thunder, lightning, wind, a few tech workshops, and a guest from holland have kept this week... full... much sadness in the death of a colleague's husband.

sadness: the husband of one of our deans, cathy smolka, died suddenly the other day. he had been battling cancer. death is a neighbor always among us. sometimes we don't notice, but... now and then it makes a big noise... way too many funerals this summer... peace to cathy and her family.

weather: clouds every day, rain and worse every day except today, bright sunshine at the moment. the garden needs sun sun sun... this morning's walk was damn chilly, taking us back to late may temps... invigorating... sure

walk: haven't missed a morning all week... sometimes the trail, sometimes the track... the trail's gravel is soggy saturated and a fallen tree still stretches across it.. but we discovered a muddy walkaround... still, some days we did the track... black old boring rubberstinky thing... but reliable... and close to shelter should the need arise... dom's into two-a-days... not me, boy... i'm a bum

workshops: tech classes offered at school drew three of us on wednesday and two yesterday (if you don't count my dutch friend). on wednesday we learned the ins and outs of our new AlphaSmart keyboards. yesterday we were introduced to the fine points of Inspiration 7.0, a fairly nifty graphic organizer software... click here to see what i did with it today...

welcome: jos arrived last sunday and has fit into our routine very nicely. he walks with us in the morning, prays with us shortly after, hangs with us for awhile and vanishes to his room for significant chunks of time. i know what he's doing there. he's putting the finishing touches on a very elaborate powerpoint program for which he enlisted my help. i'm the narrator. i liked the soundtrack with his own elegantly inflected european tones, but he wanted something more comfortable with the english language... so here i am... reading text in synch with the graphics... or almost in synch... some slides, ruined for all kinds of stupid reasons, required many many takes... but at this moment i do believe it is finished... and i guess i'm now the voice of the titus brandsma institute's new spirituality project... i'm just gonna sit back and watch the royalties pour in... but actually, jos has given me a copy of his very fine book Ecce Homo: Schouwen van de Weg van Liefde/Contemplating the Way of Love. this contains, at its center, titus brandsma's meditations on the stations of the cross as controversially illustrated by belgian expressionist albert servaes...

jos and i are off to the art institute and other downtown sites tomorrow... and then he's back to nijmegen on sunday...

odds: the other day, says niece taylor, her dog ate her cat... ouch... the other day my sister beth had a birthday... hurrah... jay has been back for a bit the past few days... alright... with snapshots from his california/alaska trip... shots of golf at midnight... cool... my next class on "the brain-compatible classroom" begins on monday... grrrr

The arbitrary division of one's life into weeks and days and hours seemed, on the whole, useless. There was but one day for the men, and that was pay day, and one for the women, and that was rent day. As for the children, every day was theirs, just as it should be in every corner of the world.

Alice Caldwell Rice

 

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