Chat with Helene - Hello Blogger Maureen - Poem: Silence

This audio book is very good! I really got into it!

Helene is reading The Nightingale by Hannah someone for her book group, there at Rydal Park. I read a few grafs of it off Amazon. I liked it very much. Yes another book about the Nazis.

Her next-door neighbors from her former home in Maple Glen, PA paid her a visit on Sunday. Eight of them - the Almonds - including Ruth and husband Hal. Two teenage girls were among them including Zoti, short for Scheherazade and Joan.

They were so animated, she said. It brot to mind the teenage girls I watched on Boyhood. Blase with no minds of their own.

Do YOU have a mind of your own?

I know half a dozen people who do not.

Am sipping on this delicious Plantation Mint tea.

Strange name. You can reflect on it later on. I already did and came up with nuffin.

Drove in the gentle rain to SM, the nursing home where I run a morning group. Gotta drive slow as my car skid while turning corners.

Our two songs for today were Frank Sinatra favorites:  High hopes and Fly Me to the Moon.

I feel so gratified as the group loves to sing!!!

For the month of February, black history month, I'd like to sing Negro Spirituals. What a rich history this music has. All sorts of messages and concessions given by slave holders.

Here's a photo of Joe, who was moved to the Memory Care Unit. I told the group at SM that just b/c you get older does not mean you're gonna get dementia. Your memory may decline, I said, but that's why we have this group.



Helene was the original person to give out amaryllis.

Her friends - the Almonds - brought her one to Rydal Park. Her goal is to plant it tomro.

I reminded her it makes a mess. I bought amaryllis this year for Mom, Ada, and Carole and a few others. They've already bloomed and are a thing of no more.

Unlike my

Stretch your mind and see if you can remember its name.

Yesterday I got a phone call on the ND line from Maureen, who has a bipolar blog. Visit it here.

What a lovely look it has.

There are plenty of photos on there. She lives in Fort Myers Florida. She's been having a lot of trouble lately. So, by the power invested in me, let's all close our eyes

  and wish her the best.

Will you join me in a bowl of trail mix?

Nice crunch, with the velvety softness of California Raison D'Etre!

How's the weather out there, Marce?

SILENCE

Be silent
Be silent when you wake up
in the morning light drizzling
thru your lavender drapes

Listen to the sounds of the world
whether the cars splashing up the
street - oh, so it rained last night! - or
the mournful whistle of the passenger train

Are you afraid to hear the
whispers in your own mind?
Give them room
Give them space
They have a right to be heard!

There's that squirrel again
outside on the back porch
the same one I saw last week
Peering at me as he nibbles
an acorn - or is it a dreidl? -
as the world enfolds us both, unconcerned.

Watch squirrel vid here.