Today is mundane task day, and I’ve already started. I did a wash and managed to pay bills without bursting into tears. As for the rest of the day, the furniture needs polishing, the bed needs changing, the floor is long past needing to be swept, and the larder needs filling. I suppose I could do a task a day, but I figure by doing everything on one day, only one day gets spoiled.

It’s sunnier and warmer than it’s been so I’ve opened the windows. My usual quiet neighborhood is filled with the sounds of sawing and hammering and the voices of my neighbor’s wife and their three year old son. My neighbor is adding to his deck, and his son is outside chatting with his father. I was out earlier wishing them all a good morning.

Kevin McCarthy died in a hospital in Hyannis on Saturday. He was 96. I most remember him as a doctor in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one of my all time favorite movies. When I was an English teacher, I taught a science fiction class, a course I had created, and during the semester I usually showed a couple of old movies. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, made in 1956, was one of them. The kids always chuckled at the reactions of the characters to the unfolding of the plot. All of the characters smoked. Any time there was a traumatic event, the characters raced to tame their terror with a glass of whiskey. Finding growing bodies in the backyard sent four of the main characters to the living room bar where they discussed what they’d seen, each of them with a glass of whiskey, neat, in hand. At the bar, they speculated, strategized and poured.

My students always me if that was how it really was in the old days.