August 15, 2020 thought for the day: You cannot buy wisdom abroad if there is none at home. Russian Proverb

I was awake at something like three o’clock this morning. Tossed and turned for a while but before I knew it it was closing in on eight o’clock.

The twins have started back to school so it looks like there overnights with us may change some. We are taking the changes one day at a time. They won’t be here this weekend so Sue is going to the other grandma’s where they will be for Saturday and Sunday. In the mean time, Bob and I will be going to William’s first birthday party.

On August 14 the photo theme was “I made this”. Well, the things I “make” currently are crocheted or with food for dinners. I had a box ready with things for some of my grand children which made a perfect project for the theme.

Since we will be going to the party this afternoon I wanted to get a couple of errands out of the way. I stopped for gas then, stopped at the mail box with notes to a couple of friends from church. The next stop was dropping the message for free meal off at church. There were several cars in the parking lot so I figured there were people in the building until I noticed that the bimonthly farmers market was going on at the Masonic Temple across the street. My last stop was at Walgreen to get a birthday card to go with William’s birthday gift.

There’s not too much on today’s agenda although I could always work on the newsletter a little more.

The word today is letters.  Other relaxations are peculiar to certain times, places and stages of life, but the study of letters is the nourishment of our youth, and the joy of our old age. They throw an additional splendor on prosperity, and are the resource and consolation of adversity; they delight at home, and are no embarrassment abroad; in short, they are company to us at night, our fellow travelers on a journey, and attendants in our rural recesses, Marcus Tullius Cicero.  Let not a single day pass without your learning a verse, half a verse, or a fourth of it, or even one letter of it; nor without attending to charity, study and other pious activity, Chanakya. Instruction does much, but encouragement everything, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent; for they introduce words by the eye, not by the ear, Isidore of Seville. I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure. . . . When letters have declined and lain prostrate, theology, too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate. . . . It is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily, Martin Luther. Kind messages, that pass from land to land; Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history, In which we feel the pressure of a hand,-- One touch of fire,--and all the rest is mystery! Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

Today was another of those days that I have two photos of the day. The first is “a mask selfie”. I am not good with taking selfies but here is my humble attempt. The second theme for today is “one of these things is not like the other”. My hibiscus bush is blowing up with bloom this summer. I gathered some of them and picked one stem from another of my plants that has had an abundance of blooms this year, tickweed. I think they are both welcoming.

I thought the article title that I picked today sounded interesting. It sounded to me like some folks who need help will be getting some. According to the article there some new apartments for homeless youth. This housing development was originally meant for once homeless youth. The neighbors formed a drive by “house warming” for them as they moved in. One of the new “renter” toured the Marsh Brook Place apartments with a mask, (and a smile underneath) and tears in his eyes. He lived several years with “anguish and homelessness”. Now he will have a safe and clean home. Support services come along with these apartments. There are forty units available that were built with public and private money. The facility was designed with eighteen to twenty-four-year old homeless young people in mind. One of the administrators says this project is “cutting edge” with it’s design and space. The nonprofit agency called Huckleberry House is providing the on-site services of counseling and job training. All or part of the rent is covered through federal assistance. The article stated that the projects is “part of the Community Shelter Board Community Plan for Youth initiative...... funded ....by HUD.”   The neighbors who participated in the drive-by housewarming had the car packed with several packages of toilet paper, soap, toothpaste and other things. The person who was interviewed earlier said that he “sometimes curled up in a car at night... or .slept on park benches”.

I have spaghetti sauce in the freezer. That may be our dinner for tonight.

Joy