On this day in 1956, 51 people died when the Italian liner Andrea Doria sank after colliding with the Swedish ship Stockholm off the New England coast....

I remember this Psych class I had where the professor lectured that a self-concept seperates us from dogs and other animals...what about dolphins? a girl asked... and somehow this led to the class arguing about the differences in people's self-concept. Most people have many compartments in their self concept..."I'm a doctor, and a husband, and a father, and a softball player."...and this defensive adaptation allows Dad to drop a pop-fly at the Tues. night game and still come home and have confidence in his ability to be a father. Like the bulkheads on a ship these air-tight divisions prevent catastophe...but they can also be traps the professor argued...we have a choice: diversify our concepts of who we are, partition ourselves to survive the markets up and downs, or embrace the roller coaster and let it all ride.

Here's an excerpt from "Someone" by Dennis O'Driscoll
...
someone is writing a check that will be marked "drawer deceased"
someone is circling posthumous dates on a calender
someone is listening to an irrelevant weather forecast
someone is making rash promises to firends
someone's coffin is being laminated, shined
who feels this morning quite as well as ever
someone if asked would find nothing remarkable in today's date
perfume and goodbyes her final will and testament
someone today is seeing the world for the last time
as innocently as he had seen it first.

perfume and goodbye's h