Carried From the Field

An epitaph from Boston, Mass., of a man who fought on the British side in the American Revolutionary War.

Major John Pitcairn
Fatally wounded
While rallying the Royal Marines
At the Battle of Bunker Hill
Was carried from the field to the boats
On the back of his son
Who kissed him and returned to duty.
He died June 17, 1775, and his body
Was interred beneath this church.

My good friend Tanya Dee Smith and I are leaving early Friday morning for Chicago and three days at the American Needlepoint Guild’s Seminar there.  ANG is paying me mileage, my room, and a generous speaker’s fee.  We are going to a private tour of the Institute of Art in Chicago (they have a world-class collection of Impressionist paintings), will attend a class, a reception, a book signing, and a banquet.  I am really excited about this, and hope my talk is well received.  The event continues all week, but we’re coming home on Monday.  I’m taking the magnificent handkerchief that is a feature of the forthcoming Darned If You Do, a copy of the cover, and some needlework-in-progress.  Oh, and four hats!

I am going to have to change my room reservation in Leicester, England, because the bus tour starts on the 28th of March and I don’t want to find us sleeping in Hyde Park waiting for it.  And I’m still trying to find a way to get the three of us from London’s Heathrow Airport to Leicester and back to London that doesn’t cost almost two hundred dollars each!
   
I’m losing my sense of smell!  I don’t know if it’s an aftereffect of the many, many menthol-flavored cough drops I consumed when I caught a cold that left me with a cough for weeks.  I couldn’t taste anything while I was sucking the drops, and now, even after two months off the stuff, I can barely taste or smell anything.  It’s annoying, and though my sense of taste does seem to be coming back, there are times when I seem to be eating styrofoam imitations of food.