Best Of

I have been working on a Celebration of Life Ceremony for the love of my life Lucy. July 27 here at our house. Several of Lucy's and my friends have stepped up to help. Figuring maybe 30-40 folks. Most all will be part of the art's community. Lots of potters, and many others who work in wood, metal, glass, fiber. The ceremony will be interactive with folks attending actually becoming part of the ceremony. We will use a talking stick and have speakers first. Then I will lead in the mourning of Lucy's death by having all write something about Lucy on a small piece of paper. I will place Lucy's urn [empty} on a small table and ask all to stand and gather around. I will then ask the folks to one at a time place the paper in the urn and say Lucy's name. A bell will be rung and everyone will say " We Honor This Woman" We will repeat this as many times as there are people. I will finish up by reciting the poem "Remember Me" I wrote many years ago. I expect there will be tears. I believe this will import POWER and bring people together.
When that part is finished we will celebrate Lucy's life by digging into the covered dishes and have acoustic music played by friends we have known for over forty years.
Everyone attending will take a piece of Lucy's work home to help remember her.

I hate traffic. A couple of weeks ago when I was coming back from the MKE herf, I had successfully avoided almost all major metropolitan areas, but I was ready to make my biggest mistake of the trip. As I was returning I assumed I could breeze through Nashville on a Sunday evening at 8:00 pm because maybe everyone had settled down for the evening to get ready for the work week. Well, that didn’t work. It was in reality the beginning of the work week for the construction crews who were trying to repair the roadways around Nashville without disruption of daytime rush hour traffic. Here I was less than 30 minutes from home, delayed by at least an hour. They had entirely shut down the exit to I-24 the main artery to Murfreesboro. And traffic was so jammed up I couldn’t get off at any exit because most were closed by construction. I had to travel west on 440 and turn south on I 65 which was currently choked down to one lane. The two main arteries running south out of Nashville, and there was one lane available to me. I was going nuts. I would rather drive an extra hour through some rural area than sit in traffic any length of time jammed in with those other drivers.