deliverance

Yesterday was a happy and emotional morning. I cried tears of fulfillment and satisfaction. Thanks to some of the most generous people in my life, I finally delivered on my promise to help the village of Sussex in Sierra Leone. I delivered boxes full of supplies (books, clothing, writing instruments, art supplies, toothbrushes) and $600 in cash which will be distributed to the village.

The books will create a beautiful library at the school. The school supplies will add value to the students experience. The clothing will be distributed to villagers. The toothbrushes will be given to a number of large families I met while in Sierra Leone. The money will go towards the purchase of rice for the families of Sussex as well as sandals for the children.

Without the contributions and care of some very special people this wouldn't have come together.

Saturday was a perfect day.

The Poems I Have Not Written by John Brehm

This poem touched me for whatever reason, i thought i'd share:

I'm so wildly unprolific, the poems
I have not written would reach
from here to the California coast
if you laid them end to end.

And if you stacked them up,
the poems I have not written
would sway like a silent
Tower of Babel, saying nothing

and everything in a thousand
different tongues. So moving, so
filled with and emptied of suffering,
so steeped in the music of a voice

speechless before the truth,
the poems I have not written
would break the hearts of every
woman who's ever left me,

make them eye their husbands
with a sharp contempt and hate
themselves for turning their backs
on the very source of beauty.

The poems I have not written
would compel all other poets
to ask of God: "Why do you
let me live? I am worthless.

please strike me dead at once,
destroy my works and cleanse
the earth of all my ghastly
imperfections." Trees would

bow their heads before the poems
I have not written. "Take me,"
they would say, "and turn me
into your pages so that I

might live forever as the ground
from which your words arise."
The wind itself, about which
I might have written so eloquently,

praising its slick and intersecting
rivers of air, its stately calms
and furious interrogations,
its flutelike lingerings and passionate

reproofs, would divert its course
to sweep down and then pass over
the poems I have not written,
and the life I have not lived, the life

I've failed even to imagine,
which they so perfectly describe.

Sierra Leone update

As i have requested donations of both product and cash I owe all an update on the status of the delivery of such goods. I had had a date (march 1) set in my calender to send off what has been generously donated (THANK YOU SO MUCH), but there have been a few snags along the way. The people who were going to deliver the goods changed their travel schedule. I may still be able to send some things over by the end of this month. i said some because it now appears that they may not be able to take all of it. I'm still working on that. Also a friend of mine who has a connection at the UN is trying to help me out. So i am working a couple of angles right now. If all else fails i am making a return trip to sierra leone and getting the stuff there myself!!