Thirteen things on my mind ~ including books

1.  My great-grandson Jonathan and his family were stranded at a Walmart when their car broke down three hours from home, as they returned from a great vacation.

2.  Here's some humor from Facebook that seems to apply to my life right now:

• Aging ~ "I love being over 70.  I learn something new every day ... and forget 5 others."
• Diet ~ "I don't mean to brag, but I finished my 14-day diet in 3 hours and 20 minutes."
• Exercise ~ "I just did a week's worth of cardio after walking into a spider web."

3.  Changes are coming to the Crown Center, as this notice of a public hearing attests.  I plan to attend tomorrow's meeting.

4.  Someone was in the Art Room Saturday afternoon, so Donna and Alyssa and I went outside to read out loud together in the gazebo.

5.  Our DASH group is still getting together to exercise.  Here's Barbara holding one-pound weights.  We meet in the Crown Center's fitness center.

6.  Colleen's recent Thirteen post started with a joke:  "When Donald Trump looks at a half-filled glass of water, he doesn’t see it half-full or half-empty, he sees his own reflection."

7.  Donna made us another Taco Pie, but this time she used tortilla chips instead of Fritos.

8.  The Smithsonian Magazine recently had an article about a corduroy road, with logs as the roadbed.  The "W Road" up Signal Mountain near where I raised my children began as a corduroy road.  The road got its name because the three switchbacks formed a "W" as it traversed the steep palisade.  This is a photo from 1914, long after the roadbed of logs had disappeared.

9.  My friend Jane will be moving into her new apartment soon.  She showed it to Donna and me on a recent Saturday.  Oh, by the way, Jane is Donna's sister.

10.  This week marked 3 years since Mike Brown was killed, sparking the Ferguson Uprising, so the West County Community Action Network (WE CAN) honored his life at Saturday's Black Lives Matter vigil with 4.5 minutes of silence.  Next Saturday, they will be in Creve Coeur from 11:30 to 12:30, atop the 270-Olive overpass, South side, to uphold the message that Black Lives Matter.  My friend Joy is in this group, and I met several others at lunch after the vigil.

11.  After the recent storm of violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, I posted a video on Facebook from the Rev. Traci Blackmon who was among the people inside the church.  That prompted me to tell people about Traci's book:  White Privilege: Let's Talk ~ A Resource for Transformational Dialogue ~ by Traci Blackmon, John Dorhauer, Da Vita McCallister, John Paddock, and Stephen G. Ray (2016).  This resource is only 99-cents for Kindle, and facilitator's resources are available free from the publisher.

12.  The book I was reading earlier in the day had referred to a book by Richard Dawkins.  When I sat down in my recliner in the late afternoon, I noticed the sun was reflecting off the windows of the other Crown Center building through my window onto a stack of books I'd put there many days earlier.  Do you see which book was "calling me"?  Yep, it's highlighted:  The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006).  After taking this quick photo, I sat back down and glanced again at the stack.  The sun had moved and was no longer shining on the stack, much less that particular book.  How funny!

13.  New fence at the Crown Center.

Burnt tree.

Partially burnt tree.

Now you may be wondering why I'm calling these "burnt" trees.  As I was parking in a spot facing these trees a year or two ago, I saw the "burnt tree" burning.  Literally burning, with flames.  I reported it to the office.  A few days later, I saw a worker from the building (which is now BEYOND the fence) flick a cigarette to the base of that partially burnt tree.  Aha!  Now I knew why the trees were burning.  My first thought when I saw the new fence going up was that now we wouldn't have any more burnt trees on our side of the fence.