Today……

We made bagels!!! I’m at Jeannette’s , “snowed in”, and we made bagels. I’m sure  a picture is forthcoming. I was planning on coming yesterday afternoon so she could go to Boston, but came ON THE TRAIN, on Wednesady evening instead. I have just been wanting a train ride for a while, but every time I think or plan it, something else comes up and I missed my ride. She called on Wednesday before I left and said the Amtrak fares had doubled between Philly and Boston and so she couldn’t go. Is that what they do when the weather is bad to weed people out? I dunno……..   I came anyway. I wanted my train ride!

Yesterday it was still nice enough to take Ellis for his  speech therapy session at Children’s Hospital. I played with the playful Marlowe .

Years ago, my friend, Claudia Peters, decide to make bagels. I happened in on the lucky day. We were so accustomed to the tough grocery store things hat when we tasted the tender fresh bagels we didn’t think that they were quite right! i have learned that they were proably the rightest things we had tasted up to that time. Time for coffee and bagel!

The Negro Spiritual

This subject is burning in me to blog about. The end of January my friend, Terry, said to me, “February is Black History Month. We need to do dome spirituals.” I actually started it out today. In church I can only tell a little of the story, but here, I can tell all!
I am pretty sure I have always been aware of the Negro spiritual, but it did not hit me with any kind of force until about 15 years ago. I was in the Cedar rapids, Iowa library settling down in a cozy chair under some headphones with a Jessye Norman CD of spirituals.  I think the first song was ‘Great Day” and I was pulled out of my seat and swept through the air! I remember looking around to see if anyone else noticed, but the library was going on as usual! As I listened, I read the liner notes and what impressed me was the note made that Negro Spirituals were typically songs of hope and deliverance. They can be my song, too, as I understand that sin is slavery and Jesus has come to be our Hope and Deliverer. The other thing that impresses me about this legacy is that these people are not known for sitting around and discussing how there could be a good God when their lives are so miserable. Their theme is. “This world is not my home, I ‘m just a passin’ through; If Heaven’s not my home, then Lord, what will I do?”.
I’m also reminded of a young friend serving on a Mercy Ship and writing about all the music around him where they were docked in an African country. The jist of what he said  was , ‘No matter the misery around them, there is always singing.’ And then there were Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail, beaten and locked up, singing the night away. And then there was my sister, who planned to sing a hymn on the way home after dropping her Navy husband at the ship to go on a cruise weeks short of their first anniversary. We have got choices. We can cry or we can sing. Steal away to Jesus. That is the legacy of the Negro Spiritual.

My Weekend at Covenant, written two weeks ago

So last week my friend calls and wants know if it is worth it to let your child go to college 700 mikes away. I said ‘Yes!’. Her daughter has applied for a big scholarship and you have to go for interviews and present yourself well to get this scholarship and it’s a really big deal, so I told her she had to go. Plus, I  thought if she went she would have a better feel of whether she could let her go that distance or not. But I told her not to go alone, I would go along! So a few days later she called me back and they were for sure going to make the trek. So I rode along and got in a good visit with Luisa. We were on the road by 5:00 in the morning and had pretty smooth sailing.  A little way up Lookout Mtn. it started to rain, pour, and get foggy. We missed the first driveway and crept to the second so we wouldn’t drive past it. They registered and went to a banquet. I ate with the college kids, meeting lots of Luisa’s friends. Luisa knitted while I read aloud, giving her eyes a break. When we went to lunch we met more old friends and the Belz gang was all in a tizzy about the new layout of the Bagpipe. Sam felt gratified his Uncle Nat liked it. I said I feel like I’ve scored points if I can pick put a poinsettia a bunch of ex-poinsettia growers like. Mindy replied, “With the Belzes, it’s all about type-face!” I went to an American literature class with her where I surprisingly kept my mouth shut. and in the evening we had a pizza party at her friends apartment where the pizza was homemade, the apple pie was homemade and the dishes  were homemade! I made sure I met Pat Ralston, who lived with my family when she was 16 and we were all little squirts! I asked her if that was hard, because she had to share a room with us. She said she was so thankful because it gave her the opportunity to go to Cono, which she wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. Sometimes I think I haven’t much to share, but often sharing the little we have completely blesses someone else. I reminded her how she made me taste vanilla, because it smells so good, but all by itself, it doesn’t taste so good!
We had breakfast and met more friends, got to catch up with Sam Belz before leaving around noon on Saturday.
Tiredly, I went to church today, which was good, but we didn’t linger. We went to an amazing jazz concert in the evening. A friend of ours had an open recording session, where we listened while they recorded.