The Weather That Was Desk: Good temps, mostly sunny, delightful weather all day long. You could even say it's fall weather but for the humid warm air that keeps pumping up north from the ravaging hurricanes experienced by so many others. Let's hold them all and our inland, earthquake-stricken, Mexican brothers and sisters in a moment of light and love as they deal with catastrophe.

Here on the home front; the soccer season is over. The last game Wendy wore new shoes which I admire...

Organized music has resumed for Aidan and he is now in the high school orchestra and Philadelphia Youth Orchestra. Way to go, Celloman. There will soon be concert and performance dates to put in the calendar. Keoni will have his Junior recital in November in Georgia. Wendy and John will be going to it while I backup Aidan on chores detail. Also, feeding that still growing young man.

My sister Sandy has been giving updates through the summer on her daughter, my niece Paula who so recently was gravely ill in St. Louis. She is continuing to recover her health and strength; even able to make plans for a short visit to St. Louis from her home in Dixon, Missouri.

More good news: November not only brings forth a number of family birthdays but, this year, Sandy will be here that month. And, Marge has pointed out some Quakertown antique shops which will see Sandy and I browsing their wares. Much else in the general area attracts our attention, too, besides all those birthday cakes.

Speaking of sisters, as you know from last posting, Marge and two of her sisters visited Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. Here is more from their communications...

Marge, Pam, Mary and a friend of theirs.

I love this picture they took.

Jeanenne has been delving into the world of watercolor and just sent these early renderings that she made into a book...

Shoutout to Jeanenne: Way to go! I love these. Thank you, for sending them.

The young man who has so wonderfully accompanied Keoni and Aidan for music tryouts and performances is an accomplished pianist in his own right. He helps with the active music program at our church and pulled together a number of great music events all summer long. He gave a small concert himself recently. I managed to miss the first phrases of The Minute Waltz but there's enough of it to enjoy...






And, in other news, this came from Sandy delving into multiple storage boxes. She snapped a photo of a painting she found that our dad made when he was a young man. I have vague memories of it on a dining room wall when we lived in Houston...

Dad's nickname in his early years was Whitey because of his white-blond hair. He signed this Whitey. As I delve into my memory, I think he drew and painted for fun with a friend who also was nicknamed Whitey. They had to have been late teens when they were doing this. His friend, again from my deep dive into memory, went on to work in Disney's studios. There are other drawings that some of us might have, I believe, and perhaps we can digitize a sharing of them.

It's nice knowing there are fish and frogs out there in the little pond. I like feeding the fish when Marge is away. As I walk up to the pond, I often hear a plop splash into the water and I know I've missed seeing one of the frogs again. But I sometimes hear their nighttime concert when our patio door is slid open.





Other news from the Health News Desk: Finally, something positive came from that implanted monitor reading by a cardiology specialist--how those episodes I had a year ago happen. They're non-life-threatening, it's overkill to stop driving (all praises!), and there are medical and procedural answers to prevention and future care or considerations, one of which is an increase in a med.

A morning when I was blogging to you here on Marge's patio. It's easily one of my favorite places. Yes, I do miss Toby.

But, Marge brought me a little friend for company when I'm on the patio...

Yes, indeed, we're all mad here.

How many ways can you say Wow! OMG! Oh no, not again? Or, how many times can extreme expressions be expressed without ourselves becoming a bit jaded or inured to extremes? The tone of networked and cabled, live news coverage that can't seem to even report weather without sensationalized, emotive delivery of language. Do we eventually protect ourselves by becoming numb; or do we respond with craven watching in ever more addictive cycles?

Like nearly everyone else, yes, I do want to know about the hurricanes pounding our continent, how people are helping each other, how much destruction is happening, where it is happening, how the planning and responses are working out, what else can be done to help. That being said, I don't want information couched in pandering to human nature's baser idiom. There is a whole world of day-to-day news out there to report!  Television anchors emoting superlatives into a mic serve themselves. Joe Friday would have said, "Just the facts, Ma'am."

I was going to apologize for getting on my soap box but I changed my mind.

Keoni has kept in touch down there in Georgia. Some of you follow his Facebook postings and I keep a few of his pictures from there and his texts...

Hey, Keoni! Where'd you get the fancy camera?

Michael Chong, you'll remember from this summer's Dali Musicians.

Michael and Keoni back at Mercer.

Yes, music life is on hold there as classes are canceled today in preparation for Irma's onslaught. Even though diminished this morning from her fierce path of destruction along the western Florida coastline, Irma is still a very powerful storm heading into Georgia and Alabama. Keoni just now texted that the electricity went out.

I learned from son-in-law Tim Love that his Tampa nephew is OK and had evacuated.

From Marge who is with two of her sisters in Wyoming, I received this...

Yes, it is THE Old Faithful!!!

And, she sent this, too...

On my home front, I have continued wrapping up items needing attention after those many months last winter of necessary stay-at-home recovery and healing. The heavy-lifting on the items is pretty much done so I can whittle the rest down in small doses in the days ahead. Yay!

Fall has been changing Penn's Woods every day. The grasses in the fields are high now. The man who bales up Joe's hay that Wendy usually purchases, had his baler break down during the baling, so the field of hay then got soaked in the downpours we've been having.

Nice to go on my walks.

And I enjoy the late light out the back of Marge's yard.

The first natural phenomena over the last two weeks contributed to a welcome focus away from the over-arching, troubling news howling across the nation and around the world. How good to be present for the Eclipse of 2017. Marge got on the Amtrak and went to her brother's in Charleston, SC, to see the full monte. The clouds parted just enough at the right moment to capture the photo she sent...

Here in PA, Aidan made his box viewer and he sent the results of our somewhat clouded 75%, Mid-Atlantic experience...

Sandy sent her colander view from St. Louis...

Note circles a little flat on one side on her photo of the exit end of the eclipse.

My pinhole apparatus wasn't working in the clouded conditions; then, as the eclipse was ending, I finally thought to take a picture with my trusty iPhone and after several tries, while not-looking, got this...

The phenomena caused awe-filled thinking. Not just how vast the ever-changing Universe is and how dwarfed we are but how we really are a part of it. How millions of us who are made of those elemental molecules of stardust, packed the ether with our eclipse images, broadcast in every possible way the eclipse's entire path, and how scientists measured, studied, and observed it all with every sort of tool now available. How we, every last one of us, counts; have living, breathing bodies with minds to wonder and know at least a part of it. What a gift for us to love and care for.

The fascinating, natural phenomena that traversed the skies over North America, snatched everyone's attention away from grim, grimmer and grimmest news. People who'd watched it happen began folding up their chairs, going home, resuming their lives. Two or three more days went by.

Then, the other shoe dropped.

Hurricane Harvey roared onto the scene, sat upon Texas, lashed everything to pieces, and rained more in a few days than the whole state of Texas gets in a year. Even now, after landfall a whole week ago, Harvey marches inland causing still more floods and destruction. People are again the news. They are helping save each other from terrible peril, to endure terrible losses. Out in the Atlantic, Irma is blowing 120 miles per hour as her path heads toward a Central or North American landfall.

Our beautiful Planet Earth wants our help, too.

______________

Sometimes, I just need a good walk. Often, Aidan comes, too.

We saw a deer again.

The deer bounded away.

Aidan got this photo of a butterfly enjoying Wendy's Butterfly Bush.

One day, Marge and I picked up Pat and we went to see the Andrew Wyeth paintings at Brandywine Art Museum. We took a break from the satisfying art works and had our lunch on a bench along Brandywine Creek.

Pat and Marge.

Wendy sent along a picture of Toby demonstrating his appreciation for the sun.