Curiouser and Curiouser

My Double Bloodroot

Seems I'm shifting gears rather sluggishly, this spring.
I was spurred to post today because a curious thing occurred. Someone read my letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal and moved by my "uncommon common sense" - sent me a book. Now imagine that: $15.00 plus postage to a stranger.

It's Mark Cahill's One Heartbeat Away. The query on the back cover asks: Is that all there is? This life and nothing more? It's a call to come to faith.

Well. Having spent too many hours in the last two days, sending comments to all the venues covering the Aliza Shvarts horror - and wrestling with that grubby little cloud in my head . . . well, I found the timing rather interesting.

I know that a few of my blogging buddies are people of faith. I've envied them that certainty.

I've not dropped by any of your blogs, recently, and hope that you're all so busy 'springin' that I'm not missing too much. In following the Shvarts story I followed an eloquent statement to Julie's blog, A Work in Progress. I needed the respite.

Anyhoo. Wishing you sunshine and puddles of daffodils and magnolia petals drifting down into green green lawns. I've cracked the door. The air is soft.

UPDATE:

A couple of you inquired about my WSJ letter. I was compelled to respond to a March 26 front page article about the increasing violence in black funeral parlors: "Deadly Business: Violence Roils Black Funeral Parlors". It really made me nuts because it dodged some of the very real problems confronting the black community and tried to correlate violence in black funeral parlor to the the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Huh?

Here's the wee bit of my letter they printed in their April 3 Letters To The Editor section:

May I suggest that the experts take a look at the entertainment culture?
How can one seriously wring one’s hands about the killing and turn a blind eye to the insidious, pernicious message from the dark world of much of gangsta rap music? The eulogies will continue and the fear and blood will not abate as long as we avert our faces from the corrosive effect of that part of the black youth culture.