Spring

It is a great thing when two souls are united to support each other in their work, in their successes and misfortunes, until the last silent minutes of the last good-bey. (George Eliot in A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy, 11 March)

People do not change just because I want them to change. (Iyanla Vanzant, Until Today! 26 February)

Be calm, be true, be quiet. (Alan L. Roeck, Look To This Day, 30 March)

Spring is a happiness so beautiful, so unique, so unexpected, that I don't know what to do with my heart. (Emily Dickinson in One More Day by Sefra Kobrin Pitzele, 1 April)

• Yesterday I had an appointment for a medical test. When I arrived at the hospital they gave me a paging device and told me to sit down. Twenty-five minutes after my scheduled appointment the pager still hadn't sounded. Intuition kicked in. I returned to the reception area. One employee passed me off to another. That one made a copy of my referral paperwork and handed my sheet back to me. In typical Washington, DC and Maryland fashion she mumbled something about what happened. I'm too old to put up with that anymore. I spoke again clearly stating what I wanted to know. Finally the person attending me admitted that she had written down the wrong pager number on the scheduling sheet. If I hadn't gotten up to make my inquiry I'd probably still be sitting in the waiting area reading my book. So much for using technology to improve what already worked well enough, calling out a person's name.

Mr. Dickie