l e a r n from the way
the wild flowers
g r o w

--matthew 6:28

close encounters

I'd heard of this man before and enjoyed his music when I caught it but never made an effort to get real acquainted--until--we were acquainted two nights ago. A favorite lovely lady had four free tickets to his show and we field tripped westward into Kansas college town territory. A few months ago listening to "So Runs the World Away" online I never, never, anticipated I'd be hanging out with this dude on his tour bus. And now I have Ritter fever. Forget Justin. It's all about Josh now.


Like when I wrote a David-Sedaris-style essay for an author imitation assignment and a year later met the man after a reading. And he read [ie, politely scanned] my imitation of him. Right over my grade school heading of name/date/name of assignment, "David Sedaris imitation," he signed his own name! omg!

It's strange and fun to realize people you read and listen to are people in fact.

hopes & prayers

Today my life idol is having major cancer surgery--at the age of THIRTY SEVEN. I don't know what is in the KC water but this makes the second of my two most favorite STA women (and the 80-millionth that our family knows??) to have breast cancer.

She's been re-reading some of her travel journals and on her blog she shared this, which she wrote while living in Central America fourteen years ago:

To me, we are alive to learn as much as we can in the time we have. We are to learn about ourselves, others, and the world we live in. We are here to have and to accomplish dreams, we are here to fail, to love, to hurt, and to be hurt. We are here to desire and to be desired. We are here to accept and to deny. We are here to find balance in ourselves and in what we do. We are here to live, I mean really live. To take chances and to not be afraid of what those chances may bring. If we don't we will never learn. And education is what makes us be and what makes us wise. Never stop learning because learning equals life.

Somewhere, there must be a lesson in all of this, but I wish there was another way to learn it.

they're BACK

My uncle's house in Dinkelsbühl

iced out & snowed in

What's a winter vacation (in the most desirable of January locations) if it doesn't get extended by four days, after two canceled flights, three rebookings, two feet of snow and a free drink racked up at Alterra through it all? Not a proper winter vacation, that's what.

Lake Michigan shoreline, Feb. 2, 2011

And what's a best friend's wedding if it doesn't include the bride's radiant joy, a reunion of too-much missed faces & a trip to Wolski's? Not a best friend's wedding in Milwaukee, that's for sure.