This may be a Sweet Autumn Clematis, at least it seems like the one I found on a garden site. In person, it looks like a huge cloud of falling stars, has a lovely, sweet aroma and is really the only new thing blooming in the garden right now.
This weekend we held our annual Prophet of Peace Award ceremony. An award given to a person or group that exemplifies our corporate commitment through their life. This year we honored Alice Edwards, PhD, from Mercyhurst University. Alice, a professor of Spanish, has spent her life in classrooms, working with local immigrants and in developing multi-cultural relationships for her students and with other groups both in Erie and through her visits to Latin America.
Some recent awardees were: Sister Simone Campbell, healthcare; SONS of Lake Erie (Save our Native Species), lake fishing, water conservation, and care for children; Linda King director of SAFENET, a refuge for women; Kelly Armour, multi-cultural musician, especially with children; Edwina Gateley, spirituality writer; and environmentalist Mike Campbell.
I drove into work a little later one day this week and because of that 1/2 hour difference I was behind a school bus in the township where I live. It stopped four times in front of me and each time I witnessed a parent, one man and three women, sending their elementary children off for the day.
Waves and kisses accompanied each child. It was so Norman Rockwell-ish and warmed my heart quite a bit, a hopeful sign to balance the non-hopeful things I've witnessed recently in our national political scenes.
If children can start their days like this, maybe there is hope that with basic love and kindness in the world goodness and care for each other will prevail.
Here's one of the nicest photos of our North Windows, from the outside, that I've seen. Everything has to be perfectly right to catch this scene: inside lights all on and a clear night outside...and one night this week it happened. Thanks to my friend Cheryl for catching this.
Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz was in Erie last week, too. It was a perfect late summer day here and his presentation was right on the Bayfront at Liberty Park. A number of our sisters attended and they said that he raved about the venue: the water, the boats, the view of the Peninsula and the couple thousand people who turned out to hear him.
Pennsylvania and Erie County are labeled as purple states--sometimes going Republican and sometimes Democratic. The city is almost always Democratic, but the rest of the county sways back and forth. Will be interesting to see in a couple months how we, as one of the 6-7 swing states, go.
MSNBC featured Liz Cheney all weekend because of her recent political statements. Liz will be here in Erie October 17 at the Warner Theater. Should be a terrific time, just 3 weeks before the elections.
Since most blogs, are personal--either in sharing ideas and thoughts or just daily goings on, I am taking the opportunity of doing just that in mine this week.
Being on vacation, which means living in a much more relaxed and flexible schedule than normally, I took the opportunity to watch all four nights of the DNC last week...all of them lasted until near midnight! Even though I am admittedly a Democrat in my philosophic leanings, I still found the whole event outstanding in its presentations, energy, organization, and creativity. Whoever the producers and idea people were they really did a wonderful job of presenting the philosophy of the party in many and various ways, all of them highly interesting, diverse and extremely relatable to the audience.
Although I am in awe of the speaking skills of both Barack and Michelle Obama (of which the next day's CNN headline was something like: Michelle Obama gave a master class in oratorical presentation) the ones that really moved me were all the "ordinary people" that agreed to tell a little part of their life experience in some area or another that fit into the platform of the candidates of the Democrats this year.
As always, it will be fascinating to see how things "shake out" over the next 10 weeks.
The San Diego Zoo just introduced the public to its new Pandas. The young male and young female are the first new pandas that the US has been able to acquire in 20 years. In case they run out of bamboo, they can make a quick call to southern New Jersey where I am spending some vacation time and pick some up here.
On our daily walk on the 10-mile long Middle Township Trail, we pass this beautiful grove of bamboo, right there in the middle of nothing special. It's quite an unusual scene. I guess I'd better send a text to San Diego and tell them of this emergency cache, just in case.
Another vacation sharing: if you're into Wordle maybe you'd like to join us with these words and see how you do---let us know if you ever get it in "2."
Here's what we're playing for the last 5 months of the year, join us: August-Auger; September-Sepia; October-Clout; November-Novel; and December-Decal.
