Josie goes to a mosque

Marie died today.

Civil War Reenactment: Battle for the Shenandoah Valley

I got a little taste of my home state of Virginia the other day, during the Civil War Reenactment in Woodbury. It was WICKED hot.





I forgot to mention in my last post that at the Litchfield Jazz Festival I had noticed a couple in their 50s or 60s that looked SO in love. It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling, and I kind of had to hold myself back from approaching them just to tell them how cute they were. Luckily though, I had a chance to talk to the woman, who I had previously taken a photo of at a social gathering just before the festival.

It turns out this woman, Lucy Anne Hurston, was the niece and biographer of Zora Neale Hurston, the author of "Their Eyes Were Watching God," a book I absolutely LOVED and was assigned to read by my high school AP English teacher, Mrs. Robison, an AWESOME teacher who I found out about a year ago had passed away after a battle to breast cancer. I smiled a little when I thought of her, because it was proof that she still lived on.

So, every once in a while I'm able to have a mind-blowing conversation with complete strangers. It's a rare treat that Lucy unsuspectingly brought to me. I got to hear about the love story of her and her husband, a little about Zora and the book, and about Lucy's sociological research about this country's prison system, and our culture's relationship with the idea of redemption.

And even though afterwards I had to walk through the mud and driving rain to my car, it was a great day. I live for days like that.

moving.

So in the past few weeks I've moved from Waterbury to Southington, and since the actual move I've been working on painting the walls and getting stuff in order. And by "stuff in order" I mean filling up the three entire power strips underneath my desk.

In the meantime, this is what I've been up to at work: