Misc

1. Celebrating 37 Days,
Life is a Verb - (37Days.typepad.com/37days/2008/04/turns-out-life.html - On 37 Days today in her 500th post Patti tells the story of her new book, Life is a Verb.

2.
Today I drove down Kensington Parkway on my way home. On the corner at Rock Creek Park a straight-backed woman Park Ranger sat on a bronze colored horse surveying the traffic. I noticed a small horse trailer parked on a near-by gravel pull off and it stuck me funny - the Ranger drove the horse to work. Old and new co-existing

3. Telling stories
Telling stories today at a small Catholic elementary school. Sunlilght flooded te large multi-purpose room when fresh faced students wearing maroon plaid uniforms filed in. "I liked your stories." from a first grade boy as he walked past me. "You really held their attention." from the first grade teacher. And they lifted my spirits with their attention and delighted smiles. Its an even exchange.

4. City Mouse and County Mouse

Watching a 1966 movie - a room filled with young women wearing bee-hive hairdos reminds me of my special bee hive up-do that I wore to New York City when Jim and I went with a medical group from Chapel Hill in 1964. There was so much hair spray holding my hair in place that it felt like a metal helmet. It did not dent when I lrested my head on the pillow.

The evening Jim and I arrived in NYC we went to see my cousin at her apartment on Park Avenue. As we left she casually suggested that I meet her next day at 11 am because she wanted to show me something "absolutely fabulous". It turned out to be my introduction to Elizabeth Arden's Beauty Salon where her regular stylist cut through my NC helmet as he restyled my hair with a very flattering short hair cut. I loved being behind the Red Door. It was only years later that I realized that my cousin had set up the excursion so that she would not have to be seen in public which such a bumpkin.

That evening she and her husband took us to an exclusive private club for dinner. Like Professor Higgins she admired her creation, the new me, and commented approvingly on my elegant navy blue silk shantung sheath. I had sense enough not to tell her I bought it at the Franklin Street Episcopal Church "tag sale" for fifty cents.