November here.

" I said to the LORD, 'You are my Lord,
apart from you I have no good thing. " (Psalm 16.2)

Dear folk out there. (Are you?)

My mother wrote to me
that God has all the gifts I don't
and will supply where I lack.

I was trying to keep Him out
of a world where I didn't want to be;

I believed He was terribly disappointed
with whatever I was and am.

Rilke wrote: "I love you, gentlest of ways,
who ripened us as we wrestled with you."

I don't know how this is going to happen,
I don't know how.
But I love the little people,
and somehow, yes, must train and shape them for a classroom life,
(though what I want is to take them out running in fields, where your feet get caught in mud, and your fingers grip the grass, and your eyes see only God-made things for miles and miles and miles.)

I am so weary, and changed by the weariness.

I wrote yesterday a small, imperfect song. well, two and some bits. Here
is one, because I don't know
what else
to say. :

Fire of holiness,
Are you neat and mild,
Are you stoic and sensible
Or raging and wild ?

In the sweetest sense, You're wild,
all the beautiful I have ever known.
Vaster than my mind can reach
wider than my vision's field.

Deeper is Your loveliness and juster is Your justice,
Sweeter is Your sweetness than a word can hold. ....

From your fire I draw mildness,
In your fire it is found.
In what appears to me as wildness,
Peace and steadiness resound...

Deeper is Your loveliness and just-er is Your justice,
Sweeter is Your sweetness than a word can hold.

Part of fire, yes, their calmness; part of fire, my heart's cry.
Do your work to shape me, change me --
only You know who am I.

Holiness higher than all our words,
Not 'calm' or 'lively,'
but both, and more,
Teach which,
and when,
and what
to be
to me, walking here bound in by either and or.

Deeper is Your loveliness and juster is Your justice,
Sweeter is Your sweetness than a word can hold.

Job. (In both senses of the word?)

"Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:
'Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?....'"

It is I, Lord. I have darkened your counsel with words without knowledge.

"Brace yourself like a man; I will question you,

and you shall answer me.

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?

Tell me, if you understand.

Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

On what were its footings set,

or who laid its cornerstone--

while the morning stars sang together

and all the angels shouted for joy?... "

"No human being can withstand the effulgence of kabod [Hebrew. glory. weight]... Moses' request to see the kabod Yahweh is denied. He is told to cover his face while the glory passes, watching only as God departs. "I will make all my splendor [kabod] pass before you," says Yahweh, "and in your presence I will pronounce my name.... You canot see my face, for no one sees me and still lives" (Brennan Manning, quoting from Exodus 33, in Ruthless Trust, p.53).

"The manifestations of kabod -- the magnalia Dei--continue in an ever-expanding cosmos. Small wonder that ninety-four years ago the eminent biographer Canon Sheehan envisioned heaven as 'The never-ending unlocking of the inner chambers of God'" (Ruthless Trust, p.51).

A God with infinite chambers to unlock, a God of infinite beauty and wisdom and power and knowledge and understanding,
this God have I been questioning, as the way that I thought life and walking with Him should work
has been stripped away from me.

(I still don't understand.
I may not be happy with it.)
But I can be joyful in it
and persevere , if He will strengthen me,
and I can trust that He is still who He says He is,
that somehow that DOES incorporate Him loving me
and Him being all things beautiful.
I may not feel it
or see it,
but I can trust it.

Forgive me, Lord, for forgetting Your glory
, Your transcendent-ness

I know that you can do all things;
no plan of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?'
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.

Melanie's assignment.

Dear friends. I'm not up to writing much about the details of here right now. But I shall speak praise for a sweet weekend, a weekend away in the fall, a remembering that there are other ways of life out there, and a reminder of my passion for weakness. Strange passion? Don't know.

But at any rate, here I am, being forced to live it out in unexpected, in washing-over, in exhausting, constant ways, day in, day out.

I love my friend Melanie. And she did this on her blog. So I will too. To remember beautiful and silly things. To fly a little. To reach out and touch her hand. Pardon the poor formatting. Here we gooooo...... off to neverland -------

Pictures of:

1. the age you will be on your next birthday

2. a place to which you'd like to travel

3. your favorite place

4. Your favorite person (persons.)

5. Your favorite food

6. Your favorite animal

7. The town in which you were born

8. The name of a past pet

9. The first name of a past love

10. Your favorite color

11. Your first name

12. Your middle name

13. Your last name

to train up a child...

