Tomorrow we head out to Burton, TX for Camp Periwinkle. This will be my 18th year at camp, and as always, I’m looking forward to another great week.

Since I have a lot of packing to do, and not just because I’m still stuck in the throws of the Coyote Mercury Summer of Not Blogging So Much, I’ll just repost what I wrote last year when I got back:

We got back from Camp Periwinkle (a camp for childhood cancer patients and their siblings) on Saturday afternoon and have spent most of the time since recovering. I’ve been going to Camp every summer since 1990, which is possible since it’s only a week long.

The underlying philosophy of camp is selflessness. All the counselors and staff are volunteers, the kids go for free, everything there is donated. For one week, and sometimes for the last time, the kids at camp get to feel normal, and they get to have fun, and they have the time of their lives.

The smiles and the laughter at Camp Periwinkle are things that keep those of us who’ve been doing it for so long coming back year after year.

It’s typically one of the high points of any given year. It’s a chance to spend a week living in a perfect world, a world of patience, selflessness, love, compassion, understanding. It’s a chance to see kids and adults truly be their best selves. Where else can you see kids in a relay race cheering on the kid in a wheelchair who will cost them the race, yet no one cares about who wins or loses? Where else can you see adults put aside every aspect of their own comfort and convenience so that kids will feel special?

I’ve never been anywhere or done anything else that focuses what life should be about and how we should interact with one another more clearly than Camp Periwinkle. It’s a place where no expense is spared, no opportunity missed, to make kids whose lives are a daily struggle feel special, feel normal. It teaches kids that they can do what no one thinks they can. It helps them survive.

In the past seventeen years, I’ve seen kids laugh, smile, dance, and play who might never otherwise have found a place to do those things. I’ve watched kids crawl out of wheelchairs to climb a wall on the ropes course. I’ve seen kids fresh from brain surgery lean on their crutches and dance.

It’s a powerful place and it changes a person’s way of thinking. It reminds me of how special life is, how lucky I am, how important it is to work everday to make the world a better place for everyone.

It’s a chance to see what life could be like in a world ruled by love, where nobody ever wanted for anything.

Did I say it is a perfect world?

* * *

Note: This post was republished as a guest editorial in the Nov/Dec 2006 Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing. 

You can read more about Camp Periwinkle on Burst Blog: BlogBurst Bloggers Help Send Children to Camp

Just a typical day in the central Texas summer of ‘07.

(Later, we did have scattered patches of sun.)

After tuning out of politics for months and just living in a kind of blissful ignorance, well, actually not ignorance, it’s more the kind of sickening certainty that requires neither updates nor commentary, I discovered that there is an election looming on the very distant horizon and there are a whole slew of puppets people who would like to lead this country the rest of the way to Hell in a handbasket.

I wish I had watched the Democrats debate last night. Perhaps the performance would have given me hope, though in perusing this morning’s paper, I find that the questions came from YouTube and one from a snowman who was concerned about global warming. A snowman? Really?

“Is this what political discourse in this country has come to?” asked the blogger whose own snowman suit is at the drycleaners, thus allowing only a trace of irony.

Okay, so there’s no reason to hope. We’re good and screwed.

Looking at the D side, I think I like Edwards and Richardson, but in the interest of staying in the real world, I suspose I’ll have to choose between Obama and Clinton. I like Obama. Clinton, on the other hand, voted for the Iraq war and therefore lacks the wisdom and foresight that I and many like me possessed in 2003 when those with open eyes saw this for the fool’s errand that it is. She is therefore unfit for the office. The president should be smarter than me. I guess that leaves Obama.

On the R side, it appears that McCain has lost his staff and his mind, leaving only some actor who might or might not run, that mayor from NYC and some flip-flopper from Massachusetts. My, wouldn’t that be a delicious little bit of irony if he gets the nomination. Perhaps, I’ll watch these bottom-of-the-barrel R’s try to defend themselves against the damning arguments of that snowman.

Only two acts with the *’s for having seen them live. The last time I saw the first one was at ACL and the next time I see the last one will be at ACL. And, I don’t know half of the others half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of them half as well as they deserve.

1. “Looking from a Hilltop” - Section 25 - From the Hip
2. “Loco De Amor” - David Byrne - Rei Momo
3. “Swingin’ the Blues” - Count Basie - The Complete Decca Recordings of Count Basie
4. “Stray” - Calexico* - The Black Light
5. “Come in Alone” - My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
6. “Blue Heaven” - The Pogues - Peace and Love
7. “Mad World” - Tears for Fears - Shout
8. “Gee, I Like Your Pants” - Frank Zappa - Shut Up ‘N Play Yer Guitar
9. “Dead Flowers” - Townes Van Zandt - Road Songs
10. “Song for Mahilda” - Yo La Tengo* - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass

“The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar; now that’s my idea of a good time” - Frank Zappa

Yes, Mr Zappa, how right you were.

