It's Friday!

It's Friday!  It's almost Rosh Hashana!  I have 5 days off!

So...gametime!  I know this has been around forever but I have never been too quick on the uptake.

Seven things I want to do before I die…

1.   Through-hike the Appalachian Trail.

2.   Hike the Mountains-to Sea Trail.

3.   Spend a month in the Cinque Terre.

4.   Hang out with my grandchildren.

5.   See each of my children living a productive and generous life.

6.   Find and pursue work that I truly and deeply love.

7.   Live by the water.  Any water.

Seven things I can do…

1.  Get someone through a divorce from beginning to end.

2.  Research almost anything.

3.  Teach almost any group of people something.

4.  Organize a trip.

5.  Identify a modest number of birds.

6.  Canoe.

7.  Find something of interest in almost anyone.

Seven things I can’t do…

1.  Cook.

2.  Organize my house.

3.  Pay my bills on time.

4.  Teach economics.

5.  Worship in a space divided by gender.

6.  Stick to a budget.

7.  Forgoe chocolate.

Seven things I say with annoying frequency…

1.  Oh s___.

2.   F--- that.

3.  Why?

4.  That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

5.   Does anyone have a pen?

6.  Sure, why not?

7.  I'm freezing.

Seven things that attract me to the opposite sex...

1.  Intelligence.

2.  Sense of humor.

3.  Energy.

4.  Interest in lots of things.

5.  Relaxed around other people.

6. Ability to fix things related to motors.

7.  Kindness.

Seven celebrities I have a crush on.

People don't really have crushes on celebrities, right?  Not after age 14?

Sweet Home Chicago

This week's Scalzi Photo Shoot:  What's my favorite thing about Chicago?

Only one possible answer:  my University of Chicago third-year son.  Looks like he's fully recovered from having had his wisdom teeth extracted, huh?  He's so glad to be back, in his single with his view of Lake Michigan, with good friends down the street, with a new job as an intramural sports supervisor, and with an actual declared major.  Life is good at 21.

A Political Interlude

So Tom DeLay was indicted.

I find that I just don't care. 

I'm not sure that I could name a prominent political figure affiliated with the Republican Party whom I consider to be comptetent, ethical, insightful, imaginative, or the slightest bit concerned with the issues that matter to me.

I am just waiting for this Administration to be over.  Three years and three months to go.

Old Friends, Good Friends

Two of us, Margarita-happily quite willing simply to divide the bill by 13 and be done with it,  are down toward one end of the long table, heads bent together, cackling as we do our old lady imitation of restaurant customers who want to divide a bill evenly.

"Look, dearie, I didn't have a Margarita."

"But you had coffee!  Two cups!"

"Well, yes, yes, I did.  But you had chocolate cake!  I think that's a good 75 cents more!"

Meanwhile, down at the other end, other friends are actually doing the division.  It appears that they miss entirely the humor of our little skit. They look up and announce that, for those who actually ate a meal, the tab is $33.44.

Back at our end, three women roll their eyes and toss twenties toward the empty dishes.

It's a Mexican restaurant good-bye dinner for one of us, one of my oldest friends, whom I met on the first day of law school 29 years ago.  Neither of us practices law anymore.  Our same age children are grown and gone.  She has just gone through a seriously difficult series of life changes and is off to a new life on the west coast.

The rest of us will still be here, silently wondering:  Would I leave?  Would I leave my friends?  For a job?  For a man?  For a change of scenery?  Who knows?  Most of us are finding that the fifties are a decade of unexpected youthfulness, energy, and willingness to take risks and make changes.

In the meantime, we just love each other.  We have been together for close to two decades and we know how lucky we are.  We have seen each other through unexpected successes and unimagined traumas of raising children.  Divorces.  New jobs.  Job losses.  Deaths of, at last count, I think, 11 parents.  The oldest children have children of their own.  The youngest has made it to high school.  We have children on  both coasts, and one in Africa at the moment. 

