Thing

German thing, in a relief of a column of Marcus Aurelius (AD 193)

I'm off to Washington D.C. to attend an advisory council for Project Access, a consortium trying to improve the lives of children with epilepsy and their families.  All week, I've been reminding my friends and family that I'm going to That Thing, and I was suddenly reminded of a trilogy of books I read more than twenty years ago by Sigrid Undset, a female Norwegian Nobel Prize winner (1938). Kristin Lavransdatter was about life in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages, and I read the books avidly, one after the next.  I remember descriptions of The Thing -- a name that fascinated me and still does. The Thing was a governing assembly, made up of free people. You can read more about The Thing here. Interestingly, if you scroll down the wikipedia site, you'll see a modern Thing in Glarus, Switzerland -- the tiny canton where The Husband has his roots. When I called to him to come see, he exclaimed that he'd been there, right in the middle, there, voting. It appears that the Swiss have a much more direct version of democracy than we do in the United States.

It's their Thing, I guess. Our Thing is to throw as much money as possible at a candidate in the hope that more money will buy more influence. At least that's the kind of Thing going on today.

So, I'm going to That Thing for a couple of days. I hope to post, but I might very well be wrapped up in solving the epilepsy world's problems. And other things.

See you soon!