May All Your Days Be Circus Days!

And with those words from the ringmistress (if you'll forgive me that politically correct deviation, for she was a female ringmaster) my family's yearly attendance at the Shriners Circus came to an end. I met Martha, Sarah, and Jeffrey there after work for day two or the circus' three-day presence here in Minot and we got a good three hour show of trapeze artists, stunt cycling, gymnastics, clowns, and the assorted stuff … I was more excited, or at least more satisfied, as a result of being there than I was when I arrived. So I really needed it.

Tuesday morning I was waking Jeffrey for school (of all my family, I'm the early riser and even when I try to sleep in I cannot do it) and got playful with him, saying that there's not much time and I can only love him on days ending in 'y', to which my sun responds grumbly, as he heads to shut off his night light, “Every day ends in 'y'!” Good going, just like his teacher said on a blue note I saw this morning commending him: “Jeffrey worked so hard today while Mrs. Burckhard was testing. Way to go Jeffrey!” And he IS working really hard with his coloring and writing his name and reading.

I'm proud of both my kids, that better be obvious! Though I would have to be talked long and hard into bringing one of them when they're older to an alternate Earth with me to sell and trade our world's tech goods for foodstuffs and other items our burgeoning population just doesn't have enough of, as Lawrence Gomes does his son Paul in Harry Turtledove's novel Curious Notions (ISBN 0765346109). Naturally the German occupiers of San Francisco wonder where goods better than any they've ever seen come from, and getting out without giving the game away is an adventure in itself!

 

Step with me from the possible late twenty-first century to the second half of the nineteenth, where a Britisher named Hudson Taylor was motivated by God to become one of the first Christian missionaries to China. My book about Hudson (ISBN 9971972204) by Shelia Miller was published in Singapore and is a quick, great read for kids and an inspiration for adults, I think. Hudson's motto: “Move Men, By Prayer, Through God Alone” is something I think we can't teach too early. And lest you see this piece as too evangelical … well, how can you overdo it when you're enthusiastic?

Our disagreement is often one of method and not purpose, David