I decided to take a break and clean up my office. So far 7 large garbage bags have been hauled out and the battle’s hardly over.

One bittersweet part of the process has been finding all of the articles my Dad sent me over the years. There are hundreds of them. Most just have an underlined sentence or a circled paragraph which explains why he sent it. Many have typically dry/wry jokes or comments scribbled in the margins. I think one of these days when the book is truly to bed and life is a bit more manageable I’m going to try to organize them and write something about them all — and what they say about him. I don’t think there’s a book there. But it could make a nice article.

Anyway, two examples at the top of the pile I like. One is from a picture from the April 26, 2003 Washington Post (he dated every clip) article about how the markets in Iraq are full of looted goods. There’s a yellow sticky-note attached with my Dad’s big block letter handwriting. It reads “A stupid way to carry eggs!” Underneath the note is a picture of an older Iraqi woman in Basra carrying five giant racks of fresh eggs on top of her head.

Another is a comic strip of four dogs playing poker. One dog with four aces has a steely-eyed poker face. But his tale is thumping wildly. The caption: “Why Dogs Make Lousy Poker Players.”