I've stopped looking for work.

That's the bad news.  The good news is that I'm volunteering, on a daily basis, at the Alzheimer Parkinson Association of Indian River County.  And I'm happy as a clam.  Finally, I've stopped obsessing about the huge injustice that was done to me, and to the Indian River Medical Center, when security was outsourced to an incompetent contractor for the purpose of stinting on money so that employees could lose their jobs, patients can be cheated of decent care, and all so that the hospital executives could continue to line their pockets.

Well, okay, it's obvious that I'm still obsessing a little bit.  But just a little bit.  Honest.  I've finally begun the process of letting go of the injustice, thanks to the immense pleasure and satisfaction that I'm getting at AlzPark.   Hmm.  I still can't publish a hyperlink.  Try going to http://www.alzpark.org/info.php for more info.  (AlzPark's home page is badly outdated.  Fixing it is one of the things I'll be able to help with.)

I'd rather help those folks for no pay, as I'm doing, than subject myself to the kind of employee abuse I can expect at most jobs.  What I used to have at the hospital was too good to be true.  A job I loved, and a job that loved me back.  Nothing that great can last forever, even though I thought it would.

OK, the announcement has been made.  My job search is over, and I've found a situation that I love.

I'm probably the slowest reader you ever met.  That's partly because I like to reread and savor interesting sentences.   And I never got into speed-reading anyway.

I say this to emphasize my recommendation that you read (and savor) Harper Lee's controversial newly released novel, "Go Set a Watchman."  I could not put the book down, and finished it in less than two days.  A normally fast reading time for me, for a book that size, is two weeks.  Or two months.  But don't think that it's a long book.  It's practically a novelette.  Like I said.  I'm probably the slowest reader you ever met.

WARNING:  It is complex.  Complexity is not a bad thing, though some people think it is.  Complexity just means:  hard to understand without great effort.  I remember there was this lady I was dating, who decided she wanted to terminate our relationship.  And her revelatory words were:  "You're very complex."  She meant it as an insult, and I was too naive to take it that way.  I AM complex.  Enough of that.

I hasten to point out:  everything I've read from commentators and reviewers is WRONG.  I think, because the novel is too complex for them to understand.  But I'm done talking about complexity.

My assumption is:  everyone knows about the classic first novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," which was made into a magnificent movie starring Gregory Peck as the 55-year-old small-town southern lawyer, Atticus Finch.  A larger-than-life lawyer hero, beloved by all.

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What may NOT be general knowledge is:

Harper Lee wrote "Go Set a Watchman" first.   It happened to be so full of interesting flashbacks that the publisher to whom it was submitted asked Ms. Lee to write the prequel that became "To Kill a Mockingbird."  Just last year "Watchman" was discovered, and now it's in print.  And the nutty reviewers are just as disillusioned as Atticus's daughter Scout, who is appalled that, 17 years later, the father she's always looked up to is an out-and-out racist.

Very well.  Prepare to be shocked.  The reviewers were shocked.  I was shocked.  And you will be, too.  Maybe you'll hate the book, but I sure didn't.  Just the opposite.

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I did find one decent review so far, written by Lawrence Hill at www.theglobeandmail.com

Here is how he explains the new publication's title:

The book takes its title from Isaiah 21:6: “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” In this line, the prophet Isaiah is predicting the fall of Babylon. Just as Babylon will fall in the Bible, perhaps Maycomb County – a place where black people live in poverty and are condemned to second-class citizenship and to jail for crimes they do not commit – will one day fall, too.