Well, my wonderful nephew, Timmy (see Friday, Feb 16th ), a big deal critic on Rotten Tomatoes, has been trying to bring me up to speed on utube, music, etc. He suggested Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, knowing my penchant for girl singers who can blow the roof off... Man, Sharon is GREAT. Download How Long Do I Have to Wait, but watch this video I found...

JAMES is home! We got to the airport with no minutes to spare. I jumped out of the car, while Dan took a couple of turns around Metro. I made it to the baggage claim JUST as James was coming down the escalator. We got his suitcase, and when we got outside Dan was coming by the door for the 3rd time- all was perfect.

It's a foggy morning- all the little cobwebs in the grass are illuminated by dew droplets. There are so many of them; crazy they were all there, we just didn't see them without the illumination of the dew.

The The Memory of Running is a little like that. Through the business of living life Smithy Ide has become numb and dulled to the beauty. He winds up on a cross-country Bicycle "quest" which reawakens him to his possibilities. It's like a rebirth for him, and it encourages the reader to appreciate the world with new eyes. Like the cobwebs on my lawn that were always there, it took the dew for me to see it. Sometimes it takes a great life crisis to force us to rededicate. This description of rediscovering bananas is a little thing, but it hit me profoundly. How we can lose our appreciation for life so easily and slip into bitching about stuff...
"I... ate breakfast. Bananas again. And an apple and the biggest Bran Muffin I had ever seen for a dollar. But Bananas, I want to say, bananas you forget. How else can I explain them? I love them. Everything about the texture and the chewability of bananas is me, but I'd just stopped eating them. I'm happy I found bananas again."

Appreciate the small things today, look at the minutiae of life with more patience and appreciation.