Mark Lyons

Walking in the woods this morning, I run into Mark Lyon's dog Cosmo and a few minutes later I see Mark coming up the hill that Lola and I are descending. Mark is a very sweet, compassionate guy who did me a favor last fall. When the doctors were telling me that I might lose my voice, I asked Mark if he could help me make a recording.
There were some poems that I'd written for my daughter and I hoped that she would let me read one of them at her wedding. Since it seemed like the chances of my being at this event, much less having voice to read were getting pretty slim, I thought it would be nice to record them while I still could and give her a copy. I knew that Mark used voice recording in his teaching, so I asked and he agreed and as silly as it sounds, the whole thing meant a lot to me.

So I'm always glad to see Mark and Cosmo and today we stopped and talked about his travels and mine and when he asked about my health, I told him what I told you yesterday: potential bad moon arisin', ecc. Then I added that otherwise I felt pretty good and no matter what, there was an excellent chance that I would live to see the World Series. (For those of you from out of town,  I should tell you that the Phillies are having a great year anchored by rock-solid pitching and are very likely to be in the fall classic.)
"What?" he said. "How the hell did you get tickets? I'm so fucking jealous! You got Series tickets! I hate you!"
"Um, no Mark. I'm just glad that there's a good chance that this thing won't kill me before November."
"Oh."