The longest day

Yesterday was the first day of summer and the longest day of the year--now they'll start going the other way, and I'll be watching the sunrise move slowly to the south, until by August I'll see it over Marblehead instead of Kelley's Island.  About 9:30 there was still some daylight, and we were in our pajamas remarking that we really should have gone down to watch the sunset.  We heard a tap on the porch door and there was a good friend, in town only briefly.  If we'd been on the dock we would have missed her.  Although, maybe not.  She's a night person and I'm a morning persons--the tap could have come much later.

I took my book down to the hotel porch about 2:30 p.m. while Jim and my husband were sailing.  This is Mayfly season (good for the birds but really messy for people) and the slowest, young man I've seen in awhile was sucking them up in a vacuum cleaning louder than a leaf blower.  Or maybe he was blowing them. I don't think his mom ever taught him how to clean.  Fortunately, he wasn't very motivated and didn't continue too far down the wrap around porch with dozens of chairs.

I'm reading "Stepping heavenward; one woman's journal to Godliness" by Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss, published in 1869 which apparently is considered a "classic" and is still in print.  I found it in the church "freebie" box, in perfect, unmarked condition (2008 reprint) about a year ago. It's really quite charming, sound theologically, and since it starts in the early teen years, one is reminded that nothing much changes in 200 years. It's fiction in diary form, a genre I usually don't appreciate, but it is well paced with a lot of introspection and spiritual temperature taking.  This was not on my TBR list, but I'm enjoying it. Need to get back to Keller's "Reason for God" which is what my Columbus group is reading.

Today is Tuesday and should be the first Farmer's Market.  There are two major seminar themes this week, "Race in America" and "American writers."  This morning's offering is "I am a promise" a film made in 1994. I'm sure it will not be noted that all our biggest poverty/education problems in this country are in urban areas controlled for generations by the Democratic machine which continues to create a sense of powerlessness, anger and hopelessness in people while buying their votes.  I don't want to hear how little has changed in 16 years and how if we just threw more money at it, everything would be OK.

The afternoon wellness program is an update on radiation therapy for treatment of cancer. That sounds interesting since I'm a bit of a medical research junkie. At 1:30 someone is giving a "living simply" lecture--yawn.  Been there done that.  Tomorrow morning the Herb class will meet at the train station.  I loved where we met last year--close to the lake and the herb garden, but we must have gotten too large for that open air space. Tonight's program at Hoover is "The Singers' Club at Cleveland," featuring love songs and music from the movies.