In honor of Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-1962), whose birthday it is today, a painting and a poem.
—ee cummings
Mysteries of DC
Where is Nancy Drew when we need her?
Columbus Day
Today, October 12th, is the REAL Columbus Day, despite its being established in 1971 to fall always on a Monday and to be celebrated festively by taking the day off from work to shop for reduced-price merchandise.
The arrival of Columbus being a difficult event to “celebrate,” given the centuries of death, destruction, and mad land-grabbing that followed the encounter with two great big plentiful American continents, we recognize the day here at home with a short Columbus bio read aloud, and a Native American blessing, followed by a consciously created Old World-New World meal. Encounters between civilizations, often marked by pain and loss, can also bear promising fruit. Not only botanically speaking, but in terms of eventual (even if it takes centuries) mutual enlightenment.
Tonight we will have sweet potatoes, black beans, and corn on the cob, followed by apple pie and ice cream.
On Deadline
Maud
Ten/Ten/Ten
Somewhere in the world there must be a person turning ten years old on this day, perhaps even someone actually born at 10:10 in the morning. Happy Birthday to you! It’s a special one.
In honor of this day, here is a page from my daughter’s first grade homeschooling main lesson book, Numbers. I don’t know about you, but I am perfectly content to be living in a base-ten number world, with the ten represented by a one followed by a zero. And it was not a foregone conclusion. We could be living in a base-twenty world, like the ancient Mayan, Aztec, Celtic, and Germanic peoples (remnants of which groupings by twenty survive in some modern European counting systems). Or a base-sixty world, like the Babylonians. Or, we could be using base ten but still be lumbering along in lengthy strings of Roman numerals, with nary a zero to be seen. And the computer would never have been born.
Peter
Birthday blessings from near and far
Today is the birthday of my cousin Dianne and her twin sister Monica. Dianne is in critical condition in the ICU with complications following a bone marrow transplant from her sister Erin. Not the ideal place to celebrate a birthday, but the extended family have all been working together to monitor her treatment, keep her household and business running, and make the celebration as festive as possible under the circumstances. All that love and care is healing in itself.
Dianne
Monica
Gathering moss
Damp weather is good not only for flourishing flu germs (see yesterday’s post) but also for rich green mosses. On a botany excursion we found three distinctly different kinds all growing near each other.
Brad
Germs
‘Tis the season to be sniffly. My daughter has whatever bug is making the rounds—fever, aches, sore eyes, sore throat, general misery. Not much happening here besides lots of reading aloud and the making of toast.
John
Blessings
My cousin Dianne, who has been in the hospital awaiting a bone marrow transplant for two rare blood diseases, has taken a turn for the worse. She has had to be intubated for respiratory problems, and now her kidneys are failing. Her birthday is October 9th and I was going to devote that day’s post to her but it can’t wait. Please, if you can, take some moments to hold Dianne in your thoughts and send healing prayers her way. Thank you, and blessings on all of you, too.
Tessa
Let Those People Go
Perhaps you did not hear, one grim day this past summer, about the abrupt dismissal of Hillary Fennell, our library’s much-loved children’s librarian for over 30 years, as part of the sudden and arbitrary termination of all DC Public Library part-time staff throughout the city. So long, folks, there’s the door! Hope you didn’t leave your lunch bag back at your desk, because you won’t see that again! I tried to imagine what logical thought process culminated in this bizarre event.
