Sunday, September 25, 2011

Past, Present & Future

Struggling to find time today to finish one of the best books I've read in a long time. It's on racial politics and the Obama presidency. I hope to review it here soon. But my first order of business is getting ready for a visit from one of my oldest and best friends. With military timing, Charlie will be stopping by this afternoon at 1330 with his bride of six months.

Charlie and I go back to 1953 when he, his parents and his five siblings moved right across the street from the parsonage I called home. Almost every day after that, it seems, we played together, went to school and church and Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts together, shared jokes, triumphs, quandaries together, of which there none more undecipherable than junior high school girls.

I haven't seen much of Charlie in the last twenty or so years. He moved to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands where, he never tires of telling me, it's 84° F. every day.

A few years ago we took in an Indians game at Progressive Field. I wanted to absorb the August sun so we sat in the bleachers, idling time away like we were still kids at cavernous Municipal Stadium. The day was one of Cleveland's brightest, so I asked Charlie why he wasn't wearing sunglasses or a hat.

Almost apologetically, he explained that in the purer atmospheric conditions of the islands, the bright sun I was enjoying would have been an unusually hazy day back in St. Christianstad.

I really do have to travel more.

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