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Thursday was a Savanna day, and I spent about five hours at the house in Shutesbury while Ellen took Savanna to her chemotherapy and Katie and Brendon went on an excursion to the MassMOCA Museum (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) in North Adams- something Brendon has been wanting to do for some time. I could have gone with them, but decided that with my knee so sore, walking and standing around in a museum would not be fun. So I was alone at the house, and I had brought with me more "stuff" to digitize. I ended up spending quite a bit of time writing a note to Ted Vogt, Winnie Vogt's son (I wanted to write in the guest book yesterday, but others were busy writing in it and I decided to go home). But I did eventually find the time to digitize some files.One was a folder of copies Rob had made for me of notes people sent him at the time of Betsey's death back in July, 2016. It was quite touching to read these notes again. And I discovered - or rather, had confirmed an earlier realization - that the notes I regard as most precious today are those that are quite specific in identifying something about Betsey that that person admired, and will miss not having in their lives in "real time." (This is a good insight to remember when writing a sympathy card - be specific!). So, for example, a friend of Betsey's from Columbia, MO, named Neil, wrote and said ".....For some reason we were talking about (games like Sodoku) and Betsey said something like, "well, those games are just logic". And at the time, I thought, "well, heck, Betsey, it is a lot more than merely solving a logic problem. You must not have spent much. time playing or thinking about these games." And I can't account for why I thought that. I knew Betsey was a mathematician and I would be wise to listen to what she said. I suppose I wanted the pastime to be a wee bit more sophisticated than cracking a logic puzzle. At any rate, for some reason, finally, I realized that Betsey was right (of course). These games are nothing more than logic puzzles, a bunch of "if/then" conjectures to be balanced against one another. So here's the second thing I wanted to tell you: I think of Betsey often; in fact, I think of her whenever I play one of these games. But I'm not going to. reveal how often that is." I couldn't help wondering, when I read this, if Betsey were alive today, would she be a big fan of Wordle and Quordle, and play them every day like Ellen and I do? They too are essentially logic puzzles. We might be trading scores every day, like Ellen does now with Max. And speaking of Max, who is in Boulder, I think if Betsey had gotten to know Max, she would have really enjoyed him. One of those many, many possibilities that were wiped out by her death.

A sample note about Betsey****************************************** The other file folder that I started on, and only got a start, was related to my doctoral dissertation - going back to 1964 or so at Brown University. I was sort of amazed by what it contained. I had first of all carefully made a chart of every Old Testament quotation in the Gospel of Luke, and noted the origin of the quotation and any parallels in the other Gospels. And then, for each quotation, I had made a page with the quotation written out in Greek from the Gospel, the original form of the quotation from the Septuagint (Greek) and the Hebrew Bible, and any other parallels. This was obviously foundational work that I could refer to again and again. organized in a way that was convenient and useful. But what an immense amount of careful, painstaking work! Saving this file may be sort of crazy, but I do have on the back burner the idea of revisiting, revising, re-evaluating my doctoral dissertation. I actually started working on that in earnest a few years ago, then put it aside. I started to make a new copy of the complete dissertation on the computer so that I could self-publish it as a hard-cover book. It was never published, and my only copy is a typed MS. It would be sort of gratifying to hold it in my hands as a book. But of course, even that thought is sort of crazy. Then I really got into going to major biblical libraries like Wheaton College in Illinois or Princeton Theological Seminary, and looking up every citation of my dissertation (and the articles I published based on it) that I could find. That was really fun, and I got a very good sense of the various issues that my dissertation raised and how scholarly discussion of those issues had developed over time. I was amazed at how many different scholars had read my work - close to a hundred ! - and some of them had discussed it at some length. So there was another project - writing a summary of all that! But then the pandemic brought all that to a screeching halt! All those libraries closed to the public, and remain closed to this day. I used to go pretty regularly to the Amherst College Library (the Robert Frost Library) because it is a short drive from Katie and Savanna's house. But it is still closed to anyone who is not a student or faculty member at Amherst. I don't know when, if ever, those academic libraries will re-open to the public! It is a huge loss to me. And it makes the idea of revisiting my dissertation unlikely - although I have to say that the work I have already done might be enough, if I got it all organized. So anyway, as crazy as it is, I'll take the time to save this folder. It represents a lot of work, and it would be useful to have it to refer to if I went back and took another look at my dissertation.