I'm guessing that some of us will live to be very old ladies, and we will probably move in together.  Separate bedrooms and a communal kitchen.  And, as we discovered tonight, we are going to have to explore this financial thing a little more carefully.  Some of us throw twenties into the pot because life is too short to spend doing long division, and some of us do the division because life is too long to throw money away.

That's all right.  We have each other and, if we are lucky, we will live long enough to find even more to bicker over.

Empty Nest: First Full Day

I wake up at 6:00, a bit too early since I didn't fall asleep until well after 1:00.  I try to go back to sleep: Lamaze breathing, prayer, rambling thoughts.  Nothing works, and I get up at 7:00.  I pull on a Reed College t-shirt, souvenir of God knows how many college trips, and the crumpled jeans I wore in the car all day yesterday, and proceed to waste 20 minutes on the computer before heading out for a walk.  

Walk the 3 miles to Lower Lake.  Hot and muggy; should have foresworn the jeans for soccer shorts.  A few mallards scattered across the lake, a catbird calling in brush that looks suspiciously like a kudzu cousin, cowbirds overhead.  I am in the mood for a Cooper's and I get cowbirds.  Okey dokey.  I use the walking time to think about and pray for my three children, now scattered across the country.  There is a lot to pray for, believe me.   I'm delayed slipping back into the house by a conversation with my neighbor, just back from 12 miles on her bike. Her three children are about 10-15 years ahead of mind -- her oldest used to babysit for my youngest -- and we discuss the joys and frustrations of parenting young adults, whose successes and missteps are so entirely beyond our control.  

Take a bath.  Find khakis and Hawaiian print shirt that will get me through church, work at home this afternoon, and another meeting at church.  Save time since it's too humid to bother with my hair.  

Only a few minutes late to adult ed class, which is a spectacular presentation by our associate pastor's husband , who happens to be a professor of religious studies, on women in the early Jesus movement.  He notes that we have to look for "erasure marks" in the Bible to learn about women in the early, almost pre-church church.  The hints are few and far between and sometimes eradicated, as was the case with the active disciple Junia, whose name was actually changed in the Biblical text to the masculine form of Junius during the European Middle Ages.  Our lecturer runs through the references to the activities of women in the Gospels, in Acts, and in those books attributed to Paul which are believed to have actually been written by Paul.  It's in those early books that Paul refers with gratitude and appreciation to women such as Lydia, clearly a minister in the early church, and reminds us that "in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor free nor slave, nor male nor female, for you are all one."  It's only in the later books, when whoever is writing under Paul's name becomes concerned with establishing the church as an institution along the lines of the Roman Empire ~ which is to say along hierarchical and patriarchal lines ~ that a harsh and rigid attitude toward women becomes apparent, an attitude completely at odds with the one evinced by Jesus and the historical Paul.  

Great music in church  today. Next week it will all be African in celebration of World Communion Sunday.  

Spend the afternoon finishing up a paper for my class, doing laundry, and bringing our bank accounts up to date.  That doesn't mean they have money in them, of course.  

A couple of hours back at church working on Katrina relief -- we are close to being assigned two families to assist, so tonight we got ourselves organized to do that.  I wasn't looking for another family in my life right now, my house having just emptied itself of children, but the only way even to begin to repay all the folks who helped my Tulane freshman daughter is to pass it on, which I'm happy to do.  

Home and the day is over.  My husband has dinner in the oven and West Wing (good tv) and Desperate Housewives (trash tv) are calling.   I can't stand reality tv, or talk shows, or tv comedy, but otherwise I am completely indiscriminate in my viewing. 

Those 50 essays I was supposed to grade this week-end?  Well, think Scarlet O'Hara.          