Have you got any thoughts on discipline, love,
and the balance between them?
And how they should appear in the definition of childhood,
and whether obedience and boundaries
must be taught and learned before grace can be understood or received?

I'm tired of 'being consistent,' of catching every 'misbehavior' in order to remain in control,
of having to stifle their silliness in order to maintain .... order.

oh how i hope it's not a horrible, harsh environment for them.
oh how i never wanted to be part of making such a place for children
oh how i miss just loving and being with.
I see the reasons for what I'm doing.
I know everyone in their lives can't be 'the fun one.' And for now, I don't get to be.
But I miss it.

Words? Thoughts? Helps?

I have been given visions of each of them individually as a deep man or woman of God
someday ;
I pray that somehow, in spite of me, and in spite of the groupness of it all, I will get to be a part of shaping them
in that direction.
I pray that they will flourish
and grow
and choose
and blossom
in that direction.

Day 3. And Abraham.

" So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we're given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, "Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own." If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift. "

Romans 4:1-5 in The Message. Thanks, Mom.

I sat in the park on the way home tonight,
and wrote, to God, before coming home and reading these verses from my mother,
something strangely parallel. :
That though I have trouble seeing anymore how I could one day be useful or apt in any way, in any thing, in any place...
it couldn't matter less. Because this is not about me. This whole
Life thing.
My job is to have eyes on Him, and to stay close to Him, and to follow after Him and worship Him. Not to look at myself.
I will not focus on my inabilities OR on my abilities, if there be any,
no, because I will not focus on me.
(Forgive me, Lord. For I have focused on me. )

This job is too big for me, by far. This job is so different from where my mind naturally and usually wants to go.
We will not be the Academically Best Kindergarten Class ever (unless that's the miracle You want to work). I will not be the Most Organized and Naturally-Gifted-at-Devising-Perfect-Smooth-Systems Teacher Lady ever. But I will love Jesus. And I will try hard. And then I will stop, and surrender. And I will trust Him to work miracles through and despite and within me.
Amen.

"It's better to have cold," (food, that is) said husky-voiced, matter-of-fact, bundle-of-energy, mini-Julio-Iglesias kindergartener Michael, "because when it's hot, everybody can win you." He means that if you have hot food, as I do at lunch time, you will always lose the food-eating race (which I engage him in to try to get him to finish his sandwich) to those who have cold food. "That's true," I said. "Good point." It's fun to see them draw conclusions and make logical pronouncements based on the ridiculous things you do each day.
You never know
what's going to stick.

How funny. How strange. Day 1 of Kindergarten.

You know things like "The First Day of School,"
so mythologized,
so anticipated,
so... almost hallowed in the halls of life experience and life stories?

I feel like I just gave a bunch of children a fake one.
A fake First Day of School.


I feel this way because it's me who made it all, and I know myself.
I don't feel Official like the teachers of my youth felt to me.
I feel like they can see through me, the little ones,
that I am just a Person,
not a Teacher.
But so it is.


Today was.... chaotic.
Five of my children were absent. And this led me to discover that one had been moved to pre-K just the day before, and I hadn't been told yet.

School lunches arrived in our classroom 50 minutes late. I tried to fill time while they moaned about being starving. I asked if they knew what 'whining' meant and taught them the valuable fact that complaining to the air does not make things come any faster. I read them a story. We played the 'raise your hand if...' game. Finally we got up and played. And then the lunches came.


When we went down to recess, another class was in the play area. We waited again.
When we went to the bathroom, other classes were already in the bathroom.

Some children brought ten tons of supplies that I had to dig out of their backpacks. There is no storage space in my classroom. Some children brought no supplies.
I can't really remember which were which. A more Effective Person would have made an instant checklist.


I began to wonder if a gift for teaching, in the elementary and middle school levels at least, is really a gift for winning attention and for effective crowd control. Neither of these do I have naturally.


