CLOUDS OVER I-287

Heading south, July afternoon, on the way to Allentown for the night, remembered now because now I'm not free to punch in the music or novel on tape and set my sights for the west and south. Remembering the white line, the trucks, the hills, the signs for NYC, and you are relieved to be heading west, away from the City, away from the parkways and turnpikes and bridges that jam and hold up cars in miles long lines. You're on the way down to Pennsylvania and on to Virgina, following the great valley between the Blue Ridge and the Cumberlands, down past Winchester and Newmarket, then Harrisonburg, and Staunton, and down to where the valley and down to the southern Blue Ride, where the valley narrows and the highway sweeps past Roanoke and Salem, past Fairfield where we broke down one New Year's Eve and the three children and I were towed three hours to Kingport, Kate and Zack riding high in the station wagon up on the Jerri-dan, Caleb and I in the cab with the tow truck driver, on down to Wytheville and Marion and Abingdon and into Tennessee, then south over the mountains to Asheville.

Hah -- you thought I was going to say something pithy and philosophical, to accompany the cloud pic? Nah, just telling you about the picture.

That evening, in Allentown, two boys explored the backyard pond.

IN WHICH I FLOUT BOTH COPYRIGHT AND PATRIOTISM

In today's New York Times, Maureen Dowd's always lively column addresses the subject of President Bush's reading program, one that seems quite ambitious for one unused to literary reading, philosophical consideration. It includes Camus' The Stranger, as well as some English classics. Funny coincidence, or maybe not, that on Friday a colleague of mine who is both a local poet and a high school teacher of English literature, and, importantly, Canadian, emailed me a picture which I shamelessly show you here, flouting all regard for copyright. My rationale is that you might not otherwise see it. Most of us have limited exposure to the Canadian press, though I suspect we'd be better if we had more.




I'm told the billboard is "in Canada, where else?!"

Oooohh, Google Spreadsheets!

My Partly Edible Garden

Inspired by Zack's big garden in a box I have small peppers in pots. As they ripen they will turn from purple to red to orange to pale yellow, all colors existing at once on a late-summer plant. Watching them will be a friendly companion from the world of nature and summer as I'm drawn feet first into the vortex of The School Year, the 180 Days.

You can eat the nasturtiums and the bronze fennel that shields my chair from the street. I've shown Phaedra and Eilonwy which flowers they can eat, and told them that you Have to Ask Someone who Knows, a Grownup. They're old enough for this nature lesson.

Okay,I'll jump on the merry-go-round at a random spot where I can grab a pole, and see if I'm near my favorite horse, the white stallion, rearing (of course, an up-and-down horse, not a standstill one, they're for the babies, we're the big kids, who ride on the outside and finally, finally, are big enough, tall-enough, long-armed and secure in the stirrups enough to grab the ring, and it has to be EVERY ring, give or take a jammed spot missed, because if you miss ONE ring it might be the GOLD RING, the gleaming prize of every ride) and bearing on his back behind my saddle a freshly-killed pinkish-tan rabbit -- but this is not about the merry-go-round but about the recent random GOLD RING on the web-go-round of now-life: www.popcap.com and go to Games -- Bookworm. Jen Robinson, the brilliant youngish librarian and webmistress, has pointed the way to this well-described "addiction."

Whoops, I have a game going on the free trial, I'm on Level 4 and l*o*v*i*n*g it and have just signed up for more....

You'll be hearing from me later, Jen....

~~~ Jane