Dear Mr. Blue

Mr. Blue is not filing today, due to a medical adventure that came up suddenly last week. He paid a visit to a cardiologist and learned more about the heart than he was hoping to know and the upshot is a heart operation to repair a leaky mitral valve problem. Forty years ago, a man would've been sent home to endure the problem for the few years until nature mercifully killed him off -- the breathlessness and fatigue and pounding heart and the alarming feeling in the middle of the night that one is about to suffocate. Now, thanks to generations of enterprising research and the bravery of cutting-edge patients, the open-heart operation is performed with great confidence of success. I will return when I return. Have a lovely August.