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Mornings like this are why I love Spring in the Midwest: a glowing sky, filled with orange light yet threatening rain, o'erspreading the new green trees...it makes up for the fact that I had an absolutely ICY shower this morning. The sky is wide through my windows. (I'm sad I shal'n't have this room next year.) It makes me think of/ pine for travel. Below are a few pictures from my recent trip to the hill country of central Florida. I backpacked (solo) the state's longest loop trail and rode (both ways) its longest bike trail (with a stop at a strange, distant hotel between legs) and, in between these two jaunts, scorched myself on Clearwater Beach...I have hardly any skin left on me. Enjoy!
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Lovely Jewels in Joy Designed

Night Nurse This is a song I first heard one night at the beginning of the magical summer of 2005. Sophia, Paul, and I were on the way home from an afternoon in Milwaukee, and I was feeling down yet expansive and hopeful (as was my wont at the time), lying in the back seat and watching the clouds turn colors with the sunset. I was so struck by its simple, quiet, lovely beauty that I had Paul play it several times. I just heard it for the first time in seven years yesterday, and it brought back a flood of memories, memories of a time where I was not nearly as steadily happy as I am now, a time when I was up and down and open, often at the same time. I think the great struggle I have had, as I get older, is marrying the open expansiveness of youth with the steadiness of maturity (sic.) The two often seem, but don't have to be, mutually exclusive. When I listen to great songs like this, they certainly aren't. It is the last day of the school year, again, and I am in my
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My Keynote Address to the Calumet High School Class of 2016

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