Ten-fingered typing again...

Although the (small, neat, but still awkward) cast doesn't make it easy.

When I got the present cast, on the 6th, the doctor said, "Keep those fingers moving," and I was delighted that typing was an approved activity. With knitting out of the question for a while, I can housekeep or read or use the computer - cheered by e-mail and Facebook.

(I've considered trying to learn to knit Continental style, but so far haven't made the attempt.)

The flute is also living in its case for a while, which is a shame, because so many of the good Sousa Band gigs are outdoors in the summer. I hope to be back to playing by mid-August.

Here in the Pacific NW we've had certifiably summer weather for weeks now. There was a brief interruption for thunder, lightning and rain last Sunday, followed by a couple of gray days, but now it's back to sunshine (with an occasional foggy morning.)

To no one's surprise, Chase Bank announced, soon after the 4th, that it will not fund the fireworks next year. That gives organizers a year to find a new sponsor - and as my pragmatic son pointed out today, during its 21-year history the fireworks show has had several underwriters.

Recommended reading: Anything by Dan Fesperman, especially his two books that cover the period of the Balkan wars (1990's) - Lie in the Dark and The Small Boat of Great Sorrows. Either one illuminates so much of what we heard on the Danube trip last year, as we floated through Croatia and Serbia. After a lecture by a Croatian woman in Vukovar, our Serbian tour guides made sure to tell us that "there IS another side to this story," and subsequent Serbian lecturers sketched out an interesting array of conspiracy theories.

Eastern Europe is full of people who live side by side while remaining deeply suspicious of each other. The first time I went to Transylvania, people in our (mostly) Hungarian partner village said they watched on TV as Croats and Bosnians were driven out of their homes and towns, sure that the same thing would happen to them when the Romanians got around to ethnic cleansing. What kept the lid on in Romania was the government's overwhelming desire to become a member of the EU (a goal achieved in 2007.)