My aunt, Dolores, sent a reprint about Women in the Bible and the Lectionary. Wow. I'm disturbed (but, I guess, not all together surprised) at the omissions. No Deborah at all? No Ruth or Esther on Sundays? And yes, it's "incredible that the Magnificat...is never proclaimed on a Sunday." I wonder if Hannah's "magnificat" (1 Samuel 2) ever appears? The date of this reprint is 10 years ago. Have they (whoever "they" may be) made any changes? I liked that this writer (Ruth Fox OSB) called the Testaments the "First" and "Second" - I don't think I've ever seen that before.

This week I replied to an email sent by a dear friend in Tasmania (Roslyn) nearly 2 years ago. It's been sitting in my inbox waiting for me to get around to replying. Anyway, I finally did. And she replied. And then we spent an hour on the phone on Wednesday evening. And it was lovely. Hard to believe that we had not spoken in, what, 6 or 7 years! With some people in my life, I have found that you can pick up a conversation after long gaps as if you had only spoken yesterday. Roslyn is one of those friends.

Nataw and I are loving our vegetable gardening class - and learning so much. We have trays of seedlings sprouting on kitchen counters. And we planted carrots and peas directly into the garden this week. And we all (N, Paul, me, and a young high school boy who helps out sometimes) worked outside this afternoon, preparing the ground in the old part of the vegie garden for new plantings, and pulling roots and sticks out of the new part of the garden. What a delight!

Our handicapped guinea, Hawkeye, has taken to being carried out to the garden with us when we work out there. With the gate closed, she is safe from the other birds, and she likes having a bigger space to wander around in. She especially likes making a dirt bath - where she digs out a bowl-shaped space in the dirt, and sort of scrunches down into it, and then uses her wings to throw dust all over herself with gay abandon. I haven't quite figured out how this works, but all the birds seem to enjoy doing it, and somehow become perfectly clean.

There was a big NAACP rally and march in Raleigh yesterday. Paul and Nataw went and report that there were some great speakers and maybe 5,000 people. I did not go, siPublishnce I had already signed up for a fruit tree pruning workshop (which was also great).

School continues to be a pleasure. Paul and I have worked our way through a couple of dozen videos that I found in the Meredith library and I've been showing bits of them in the classes. I lecture with slides that I put together with Powerpoint (are you familiar with this software?) - a mixture of pictures and bullet points that keep me on track, and give the students something to gaze at. And with only 7 students, there is also much discussion. They really are a very lively and responsive bunch!