Yes, I have a cold.  It came  like a thief in the night and began to rob me of my sleep around 3 am Saturday.  Sore throat, head and body ache.

And now the dripping and sneezing. The headache is gone, thank goodness. Ibuprofen helps the body ache go away for four hours. I’m making smoothies with frozen fruit and my lactose free milk to soothe the sore throat.

What I want to know is what makes the inside of my nose itch so that I sneeze? I tried to roll up a corner of a Kleenex and stuff it in the left side to contain the clear drips that often fall on my pj top before I can get to it. But the itching drove me crazy.   What causes that itching?

Is it something that needs to get out of there and the itching is my body’s way of getting rid of it by sneezing it out??  If so, it’s not working, because the itch is there right after the sneeze.  It’s like the skin is irritated, but why is it irritated?

It’s like supreme black pepper. Hey! I wonder if I shook some black pepper on a napkin in front of me,  making my nose itch, if that would make it stop itching, like a double negative negates the action of the verb.  Hmmm…

I may be on the threshold of the cure for the common cold through grammar.  And you were right there with me!

All I know right now is that I have gone through a nearly full Kleenex box today.  And my left pointer finger is slippery with the Vaseline under-the-nose treatments suggested by my sister, so I am not responsible for any typos!

Heard something interesting on the radio yesterday.  Did you know that in Thailand on an isolated riverbank, there are trees filled with fireflies that blink on and off at the same time?  How do they know to do that? Which firefly do they follow?  Turns out that there is something that happens when a group gathers.  If I were on that riverbank, I would call it magic.

The individuals in the group come together and create something that individually they couldn’t  create.

Boy, talk about it takes a whole village to raise a child.

This program, called Radiolab,  on 91.1 from 2 to 3 on Saturday always challenges me to think.  Sometimes the depth to which they go makes my head spin.  Such was the case yesterday.

So when I tell you about parts of the program, these are the parts that I can remember,  that I understand.

Did you know that if you put a bowl of jellybeans in front of a lecture class and have all the students guess how many are in the bowl, that the average of all the answers will be nearly on the money?  The result of the group is greater that the individual’s.

How does this happen?

DANGER——-NO TRANSITION——–DANGER——-  NO TRANSITION———

All this fall the U of MN Marching Band has been dedicating their marching season to a much loved senior who was killed  by a distracted driver right before school started .  Some wore armbands, some wore  his initials on their epaulets.  They spelled out his initials on the field at the last Gopher home game.

Well, at the Indoor Marching Band Concert yesterday, they paid tribute to him again.  In the band he played meLlophone, but he was also a guitarist and would have played a solo at that concert.  So they had another guitarist play a beautiful piece from Children of Sanchez, by Chuck Mangione, accompanied by Ray  Vasquez, a  former doctoral student who had worked with the band.  It was beautiful.

And then they played ” Bring Him Home” from Les Miz.  It was heartbreaking. Kids that young shouldn’t have to experience the sadness of losing one of their own.

DANGER—–NO TRANSITION—–DANGER—– NO TRANSITION

So glad I’m not still teaching for one reason tonight: getting plans ready for a sub.  it’s like rubbing salt in the wound.

I do hear that the subs are as scarce now as they are normally at the end of the year.  This is not good.  One friend told me to reconsider my retirement from subdom.

Not gonna happen.

Love you!

Drippy-Sneezey Red Nose