Bastille Day/Casey's Birthday

It's Bastille Day in Portland, and the Mudtown Stompers were performing outside the Honoré Boulangerie in full sun and 80F/27C heat. The man in blue is Mark Lindau, director and clarinetist. If you'd like to hear a bit of what the Mudtown Stompers sound like, there's a video here. I made a great many pictures of them, and there's a slideshow on Flickr here.

I am a bit foggy-headed today after the kind of interrupted sleep everyone gets in a hospital. Did I need further proof of how deeply broken the health care system in the USA is? The USA has the most expensive health care in the world, and the nurses are overworked and underpaid while the pharmaceutical companies are rolling in ill-gotten gains. Given that rest and good nutrition are the cornerstones of healing, how is it that in hospital, one gets no rest and the food is about as tasty as cardboard but less nourishing? I could go on ranting, but I'm too tired. And besides, it's Bastille Day, the sun is shining, and I've just been listening to a Dixieland Blues Band.

It's my grandson Casey's 24th birthday today, and I didn't get his card mailed. I have it, but it's right here. Not in the mail. (What's worse is that his little sister's card is still here since May.) Casey is the firstborn of my firstborn, the father of little Haven, born prematurely in November, but doing well by all reports. I am sad that I haven't been close enough to my Arizona grandchildren to know them as I know the one who lives here. But I do love them and wish them well. They may not know that, as I suck at being a long-distance grandmother and I've never even met my great-grandchild.

But happy birthday, Casey. And Happy Bastille Day, world. Shout-out to LoJ, whose blog combines French living, wildflowers, and jazz music.