Earth Bound once more

As summer winds down and school days quickly approach, I find vacationing with family to be a most cherished memory, and can spend hours looking over photos or recalling those days past. So, if you’ll indulge me a flashback post again, this one highlights a late August week in 2013! Enjoy…

Here on the Northeast coast the humidity level is dropping as fast as the overnight temperature. But before the memory of summer fades away, I will savor those vacation days of August, when nothing stopped our early morning swims or twilight strolls around the lake.lias

Perhaps even more importantly than those delicious moments was the gathering of extended family, from our Grand Matriarch calling for peace in the world to our sweet teen on the edge of high school, and all the rest of us in-between with Big Birthdays looming, careers starting or retirement celebrated, all of us facing change. But here, with the backdrop of a grand hotel, we stopped for a brief interlude, and took the time to laugh at ourselves and with each other.

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One Planet

Even in these dark days while we all count the slow minutes of each hour, there are some gifts resting under our fear. Shifting my daily routine from standing resolutely in my classroom to teaching from a wavy screen in my living room first brought me unease, but then I found absolute faith from my students who are rising to meet the demands like champs. I have gained hope from these teenagers, as their optimism buoys me in despair. I depend on them once more to cultivate a symbiotic although digital relationship, as we all face another day sheltering in place. During the other hours, while alone in my own thoughts, I turn to memories of traveling this one planet, navigating the ancient cobblestones and sandy beaches and stone steps and narrow turrets and city sidewalks and dirt roads and roof tops and galleries brimming with the masters and bike paths and mountain peaks all under a busy and brilliant sky.

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