I think that I shall never seize

A poem lovely as a Trees ...

(done with apologies to Emily Dickinson)

For the slower students on the bridge, the poem -- aptly enough titled "Trees" -- begins

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree

It was just cool to use it! A few days ago I checked the graphic novel Trees (ISBN 9781632152701) by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Jason Howard out of Minot Public Library and read it in less than a day. Ten years before the story begins, giant poles descend all over the world and come to be called Trees because they're big enough for people to take shade under them; somehow it's determined (I'll have to read it again) that the Trees are intelligent, but they don't recognize human beings (so far, the book collects the first eight issues of the series) as intelligent or alive. The action, if you can call it that, takes place all over the world from a special cultural zone in China to a brewing war on the Somalia-Puntland border to a fascist gang in Italy to Svalbard, where a group of researchers studying the trees may find the Trees are starting to speak ... but will we understand what they're saying?

This morning I brought Sarah and Jeffrey to Bethany for their third day of Day Camp at Bethany Lutheran (Vacation Bible School by another name ... or maybe not; this morning Sarah said they were asked to bring a Bible so they could turn to the story of Jonah and then we got there and she asked me to take it home -- to me the Bible is the Word of God and you should be constantly reading and studying it, especially in church, and there was a disconnect for me ... have I been that lousy at imparting Christian knowledge and values in my kids?) and after running some errands I stopped back by and sand with the kids and the counselors the song "The Lord Told Noah To Build An Arky Arky" -- and it's got more verses than I remember. And as for the hand actions? I have to go with my wife on this one, I've no rhythm in that regard.

Don't blubber if you never receive prizes. Look at the poets who won the Pulitzer fifty years ago. See who's there. See who's not.

(from William Logan's "The Nude That Stays Nude" printed in Poetry, April 2013)

I picked that up at ReStore this morning because I liked that line! Jeffrey had his last day of basketball camp yesterday, and I picked him up after Sarah and I left Martha's parents' place and looked around in a local Hallmark store -- come on, Christmas ornaments get here, I really want that USS Enterprise-C ornament you made! And on another note, I remember someone who posted with Will Ferrell's character from Elf that's it's only 20 Fridays until Christmas. They should be no longer with us, I say with a conspiratorial wink ... I'd say the kids and I were all thankful last night when Martha came off job #2 at Burger King (she and I alternate second jobs to get bills caught up and we're closer every day!) with traditional chicken sandwiches for the girls and chicken nuggets for the guys, they're really good!

Oh, I almost forgot, yesterday Bible story at Day Camp was about Ruth ... I don't remember how Sarah said her sister's name (Orpah, the one who stayed behind in Midian; Ruth went back to Israel with her mother-in-law Naomi) but I recalled that it got misspelled on a particularly famous person's birth certificate which is why we refer to OPRAH Winfrey. (Got to wonder about the story of Orpah ... did anything else happen, of significance or not after she headed back home? Did Ruth keep or at least try to keep in touch, invite her to her wedding to Boaz, give her the birth announcement when Obed was born? Ah, the questions we'll have and never get answered this side of heaven ...) And for our final piece today, we come to a person I first met in fiction -- specifically, Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series with an alien invasion during the Second World War -- and now in real life:

Mordecai Anielewicz. Please forgive me if I'm mispronouncing his name. From Karen Zeinert's account of The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (ISBN 1562942824), documenting the Nazi invasion of Poland and the segregation of Jews into major cities and essentially making their existence difficult if not impossible before the Final Solution began -- known to most of our audience as the Holocaust or Shoah -- Anielewicz became at twenty-three the leader of the Jewish Fighting Organization and from roughly September 1942 to May 1943 was willing and able, despite seemingly every hand against them (another Jewish resistance, the Polish underground, and the utter credulity of people outside Poland to believe the Nazis WOULD do what they were doing) to fight back. And that is a spirit we need to be careful not to lose.

And that is a spirit we need to be careful not to lose, David