THANK YOU FIREFIGHTERS!! YOU ROCK!

Getting close to Burlington, Vermont, my destination. I wonder if this is Smuggler's Notch?
All this green looks so amazing to a Californian used to years of drought

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Recently, I was shocked to read about how an investigation revealed that child labor was being widely used in the Blueberry industry in the US. Blueberries have been gaining a lot of popularity recently, due to their claimed anti-oxidant properties, but who would have guessed this growth would be accompanied by such horrible practices! http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/young-children-working-blueberry-fields-walmart-severs-ties/story?id=8951044 Not surprisingly, Walmart was one of the main retail chains doing business with these growers. To see a slide show that will make your jaw drop, of tiny children toiling in harvest fields, check http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/slideshow?id=8953113 "What it really comes down to is small fingers picking the smaller fruits and vegetables," said Joel Stonington, a recent graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The profit motive seems to turn some people into heartless animals... wait, that is an insult to animals!

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In honor of an important local writer and teacher, Morton Marcus, who recently passed away, I am continuing to share some of his writings:

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From "Poems from
Pages From A Scrapbook
of Immigrants," by Morton Marcus

GRANDFATHER REMEMBERS HIS YOUTH

Winter

"In winter, the world outside became a universe of glassware,
like the merchandise old Lebenshorn piled on his wagon
that tottered from town to town, jiggling and clinking.
On such nights I'd hold my breath and hope that hush
would keep the trees and lakes and snowy fields,
the iced houses and glazed mud streets from shattering.
God was a glassmaker, just like old Lebenshorn said,
and like men stumbling without candles in the dark
we had to walk on tiptoe through His world
so we wouldn't smash all the goods on His shop."


DOMINOES

The boy loses at every game--
checkers, backgammon, chess.
"Yes! Yes!" the old man roars with every win,
seated on the chair opposite,
and smacks his thighs again and again.
Then the boy discovers dominoes.
He sets his pieces on the table
with the dotted sides towards him.
The markings hover and glow
like an intergalactic Morse code,
whole star systems of white signals.
The old man's squinting eyes
struggle to comprehend,
but all he can see
is a small boy's black wall facing him,
a starless sky--empty, impenetrable,
like the one that surrounds his head.
Each piece the old man places on the table
is a star system of his own, but the boy
matches star clusters, extends galaxies,
in unexpected directions,
bewildering the old man,
who watches craftily now
from somewhere behind his eyes
at the constellations spread before him.
The boy claps his hands and yells, "Yes! Yes!"
each time he fits a final piece in place.
And "Yes! Yes!" the old man joins in, "Yes!"
raising his fists above his head
as if now he could hammer nails
into the blackness of the sky.


THE NEW GLASSES

Old and scrawny, his grandfather waits in front of the house.
Two copper-colored mirrors in oval wire frames cover his eyes.
"Prescription," he says, and chuckles at his grandson's face:
he can stare out at the boy, but the boy cannot stare in at him.
"I can look daggers at a neighbor, but vhat can he see?
I can be facing a building, a trolley, a car,
and be rolling my eyes at a zoftig voman on the street--
who's to know, who's to guess, who can tell a thing?"
Jauntily he starts upstairs, stops, taps his sunglass frames,
and says, "MacArthur vears dhese vhen he fights dha Japanese."

Upstairs, his grandma giggles, points to her eyes,
and says her husband wears a mask "just like some cowboy bandit,
or like them boys with pompadours who lean all day on cars,"
and mutters that he is "no longer Jewish."
The old man cackles, lifts his head and howls,
then grabs her and whirls her round. She laughs
and beats her tiny fists against his chest.

The boy sees but is not seen: he is witness to an old man dancing,
a blind old man with copper coins upon his eyes
who gropes from one side of darkness to the other
with a doll-like woman hanging from his neck.
"I got my eye on you, young boychik--you hear?
I see where you are!" the old man calls,
whirling deeper into the shadows with his ancient bride.

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