The Empty Nest: Three on the Wing

nonstop day and night puking through pregnancy  

a c-section  

a vbac  

nursing  

camping in a lean-to in the Adirondacks  

hiking along the Yellowstone River  

full moons over the Palazzo Vecchio, the River Seine, the Tetons, Algonquin Park, the Atlantic

endless and absorbing information about lizards, constellations, bats, sharks, cats, turtles  

construction projects such as "The Machine for Communicating with the Stars"  

14 years of Montessori schools  

Halloween lizard and turtle costumes  

the School for Cats  

lemonade and muffin stands  

bass guitar, flute, piano  

bunk bed theatre  

soccer games and practices and skills and games and practices and skills  

starring roles in musicals  

total rejections by casting directors  

a French family  

serious illness  

serious trouble  

honors grades  

failing grades  

summer camp in North Carolina   

8 jobs  

4 colleges  

2 hurricanes

Travelogue

Here's the deal:  when someone RETURNS to your hotel because they had such a wonderful experience the first time they were there, the checkout conversation should NOT go like this:

GUEST:  I'm thinking a discount is in order here.  The bathroom door does not close, the stopper in the tub doesn't work, we couldn't figure out how to turn on the shower, and there was no hot water for any of us.  It was more like camping than a $140 motel room.

CLERK (Cheerily): That's what we tell people about the boathouses -- just like camping!

GUEST (Repeating):  There was NO HOT WATER.

MANAGER:  There's a sign in the bathroom that tells you how to turn on the shower.

GUEST:  Actually, there isn't.

MANAGER:  And the hot water is in the middle.  If you couldn't figure out the shower or tub, you should have called us to help you.

GUEST (Smoldering, and just thinking, not out loud):  It was 7:30 a.m. and I didn't have any clothes on.  (Out loud):  It really was just not an acceptable accomodation.

MANAGER:  You know, people have complained about the hot water before.  But when we've gone down to check afterward, there's always hot water.

GUEST (Thinking): Yeah, half an hour after they've left.  Maybe.  What do you think it means if people "have complained before?" (Out loud):  Silence.

CLERK: Do you want to keep it on your Mastercard?

GUEST:  Will there be a discount?

MANAGER (Snarling from back office): Just give her 10%.

Note that Guest did not mention that the previous night she had called from about an hour away to ask whether dinner reservations would be necessary for the hotel's excellent Italian restuarant on a Friday night, had been assured that her family would be able to walk right in, and had then waited half an hour for a table and half an hour for service.

It is possible under these circumstances to ensure that Guest will still pursue her plan of bringing her group of women friends to fill the hotel, its bar and dining rooms for a week-end, thereby adding muchos dolares to the hotel's coffers. The appropriate response to a dissatisfied returning guest is "I am SO sorry.  What a disappointment.  Why don't we just call this one gratis?"

Oops.  Well, there are only a million other hotels around Lake Michigan.  Guess we'll be checking out of a different one next time.

All The Books I Am Not Reading

My friend Kathryn left a bit of a challenge a few entries back when she commented on the tower of books on her bedside table.

I don't have a bedside table.  I have a narrow five-shelf bookcase.  And I have the floor that runs alongside the bed next to the wall and window.  I couldn't begin to count the book-and-magazine content of those two spaces.  Let's just say that I'm surprised I haven't sprained an ankle yet by sliding across the floor clutter when I get out of bed.

The top shelf of the bookcase:

Dan Charon's You remind me of me.  Crisp and shiny.  I haven't opened it -- looks like something that caught my eye at the bookstore one day.

Edward Rutherford's The Princes of Ireland.  One of those centuries-long sagas you can't be without.

Piers Paul Read's The Templars.  After The DaVinci Code, who isn't curious?

Jack Kornfield's A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life.  His guides to Buddhism are always accessible.

Pema Chodron's Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living.  Pema Chodron saw me through the most agonzing period of my life.  It's been four years, but I really can't read her again, not yet.  I just look at the name (on any of a number of books lying around here) and I am immediately transported back to a place that feels like suffocating ice and terror.  But I keep her around, knowing that there's a  lot to be gleaned during periods that are not so infused with trauma.  I just can't do it yet.

Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason's The Rule of Four.  A DaVinci Code rip-off.  Not so entertaining.

Mary Oliver's House of Light and Blue Iris.  Now these, these I can pick up anytime.  Herons who live and herons who die. 

And why I am not reading?  Or walking?

