another few years.

When so many neighborhood theaters continue to close, it's great that this one, only eight blocks from our home, has been all spiffed up, is still busy, and now even has a bar to go along with its four screening rooms. Miss A and I saw "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" there, just last night. For details about the theater, see Renovated Manor Theater boasts new seats, sign, floor and bar.

Okay, I have a few dozen rough drafts of research papers that must get marked up this week, I need to return some books to the public library and get a few others out, and I'm also thinking about voting in today's Pennsylvania primary election. But before I go anywhere, I need to shower and also look at my library account online and see which books I absolutely must return to avoid accruing even higher overdue fines.

By the way, I'm reading Charles Shields' And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life. So far, so good. Recommended.

Last Word: Mike Wallace (22-minute documentary, featuring an interview with Wallace)
In the winter of 1995-96, I was putting books into the window of a store in NYC when I sensed someone out on the sidewalk, checking the new titles. It was Mike Wallace. We made eye contact, offered nods of recognition, and he walked on into the cold.

John Megna (November 9, 1952 – September 5, 1995) was an American actor whose Broadway success at the age of seven in 1960's All the Way Home led to his being cast as Charles Baker 'Dill' Harris, the toothy young summer visitor in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird. According to Mockingbird author, Harper Lee, the character was based on her childhood friend, writer Truman Capote.

A half-brother of actress/singer/businesswoman Connie Stevens, Megna appeared in many television programs throughout the 1960s and 1970s; he played a small role as one of the "Onlies" in the "Miri" episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. As an adult, he turned to stage directing. He appeared in two car chase films starring Burt Reynolds and directed by Hal Needham in cameo roles: Smokey and the Bandit II and Cannonball Run.

John Megna later became a high school English teacher, and last taught at James Monroe High School in North Hills, CA. On September 5, 1995, in Los Angeles, California, he died from AIDS-related complications at the age of 42. (from Wikipedia)

Current plans are to permanent close a number of facilities in my home state of Illinois that have been providing homes for mentally retarded adults and children for decades. Centraia, the town where I spent my childhood, is the site of one of these facilities, due to be shuttered and shut down after nearly fifty years. Governor Quinn supports this plans, while state Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka observes the following: "I don't see a plan out there for the people who leave those hospitals. Where do they go? There is no community-based system out there. Are we going to see them in jail or are hospitals going to deal with them, or nursing homes trying to deal with them, or are we just going to have a bunch of homeless sickees out there?"

Similar closures have been carried out across the country in regard to mentally ill adults who have known only hospitals as their homes. New York State, and more specifically New York City, have a far greater number of mentally ill residents living on the streets or, in some cases, being warehoused in old hotels with very little attention being paid to them.

This is a sad time in America.

I had been feeling pretty lethargic and mildly depressed through much of the day, but have been perked up by a couple of glasses of water. It hadn't been helping that the several things on my to-do list for this week of spring break from teaching have gone mostly undone, and it's already Thursday. That said, I've at least touched on the academic-related tasks, am currently finishing up laundry, and am prepping myself to vacuum to the whole damned place. Oh, and I ruined a shirt by sending it through the wash with a ballpoint pen still in its pocket--an old shirt that had seen its better days, but I'll still miss it.

I was visiting the second rabbi in the Coen brothers' A Serious Man, the one who relates the story of the goy's teeth. I have no memory of what he was telling me, though. As it is, I usually see at least one rabbi a day because I live pretty much next door to one of the largest synagogues in town.

Embedding of this clip has been disallowed, but here's a link to that scene of the second rabbi and the goy's teeth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUTyEEiulQk&feature=related

This story sounds like a plot for an X-Files episode, minus the mutants. Then again, maybe the mutants haven't come above ground, just yet.

(from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/us/in-clintonville-wis-the-ground-is-going-bump-in-the-night.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120323)

When the Ground Goes Bump in the Night
By STEVEN YACCINO
Published: March 23, 2012
Residents of one small Wisconsin city have been awakened by mysterious noises that seem to come from underground. Microearthquakes may be the cause.

I love being able to check out really old books from my public library. Today, it was George Moore's Celibate Lives, with the 90-page "Albert Nobbs" among the stories included in this volume, printed in 1927. For some reason(s), Moore's work has been largely out of print. There's a paperback recently out from Penguin that's "Albert Nobbs" all on his lonesome, but I'm really interested to see what else this hated-Ireland Irishman has to say about celibate people in Victorian-era Ireland. The book was right there on the shelf, but when I tried to take it out through the check-it-out-yourself machine, I got a message on the screen that said it could not be checked out. Two library employees later, I learned that it was due to visit the mending office. Indeed, when I leafed through it, I noticed the 85 year-old stitching was coming loose. However, I was pleased to learn that I could go ahead and borrow it, but that I wouldn't be able to renew it after a three-week loan.

The film Albert Nobbs is excellent, by the way. It, along the novella, is about a woman who was orphaned at a young age, educated at a Catholic boarding school, and gang-raped at age 14. She finds herself in a quandry, and then finds herself passing as a man, working as a waiter at a series of posh restaurants. We meet him in his middle years, in another quandry, and you need to see the film and/or read the book for the rest of the story.