Grace...Compassion...Devotion...Forgiveness...Love...A Meditation

Grace
Grace--\Grace\ (gr[=a]s), n. [F. gr[^a]ce, L. gratia, from gratus< beloved, dear, agreeable; perh. akin to Gr. ? to rejoice, cha`ris favor, grace, Skr. hary to desire, and E. yearn. Cf. Grateful, Gratis.] The exercise of love, kindness, mercy, favor; disposition to benefit or serve another; favor bestowed or privilege conferred.

To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee.
--Milton.

Web site to support presentation on the baseball strike of 1994; Pennsylvania Dutch Country; day labor in Pittsburgh for a great cause...

I travel to Philadelphia today to give a presentation (see first slide) about the economic impact of the baseball strike of 1994 at a REMI educational seminar in the Radisson Plaza-Warwick Hotel Philadelphia. Here is a web site I developed to support the presentation:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/dlp/baseball/ From Philadelphia I travel to Lancaster, Pennsylvania (the "Heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country") to meet on Friday with people from the Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board. On Saturday I travel to Pittsburgh to help my daughter, Maureen, and her husband, Dave, move into their first house!

Worth repeating....

Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children, by John Updike, from Americana and Other Poems (Knopf).

They will not be the same next time. The sayings
so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected.
Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in
the more securely to the worldly buzz
of television, alphabet, and street talk
culture polluting their gazes' dawn blue.
It makes you see at last the value of
those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells
of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces
like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves)
who knew you from the start, when you were zero,
cooing their nothings before you could be bored
or knew a name, not even your own, or how
this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye.

I read this poem in MP3 format at:

http://emerge.ed.psu.edu:1026/movies/youngch.mp3Or, for those of you who want to do it the easy way, this reading also is podcast at this RSS feed:Good summary of the feeling on that day.

Baseball presentation half done...

My slides for my presentation about the baseball strike of 1994 are about one-half finished. Will finish tomorrow!
Wish me luck and productivity!

So, we have what we hoped for....

So, we have what we hoped for in deep winter and lingering spring: hot, searing, steamy heat; long days; endless sun, broken here and there by dark storm clouds that soak the hot asphalt and add steamy mist to the air as the sun comes out again.

Today's weather report is:

Scattered thunderstorms this evening with a few showers possible late. Humid. Low around 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.

The watchword here is "humid" in that report. More of the same forecast for the next week or so. Do I really need to wear a suit tomorrow to work?

Oh, but there will come a day. Probably in late September or early October. These leaves, now green and full on the tall oak trees in my yard, will dry and molt to new colors. I will see, on a sunny, still-warm day, yellow, red, and brown leaves drift slowly to the ground flown on a gentle breeze. The leaves will gather here and there in piles, only to regroup later when brushed along by a slow wind and washed by a gentle rain. And, one day we will see the harvest moon low on the horizon pulling itself up over our near, low mountains on a cool, dry night. I will have great satisfaction at having passed a year of bliss. Now, that is a day to hope for!