Well, I rather dropped the ball on blogging the rest of my road trip.
Quick summary: on Saturday, I went into Manhattan. Walked around a lot, it was beautiful day, not as humid as east coast summer days can be. I went up to the Guggenheim museum (Central Park East at 89th) where I'd never actually been before – I try to go to a museum I've never been before to every time I visit New York, and suspect I'll never run out, as there are so many, and I don't go there often enough. Then I took the subway out to Coney Island, but the crowds were intense and overwhelming – there was a Gay Pride event going on. The people-watching was riveting, however, as it can be during Gay Pride events.
Late Saturday I began my drive back to Minnesota, and by Sunday evening I was at Bob and Sarah's in Whitewater, Wisconsin, after some horrible smoggy traffic on the far southside of Chicago. I crashed on their couch and then finished my drive on Monday, and was back at home by 3pm. Bernie was glad to see me.
I've been rejected for the Public School teaching job at Gangwon province in Korea, but I always viewed the public teaching job with its more stringent requirements as a long shot. I will continue pursuing private teaching positions.
Meanwhile, I've been, as usual, gradually sorting out old things and trying to lower my "stuff" quotient – without touching the book collection of course. I made the bold move of realizing that I was never likely to own a cassette tape player ever again, and that my 150 or so cassette tapes were essentially obsolete. I went through and wrote down the name of any recording for which I don't already own a CD or have MP3, and then threw the entire lot away. Some of those cassettes have been in my possession for almost 30 years (e.g. Simon & Garfunkel or Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which I remember making from the LP using Arthur's stereo set-up in about 1977).
Fortunately books, with their amazing low-tech user-interface, won't ever be obsolete in quite the way those cassettes were.
More, and more philosophical (?), to come.