To 2 of the younger ladies in the Ladies' Room....






Thanks for keeping track of such things, Luv.   ( I think you snuck off and took a cake class at Wilton or something....amazing cakes lately !!! )

View, I somehow missed you last night, but, yes school starts pretty soon. It's the 26th for the younger students and the 27th for my sophomore. I'm used to school starting after Labor Day, so I hate this. The only good thing is that the activities kind of ease in, usually after school starts.

Happy, happy birthday VMMM and Tenn.   I have always loved the beautiful comment that Beatrice makes about her own birth day.  In the scene, Beatrice does a lot of joking around and finds herself apologizing instead of taking things more seriously.  Don Pedro then tells Beatrice that he enjoys her mirthful ways and is sure that Beatrice was born during a "merry hour."  Beatrice replies, "No so my lord, my mother cried. But then there was a star danced and under that was I born."   So happy birthday to two ladies who, I am sure, were also born under dancing stars.  

And to all of you who are grandmas again or great aunts three times over---there have been a lot of babies here are words from William Wordsworth, these beautiful lines from William Wordsworth.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The Soul that rises with us our life's Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy."

LUV, all the cakes for babies, for birthdays, for special occasions are beautiful.  

Working on the Beloved Community Potluck Dinners has been an incredibly enriching experience.  Ultimately I will have to get a refurbished Mac laptop.  But to my utter astonishment, one of African American men who began working on these dinners in May, called me to tell me that he builds computers and that he has one he wants for me to use as I continue to gather the money for a refurbished Mac laptop. So, if all goes as he plans, by Monday I will once again have access to all the letters of the alphabet, to all numbers and to all punctuation marks.  In the meantime, I have now learned how to do group text messages.  Not only do I have my two sons on my case about becoming technolically savy, I now also have the young men from the Black Male Initiative at NIU on my case. 

Our next dinner, #7 is this coming Sunday evening.  And then we have a special Beloved Community picnic on August 30.  The numbers have not dropped and in June, what we thought we be a down month, we increased.  Then at our July dinner, one of the couples who has come to every dinner challenged everyone present to invite at least one person to the next dinner.  He and his wife have already texted that they will be attending and that yes, they are bring two people who have not come before.  I half the folks who attended the July dinner take the challenge, we will have around 150 people.  The conversations around the table have become very important to people, especially as more and more unarmed young people, white and black and native American, get killed.  

Have a wonderful weekend, all of you.  And CEK, I hope you and your loved ones have a glorious times at DW.     

Hugs to you all.

A quick hello.  Hope your day is going well.




Snooping around, I did see 2 more names thrown out there as possible celebrities. (I don't personally know either one except for some Kardashian connection for Scott ...)

Chace Crawford    and   Scott Disick