Highs

1. Outdoor Game Day...bizarre team building games and softball/ultimate. Such a delight watching folks play together. And totally amazing watching groups do origami. With a blanket they happen to be standing on.

Highs

Books I'm taking with me on vacation:
1. The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
2. An Assembly Such as This (A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman), Pamela Aidan
3. Eggs, Jerry Spinelli
4. The Chosen, Chaim Potok

And, too bulky for vacation, but waiting when I return:
5. Inkheart, Cornelia Funke

A Bit of Hoovering

It was eight o’clock on a warm May morning. Mr. Brown was in the bathroom singing the Hallelujah Chorus. Mrs. Brown was in the kitchen mixing homemade muesli and chopping bananas for breakfast. Ten-year-old Betsy was brushing her hair while revising for a French test. Nine-year-old Brian was watching an item on TV about Cruft’s Dog Show. Baby Brown was upstairs in his cot.

The family gathered in the kitchen and sat down to breakfast. Mr. Brown mentioned a big financial deal he was handling at the bank; he was the Assistant Manager. Betsy spoke enthusiastically of her French test, in which she was expecting to do well. Brian apologized for the state of his room and said he would tidy it up after school. Mrs. Brown nodded amiably but otherwise said little. She was looking forward to a having the house to herself and getting on with a bit of hoovering.

Silence. Immobility. Shock.

‘Hang on a minute.’ Mrs. Brown lowered her spoon. ‘What’s all this? “Looking forward to a bit of hoovering”?’ A puzzled frown. ‘I hate hoovering.’

‘I hate muesli, come to that,’ said Mr. Brown, staring perplexedly into his bowl.

‘Me, too!’ cried Brian.

‘And I hate French!’ Betsy yelled.

Silence again as the Browns considered their unusual situation.

Mrs. Brown said, ‘Who writes this rubbish?’

-Allan Ahlberg, The Better Brown Stories, 2-3.

When the Ship Comes In

Oh the time will come up when the wind will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathing
Like a stillness in the wind 'fore the hurricane begins
The hour that the ship comes in
Oh the seas will split and the ship will hit
And the sand on the shoreline will be shaking
And the tide will sound and the waves will pound
And the morning will be breaking

Oh the fishes will laugh as they swim out of the path
And the seagulls, they'll be smiling
And the rocks on the sand will proudly stand
The hour that the ship comes in
And the words that are used for to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they're spoken
For the chains of the sea will have busted in the night
And be buried on the bottom of the ocean

Oh a song will lift as the mains'l shifts
And the boat drifts onto the shoreline
And the sun will respect every face on the deck
The hour that the ship comes in
And the sands will roll out a carpet of gold
For your weary toes to be a-touching
And the ship's wise men will remind you once again
That the whole wide world is watching

Oh the foes will rise with the sleep still in their eyes
And they'll jerk from their beds and think they're dreaming
But they'll pinch themselves and squeal and they'll know that it's for real
The hour that the ship comes in
And they'll raise their hands saying we'll meet all your demands
But we'll shout from the bow, your days are numbered
And like Pharaoh's tribe they'll be drowned in the tide
And like Goliath they'll be conquered

-Bob Dylan

Waiting

Right here's beauty like I have never known
And I'm carefully placed here, not some cast-away
But I'm weary and aching for my home
And I'm waiting for my day

-Jason Harrod, "Waiting For My Day"

Vocation

In nothing has Church so lost Her hold on reality as in Her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.

-Dorothy Sayers, Why Work?

Hidden Things

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well...”

-Antoine De Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, 75.

All the Way My Savior Leads Me

All the way my Savior leads me;
What have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt his tender mercy,
Who through life has been my guide?
Heavenly peace, divinest comfort,
Here by faith in him to dwell;
For I know, whate'er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well.

All the way my Savior leads me,
Cheers each winding path I tread,
Gives me grace for ev'ry trial,
Feeds me with the living bread.
Though my weary steps may falter,
And my soul athirst may be,
Gushing from the rock before me,
Lo, a spring of joy I see!

All the way my Savior leads me—
O the fullness of his love!
Perfect rest to me is promised
In my Father's house above:
When my spirit, clothed, immortal,
Wings its flight to realms of day,
This my song through endless ages:
Jesus led me all the way.

-Fanny Crosby

The Lanyard

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

-Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems

Highs

1. GPS
2. Peripatetic studying
3. Long John Silvers
4. Fairmont reunions
5. BHUP reunions
6. Perry Mason
7. Coming home!

Work

Most of the world's work is done by people who are not feeling very well.

-Winston Churchill (?)