Hi Mom,

I'm up early because I have people coming over this afternoon, and the house is quite a mess. I feel tired and almost wish I'd not arranged this first music "meetup" in more than six months, but I fear that if I had not gone ahead and set it up, I never would have got the group going again.

As Madelyn wrote me in a recent e-mail, "...with all the headlines of the morning paper, with the tragedy in Paris and the continuing steady flow of desperate refugees flooding into Europe, I realize how fortunate we all are, and how small our problems are."

Of course I'm sure it doesn't always look that way from your wheelchair! But you always were a person who could see the big picture.

After my handicraft "meetup" with the two ladies in the photo I sent in the last blog, I purchased a cold "Thai peanut chicken wrap" for lunch in Starbucks and spent several hours there: creating the blog that I sent yesterday, going through e-mail, Facebook, checking meetup messages, etc. It took longer than usual because I had not gone on there in several days.

Lyssa e-mailed some recent photos of Waylon, and I hope she sends them soon to your photo device. The most intense-looking eyes on a baby I have ever seen! His father has very intense eyes.

Someone called my name as I was sitting there, and it was a teacher whose classroom I'd worked in years ago. That was one of my favorite years as a school district employee, because there was an especially nice group feeling among all three of the Special Education teachers that year, the other classroom aide, and I.

This teacher once wrote me a story from his difficult childhood (he had an abusive father who would suddenly erupt in violent rages.) I had mentioned that I wanted some example of that kind of thing, so that I could write a scene about it for the drama club to perform. (The scene did not react the incident, but one of the characters describes it to another student.)

It was so good to see him looking so happy. He had a woman with him who looked like a nice, kind person.
 

Facebook had many posts about the tragedy in France, endemic were pledges of solidarity with France, many people changing their "profile photo" to show it overlaid with the a see-through version of the French flag. (Joan Gray and the Gray brothers did this, for example). But several other people I knew put posts on Facebook pointing out that as many people had been killed the day before in Beirut and no one had posted anything about having solidarity with those victims. Two friends posted messages saying how un-Islamic "Isis" is.

Love, Lennie

On my walk home, I enjoyed the beautiful scenery.

Love, Lennie