My favorite part of today was when we prayed for my friend Wesley, who lives on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. We looked at his picture and at a picture he finger-painted for me, of the concrete arches of Rio under which we Word Made Flesh folk met with the people of the streets.
"Please give him a bed," said Jemimah.
"Please give him a lot of people and a lot of money so he can buy food and a lot of love," said Julia.
"Thank you for..." and Daniel proceeded to recount all the things he could remember that we'd done today.


Please pray that the need for behavior-molding and crowd control and correction
would not take over;
that by the miracles of them learning to pay attention,
and me becoming a better attention-getter and keeper,
we will have the space for me to really look deeply at them and love them,
and deal with them as the individuals that they are,
to love as Christ loves
each member of
my motley band.


Being a one-on-one sort of person
May be the reason I've felt so ill-suited to all of this. To teaching.
Please pray that that gift would be used somehow even in the midst of all this.
And that all this
wouldn't drown out that gift
by drowning me in discipline routines
and details.


Here is our room (now with two largeish carpets and with names on the door, not in the photographs :-) ). Thank you, brilliant Liz, for making it so.
They knocked on the door of the Crazy House today, and called to the people inside whom we cannot see... tomorrow we put the first bird on what I've decided is, among other things, a Birthday Tree.

i live in the bronx.

This city,

New York City,

makes me cry.

The forms upon forms upon forms of lostness and Christlessness,

the hard faces, the weight that seems to press down on every pair of shoulders. Weight weight weight weight weight. . .

like everyone has all the bills they owe and all the family and job responsibilities and all the anger and loneliness and resentment and hardship of a lifetime

hardened into a mask

which they wear all day long,

and no longer know how to take off.

Today I was down at the bottom of Manhattan,

and in the middle, and here in the Bronx. Today I walked a lot. And took long subway rides. And carried heavy groceries.

And how strange this place is. Unlike any other, in the way it feels to me.

And there is noise

and there are a thousand different worldviews

all clashing into a cloud of chaos

until the only value left that everyone believes in

is survival,

is: not physically hurting someone else;

and, maybe, if you're rich enough, environmentalism.

May I tell you?

This is a hard place to be poor.

and this is a hard place to be alone.

Was Rio like this? And I just didn't feel it,

because I was surrounded so closely and supportively

by a community that shouted out "KINGDOM" and refused to be hopeless

and was determined to see the world in light of God's promises

and character?

(Did I not feel it also

because it was 'foreign'?

Because of the layer of outsider's perspective that a different language adds? The alien-planetness that gives me the privilege of contemplation and analysis ...

Because of the hundreds of little words and conversations I missed

that here, I hear without trying?

And because I was not plugged into, aware of, the mass media culture there, hearing the messages people there hear...? )

Which way is the truth?

Rio was -- is -- a city full of violence, full of problems, darkness, spiritual oppression,

of course.

But I did not feel there

like I feel here.

Please pray for this city. Please come to this city

and help to transform it with the salt and light of Jesus.

Please pray that it does not step on me and squash me,

that it does not form for me a mask

as well;

that I do not lose

(most precious, precious) Hope.

I am in a job now. this is hard for me. i have been privileged to live a contemplative, fairly intuitive and improvisational day-to-day life these past years.

A life of being out and about,

walking around,

talking to people,

thinking about culture.

Praying a lot.

No human standards to live up to, few deadlines, loose schedules.

No spirit of competition;

a feeling of freedom

and joy. Easy to trust that God was everywhere and that He would fulfill His plans; all I had to do was listen

and obey...

I loved it.

I think that I thought

my crumbling-all-to-pieces days were maybe, just maybe,

behind me...

then this.

A job that is very structured

With people who seem to have, and enjoy, "Right way, Wrong way" labels for all things -- or at least "Better way, ineffective way"--

People who are very different parts of the Body than I. And sometimes I find that I've begun to fear that Jesus sees everything their way -- that it's right

and I'm so wrong. This systematic way of looking

and living,

the extreme busy-ness

.

I confess

I long for freedom.

I do not want to lose my belief that God loves and uses the foolish things.

I am not a person who is about

Achievement.

I tried, long ago, to be one of those people,

to keep up with those people. And I did.

