Connections

Today spring shone through. The day was delightful, friends came visiting I got a minimal amount of work done. It is time to fit writing into the schedule again, but before I do that I have been indulging in playing on Facebook. In the process of seeing what friends are doing, I discovered a fantastic blog, The Lighthouse Keeper. The writer, a friend from my graduate school days, who is choosing to be anonymous in her blog, writes of an ancestor who was the last lighthouse keeper in Sandusky, Ohio. Sandusky is not too far from Toledo, where I grew up and where family and friends still live.

It is beautifully written, this blog that gives me dual connections--to the area that I grew up in and to a friend whom I haven't seen in so many years and whom I had lost touch with until the Internet brought us together again.

I love the powerful connections of history, having majored in the subject myself in college so many years ago that I can now properly speak of decades ago. My friend writes powerfully of history, research and genealogy--of connections. I highly recommend this blog. She has a compelling voice, one that I hope will be in print. It is thrilling to read such beautiful and powerful writing and know that I know the person behind it.

I am grateful today for pausing to read. Her blog is noted in my blog links to the right. I highly recommend it.

Catching up

I can't believe more than a week has gone by. Ah, how time can fly when one is having fun on Facebook! Among other things.

While the rest of the country has been freezing, it has been springlike here in California. The oldest of my daffodils already have buds. The flowers will bloom in succession this year, since all the new bulbs were planted in succession. It is fun to go outside and see the new little shoots poking up. January is a little too early, though, even here and I worry over them even as I admire them. Of course, with no rain, they have also needed to be watered.

I wish there were winter vegetables to accompany the flowers. If I live long enough...

Like everyone with in range of a newscast, I was amazed and heartened last week by the sight of people emerging from the plane on the Hudson. Is this a good omen for the year? I do hope so. Like over 200,000 other people I joined the pilot's fan club on Facebook.

The concert on the Capitol Mall yesterday was also amazing. It was touching and endearing to see and hear Pete Seeger and to sing along to "This Land". (We sang Climb Every Mountain and This Land is Your Land so many times in high school glee club concerts that I thought I would never want to hear either of them again. I had tears in my eyes yesterday as I sang along.)

It was wonderful, too, to see the Obama/Biden team journey to Washington by train, evoking images of earlier great Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and I think, Theodore Roosevelt who journeyed to their inaugurations the same way. I like Obama's sense of history, I like his brilliance and I hope and pray for him as he becomes our President.

While there is so much fear and despair in the air about the economy there is also this magnificent feeling of hope and joy. I hope the hope and joy win. I am grateful for the promises for the future that these days hold and these celebrations hold. May God be with us all.