Well, as of this week-end, we will have delivered three children to four colleges.  Burgeoning charge cards, health insurance forms, debit cards, trips to Linens 'N Things and Target, basement searches for wayward sheets and blankets, runs for first aid and cosmetic supplies, discussions of courses and activities and jobs -- and that little up-ender, Katrina.

I have teaching, and my own graduate class (for which I should be working on a paper at this very moment), and the Adult Ed and Spiritual Formation committee and the Session at church, and working on hurricane relief, and the bills, and the house -- the house?  Oh yeah, heaps of clutter practically get up and follow me wherever I go.  I guess that's the house.  I've been to a reunion and I've been -- uh -- exploring certain other options for my life.

So I will leave (literally, too, since tomorrow it's off to Chicago) with a Mary Oliver reminder of what I really should be paying attention to:

THE LOON ON OAK-HEAD POND

cries for three days, in the gray mist,

cries for the north it hopes it can find.  

plunges, and comes up with a slapping pickerel.

blinks its red eye.  

cries again.  

you come every afternoon, and wait to hear it.

you sit a long time, quiet, under the thick pines,

in the silence that follows.  

as though it were your own twilight.

as though it were your own vanishing song.

Faith: A Repeat

I'm so busy right now that I'm barely thinking, let alone writing.  So I thought I'd lift an old entry from my private journal.  I've been thinking about this a bit anyway, since I was home for a school reunion last week-end, and maybe I'll explore it a bit later.  For the time being, a reprise:

************************************

I spent the first seven years of my life in idyllic circumstances.  The oldest daughter of very young parents, the first grandchild on both sides, and the first girl for my paternal grandmother who had three sons, I was adored and doted on by almost every adult with whom I came in contact.  

We lived in rural southwest Ohio, on several acres at the top of a hill behind my grandparents' own acreage.  I was too young when we moved from an apartment in town out  to the country, first to my grandparents' home and then to our newly built little ranch house carved into the side of a hill, to understand the ominous motivations behind the abrupt transistion.  It was the early 50s and polio was abroad; parents thought that they could spare their children by moving from densely populated areas.  

By the time October rolled around "when I was six," I was an older sister, to a three-year-old and a newborn baby brother.  I absorbed the natural world as easily as I downed my morning orange juice and scrambled eggs:  our house was surrounded by scarlet and gold trees in the fall, by soft snow and excellent sledding hills in the winter, and by carpets of flowers planted by my mother and grandmother in the spring and summer. I spent a lot of my time with my grandmother next door.  She had a porch table full of jars of monarch caterpillars and chrysalises in various stages of development, a house full of books and games and art supplies, and unending patience for her oldest grandchild.  

We spent the springs of my kindergarten and first grade years living near the beach inFlorida.  My father was trying to get a home construction business going, and one of the last houses he completed was ours.  We moved put of our small rental house, set back among trees festooned with Spanish moss, to the spacious second floor of a triplex, sometime in the late spring of my first grade year.  I acquired my very first room of my own, and my mother and I made big plans for how I would decorate it with shells and other ocean paraphernalia the following year.  Photographs show a largely unfurnished apartment, an up-to-the minute 1960s kitchen with pink appliances, a handsome young husband and attractive blond wife, and three 1960 children: a little girl in dresses, short socks and Mary Janes; a little boy in shorts; and a fat and happy baby.  

I can't say that we had any kind of spiritual life in those days.  We attended the  Methodist church in town, where my mother had sung in the choir as a young woman.  As far as I know, she was the only member of the family who held an official church membership.  I can remember standing on the pew  next to her as she sang in the congregation, and straining to see around her slim body when my soon-to-be aunt came down the aisle in a hoop-skirted white wedding dress.  