If you use your thumb to break your fall, your fall may break your thumb.

(That’s what I get for ignoring the lesson about running up stairs two at a time in flip flops.)

I read Herbert Mason’s 1970 free verse version of the ancient Babylonian epic Gilgamesh last year as part of the Lost Book Club. It’s one of my favorites from the Lost project, so I decided to read a different version this summer. (Here’s the link to my post on Mason’s version).

I chose David Ferry’s 1992 version, written in unrhymed couplets in iambic pentameter. The basic story is, of course the same, but where Mason’s feels personal and cuts close to the heart, Ferry’s feels a bit more scholarly. Fine if you’re studying the poem, but not as moving.

Other than the poetic form, the biggest difference lies in what motivates Gilgamesh to go on his great quest. In Mason’s version he is motivated by the pain of losing his friend Enkidu, and he wants the secret of immortality in order to bring Enkidu back to life.

In Ferry’s version, Gilgamesh seems more motivated by fear of his own mortality and his wish to extend his own life.

Interestingly, this version seems more in line with issues on Lost, particularly since we’ve learned that the island appears to grant exceptionaly long life or slower aging or possibly immortality.

Gilgamesh was referenced in Season 2 as a clue in a crossword that John Locke was working on prior to meeting Mr Eko. Now that we have the perspective of Season 3 and Eko’s death (killed for angering the “gods” much like Enkidu), things seem a bit clearer as Locke is on a quest to know the island’s secrets including the one about longevity, though he doesn’t know that yet. I’m guessing Locke’s motivation isn’t as selfless as Mason’s Gilgamesh, though.

I’ll probably have to read another Gilgamesh or two to see which of these versions hews closer to convention. Maybe this will be an annual event.

I shot this as I was cruising up 610 towards the 290 exit in Houston this afternoon.

It’s a nothing shot, a throwaway of a sign, but it’s a sign I love to see.

Whether it’s coming home from an errand to Houston as today or returning from a longer trip, seeing the Austin sign makes me happy.

There’s just nothing like a sign that points to home.

While we were in Orange, I kept seeing this fellow standing in a ditch by the road hunting crawfish. Finally, I stopped to take a picture so I could ID him. He’s a yellow-crowned night heron.

I love the name night heron. It’s such an evocative name, one that fires the imagination. Not quite as good as the Latin version of the black-crowned night heron (nycticorax nycticorax), which translates to night raven, though.

The picture here doesn’t really do him justice as his crown appears more white than the pale yellow it should be. Blame the photographer. The bird himself was living up to his name, which he claimed was actually Moe.

I also added another bird to my life list: the fish crow. I heard what sounded like a nasal quawking, but the birds flying over looked like crows, but the sound was definitely not the hard caw-caw. I listened to some recordings online and consulted many a tome to learn that I had seen fish crows, a fairly common coastal bird.

We did not wash away in the floods, though I’m still trying to collect two of every greyhound for the ark I’ve been building. Unfortunately, they are each individuals, so I’m only able to find one of each.

Mainly, I hadn’t blogged because I wanted to finish my book. I didn’t want to sit at the computer writing and not be writing that, so blog went by the wayside to meet my self-imposed end of June deadline. I made it with a few days to spare.

The manuscript came in at 249 pages or 66,ooo words. A short novel, called A Short Time to Be There, at least for now. When I went back and looked at the early pages written before I really knew the characters or the pace of the story, I found a few chapters and some scenes that I didn’t really need, so I found myself going with Stephen King’s dictum: 2nd draft = 1st draft - 10%. When that 10% comes from the front end, things start to move better. Redundancies disappear.

I finished the book last week. The next day R’s grandmother died so we had to go to Orange to help with arrangements before the funeral. She died in her sleep at her home without any illness or hospitalization a few weeks shy of her 87th birthday. It was a tough surprise, but then it’s hard to imagine a better way to go.

On the long drive east to Orange, we saw a coyote standing on the side of the road outside Elgin. He ran when he saw us. We spotted a red-tailed hawk perched on a power line near Houston. A bobcat ran across the road in front of us in Orange. I never see that much wildlife from my car. I had never seen a bobcat before. The weather was weird too. Powerful storms kicking up while we were in church, where she was honored, and also right before the funeral.

My mind kept going back to Caesar: “When beggars die there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”

Of course she wasn’t royalty or even a prince, but she was noble. She would help anyone who needed it. She took in the lost. She never gave up on anybody.