Friday Plans

Today Bram and I will take thirty-seven more stuffed animals to the Pacolet Senior Center to add to the first batch of seventeen I took last week. Then we'll party with my new old friends there. There won't be a Santa, and I've heard the widow women will be disappointed. I need to start shopping for a Santa suit now for next year.

From Wednesday

The waterworks from The Whitney Mill, which was powered in part by hydro-electrics.


Bram's playdough ammonite.


The pink elephant: Someone rents it and has it put in your yard the parking lot where you work when you turn 40 or 50 or 60 or...there's just news you want to share. I can't imagine a single Czech finding this kind of advertising appealing.

There's No Place Like Home

Since Tuesday, I have been awash in homesickness for Brno. I am especially feeling the lack of the serenity I felt at Smidkova, in the little dining room where I used to study, write, and say my prayers. I felt close to God there, where the eastern light slashed through the high windows to light the tiny cross I had made one fidgety morning from an olive twig brought from Tunisia. When I lifted my head from my work, I could calculate the weather by the number and colors of the rising chimney smoke against the sky. I knew that if I stood up, and the day were cold enough, I could see that haunting Dormitory where Nazis tortured and executed Jews and other enemies of the Reich, jailed behind the pale gray bars of smoke and time. It isn't a threatening place now, though it will always loom.
In my sanctuary, I could anticipate the upstairs mid-morning coffee routine and track the sounds of wooden chairs scraping lightly across the ceramic floor, the muffle of conversation, and hearing these things, feel safe and comfortable, at peace and unalone.
This is all in contrast to the peace and security I now lack. I am betrayed and heartsick, longing to click my heels like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, of returning to a better time and better place, both literally and figuratively. There' no place like home...there's no place like home...

Hedonistic Saturday (Požitkářský Sobota)

Our son has been dreaming of today all week because today is going according to his plan. I know it's indulgent of Thomas and me, but we like to give Bram the chance to have just the kind of day he wants every now and then. So, today's plan is to spend all day in bed. Who among us hasn't dreamt of such a day when the alarm had gone off? Our shifts as butler have been scheduled so that no one gets taken advantage of; whoever is butler is to be called "Jeeves", and the means of summoning the butler has been determined (Bram taps his lamp; Thomas and I yell "ding ding!") Bram has set the tone for interactions with Jeeves, and it's extremely polite, so for now, we're all laughing our heads off every time Jeeves is summoned. I've had my coffee and a corndog for breakfast, my computer, books, iPod, and telephone beside me, so I'm enjoying it. I know how ridiculously silly and self-indulgent this is of us, but as there's no harm in it, why not just enjoy it? After all, we have permission to lie on the bed rather than in it, and to fetch things for ourselves if we want, to even get dressed. Now if we could just get snow on Christmas... .