The haunting melodies of Stephen Sondheim’s musical have little to do with the day to day hum drum of our lives, or don’t they? I have said before that I am a romantic or am I an imaginarion? It must be both, and perhaps, all. As the Summer comes to a close, I look at the empty new schedule, and wonder where the last year went. It is written down and drawn out for me in the pages of the last two years’ schedule, but I will probably never sit down and look through it, preferring to take with me into the future a fresh, clean slate, not written in as yet although it began chiefly in the month of August. I have not opened that book for fear the same predictable appointments and hardships will mar it’s nice new pages. So, I will a while with it’s nice new pages until some new idyllic event occurs and happily joyfully and dutifully causes me to begin to christen it.

Gosh!!!!What a year it has been so far….they was the Nutcracker which went very well for my daughter, even though she was pushed by a mom in the theater for (presumably) upstaging her daughter. If I had been entirely sure my daughter was right in her initial assessment of it, which she probably was, i would not have retreated without a fight? When does one need to fight? And when should one circle ones enemies, or hide in the bush, and await the right time to pounce? My mother used to say,”he who’s runs away lives to fight another day!” He who runs away might also be a coward. I, for one, think there is a lot of good about being a coward. It has saved my behind on more than one occasion. Sometimes a coward thinks alot about why he is a coward and that can also be punishment enough. Well, most of you who knew me would say,”You are no coward!,” but they would be wrong. I think I come from two cowards and I fear I may have passed this on to all of my children. “Only the good die young” is also a fairly apt expression because we attribute to people who die all of the good traits that we did not think about them having at all when they were alive. In fact, we may not have thought about them very much at all when they were alive but when they die, their death brings out in us all of the hypocritical tendencies we otherwise lack, by having the podium to discuss their worth. My grandfather and other people’s grandfathers did not want to be mourned in their death by people who did not rejoice at their life. Also, we were to not be penitent about what we were not sorry we did at the time, but are very sorry we got caught for! If w you walk down a street, do you say hello to the bum the way you say hello to the banker? They are the same men after all….in God’s eyes. But we are not perfect, but we can strive to be. And never let the sun set on your anger….keep on dancing.