Let Me Count the Ways

I promised on the 19th of June to start writing and now on July 1 I understand that I will have to go into retirement to write everything that I want to tell the world (my one blog reader, if that). The Sufi "mystic" Rumi wrote in Farsi (Persian) that there are a hundred ways to pray, and English speaking poets have taken the liberty to express that as "There are a hundred ways to kiss the earth."

In a sense, they are one and the same statement as I hope you can see from my annual homage to my mountain, Camels Hump Mountain in Vermont. The picture was taken today at the summit but the wind was blowing so hard and the rain was driving horizontally that I only had one chance and had to take shelter a bit lower down.

That is one of the ways I love Vermont or being in Vermont.

Another way I love Vermont is that in Burlington, Vermont, I am given endless opportunities to enjoy environments like this one, Speeder Earls Coffee on Pine Street. Never in Sweden, sadly.

And here at Speeder Earls I take chances and occasionally ask a question as I did just now - no picture. A woman was engaged in discussion with two young women with magnificent corn rows (there may be a more accurate name but that is the best I can do) who looked as if they might have African roots in the sense that they, unlike the standard African-American, were born there. I asked and I was rewarded. The three were discussing something planned - perhaps - by the Vermont Multicultural Alliance for Democracy. My question always is - What languages do you speak? Here part of the answer was French, Swahili, English, and ?. Now you, my lonely reader can place them in the country to which NPR has devoted much of its day, the country freed from King Leopold Fifty years ago. They are not (yet) in the picture.

So let us hope the pictures appear here, then I must leave. But stay tuned!