The mountain laurel is gorgeous this year, as is this vine that has taken to our fence. I have no
idea what it is and don't remember seeing it before, but I guess it doesn't need a name for now. Ronald is getting big and adventurous. He fights with anything that moves, and uses shoulders and faces (ours) to springboard from the floor to the couch to the kitchen with no concern for our scratched ears and legs; the new LaPoint is a tattoo artist. To anyone wondering if this blog has anything to do with Africa or the Peace Corps, I say not really. I'm still leaving on June 4th for Philadelphia and June 6th for Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. I filled out my last visa applications today and will send them in tomorrow. Besides that, there's nothing more I can tell you. Burkina is a relatively, if not completely, unknown corner of the world. Googling it can probably tell you more than I can, I haven't been outside of Texas for over a year. What's that, enough with the Peace Corps talk you say? You want to see a picture of Ron? Alr
ight alright, here he is coming out of the canoe in the backyard to look around. I went hiking last Saturday morning at Enchanted Rock, which is awesome if you've been wanting to hike. The drive is about two hours but worth it. Actually the drive itself is just as enjoyable. I saw bison, a camel, cyclists, and endless vineyards and wineries on the way to Fredericksburg. I've been getting really into beer lately, not in the sense that I pass out regularly on my parents' couch with a blanket of empty bottles over me, but in the way that it is a lot of fun tasting different beers from different places. I had a love at first taste moment with Grant at the Flying Saucer, a bar in San Antonio. It was a Maredsous 10, and I looked for it for the last month only to find out that hardly anyone can get it here in America right now. The Maredsous 6 and 8 are fully stocked everywhere I go, but the narrow space in the beer aisle where the 10 should be resting has plagued me to no end. Well that's not true, but pretty close. Anyway, my mom told me yesterday that there was something in her trunk that she couldn't carry into the house. I went out there to get it (I'm really glad that for once I didn't complain that I had to carry something, that would have be
en horrible), and it was an entire case of Maredsous 10! It really doesn't get any better Mom, thanks a lot. I'm thinking about trying to get a trip organized to go to a brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado, if anyone has any interest in taking a roadtrip on the cheap. We could make the drive from Austin to Colorado Springs in one day, and then head up from there. Now that I think about it, I actually do have something related to Africa to share. Africa can be very expensive to get to; it makes a flight to Europe look like a southwest airlines hop from Dallas to Austin. But it doesn't have to be this way. Here's a great article from the New York Times regarding money-saving flights to Africa (in case you ever want to come visit). Also, malaria is a real concern for the people in West Africa. It destabilizes families, villages, and the entire economic system. Thankfully, a French drug company has announced that it will sell its malaria pills at no profit to Africa. Here is an article about that (in English). And one more link, this one less about Africa and more about general perspective. Try it out here, it's actually really interesting and only takes a second. Well that's all for me. I finished Arthur Miller's memoir last week at the YMCA, and it ended with a beautiful paragraph. If you've read to this point in my blog, it'll only take another twenty seconds to read this, time very well spent. It's so wonderful, especially considering it is the last paragraph of a man drifting away in his thoughts while looking back on his life.
idea what it is and don't remember seeing it before, but I guess it doesn't need a name for now. Ronald is getting big and adventurous. He fights with anything that moves, and uses shoulders and faces (ours) to springboard from the floor to the couch to the kitchen with no concern for our scratched ears and legs; the new LaPoint is a tattoo artist. To anyone wondering if this blog has anything to do with Africa or the Peace Corps, I say not really. I'm still leaving on June 4th for Philadelphia and June 6th for Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. I filled out my last visa applications today and will send them in tomorrow. Besides that, there's nothing more I can tell you. Burkina is a relatively, if not completely, unknown corner of the world. Googling it can probably tell you more than I can, I haven't been outside of Texas for over a year. What's that, enough with the Peace Corps talk you say? You want to see a picture of Ron? Alr
ight alright, here he is coming out of the canoe in the backyard to look around. I went hiking last Saturday morning at Enchanted Rock, which is awesome if you've been wanting to hike. The drive is about two hours but worth it. Actually the drive itself is just as enjoyable. I saw bison, a camel, cyclists, and endless vineyards and wineries on the way to Fredericksburg. I've been getting really into beer lately, not in the sense that I pass out regularly on my parents' couch with a blanket of empty bottles over me, but in the way that it is a lot of fun tasting different beers from different places. I had a love at first taste moment with Grant at the Flying Saucer, a bar in San Antonio. It was a Maredsous 10, and I looked for it for the last month only to find out that hardly anyone can get it here in America right now. The Maredsous 6 and 8 are fully stocked everywhere I go, but the narrow space in the beer aisle where the 10 should be resting has plagued me to no end. Well that's not true, but pretty close. Anyway, my mom told me yesterday that there was something in her trunk that she couldn't carry into the house. I went out there to get it (I'm really glad that for once I didn't complain that I had to carry something, that would have be
en horrible), and it was an entire case of Maredsous 10! It really doesn't get any better Mom, thanks a lot. I'm thinking about trying to get a trip organized to go to a brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado, if anyone has any interest in taking a roadtrip on the cheap. We could make the drive from Austin to Colorado Springs in one day, and then head up from there. Now that I think about it, I actually do have something related to Africa to share. Africa can be very expensive to get to; it makes a flight to Europe look like a southwest airlines hop from Dallas to Austin. But it doesn't have to be this way. Here's a great article from the New York Times regarding money-saving flights to Africa (in case you ever want to come visit). Also, malaria is a real concern for the people in West Africa. It destabilizes families, villages, and the entire economic system. Thankfully, a French drug company has announced that it will sell its malaria pills at no profit to Africa. Here is an article about that (in English). And one more link, this one less about Africa and more about general perspective. Try it out here, it's actually really interesting and only takes a second. Well that's all for me. I finished Arthur Miller's memoir last week at the YMCA, and it ended with a beautiful paragraph. If you've read to this point in my blog, it'll only take another twenty seconds to read this, time very well spent. It's so wonderful, especially considering it is the last paragraph of a man drifting away in his thoughts while looking back on his life. ----------------------------------
And so the coyotes are out there earnestly trying to arrange their lives to make more coyotes possible, not knowing that it is my forest, of course. And I am in this room from which I can sometimes look out at dusk and see them warily moving through the barren winter trees, and I am, I suppose, doing what they are doing, making myself possible and those who come after me. At such moments I do not know whose land this is that I own, or whose bed I sleep in. In the darkness out there they see my light and pause, muzzles lifted, wondering who I am and what I am doing here in this cabin under my light. I am a mystery to them until they tire of it and move on, but the truth, the first truth probably, is that we are all connected, watching one another. Even the trees.
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Hmm, looks like I ended up on winter after all (some habits aren't easily broken).
1 comment:
wow, what an awesome mom. fort collins: yes. and please post more, or write a book. i enjoy reading lapoint. (elitists reference a writer by last name alone...you know "have you ever read nietzsche?")
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