All Shall Be Well (The Accidentals and Mary Gauthier)

S invited me for coffee at her home yesterday morning, along with her friend C, who used to live next door but has moved a few towns over.  They have been getting together every Thursday from 10 a.m. to noon for *many* years, and S felt C and I needed to meet (soulmates, she called us).  Confused yet?... 😍

D*mn!  The force is strong with those two.  I felt an instant connection, and it was the most delightful two hours I've spent in a very long time (other than reading - ha!).   The conversation was easy, entertaining, stimulating.  If you know me at all, you understand that I feel I am in the right place at the right time when everything just clicks.  So. Many. Clicks!  You will also recall that I believe there are no accidents (Synchronicity for the win).  It was honestly as if metaphorical stepping stones were appearing right before my very eyes (feet?), as one topic of discussion (boom!) led to something else (pow!) which unveiled another epiphany (bam!).

I have mentioned previously that, now I'm retired, job/career-wise as well as from the concert series, I've been struggling with re-finding my Life Purpose.  I know I have a lot to offer, but it's been on a back burner during the pandemic... and I'm now ready to shine my light and spirit back into the world again.

All this to say, I have been handed two perfectly-made-for-me opportunities on the proverbial silver platter, which I will discuss more in detail next week.  For now just let me say that I am throwing myself All In with both, at least a once-a-week commitment for now.  For the first time in a while, I am very Very VERY excited about the Future with a capital F... 💖

My sweet grandbaby Colin turned three years old this past Wednesday; he deserves a full blog post and, by god, he'll get it... next week!

Long-story-short (look for the Extended Dance Mix, also next week), my dear friend Melanie *finally* had her long-awaited kidney transplant and, because those operations are not cheap, our mutual friend Dave set up a GoFundMe page.  Please contribute if you're able... 💞

NR:  Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot

It is indeed Feel Good Friday and, as is tradition, five items below of beauty, interest, and humor to brighten your day/weekend/week.  Enjoy! 

~ Why Jane Goodall Still Has Hope for Us Humans:  Wherever the story of our natural world ultimately lands, Jane Goodall will have earned a proud place in its telling.

~ These vegan crayons are made from green onions, purple potatoes, corn, and other would-be wasted vegetables:  Created by a mother in Japan, the Vegetable Crayons use discarded vegetable waste to create safer and more eco-friendly crayons for kids. 

~ When My World Fell Apart, I Turned to Puzzles:  A woman found that when her life was unstable, jigsaw puzzles provided a reliable solution.

~ RealWomenRealSongs Season 3:  This page serves as home to 28 women. They are all songwriters and all committed to writing 52 songs this year.  Each week the women will be given a prompt to write their songs from. And on their specific day of the week, they will post their newly-written, untweaked songs RIGHT HERE for your listening pleasure.  We hope that you will follow their journey: the ups and downs, the writer's block, the grand successes when they get it right. AND we hope that in in watching them take risks and being vulnerable with their dreams, YOU will become inspired to create something of your own, be it a song, a painting, that book you've been dying to write...the possibilities are endless! 

~ What Matters in a Name Sign?  We look at the origins of name signs in deaf culture, including one recently assigned to Vice President Harris.

SONG:  All Shall Be Well by The Accidentals and Mary Gauthier

BOOK:  How Far You Have Come: Musings on Beauty and Courage by Morgan Harper Nichols

POEM:  I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone by Rainer Maria Rilke

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone

    enough

to truly consecrate the hour.

I am much too small in this world, yet not small

    enough

to be to you just object and thing,

dark and smart.

I want my free will and want it accompanying

the path which leads to action;

and want during times that beg questions,

where something is up,

to be among those in the know,

or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,

never be blind or too old

to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.

I want to unfold.

Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;

for there I would be dishonest, untrue.

I want my conscience to be

true before you;

want to describe myself like a picture I observed

for a long time, one close up,

like a new word I learned and embraced,

like the everday jug,

like my mother's face,

like a ship that carried me along

through the deadliest storm.

QUOTE:  "Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions." ~ Albert Einstein

Our Lady of the Shooting Stars (Mary Gauthier)

A friend (thanks, FM) sent me the following - sounds like a good reason/excuse (as if I need one... :-) for a late-night/early-morning jacuzzi soak!

Next Saturday night/Sunday morning, November 17th, we may have a very rare event occurring in the night sky. The Leonid Meteor Shower will return, as it does each year, when the earth passes through the dust trail of the Comet Temel-Tuttle. However, this year it will be a meteor storm. When this happened in 1833, people thought it was the end of the world. You can count on 1000 per hour, but astronomers think the stars are right for a repeat of the 1966 event when at one point 40,000 meteors per hour lit up the night sky.

SONG: Our Lady of the Shooting Stars by Mary Gauthier

BOOK: The 50 Best Sights in Astronomy and How to See Them: Observing Eclipses, Bright Comets, Meteor Showers and Other Celestial Wonders by Fred Schaaf

POEM: The Mystery of Meteors by Eleanor Lerman

I am out before dawn, marching a small dog through a meager park
Boulevards angle away, newspapers fly around like blind white birds
Two days in a row I have not seen the meteors
though the radio news says they are overhead
Leonid's brimstones are barred by clouds; I cannot read
the signs in heaven, I cannot see night rendered into fire

And yet I do believe a net of glitter is above me
You would not think I still knew these things:
I get on the train, I buy the food, I sweep, discuss,
consider gloves or boots, and in the summer,
open windows, find beads to string with pearls
You would not think that I had survived
anything but the life you see me living now

In the darkness, the dog stops and sniffs the air
She has been alone, she has known danger,
and so now she watches for it always
and I agree, with the conviction of my mistakes.
But in the second part of my life, slowly, slowly,
I begin to counsel bravery. Slowly, slowly,
I begin to feel the planets turning, and I am turning
toward the crackling shower of their sparks

These are the mysteries I could not approach when I was younger:
the boulevards, the meteors, the deep desires that split the sky
Walking down the paths of the cold park
I remember myself, the one who can wait out anything
So I caution the dog to go silently, to bear with me
the burden of knowing what spins on and on above our heads

For this is our reward: Come Armageddon, come fire or flood,
come love, not love, millennia of portents--
there is a future in which the dog and I are laughing
Born into it, the mystery, I know we will be saved

QUOTE: "It takes solitude under the stars for us to be reminded of our eternal origin and our far destiny." ~ Archibald Rutledge