Acceptance

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic and She said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
    and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
   or not wear nail polish
and She said honey
She calls me that sometimes
She said you can do exactly 
  what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it okay if I don't paragraph my letters
Sweetcakes God said
Who knows where She picked that up
What I am telling you is
   Yes  Yes  Yes
                     -Kailin Haught

Buying School Supplies

A friend at church teaches in a small town nearby ; she reported their need for a stock of school supplies as so many children cannot afford them.    I had knee replacement surgery about a month ago and I am just able to drive again and get out (I have had the capable care of my husband.)    So I decided to shore up my energies, go to Walmart and fill a back-pack with school supplies for Slater Schools.   I have no pride:   I knew I would need the motorized shopping cart in order to accomplish the task.

I forgot that this particular week-end was "tax free school shopping" in Missouri, a wonderful break for people with more than one school child.    When I got my vehicle into the school supply aisle, I felt like I was going the wrong way on a one way street.   Children everywhere with parents; I was not welcome and I could go neither forward or backward.     I could not reach some items on the list and thought I would ask a kid to help me, but no one would make eye contact with me; I was clearly in everyone's way.   Eventually, I collected some things and made my way out of the chaos.

When I got to the check-out stand with fifty dollars worth of very basic needs, a  friendly employee smiled and said, "So you have been in the school area.   We hate to go over there.   Every two hours one of us has to go in and straighten up.   The kids take things off the shelves, examine it, decide they don't want it and throw it down, making a complete mess.   I don't like to take my turn in there."

When I returned the motorized cart, three women were sitting on a bench waiting (average weight 250 pounds).   I felt I needed to explain myself as I look relatively healthy, so I said I had just had knee surgery.   "Oh, so did we," and they pulled up their skirts to compare scars.    

Thank God for motorized carts at Walmart, and thank God for the tax-free holiday.  Life is expensive for families these days.   However, after my hour of shopping under hazardous conditions,  I went home and took a long nap to recover.

Look to this Day

        Look to this day:

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course

Lie all the verities and realities of your existence

  The bliss of growth

The glory of action,

The splendor of achievemnent

Are but experiences of time.

For yesterday is but a dream

And tomorrow is only a vision;

And today well-lived, makes

Yesterday a dream of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well therefore to this day;

Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!

Kalidasa

For my high school graduation, the Mixed Chorus sang a musical arrangement of Salutation to the Dawn.

As chorus members had to memorize the lyrics, I have never forgotten the words; I have to look the total verse

up now and then, but I always found the message meaningful.    More than fifty years later, "today well-lived"

is a mantra for living.

Presidential Election Year

Summer, 1987, we visited with Richard's aunt Theo Rice in Kansas, the oldest of his mother's siblings.
She recalled a trip to visit her grandparents in Nemaha County, Nebraska,  when she was a child, during the presidential election campaign of 1896.   Her dad, John Samuel Barnes, drove a covered wagon;  her uncle and his family accompanied them in a second wagon.   All travelors on the road had political  signs on their wagons and  called out their  party  and favorite candidate to those they met.  Theo's dad (Richard's grandfather) was Republican and their candidate was William McKinley (the eventual victor); her uncle was a Democrat and supported William Jennings Bryant.   Our country has a long history of strong  political feelings!

Turkey Vultures

     I have long held a fascination with vultures (see blog note 5/13/11).  When I read The Bluebird Effect:
Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds  by Julie Zickefoose and saw her comments on vultures as a spiritual guide in Native American mysticism, I was intrigued.   "If a vulture has flown into your life, you are being asked to remedy a messy situation and turn it into something positive." . . ."a clean-up of psychic messes".    
      Since Zickefoose cleans out freezer burned food and leaves a bucket of it in the meadow for vultures periodically, her encounters with vultures may have more to do with her generosity.   "The freezer for me," she says, "is a place where good food goes to die."    She did observe that when placing a bucket of freezer-burned  beef, chicken and pork in the field, vultures would not eat a processed chicken nugget.   I have great respect for the judgment of the bird.
     I highly recommend this beautifully illustrated and interesting book.

Spring Planting at our Farm

                                         
                                                      Farmers. . ."beholden to dirt"

                            Daddy's Money:  A Memoir of Farm and Family     Jo McDougall

Our Times are in His Hand. . .

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith "A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''

              Rabbi Ben Ezra  Robert Browning

A good friend, married for 60 years, is engaged in chemotherapy for cancer.   Her husband

is experiencing cognitive decline, yet remains as sweet and good-natured as ever.   She says

she feels they are closer than they ever have been in their marriage;  she quotes the 

Robert Browning poem.                   ". . .trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"