October...2011

I have been 10 years with ERT...13 with DOB...it has been 30 since WSIA FM...

OCTOBER...AND THE LEAVES ARE STRIPPED BARE OF ALL THEY WEAR...DO I CARE...

It really is fall. I look back on a wealth of experience and wax with melancholy. Through the miracles of technology our pasts are no longer consigned to mere memory or moments captured in fading photographs enshrined on silver nitrate. Our friends from high school and before...and after...are now Face-Booked and Linked-In on My-Space...people we never knew had interest in us now say hello as if for the first time. The whole of a life's experience never leaves us, but is condensed, like a fine liquor, heady and intoxicating as we revel in the life lived, the loves lost, the loves gained, the dreams that remain...the dreams just that...fantasy...and the harsh halo of reality meshed with day to day onerous life of constant value. I pray every night giving thanks...to what ever all-in-all God, if you will, for my existence...for all it is and all it is not...I give thanks. And those who did not come with-in arms length for whom I still lust...and for those whom I've held in my arms and will ever love...my heart feels full and heavy, like a ewer overflowing with fresh cream and milk.

I just want to tell all of you in this moment, where you read these words and for a second join with my thoughts in this most incongruous and intimate of universes, that I... I am truly, truly, blessed.Thank you for your friendship past and present. Thank you for your thoughts and well wishes and know I send the same to you and yours...in our hours or need...we always have each other.

"Well, I'm back." Sam Gamgee

It is comforting to know that at my advanced age there are still experiences yet to be had that are life altering. Our international travel to England, I trust, will be the first in a long line of journeys that lift the veil from our mundane, day-to-day existence long enough for a real look at the wide world. While travel was exhilarating, it was also hard work. The rewards we hope to share, Jennifer with her students, friends, and family and I with all of you. But instead of boring you with the details, I will just post photos from the journey and urge you all, if you have a passion for Shakespeare and his theatre as it was originally presented, then by all means take the trip. I let my camera do the site-seeing. Often just raising it above my head and letting it see and record the places we were passing through.I took almost five hundred photos. Don't worry, I will only bother you with the best.