My father claimed no religious belief; he simply accompanied my mother.  I don't think that any of my grandparents actually belonged to the church, although they were active participants in its major events and fundraising efforts.  Many years later I discovered the names of most of the adults in my family -- parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles -- on the programs for a church anniversary celebration and the dedication of a new classroom wing.  They had all been fundraising and building committee and decorating committee participants, but I believe that they saw themselves as fulfilling a civic duty rather than acting upon religious convictions.  Certainly no one in my family talked or taught about a life of faith, and while our Christmas and Easter celebrations were extravagant, they were decidedly secular in nature.  If I did go to Sunday School, or to summer Vacation Bible School, it wasn't with any resistance.  But it wasn'twith any sense of their import, either. The red brick church on the corner was simply one of several familiar spaces in my rural and small-town childhood, known to me in much the same way that my father's office and the town drugstore and grocery were.  

 (My childhood church)

I have a number of friends who grew up in the Methodist Church, attending Sunday School every week, belonging to youth groups, singingin children's and youth choirs.  My husband, actually, is one of those people.  One of my best friends has a whole string of pins for her thirteen years of perfect Sunday School attendance.  In the Presbyterian Church that I attend now, enormous attention is lavished on  the  children's and youth programming, and the response on the part of both kids and parents is entirely positive.  Who knows how things might have turned out for me in the church if my life had stayed on its ordinary and happy little track? 

Travel: Across from Northport Pier (PEI)

An afternoon on an island ~ mother and daughter ~ seven miles of sand and an abandoned lighthouse ~ does it get any better than that?

Travel: Harbors and History

Who can resist a harbortown?  Not me, that's for sure, even though the last time I went sailing, as I recall, involved a capsized boat in the middle of an icy Torch Lake in northern Michigan.  Oh, no ~ there was one sunny day on my brother's cat on Lake Chautauqua ~ but even that was 20 years ago.  Nevertheless, there's nothing like a city with a harbor and boats, boats, boats.

Charlottetown, the capital of Prince Edward Edward. is just about perfect in my book.  After our rainy morning in Halifax, my daughter and I took the ferry to PEI and headed for Charottetown, via fields of multiple colors stretched under the wings of marsh hawks
 

 

                                                                                                           (http://www.bcadventure.com/adventure/wilderness/birds/harrier.htm)

 

 

 

and with a  detour to Point Prim, home to the oldest lighthouse on PEI and the only one made of brick in all of Canada. 

Charlottetown itself is a relaxed and funky 19th century city,  with shops ands restaurants dotting the harborfront.  It's a bit quiet, though.  After dinner and a little relaxation time back at the motel, I urged my lovely daughter back outside for a walk down to the docks a few blocks away.  "There will be music!"  I said.  "Lots of people!  It'll be so fun!"

NOT A SOUL.  9:00 p.m. on a summer Saturday night.

Okay, so that might explain why the young cashier in the drugstore the next morning said she couldn't wait to move to Toronto.  And when the nightlife doesn't meet even my meagre expectations, you know things are really slow.

We spent part of Sunday on one of the historical tours narrated from Founders' Hall by charming college students in costume.   PEI bills itself as the Home of the Confederation and, in fact, the first conference on the topic of Canadian unity took place there, with important delegates arriving from across Canada and partying merrilying into the wee hours of the mornings in the autumn of 1864.    But the Islanders themselves weren't much interested in the idea until an economic crisis several years later left them with little choice.

We saw their early homes and cathedral, learned about the constant threat of fire, and heard about PEI's early successes in shipbuilding and agriculture.  I would love to return just for the tour that tells the story of the Acadians and their plight at the hands of the British.  For us that Sunday afternoon, however, the road north to Green Gables was calling.

 

Reading: On the Coffee Table

Giant Picture Books:

Earth From Above 

  Great Cathedrals

Magazines:

Cottage Living

Saltscapes ~ Canada's East Coast Magazine

Oprah's At Home

National Geographic Traveler (May/June)

Case Western Reserve University Magazine

National Geographic Traveler (July/August)

Northfield (School) Spirit

Highlands Nature Sanctuary: Dreaming the Arc of Appalachia

Books & Culture: A Christian Review

Prince Edward Island Visitors' Guide

Sunset: Prince Edward Island National Park

 

 

Faith: Over the Dunes to Somewhere New

"From Manresa [in Spain] came a man [Ignatius] who had freely bound himself in joyful service to a king called Christ.  He had been so open to the inpouring of the Holy Spirit that he was able to interpret his own experience in a way that has universal validity and significance.  The fruit of this experience and the wisdom that it engendered is recorded in an unassuming little book called the Spiritual Exercises.  [Ignatius's] notebook was to become a guide, based entirely on his own experience, on how to become increasingly sensitive to God's action in our lives, on how to discover and live true to the very deepest desires within us, how to make decisions that reflect God's indwelling presence in the innermost freedom of our hearts, and how to join our lives consciously with the life of Jesus, God-made-man, through the living spirit of the gospel."