And I was an empty shell,

and there was no depth to the world,

and no depth to God in my spirit.

Why would You take me back into such a land, oh Lord?

I do not understand.

And after giving and showing me a life that fit my heart

so well.

Please don't let me stop believing in that life's existence

and its reality and value.

Here, I am broken down to childlikeness,

not impressive in any way. Impressing no one,

by any stretch of the imagination.

not shining Jesus the way I know I want to,

and quietly ashamed

that so much could 'backslide' so soon

and so completely.

But You, O Lord, are my strength and my song.

But You, O Lord, are still You, and still died for me.

But You, O Lord, have lost none of Your strength, Your impressiveness, and Your power.

Whatever I once had

was completely by Your grace,

a gift for a time -- a miraculous work completely of God.

Whatever is gone now

is Yours to have, and to restore in Your time.

I am not in my element.

I have become last.

I need You to do this job

through me.

I need You to do this job through me.

I am humbled to the ground

I don't know how to get up

.

Please bless this place through me somehow

Please bless this place, these people.

Please bless and form these children somehow.

I do not know this place. I do not know what You want to do here.

Do it

please.

Break me down,

even those things that I thought You wanted and approved of in me,

those things I thought were permanent now, and to be joys longlasting.

If You want to take them down, and take them away,

they are Yours.

May I ask for them back

someday?

I do, Lord, I do long for happiness. For joy.

Give me, please, joy that sings louder than the suffering

, even though the suffering can still be heard.

Somehow.

I talked to you

years ago,

and months ago,

and weeks ago,

about becoming poor. About experiencing the life that so many live.

i think it is happening. I did not think I would have to be so alone.

But poverty is often loneliness.

I did not think I would have to do something so scary and so oppressive to me.

But poverty is often in scary and oppressive circumstances, and leads to having to take scary and oppressive jobs.

I loved our life in poverty in Brazil. Because we were together -- our team. Our small band

of 'new friars' .

I believe You call to loving community. I believe it's a good gift, and Your ideal for us.

I can't wait to work in it fully

again.

But for now you seem to have This Other in mind for me. Do Your will, oh Lord. Pull me through, oh Lord. Prove Yourself God in the midst of it all, oh Lord.

And please. Please wipe away the shame coloring my heart, shame for not handling this with a grin on my face and great hope pouring out of my mouth; shame for not being strong here;

did I think I was impervious? Super Transition Woman, able to leap between sin-struck cultures in a single bound, smiling all the while, never feeling, never broken ?

i am small and i am human

and i can't do this.

AND YOU CAN.

moment by moment,

carry me. and help me to trust

in Your love.

Can you, friends, help me to love this city?

Talk back. and pray. and come, please come.

Subsequent Travels. 1.

Washington, D.C.

Yes, but where am I?

Struggling.

Caught up in waves of feeling, and permeated by so much questioning that I feel I am becoming a Walking Question.

Lovely city. Remarkable place. Blank slate of the 'write-on-me' nation. Nest of idealists (and den of those who've lost their ideals but kept their power.) and planners and do-ers and talkers. Museum-land. Which makes me happy as a clam.

But here I am, all at sea, missing a Rio-lifestyle that is not validated by what's all around me. I have no expertise. I have no title or profession. I have no Project or Plan. I cannot claim to be an expert even in what I've lived in the last four months. Not even close.

So where do I belong? Not wanting 'professionalism', if it means focus on business over people, if it means no room to breathe, if it means putting Jesus in a box and pretending we know what we're doing. But feeling accused. By an efficient world,
of being lazy
or naive
or 'unrealistic.'

It's a private battle, one of constant petty skirmishes in my heart and head -- there's no loud external opposition, no earthshattering news to report to you, or stories to tell.

I don't want to be stupid. Don't want to be a baby clamoring for my own way, or a coward or a sluggard trying to evade the sharpness of the competitive world. Even 'charity' is competitive in such a world, it seems. . . But. But I cannot live well like this. I cannot enter this fray. Not now. My heart cries and thirsts and aches for a life with room in it. Room to live out love and listen to the Spirit, room to be 'unprofessional,' free from a title and possessions. This is not for everyone. Job titles, and organization, and professionalism, and possessions are not evil. But I cannot survive them
yet. Maybe someday. But for now I have to accept grace and believe that the thirst in me is part of my call. Is how I'm being called.

