I'm so sorry for my absence. Since the start of school, my life has been crazy busy. Labor Day weekend was the party my sister and I threw for my parent's 40th wedding anniversary. It was a wonderful day. The late summer sun shone down on the flowers in my mom's garden and 60 family and friends came to my parent's house to celebrate their shared life together. It was an amazing day. But whew! You can imagine.
Last weekend my dad and I drove up to State College, PA to go to a Penn State football game. My dad receieved his Masters in Journalism from Penn State and he and my mom used to go to every game - even the blizzard conditions of some! Dad goes every year to one game (usually in September to avoid driving those curvy mountain roads in the snow). This year he took me. I'd never been to Penn State, and it was so fun to walk around the campus and see where my parents spent their early days of marriage. Penn State beat Syracuse and I learned the cheer "WE ARE....PENN STATE" cheered by 103,000 people.
Last night I went to my first Orioles v. Red Sox game of the season. It was great. Camden Yards was filled with Red Sox fans - I felt sorry for the Orioles fans - it felt like Fenway. In any case, the Red Sox won, and we had great seats! Fun times with my friends Gregg and Carrie.
So besides the start of school - which in and of itself is a hectic and crazy time - it has been difficult to get that time to center myself and rejuvenate my spirit. I need to somehow find some time to find balance. Today is filled with some much needed laundry, grocery shopping, school work and then the entire science department is getting together tonight for a bonfire at the dept. chair's house. It should be fun (the fire part)! Our headmistress sent this along to us and I love it. I'm going to share it with you here.
Editorial The Rural Life New York Times
Goldenrod Time
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: September 17, 2009
Somehow my internal timekeeper failed this summer — broken down, perhaps, during the utterly sodden month of June. Time passed, and all the natural events that happen on this farm happened in order. But when the goldenrod began to bloom a few weeks ago, I failed to make a connection between the two.
The goldenrod ripens with nearly the same power as the leaves turning. It’s one of the strongest temporal clues I know, and I usually respond to it the way I respond to most signs of a shifting season: with an inward emotional tug.
This year, I seem to be absent, or perhaps I’m just resting in the lull of late summer. Or perhaps I’ve become just another of the creatures on this farm.
I don’t suppose the bees answer the blooming goldenrod with a rush of emotion. They’re acutely aware of the sun’s position. They’re connoisseurs of ripeness, that moment of nectareous perfection in each blooming species.
In the life sequence of the hive, bees certainly know the order in which things are done. But it isn’t — or so it seems to me — a nextness that reaches beyond the very task at hand. And yet what could all that honey mean except an awareness of the future?
What I needed, besides the goldenrod, was a few cool nights. And now that they’ve come, I feel my clock restarting. The goldenrod is pointing headlong to September’s end, and soon the world around me will be turning copper, deepening the blue overhead. I moved to the country, long ago, in order to live with time. I believed it was something happening around me. Now I know that it’s passing in me.
