Working for the weekend

Apologies for the long hiatus! I was in Scranton with the fiance, doing wedding-related things. Although we're not far away, we don't get there very often, because the lack of train service (don't get me started grumbling about that) makes our travel options limited and not very attractive. So these days, when we do make the trip (in a rented car, this time), we try to pack in as much activity and planning as we can. We had a very productive weekend of reception-site-visiting and engagement-portrait-posing and rehearsal-dinner-planning. Not to mention Guinness-sampling (the fiance) and chocolate-fountain-testing (my dad) and dress-modeling (me).

The weekend also brought another exciting wildlife encounter, the latest in what I hope will not be a regular series. Yesterday, we were driving through a lovely rural section of the greater Scranton area, on our way back from our portrait session, and we saw some birds making their high-stepping way across the road up ahead. From a distance we could just make out their silhouettes -- a mommy something-or-other, followed by an impressive brood of smaller something-or-others, with one tiny runt bringing up the rear in a frantic and comical fashion. They were too skinny and long-necked to be ducks, so we thought maybe they were geese -- but they seemed very sure on their feet for waterfowl. We'd stopped the car while they were crossing, and when we started driving forward again we went very slowly, just in case any other brothers, sisters or friends were bringing up the rear. We stopped again when we got to the spot where the birds had crossed the road, because we could see some movement in the tall grass, and suddenly there was a fluttering of wings as this big bird flapped his way across the road right in front of us. It was a turkey! An honest-to-goodness, blue-headed, red-wattled turkey! We saw a whole turkey family out for a morning stroll. My heart was warmed. (Oh, also, driving back to New York yesterday evening, we had to swerve to avoid an eviscerated deer carcass spread across the right lane of I-380. But that's not so unusual, and much less heartwarming.)

Speaking of alarming sightings on the street: Last week I passed a van parked on 57th Street, a white van, apparently being used for some evangelical purpose, with this message on the side: "Love thy neighbor as you love thyself." This offended my sensibilities. Call me a fundamentalist, but I believe the Bible also says, "Thou shalt not start a sentence using old-timey second-person-singular pronouns unless thou art prepared to finish it in like manner."

Oh, and speaking of religion, I have a letter to the editor published in the August 17 issue of Commonweal magazine (and in the lead-off position, no less!). Unfortunately, you must subscribe to read it, but basically, I wrote to say how much I valued the thoughtfulness and seriousness of this discussion of "Homosexuality and the Church" (which you can read for free).