Alone

Tonight, I am home alone. A rare experience. Ellen left early this morning to  drive to Philadelphia to attend a funeral for her friend, Janet Mustin. She will spend the night with Wallace and return tomorrow (Monday) evening. Saturday evening, she and I drove to Northhampton to borrow the Feinland 's Toyota, so I would have a car today. We set our clocks and didn't get to sleep until after 3am, DST. Up at  6am. Short night!  I stayed up when Ellen left this morning to work on Carmina Burana, and then went to church in Guilford. The choir sang Bobby McFerrin's Twenty-Third Psalm, and Durufle's Ubi Caritas, two favorites. I stayed after church for a presentation on a book by Robert Putnam, titled, Our Kids: The American Dream In Crisis. One of our lay leaders, Dunham Rowley, made the presentation, and tied it in with issues we are facing with the children in our church and the local community. A really important issue.

After church, I came home, fixed one of the lunches Ellen lovingly prepared for me before she left (as she always does), did some more music practice, talked on the phone with my friend Paul Jones, who lives in D.C., and then hightailed it back downtown to Centre Church for a dramatic presentation, by heart, of the entire Gospel of Mark, by the minister there, Bert Marshall. It was powerful. Bert answered questions afterward, and then, John and Cynthia (who were also there), and I got supper together at the Coop, and I went to the Carmina rehearsal in Putney. It was for men only this time, working on the In Taberna movement, which is basically a bunch of drunken medieval monks singing their hearts out-quite fun to sing! But, boy, there are a lot of Latin words, and they are sung at breakneck speed. 

After that I came home and watched a fascinating Rick Steves program on The Holy Land, which covered Israel and Palestine in some depth. He said afterward that he had tried very hard to create a program that was fair to both sides, and that since both Israelis and Palestinians (some, not all) had been angered by the program, he figured he had probably found the middle ground. He was brave to attempt it, and it gave a very vivid and intimate glimpse of life in that very controversial part of the world. 

Now it's time for bed. It will feel lonely! But it's just for one night. 

Yesterday, Ellen and I found time for a walk, and were surprised to find a Witch-Hazel bush in bloom, though I guess some species are winter-bloomers. I'll close with that:

Witch-Hazel in bloom on Black Mtn. Rd.