Called to be part of a brotherandsisterhood of broken people who claim no other titles and who enter into lives with poor people knowing only that their call is to listen and to love: to listen to both God and the people. To love both God and the people. To listen to and love one another. And trusting that 'the work' will flow out of that if God wills it.

There is this title of a book I've never read that bounces around my brain so frequently.
'Brothers, We Are Not Professionals.'

As I war with shame
and try to discern the Holy Voice;
As I wander a city alone,
meet a country,
settle in the land of notknowing for awhile;

I long for your prayers, and, I confess, for some validation

that a call to a life like I had in Rio
Is valid. Is good. Is acceptable. Might even be useful.
Above all, I want to be obedient -- even if it takes me into what smells to me of misery.
So pray openness in my heart, and joy in my days,
And above all, closeness to Him.

You see, I know nothing but Jesus.
( And suddenly I remember

that that's okay. )

We are in a battle.

Don't forget. Please don't forget.

You live on a small planet  where suffering is woven through all around you.

Don't forget. Please don't forget.

I can walk around filtering out the colors of light I prefer not to see.

I can leave "activism" to the "extreme people" and sacrifice to the missionaries.

Or I can recognize the radical call that it is to be Christ's. To be loved.

And live a life of compassion.

It's short,  this life.  Home's coming.

Meanwhile,   I want to show pieces of it here,

and I want to clear out that which would distract me from the ultimate Beauty.

And that which would distract me from the imperfection of the war zone in which we dwell

for a time.

There is love. There is beauty. There is Beethoven's 5th, and there are twinkling lights, and there is the sweetness of real companionship. There is rest. Thank you, dear and tender Lord, for all your artworks.

But dear ones, there is war, as well. May the beauty and the love be our weapons in the battle;

may we leave our baby-comforts  and walk out to meet those with no comfort at all.

We are loved, so loved, by our Maker and Purchaser. He came in and sat with us.

Let's go out and sit with them.  And fight for the beauty 

they don't even know they have.

Please help me stay clean, streamlined and simple. Please help me live love, and please help me know Jesus.

I'll help you too, 

if you want.

Pedra Lisa.

Up top,

at city's peak,

in a small square church

all white tile

white plaster

white stools within,

high ceilings, and windows framing

spectacular views

of the city beautiful, the city surreal,

the city extreme;

up top

in this white room

strange levels of possibility emerge .

a dream-laboratory

where smile elicits smile

and innocent questions rise from yet-innocent hearts;

a nether-room where one sees

how life on a steep city hillside

in the simplest of conditions

could be -- (can be) -- Beautiful.

sunlight through a window casting perfect faces with pale orange,

whispers passed through the same window

and a boy passes rocks in for the teacher.

clean slate,

world apart.

Jesus is there.

up top

at city's peak.

Rio.

mountains and sea and a Jesus in the distance
and a Jesus right with me -- the real one.
long, slow bus rides and a mind working in a language not its own,
a mind wrapping itself around a rhythm it's just meeting,
trying to pour into it, trying to speak out through it,
sometimes finding a way to flow,
and sometimes resisting with the stubborn outward push of a strong-willed child.

City I live in and hardly know.
It's the details
that catch me
and stick.

for: is there anything in this world
more absorbing and worth delighting in
than one child?
All these wild, precious wonderworks of art
running around on two legs.
I could get lost in the face of one.
(what is a city when there are these marvels to be known?)
In the blessed tenderness found in secret pockets,
in barely hidden pools
uniquely configured in each dear one,
like deep and beautiful networks of
lavish caverns
barely discovered
, in each little treasureperson.
is there any easier place to get lost
than in close-faced conversation with a child?
Where am I? I hardly know
except that I am in her eyes
and hearing her newly-minted mind pour out
like water and music.