~ Margaret Silf, Inner Compass (1999)

I am SO excited.  I have found a priest willing to guide me through the Ignatian Exercises (the endless version, the one for people who can't just take a month off for the 30-day version) ~ a Jesuit for whom I have such tremendous admiration that it never occurred to me that he would just say, "Sure."  I am SO excited.  Did I already say that?  We start in a few weeks. 

Cavendish Dunes *****  PEI

Family: Goddess of Light

Apollo, otherwise known as Psycho Kitty, came to us with her three siblings and mom as a foster family from the animal shelter when my daughter was a sixth grade volunteer there.  The idea was to enjoy the antics of four kittens without adding another Permanent Cat to the household.  Like all carefully laid plans, that one had its shortcomings and, seven years later, Apollo, the god(dess, in this case) of light and poetry, is still here.

You would never know that this has been her home for most of her earthly existence.  She leaps into the air and races from the room at the slightest provocation.  If strangers are in the house, they just might see a tail curling around a doorway -- probably not, though.  Apollo is here but she isn't.  We're not sure which life she is on.

The Timeline See Previous Entry)

I can't seem to transfer my beautiful chart onto my journal, but here's the basic content:

800-500 BCE   Classical Hinduism: Upanishads

560-480 BCE   Life of Siddhartha

400 BCE-200 CE  Medieval Hinduism: Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita

300s-200s BCE   Buddhism becomes official state religion of India (King Asoka)

6/4 BCE-30 CE   Life of Jesus

27-30 CE   Public MInistry of Jesus and 12 Disciples

34 CE   Conversion of Saul of Tarsus (The Apostle Paul)

46-57 CE   Missionary trips and writings of Paul

49 CE   Council of Jerusalem:  James' determination that Christians do not have to be circumcised or follow Jewish dietary laws

55-100 CE   Christian Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John) written

100s CE   Development of Mahayana Buddhism

295 CE   Roman Empire divides into Eastern and Western portions

312 CE   Constantine converts to Christianity

325 CE   Council of Nicea:  First Codification of Christian Doctrine

337 CE   Christianity becomes offocial state religion of Rome

500s CE   Buddhism enters Japan

1054 CE   Eastern and Western churches separate; their heads excommunicate each other

1000s CE  Beginning of Crusades

1200s CE  Indian encounters with Islam

 

Education: One of My Favorite Parts

I love studying, discussing, and teaching world religions.  As a ninth grade world history teacher, I get to do it every year. And in a private religious school, I teach students who love to learn about and discuss religions, others as well as their own. 

This fall I'm trying something new and starting with Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.  (I don't cover Judaism, since the students take four Judaic courses with real experts.) I've given up on teaching the ancient and classical worlds, since they add too much to a one-year curriculum and the students have studied them in middle school.  (We might go back and do some fun projects on that timespan in the late spring.) 

The next huge unit in world history commences with the beginnings of Islam in the 600s.  So that the students can understand Islam in context, I started with the other major religions last week, and for the next couple of days we will address the basics of Christianity.

I'm not sure if it will work, but I'm going to try to add the timeline -- early Christian history with a few Hindu and Buddhist dates for reference -- we'll use as today's focus .  And maybe tomorrow's, and the next day's.  As Orthodox Jews, my students are fascinated by a religion that makes claims so distinct from their own, and it always takes us awhile to wade though the material.

(Nope, it didn't work.  Too many characters.  I'll try another entry.)

It's an endlessly intriguing topic of study.  And out church adult education program is working its way through church history this year, so I might actually get my fill of it.

