Post 37/2023. There’s no stopping the ebb and flow of time. That’s a truism I utter to buy a moment of reflection. This morning: weather’s achangin’. Foggy, flannel shirt/jacket time. To be shed this afternoon, after a walk to Cabin Coffee and library. That’s the plan.

Later

The plan worked. I stuffed my coat into the backpack after breakfast. Beautiful day.

This afternoon we attended the “Celebration of Life of Eli Stoltzfus.” His wife of more than 70 years, Paula, died in July. Rich memories. Lives well lived. Eli and Paula shared their lives widely with friends, family and various communities in retirement, as during their gainful employment years in Michigan’s Upper Pennisula. Rest in peace, dear friends.

Moon

Books

No Human is Illegal was written by JJ Mulligan Sepulveda, an immigration lawyer working at the University of California Davis School of Law. It’s personal, erudite, compelling. Thank God for people who work in the thicket of issues surrounding human displacement and search for safety and a sound future.

Richard Osman’s fourth novel is a bit edgier than the first ones, but the smiles and shutters and reflections he creates through a quartette of retirement home residents who solve cold cases as the Thursday Murder Club keep one turning pages. Osman will take a hiatus from this series to introduce a new one, but he notes the TM Club will be back down the road.

Friends

Friends. Ah friends. We were so happy to connect with friends of long-standing this week: Stanley and Marlene Kropf (on the right) from Port Townsend, Washington and Willard and Alice Roth from right here at Greencroft. If one were to summarize friendship in one word, it would be “sweet.” So sweet.

Season’s achangin’

What’s puzzling about this picture?

One thing’s not obvious. The middle Balzac’s bag is empty. We’ve used up the Anniversary Blend beans. The bag will go to the recycling bin. We’re now into the Dark Affair blend.

Balzac Coffee Roasters started in Stratford, Ontario in 1993 as a coffee cart. The first cafe and roastery (1996) has spread to fifteen distinct locations and sales are done nationwide.

The company, based in Ancaster, Ontario, notes: “To celebrate out 30th anniversary, we proudly present this unique blend of 100% arabica beans paying homage to where we come from, where we are and where we’re going next. So here’s to 30 years. We’re just getting started.”

You can get tea at Balzac’s, too. We keep our tea in a drawer, not the canister on the counter. Next to the tea canister you’ll see an upside-down bag of decaf beans from Five Lakes Coffee, a LaGrange County enterprise. It’s good, too. The bag’s upside-down because I mistakenly, in haste, opened the wrong end. Pity, but not the end of the world.

So, an assortment of teas, coffees and hot chocolate completes our hot beverage offerings.

A thought

If people in China had not cultivated tea, what would we be drinking today? Another truism: history sets the context for what exists today and tomorrow. Everything that has happened before has set the stage for what unfolds in the future. The future has deep roots in past actions.

Winston Churchill: Of this I am certain, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.” Politicians take heed, hear the words of a fellow politician. Learn from the past. Do better. Do not take us back to the past. Show us a way forward that all can trust. Let the moment be one that changes lives for the good.

Peace.

-John