Halcyon Days...

Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honor'd middle age, nor victories of politics or war;
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,
As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs
really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

--Walt Whitman

And, no, the turbulent passion is not calmed. Just praising the start of true summer around here.

In the Poconos Mountains for Wall Street West meeting ...

Rose Baker and I are attending a meeting at the Inn at Pocono Manor in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania for a Wall Street West project meeting. Wall Street West is a partnership of more than two dozen northeastern Pennsylvania regional and statewide Pennsylvania economic development agencies, technology investment groups, workforce development organizations, educational and research institutions and private-sector experts. With a strategic location in northeastern Pennsylvania, the program is a federal- and state-funded initiative to develop a total back-up solution for New York City financial institutions in the event of a disaster.

In February 2006, the group secured a $15 million Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to assist in the initiative and encourage New York City-based financial institutions to establish their back-up and back-office operations in the region. The region involved in this grant consists of the following nine counties: Berks, Carbon, Lackawanna, Lehigh, Luzerne, Monroe, Northampton, Pike and Wayne.

Wall Street West is helping to preserve the sanctity of the U.S. financial system: It is the only program of its kind addressing all the recommendations outlined in an interagency paper from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller that calls on major financial firms to have backup operations outside of New York's power and water infrastructure. With much of the nine-county region just a 90-minute drive from Manhattan, northeastern Pennsylvania is still close enough to allow for synchronous data transmission and easy employee access.

An easy ride. Great lunch. Pleasant day.

The view out the window from the conference room of the Kittanning Country Club...

Took this photo with my cell phone from the conference room of the Kittanning Country Club in Kittanning, Pennsylvania in which Rose Baker and I made a presentation, "Workforce Data: Its Meaning and Use," to the Tri-County Workforce Investment Board.

Good coffee and a fine breakfast!

The sky....the moon...the stars...so far away...

Superb thunderstorm in State College, Pennsylvania. The sky was just clearing as I took this photo with my cell phone.

The Song of the Wandering Aengus...

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

--William Butler Yeats