Travel: High on Halifax

Halifax, Nova Scotia stretches up a hillside overlooking a spacious harbor and capped by the Citadel, the highest point in the city and home to a 19th century fortress.   The city is small enough to be easy navigable on foot, but large enough to host a plethora of restaurants and retail establishments, ranging from international news storefronts to the most elegant of dress shops.

My daughter and I began and ended our August Prince Edward Island trip in Halifax.  The first layover was a disappointment -- we had dinner in a harborfront restaurant where we were encouraged to "get with" the relaxed atmosphere of the Maritimes, which meant that we had a two-hour wait for service after a long day of travel, and then had only the next rainy morning left to see the city.  I hiked up to the Citadel, only to learn that it doesn't open until 10:00, so we decided to go ahead and make the trip across the province to catch the ferry to the Island.   We had better luck on the way home.  We had a great dinner in a  little Italian restaurant and disovered the various passageways that make trekking up and down the steep city somewhat easier as we finished our shopping for family and friends.  We visited the Citadel, checked out its detailed and beautifully presented historical exhibit, and watched the Regimental Association perform. 

Halifax  has always been a significant port for its inhabitants; it was THE port of embarkation and arrival for Canadian troops during World War II.  It was also the site of a devastating World War I explosion when two ships collided in 1917, levelling much of the city, killing over 2,000 people, and injuring 9,000 more.  (New Orleans, take note:  Halifax today is charged with vibrant energy.)  Halifax history is fascinating, especially for us Americans who tend to be oblivious to the stories of our neighbor to the north, and Halifax streets are  definitely hopping at night.

It's a great city -- it's easy to imagine building a life there.  

Hope Springs Eternal . . . or, Crop Circles

Yes, I've been playing around with my journal -- layout, colors, and now content.   I'm going to try something new for the month of September.  I feel so disorganzied, so all-over-the place -- and, by the way, the most recent clarification of my identity (see below, courtesy of Cynthia) indicates that I am right on track here.  Note the flamboyant material success that would surely be mine for the taking were I but more practical and organized.  

Herewith, a Writing Schedule.   

Sundays:              Travel

Mondays:             Education

Tuesdays:            Family

Wednesdays:      Faith

Thursdays:          Reading

Fridays:                Outdoors

Saturdays:          Memories and Dreams  

One never knows -- I might actually stick to it.  After all, it has been revealed to me that my deepest and truest identity is nothing less than:  

Shining Fame!

Energetic and courageous, you stand up for your beliefs and for what you desire. You are independent, strong-willed, and fiercely competitive when needed, although your ambition is tempered with patience. You maintain a positive attitude and, with a more organised or practical approach to life, material success is very likely. Your immensely loving and generous nature brings joy into peoples lives and ensures your happiness. 

In the meantime, while we were all waiting for this paragon of organization and practicality to emerge, aliens were here, right here in northern California:

 

 

 

 

Crescent Moon

Time for a breather  ~

Going to catch up on other journals over the next few days ~

Daughter settling happily into college life in Oregon ~

Older son still recovering from Monday morning departure of his wisdom teeth ~

Younger son down to Ohio State for a week-end of football-related partying (just what I like to think of him  doing ~ NOT) ~

Seem to have sort of accidentally become our church's hurricane relief effort contact person ~ OOPS (but the least I could do after all the kindnesses shown our daughter) ~

Trying to catch up on grading papers after having lost the Labor Day week-end to a trip west ~

Well. . . not entirely LOST:

Silver Falls State Park, Oregon

We're OK, But. . .

It's starting to sink in.  With a tragedy the magnitude of Katrina, it's hard -- and wrong -- to think of losses of less than life, health, and livelihood as catastrophes.  But losses are losses and, no matter how resolutely you push it away, grief does accompany them. 

