A restorative day

Today I really took it easy! I was awake pretty early, and I stayed in bed until almost noon, working on Wordle, Quordle and Spelling Bee. I did something I had never done before and really didn't think hardly possible - I completed Quordle in just five turns, which means I entered the first word (which was"ARGUE"), and then found the right word the first try in each quadrant, bang, bang, bang, bang! Wow! I think there had to be some luck in that, but I also gave each one a lot of thought. The first one I solved had three yellow letters - "A," "G." and "U," in that order, in positions 2, 3, and 4. I entered "GAUNT" as my guess, and it was right! It could just as well have been "LAUGH." There are undoubtedly other words it could have been. "GAUNT" was the first one I came up with that was possible, and it was right. The same for the other three words (TITAN, APNEA and NINNY). The last quadrant, I was looking at __ I N N __. I suspect that "NINNY" might be the only word that would fit into that pattern (you can only use the letters that are left to you to use. A, E, G, P, R, T and U had all been ruled out in that quadrant. So, for example, TINNY was not an option). Anyway - I was amazed. It made up for the fact that in Wordle I had to use all 6 lines to get the right word. That's better than total failure, but it isn't great. I aim for three or four, and that's what I usually get. As you can see, I'm really into these word games! I got up a bit before noon and had a lovely breakfast on the deck. Then John csme over at about 2pm, and we talked for close to three hours. That was really nice, sitting on the deck, listening to the birds and the wind in the trees, and talking about this and that (our health, summer plans, contemplative ecology, what's happening in his and Cynthia's working lives, our pending decisions on what kind of heating system to install as a backup to the wood stove, etc.). One thing that came out was a book he found on a website that was a free download - a study of Thomas Merton as a "radical ecologist." It's by Donald St. John, and it is pretty amazing what Merton was thinking back in the 1950's and 1960's. He was WAAAY ahead of his time. John was excited to find it and feels confirmed in his own thinking - he is not a total "outlier." He feels that a lot of what Merton was saying could have come out of his own mouth. But much of it is found only in his journals - it was not published before his death in 1968. So the public was largely unaware. More's the pity!

The book John told me about