It's Not Always about the Bugs

even though they're out (Common Baskettail and Blue Corporal emerging today).

Sometimes it's about a new view of the familiar or known.

Like the area around Up-the-Down on the campus. New curving beds of evergreens and shrubs and beautiful flowers make the perfect complement to the Quad.

Or like my former student, who admits in front of her Sewanee undergrad children that English was not her strong suit when I taught her, but then tells us she is the person that colleagues at Entergy go to for proofreading or composing and that she reads my blog every day. (I hope she reads this post.)

This matters more than all the bugs and flowers: this is what lasts.

Trail Blazers

On a stroll this afternoon along a trail I hadn't walked before, I kept an eye out for the blue blazes marking my way. Their variety pleased me: ranging in color from pale blue to robin's-egg blue to near-turquoise, the paint rectangles chipped in places, taking on the fine craquelure of Old Master paintings, and in other places the paint hosted lichen as it grew pale on a tree's trunk. Some old blazes had even been replaced entirely with new ones.

They reminded me of an article and video a former student posted earlier on Facebook in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Featured is Todd Endo, a Japanese-American who marched for Civil Rights in his youth, at a time when "the Asian-American population was little more than .05 percent of the U.S. population." Watch the film and you will hear him describe his heroes -- the women who marched next to him, who by their actions risked everything for an idea.

click for the video and article

Sometimes, when I fear that the trails blazed in my childhood and youth by countless nameless men and women and children are chipping and fading away, I think on this student and others of her generation and the one before hers and see them re-signing the way. 

They are my trail-blazing heroes too, and today I honor them.

"Mother" Mary

Better than bugs: a visit from a former student turned Episcopal priest, mother, and author, and still spreader of joy, laughter, and zest for living. How good it is to remember people we know and experiences we shared.

No one has made me laugh more than she (others will remember her and a classmate's special awards ceremony for overlooked members of her class), and I am grateful for her visit and continuing friendship.

Old Soul

Chris was an old soul even when I first met and taught him in prep school. A college graduate now, he talks about his two years studying in China with joy, respect, and appreciation of the culture that's rare among young people with lucky lives.

Over a long lunch cooked and served expertly by a Singaporean Chinese (on introducing Chris to Irene at Crossroads Cafe, she said, "Robley! Don't order! Let me just give you food!"), we talked and I learned. By the time we had taken a short tour of the college and strolled around the lake, I knew we'd need one more sit-down before he drove home.

Dessert selected (chocolate for both of us), I admired his ring, a soft yellow-gold wonder that fits his finger well. "All jewelry in Hong Kong is a social status indicator," he told me. "This ring isn't popular now. Young people wouldn't wear it, but the older generation purchase these soft gold rings because they believe if you can wear one, you obviously aren't working. And if you aren't working, you've made it."

"What about the characters?"

"The symbol on front is fu, which means good luck and fortune. Fu dao le means fortune comes, which is why every time I see a Chinese person, they tell me to turn the ring around so the character is facing me."

Chris doesn't need Chinese superstition to find good luck and fortune. He has already has it -- in his character -- and with it, he will make his own fortune. 

May good things always come to him.