Will I know this city,
understand its reasons and rhythms, patterns and purpose ?
i thought i would. But now I'm wondering
if what I'll know of it
is
her
and him
and her and her
and him
and him
and they will be
my Rio.

book.

read (please.) !

a treat

http://www.ubu.com/sound/komar.html

The above link will take you to something that made me laugh long and hard. And makes me laugh just thinking of parts of it now: The "scientifically" engineered most-wanted-song and least-wanted-song. I assume we're talking about in-America here. Just listen. All the way through. Then come back and tell me about your delight.

This seems like an odd thing to post about less than 48 hours before I leave the country. But when is it ever a bad time to spread a little happiness?

Maybe I'll get to post here while I'm in Brazil... or maybe I'll just have to stick to the email updates. If you want them, and you haven't gotten the first one, you should email me.

I'm well. This is going to be good. As all life in Him is, it will be good, truly and deeply and for the long haul.

And this one's for Bonnie: a picture from our week of joy last month. A week that will be a mental reservoir of sweetness for years to come.

a day in the current life

• woke up around 8:30 and donned all green (easiest thing to do when dressing quickly).
  ate a bowl of cereal and headed off to take care of a bunch o' kiddos at church during their moms' Bible study. Josh and Heather came along today. Makes it much quicker, more fun, and easier.
• Wacky times with tots. Lego rocketships, squid drawn with crayons, a four-year-old who reports that his brothers are ghost-hunters who live in the church. He was a little delirious with his own energy and laughter at the time.
• Back home at noon for a lunch of leftover deliciousness made by Heather. spinach noodle casserole with broccoli and cheese. And a bit o' cold salmon. Eating while watching the rest of the old version of Around the World in 80 Days (begun late last night).
• Josh and Heather head out for work. I eat too much chocolate.
• Melissa calls. Delightful.
• Write an email to new Brazil teammates;
  am sufficiently motivated and convicted to actually sit down and do some Portuguese lessons with ye olde tape player. Hours spent thusly. Eu vou ficar ate as duas. Voce vai sair agora? Nao, nao vou. Eu estou com fome. (I'm going to stay until two o'clock. Are you going to leave now? No, I'm not. I'm hungry!) This kind of stuff seems useful, but when I sit down to email my Brazilian friend, I find I still lack the skills to say the simple things I want to say to her. But by golly, I can ask her her name and tell her when I'm leaving. I can even ask her if she's married and if she wants to go out with 'that young man.' My tapes say they're how diplomats learn to speak fluently. Apparently diplomats have slightly different priorities than I do.
• Motivational snack: chai in soy milk. Yum.
• Dinner time around 7. Delicious HEB (Texas grocery store) tortillas and taco cheese, with delicious HEB chipotle salsa. Kate's classic comfort dinner.
• Time for email. They're piling up a bit.
  And it occurs to me I haven't put anything on the blog for quite awhile. So here we are.

Childcare jobs, Portuguese learning, random trip preparations (leaving Feb. 7), time with J&H, phone calls with friends, email, reading, old movies. This is the present, and really, it's very nice. Not a permanent kind of life, but a lovely interim life. Thanks for praying, you who are. I feel I'm being cradled by the Master. Treated tenderly and whisper-sung to, and given grace. harsher reality lies ahead. Big things. Much thought and vivid experience. Yet unless I make myself afraid, I feel... ready. Not prepared. Who could be? But ready because it's right and I am carried in the hand of an all-knowing, encompassing-all-time Abba.

So I'll just thank Him for the soft times
and ask Him that my brain would not be so mushy by the time they're over that I'll be useless for the real stuff.
How kind He is being; I can hardly believe it. (But how can I not??)

Recently read: A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon VanAuken; The Thief Lord, by Cornelia Funke.
Currently reading: Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, by Jim Cymbala; Less Than Two Dollars a Day, by Kent A. Van Til; Return of the Prodigal Son, by Henri Nouwen; numerous other things.
New listens: Gotta Serve Somebody--The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan; The Builder and the Architect (Sandra McCracken).
Classic listening: Billy Elliott soundtrack; Doc & Dawg; The Inkspots; Tom Waits ('You got to come on up to the house...")
Recent watchings: The Pirates of Penzance (with Kevin Kline, Rex Smith. FanTAStic.); Alien; Damsel in Distress (Fred Astaire. Lovely. Funny.); bits of Ken Burns' The Civil War (could watch his documentaries forever.)