Hey, all:

It's been a tiring last few days, so I made myself a cup of tea (brought over from Engaland by Colin Kemp when he visited here) and made a couple of pieces of orange/cranberry toast. It just feels good to sit here at the table for a couple of minutes. This last week has been busy, but I mostly do "busy" pretty well. It's trying to be there for others when they are struggling that is hard. Last Thursday, Ruth and I went down to Brooklyn to the funeral of my brother-in-law's step-daughter. It was all hard. I didn't know the woman, but she was in her early 50's and left a slew of children and grandchildren. The whole day was exhausting. It's just a little over 80 miles from our house to the funeral home, but it was raining off and on the whole way and it took 3 hours to get there. We probably covered the first 60 miles in not much more than an hour before we got into Brooklyn traffic. Do the math. 60 miles an hour for the first hour and less than 20 miles an hour for the last two. I was driving into an area of Brooklyn I've never been in before and it is very depressed, and depressing. We stayed for the wake and funeral and then faced the long ride home. It was almost midnight by the time we got back. It took a whole day to recover emotionally and physically from the trip, and now we have another funeral tomorrow, an hour's drive away.

I may have to bake some more rhubarb cobbler if this keeps up. And then today I was talking with my check out clerk friend I wrote about in my book. She was widowed ten years ago and without any education or training ended up as a checkout clerk at Walmart. Walmart has a terrible reputation about how they treat their employees. When I talked with her today, she'd worked 20 hours in the last two days from noon to ten one day, and then from 7 the next morning to 5 in the afternoon. She was very stressed out, because all she sees is Walmart on her bed.

But ya know, there is goodness too. Her birthday is next Saturday and she was able to get the day off to go on a bus trip up to Quincy Market in Boston, and she's really looking forward to getting away.
At least it's not Walmart. I've been wishing her a Happy birthday every time I've seen her this last week, and did again today. I told her that my mother celebrated her birthday for at least two weeks and when my sons were little, we did something special every day for their birthday week. As I told her, I don't celebrate "little." That's not how my family does it.

So, there will be celebrating this week, and the following Saturday I'm performing gospel at Lordship Trolley Days... an all-day festival with trolleys providing the transportantion from one place to the next. It should be fun and uplifting. I've got two more bookings to play music and do book signings in the next month, and I always enjoy meeting new people.

I left the last of the oatmeal/raisin cookies for the next person who drops by.

This week I think I'm going to make peach cobbler, which my wife near-adores.

Jerry