COMING AROUND AGAIN: Air Quality Alert

The story of my summers here in the Baltimore area:

AIR QUALITY ALERT IS IN EFFECT FOR MONDAY JUNE 21...

THE MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT HAS ISSUED A CODE ORANGE
AIR QUALITY ALERT MONDAY FOR THE BALTIMORE METRO AREA.

A CODE ORANGE AIR QUALITY ALERT MEANS THAT AIR POLLUTION
CONCENTRATIONS WITHIN THE REGION MAY BECOME UNHEALTHY FOR SENSITIVE
GROUPS. SENSITIVE GROUPS INCLUDE CHILDREN...PEOPLE SUFFERING FROM
ASTHMA... HEART DISEASE OR OTHER LUNG DISEASES...AND THE ELDERLY.
THE EFFECTS OF AIR POLLUTION CAN BE MINIMIZED BY AVOIDING STRENUOUS
ACTIVITY OR EXERCISE OUTDOORS.

It is tedious, boring, and I don't really take these too seriously anymore. I hate to be confined to my house - House Arrest! Since I cannot see it, smell it, taste it, bad air quality doesn't seem "real" to me. And I am used to how my lungs work (or do not) by now and don't feel much of a sifference if I go outside on days such as today.

Will I regret this down the road a bit? Do I care today!

TO HOLD

So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife and I
make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight.
measuring by eye as it falls into alignment
between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I'm lucky,
she'll remember a recent dream and tell me.

One day we'll lie down and not get up.
One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we'll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn't for our having.
So often, fear has led me
to abandon what I know I must relinquish
in time. But for the moment,
I'll listen to her dream,
and she to mine, our mutual hearing, calling
more and more detail into thhe light
of a joint and fragile keeping.
Li-Young Lee

Pattee's Picks - Best Books I have read

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Unless (Shields)
Traveling Mercies (Lamott)
The Wind in the Willows (Grahame)
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (Wroblewski)
The Mistress of Spices (Divakaruni)
The Making of A Quagmire (Halberstam)
The Higher Power of Lucky
The Ha Ha (Dave King)
The Fortress of Solitude (Jonathan Lethem)
The First Part Last (Johnson)
The Fiddler of the Northern Lights (Kinsey-Warnock)
The Feed (Anderson)
The Echo Maker (Richard Powers)
The Book Thief (Zusak)
The Age of Unreason (Handy)
Shame of a Nation (Kozol)
Science of the Artificial (Simon)
Poetry of Carl Sandburg
Playing After Dark (Ascher)
Once Upon a Distant War (Prochnau)
Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro)
Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke)
Heidi (Spyri)
Half of a Yellow Sun (Adiche)
Grace (eventually) Lamott
Empire Falls (Russo)
Drop the Rock (Bill, Todd, & Sarah)
Dinner at the Homesick Resturant (Tyler)
Case Histories (Atkinson)
Because of Winn Dixie
Anything by Alice Munroe
Any of the James Lee Burke mysteries featuring Dave Robicheaux
Anne of Green Gables (Montgomery)
Amazing Grace (Kozol)
All of the Kurt Wallander mysteries! by Henning Mankell
Alcoholics Anonymous
Administrative Behavior (Simon)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (Irving)

Blog Thoughts

When I began this blog I thought that AGE would be a GREAT topic to ponder. As a baby boomer it seems as if we need to redefine each new decade as we reach it. "60 is the new 50" and blah, blah, blah! A focus on age limits the scope of a life and in the end, what is there to say?

I am surrounded by the grace of god and it changes all the time. And in living each day in this grace, I see there are luminous stories, everywhere. Stories like a shaft of autumn light falling as if ashes through the trees; like the world in a baby's eyes; like the lilacs, reaching for the sky in the third week of May.

Here are my stories.

COMING AROUND AGAIN

LINK of the Week

CHECK OUT

Air Quality Alert

Rose in October

The Middle

PRAYER

TO HOLD

NPR Topics: Politics & Society

GODDESS

Pattee's Picks - Best Books I have read

One Day at a Time

TOYING

USA Map

Peace, Love, Dove

Funky Shopping

The Baby Boy Fletcher

In the Fairy Garden

Baby Boy Thighs!

My Favorite Cousin Karen

The Blues Brothers

Leisure Suit

FAMILY

And in the end...

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Coming around again

BEFORE DAWN