Why wait any longer for the world to begin?

Not like Dante
discovering a commedia
upon the slopes of heaven
I would paint a different kind
of Paradiso
in which the people would be naked
as if they always are
in scenes like that
because it is supposed to be
a painting of their souls
but there would be no anxious angles telling them
how heaven is
the perfect picture of
a monarchy
and there would be no fires burning
in the hellish holes below
in which I might have stepped
nor any alters in the sky except
fountains of imagination
.................Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind

Let’s go berry picking, don’t forget your hat

That’s my grandmother Helen K. sitting in the front with the big sun hat. My great grandfather Jacob Leonard is standing on the far left and my great grandmother Katherine Leonard is second from the right.

To H.C.Osterman, with love and thanks

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

.................Walt Whitman

You will search, babe, At any cost.But how long, babe,Can you search for what's not lost?

This week I began a new job working for a Nebraska State Senator. Here is where the action happens.

This past year brought more change and stress and happiness and worry and calm than any year of my life that I can remenber. To recap, I have settled into my first job, settled into a new city, met all sorts of new people from all over the world, struggled with depression, been in love, found the strength to pull myself out of that relationship, learned that I really like who I am, survived the LSAT, supported my mother through breast cancer, lost my grandfather in person but not in spirit, moved half way across the country, moved home, started a new job...and even though I still don't have a good idea of what I want to do with the rest of my life, some how I feel more relaxed, more confident, and more sure of myself than I have in a long while.

Here's to the New Year! What ever it may bring.