It's really just sinking in -- the year of questions, research, visits, interviews, essay writing, forms, tests, recommendations, apprehension, disappointment, relief, excitement, anticipation, planning, scheduling, choosing, shopping -- all that goes into a college choice, into what is, in our culture, a hugely significant rite of passage  -- all upended in a matter of hours by a force completely beyond human control.  While her high school friends are hanging out in the dorms and studying in the libraries and walking across the campuses they chose last spring, my daughter is accomodating herself to the demands of a completely unexpected turn of events.  And even she if she is able to return to her college of choice in the spring, it won't be the same college and it definitely won't be the same city that she first visited more than six months ago.

She has actually weathered worse, and I have every confidence that her natural resiliency and formidable strength of character will enable her to pull through triumphantly, but still.  Tough, tough times.

Hope in the Desert ~ Sacramento Valley From The Air

Grand Canyon Sunset 09/06/05

I'll have more to say later, but I wanted to share this image as a reminder of some of the magnificence to be found on the North American continent.  During this time of terrible loss and devastation, we need to focus on our treasures as well as the work ahead.

I've never visited the Grand Canyon and I don't think I've ever flown over it before, either.  But yesterday, en route from delivering my daughter to her second try at college in less than a week, I finally landed a spot in a Southwest Airlines "A" line, which enabled me to choose a perfect seat for photographing my journey from Portland to Sacramento, and then from Sacramento to Colorado before the clouds created an inpenetrable blanket over the Rockies. I've had to work on the photograph a bit to eliminate the effect of airplane window fog and glare, but what you see now is pretty much what I saw last night.

Multiple gifts yesterday: my daughter is happily settled and I've seen vistas I never expected to encounter. 

Welcome to College -- and Get Outta Town!

We've finally come to understand that the reason the Tulane President held out hope of salvaging a college semester for so long was that he was hunkered down in an athletic center until Thursday.  The campus remained unflooded and in pretty good shape so, without television or internet, he was unaware of the story of devastation unfolding in his city.  I had heard a report that the people "sheltered" in the Superdome were desperate for news -- 1000 miles away, we knew far more than they did about their homes and streets.

My daughter is off to college for the second time tomorrow -- to Willamette in Salem, Oregon.  We visited it last year on our trip to the Pacific Northwest and both loved it.  While she's terribly disappointed and somewhat stunned by this turn of events, she's most likely going to have a great semester in a magnificent part of the country.  She and her new roommate have communicated and it sounds like they're a good match, and the school has cut through all the red tape in record time to welcome her and settle her in classes which have been ongoing for a week.

My last few days have been filled with phone calls and emails to and from colleges, airline reservations (the rising price of oil has had an immediate effect on ticket prices), and replenishing my daughter's wardrobe.  I actually found a pair of size 5 shoes today! -- still too big, but close enough.  I hope to turn my attention to some form of assistance to the Gulf Coast once my own little family crisis is in hand.

A Brief Update

Baton Rouge, Louisiana *** 9/2/05

My husband and sons took my daughter to New Orleans for her Saturday Tulane University orientation.  They moved up to Baton Rouge (a 90-mile (?) drive that took six hours) that night and spent three days with family friends they had never met.  (The photo came today, courtesy of same family.)  They got home Wednesday night and by this afternoon my daughter was enrolled at a college in Oregon -- yes, even further from home than NOLA.  She and I will fly out there on Sunday.  My boys turned 21 yesterday and I'm sorry to say that that landmark was barely registered by their mother.  They went out and bought pizza and champagne and we celebrated very quietly.

Our little saga barely merits a mention.  Neither does the plight of comfortable and dry college students.  But I have to use this space to give credit to the dozens and dozens of colleges and universities that have come forward to offer space to the students displaced from their schools by the hurricane.  In many, if not most, cases, tuition is being waived with the expectation that it has been paid and will stay with the home institution to support the recovery effort.  We have been the beneficiaries of such speedy work, financial generosity, and kindness that tears come to my eyes every time I start to think about it.  My daughter has heard from her new roommate and there are sheets on her bed in Oregon-- a good thing, since her new ones are no doubt mildewing rapidly in Louisiana.

I know that people are doing what they can for those whose lives have been so radically altered by Katrina.  Now we just need to do more.