I’m reading Steve Jobs on my Kindle which reminds me of Europe with you and packing light and repacking light from hostel to hostel. The compactness of it all. This morning I showered as your Israeli soap grew paper thin in my hand. I knew this day would come when the scent of the promised land would slip through my fingers into eternity.

‘In recent memory the round table had seated such royalty as Bob Dylan, Bob Neuwirth, Nico, Tim Buckley, Janis Joplin, Viva, and the Velvet underground.'
-- Patti Smith, Just Kids

Dylan’s songs let us in. They are his butler, impeccably dressed, astute, well versed in the bard’s wishes. Oddly, this butler lets anyone enter who rings the bell.

Worn wood bleachers, shade and sun.

Camp kids, kickball, home run.

One girl slides in the dust and jumps up

announcing through gap tooth grin,

It didn't hurt. I'm OK!

Annie Oakley squint, outlaw braids

are OK too.

They dance, with her, back into the game.

It's a pretty day. Sun dry and not hot either. After swim workout, Micky decided, 'we should all go have a picnic lunch.' After which we all sped off to our non-picnic obligations.

I just got back from Europe. My sister, Pam, thought it would be great to spread the riches of those weeks over a year instead of spending our 'wow' time all in a heap.

CLEVELAND (March 10, 2011) Local artists Colleen Clark, dancer, and Susan Weber, storyteller/musician have launched a new school assembly program, Dance! Tell! Celebrate Me! The performance for Kindergarten through sixth graders explores how we express ourselves through the arts as a way to celebrate our bodies, our minds and who we are inside.

A little kid at my school assembly grinned up at me after the show. ‘You remind me of somebody I know!’ he chirped. ‘Who?’ asked I. ‘My Gramma!’

It wasn’t the first time my internal chronometer got a jolt of sudden aging. My dad’s friend told me one day I looked more and more like Frieda, my paternal grandmother he’d known as a child.

All this grandma talk can get a girl cranky in the bones.

What do a Chicago dog school, a Pakistani murder and a Tiger Mom have in common, and why do I write this out in cursive?

My dear father knows a great deal about frugality, magnanimity, cheese and bees. He can distinguish himself in a card game, tossing out helpful tips and random quips, all the while creaming his opponents. He’s aggregated funny and wise, humble and proud, stoic and wry into his crossword puzzler’s brain over ninety plus fruitful years.

The challenge and lament of kindergarten teachers the week before Christmas strikes a winsome chord in me as I wind down from a spate of arts residencies in far flung public schools. Ponder days disappeared from my date book mid Fall. Early excursions o’er gray interstates to small Ohio towns took my imagination elsewhere.