Lesson 680: Second Language

 Jo estet olvasok!

In case you were wondering,

that's good evening in Hungarian.

The evening is cold here in Erie, PA

hideg.

A few of the sunrises this week were glorious

dicsoseges napkelte

The sun and the moon had a few minutes to speak,

each going her separate way

before they meet again.

Moon

hold

Nature is my second language.

I love all things outdoors,

even in Erie January.

Erik and I patrol the northern border every weekend.

No Canadians invading.

Erie has proven there is beauty in the bleak.

Such peace in the dormancy.

When I return home from the great outdoors,

my second language becomes Dog.

So much for the winter tree.

The long haul of winter for Erieites begins now.

The holiday fun is over.

Normally we really look forward to basketball,

but it's a lackluster season filled with rules and worry.

I filled the Lamp Post with warmth

hoping for a cozy feel.

If you sent me a Christmas card,

they are still up,

and I look at them daily.

My January joy returned to the countertop.

I bought it in 2001

and never found the right sized photo to fit.

For twelve years Ellen thought it was her.

I don't remember that snowsuit....

Trickery!

trukk

These bring warmth to my home, too.

So hot they made the pages of Taste of Home magazine

and enough to not post the photo correctly.

My second language will always be learning.

I love to learn things and share what I learn with others.

No better time like a pandemic to learn something new.

I'll be starting study to earn my next teaching certificate--

English as a Second Language!

I'm very excited to help others learn this crazy language.

No sooner did I share the news with my parents,

did they resurrect a family scrapbook.

My parents are one part historians

and one part museum cureators.

They found this 1957 newspaper article.

featuring none other than Grandma O.

She was a teacher, too!

How cool!

Milyen klassz!

Enjoy the weekend, Readers.

Eloise

Lesson 679: January 6th

Hello, Readers.

 It's the second weekend of the new year 

and hopes for a positive start to 2021 have been dashed

buy a the Capitol building terrorized by rioters.

The afternoon of January 6th 

interrupted an ordinarily bleak day in Erie, PA.

A non descript weather day

that left the pups wanting to watch the cold drizzle

from the couch rather than go romp in it.

It was a strange day for sure.

The dogs woke me up at 4:30 am  and I decided to stay up

 and read 35 assigned pages 

of a book I needed to complete for a virtual book club that evening.

The book is Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson.

I'm known in my bubbles for being the town crier,

and rightly so.

This book is a must read for any American.

Go get it without hesitation.

Later that afternoon hate overtook Washington DC,

and I returned home to this ominous sky.

The sun shone brightly as it prepared to set in the west

onto a blackened storm sky in the east,

igniting nature aflame.

I don't recall what I ate for dinner on Wednesday night,

if anything at all.

We watched the news as a family 

and tried our best to talk things through.

7:00 pm I logged into the book club zoom meeting with

22 other participants.

The discussion leader was a well spoken and articulate high school teacher,

a nice looking younger man ,clearly excited to discuss Wilkerson's work 

about racial disparities.

I didn't really think about this gentleman being African American

until the group was hacked by an outside person

who kept shouting Nigger.

I was at a loss.

A loss for words.

A loss for breath.

A loss for a hope in humanity.

But the unflappable way this teacher was able to carry on

was the most heroic thing I've witnessed recently.

Me and the 22,

a mixed screen of squares

representing different ages

and different races,

all living in different parts of the country.

All sharing a our similar feelings of disbelief.

On January 6th,

I'm not sure why Penny woke me up to pee at 4:30am

 and I read Caste,

 Or why I told anyone who crossed my path to buy the book.

Or why those fools were able to get into the Capitol.

Or why the hacked club meeting closed the day.

What I do know 

is that I gained new perspectives from all of it.

It is a day that changed me forever.

Grandma must have known I was down,

and I needed some beets to cheer me up.

She even makes picked eggs

and a whole separate container of just beets for me.

I liked them way before Dwight Schrute made them a thing.

The rest of the week I hopped between Caste

and this book.

An invisible life sort of sounds good right now.

I just finished this book.

It was really, really good.

I gave up reading these just started watching the series on Netflix.

It is rare that I'd report this,

but the made for tv version is way better

than the books.
So are writing assignments of most sixth graders.

Ellen showed me how to make a collage for my laptop screen.

That made me happy.

I had planned to write about goals 

and reveal my choice for my Word of the Year.

It didn't feel right.

Maybe because I don't feel right.

And surely because the world isn't right.

We'll save goal talk for next week.

For now,

I'll end here, 

with these sweet images.

Can't we all use a few more sweet images?
Eloise