The crowd was crazy about miracles.

Thirteen years ago ...


Psalm 46                                                                      October 27
Greg @ leadership training                                         10310.27

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed ... though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah. 1-3


----


God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.
The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. 5-7

The buck stops here. It's the last Bible study at Bethany until January, I got another library card (I was weak; I turned in two books and checked out three!) and Martha's still beautiful!

THE HIGHTOWER

Am I a Be Janet Teng?
Not a pentapod of tongues
Do I speak, but she does more.


Airlifted before, connects
Now in her class in Plano,
Dot-dash-dot, the republic.

A student of teaching, she
Notes ways to do better now.
Down I write them in my heart.


[Be Janet Teng is the name of a teacher (as least as of 2003) at Hightower Elementary in Plano, Texas, one of USA Today's outstanding teacher honorees. Also with this entry is my review of Charles M. Schulz's 1982 collection Look Out Behind You, Snoopy!]


Today's title comes from Kurt Vonnegut's novel The Sirens of Titan, a book I've been looking for another copy of since the paperback I had split in two! So now I can ditch that -- I found this copy at ReStore Thrift Store this morning when I went to check on a winter jacket Sarah had outgrown and asked me to donate that apparently some football cards were left in their pockets. I talked to ReStore's assistant manager and he told me that winter clothes now go out on the sales floor right away and they don't go through the pockets -- and it's a safe bet I don't go through their pockets at home either, unless I have reason to be suspicious. Anyway, I didn't find the cards.


But I DID find that copy of The Sirens of Titan and another blank journal -- I'm debating whether to use that as my journal's next volume or for something special during National Novel Writing Month next month. I'll let you know. Before I woke up this morning, I had a dream -- at least part of a dream -- of a new character I can see working for "Threnody" and even got a few details about him/them. (For what I'm talking about, please read the book; I expect over the next month or two you'll see many references and even excerpts from the draft I write which will likely become the story the further we go.) Starting Tuesday you'll see these entries beginning "WORD COUNT"!


I'm truly not sure -- or if -- I'm supposed to cheer for anybody in Adele Griffin's young adult novel Amandine (ISBN 0786814411). The title character is a high school freshman who acts, dances, and performs exceptionally, but doesn't really make any use of that other than to manipulate people. She flits from friend to friend with secret to secret, and the main character/narrator Delia, a fellow freshman moved into town becomes the next casualty. But SHE'S got secrets of her own, particularly an older brother who's off in college -- but nobody can go into his room. Saw elements of horror here, saw a junior version of John Lutz's The Ex which I haven't read since the turn of the century ...


"I've always got an audience, no matter what I do."

That's the last thing Amandine says to Delia in a bittersweet ending to the story. And it's true -- you and I always have an audience, but we can't let the audience write the story of our lives. Or our stories, for that matter. In an increasingly pervasive culture of perceived offenses and trigger words we're told to avoid, we run the risk of becoming tapioca ... Beatty in Fahrenheit 451 gives an excellent discourse on this, but right now it's not with me. Becoming tapioca, becoming meaningless with nothing to say that challenges you. Even on the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in the eastern part of my home state, there's points for both sides. Even for Donald and Hillary.


Somebody up there likes me, David