Almost Pictureless Monday Musing

A picture from my visit with Grace Lee.  We are holding up her prize winning poem, which I will publish on The Strait Line later this week.

I know.

I should be using my phone camera more to take pictures of my weekends, especially if I'm going to do these weekend review/Monday musings.  I know that stories with pictures get more page views. I would like to criticize our barely reading public, but heck, when I'm browsing the internet, I'm probably the same way.  I need a picture or pictures to draw me in.

I should have a picture of Alison dressed up as the Weeping Falcons fan.  Or myself in an Hawaiian shirt and Detroit baseball cap as Magnum P.I. with a thyroid condition.  Or Benjamin with a decorated box over his head, that most tweens and some young adults knew right away was Creeper from Minecraft, but that younger children and older adults thought was "Mr. Boxhead."  But I didn't even get my camera out.

We had hordes of colorfully dressed children come to our house Thursday night (they did not have trick or treat on Friday, Halloween, because football is sacred), so many that once again, despite better planning than last year, we still did not make it until the end.  We ran out of candy with about twenty minutes left in trick or treat time.  And I got pictures of none of it.

The picture that I am using for this post is a good one, taken by my friend and fellow Writer's Guild member, Julianna Lacefield, as part of our visit to see Grace K. Lee, our 86 year old poetry contest winner.  She has a nice apartment in the Assisted Living part of Baptist Village.  She has a great collection of stories that she has written about her life, and read several of them to us.  She has a great way with words, has a wonderful sense of humor, and is a very good, animated reader.  I look forward to her attending some Writer's Guild meetings.

The event where our family dressed up was our church's Halloween event, the Holy Ghost Weenie Roast.  It included an actual church service with scripture readings, a delicious weenie filled supper, and the first time ever Alison and I had been involved in Trunk or Treat.

I would like to give a shout out to my Sunday school class at Grace Episcopal Church.  It is truly a remarkable, open class, with freedom of expression, and a discussion of a variety of religious and spiritual topics.  There are hundreds of Sunday School classes in our area, I imagine, but this almost certainly is the one with the widest range of Christian inquiry and exploration.  It is a spirit filled inspiration, and my most important hour of the week.  Newcomers are welcome - indeed, celebrated.

Neither the Detroit Lions nor the Atlanta Falcons lost this weekend.  They didn't play,  It was their bye-week. The Michigan Wolverines were on the rare winning side this week, beating Indiana.  This helped renew their playoff hopes and, ahh, who am I kidding?  The season is still in shambles, but the win was nice.  Georgia, on the other hand, whoah, what a disappointment.  No college playoffs for them!

The media seems to be communicating that the Republicans will win the Senate.  They let me know this at every turn.  It seems completely irrational that this should be so, but I guess we have to go through it.  Politics is cyclical (in case of our country's midterms compared to Presidential elections - REALLY cyclical), so there may be time to straighten some things out.   The loss in time to combat climate change may be fatal, however.  Conservative voters, good luck in explaining to your grandchildren and great-grandchildren why they can no longer go outside without a protective suit on, or why the great cities of Miami and New York City are now underwater, or why the food bowl is now the dust bowl, or why hurricanes accelerated by the warming, increasingly dead ocean now have the force to wipe out whole states.  Tell them why while you try to explain how your hatred of gay marriage or not wanting everyone to have a right to healthcare was more important than the very viability of the planet.  Good luck with that.

Yeah, I know.  Politics.  What are you gonna do?  It's me.

Until next time,

T. M. Strait