Tra-la! Tra-la!  The sun seems to be coming up.  Again.

I noted in the morning paper the obituary for Margaret Watkins.  She was almost 102 and had lived a brilliant life, including a degree from Stanford at the age of 20 in 1937.  I would like to have known her longer and better. However, for once, I did not have to kick myself for total neglect, as I had actually been to visit her in the infirmary only two days before she died.  She was serene and smiling and gave no hint of the possibility that she was on her Final Approach.  Personally, I believe she decided it was time, and closed her mind, and left.  I’d like to do that.

Bill is in the next room negotiating the purchase of 14,000 lbs. of native rock.  The wall building project will commence next week.  This is a garden wall that we hope will delight the neighborhood and exclude no one.

Yesterday we attended a walk-through of the soon-to-be-opened Napoleon Exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, hosted with commentary by the museum curator. Room after room of splendor overwhelms the senses and the imagination.  In the light of today’s politics, I have to say that Napoleon wins for PR strategy and charisma.

He gets credit for boosting employment and the economy by reviving the Gobelin tapestry production, Sevres porcelain manufacturing, and other industries supporting the extravaganza of court life in his many palaces throughout Europe.  And to think he came and went (officially) in only a couple of decades, counting his rise through the military ranks.  1799-1815 (second exile to St. Helena) is the official scope of the exhibition. In the final room, a stark profile of Napoleon in death (which looks like a Gorey drawing) floats upon a moving projection of the surface of the ocean.  Haunting indeed.

The exhibition will be on view through March 2019. Worldly glory comes and goes.

Meanwhile, I would like to remind today’s young of a classic admonition. Next to my keyboard, I have a little prayer card with a picture of Saint Teresa of Avila on one side and these famous words on the other:

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
all things are passing away.
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God
lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

Patience may obtain all things, but don’t forget to VOTE.  And don’t give power to anyone who claims that they “have God” in a box of their own devising.

Eventually the microbes will reclaim the planet.  Meanwhile, be as happy as you can.

Love your friends. Love your enemies.  Love yourself.  And try to embrace a Spirit who is beyond “all things.”