Summer Goal

Other than trying to prevent people from drowning, my goal this summer: memorize poems or at least lines of poetry.

I have this desire to be the kind of person who just quotes poetry.

I have Browning, Tennyson, Whitman, and Dickinson poetry books. This will be my starting point. But the first poem I must memorize: Musee des Beaux Arts by Auden. Good stuff.

Yeah, I'm still on my poetry kick. It might be here to stay. But no worries--I still have an undying love for novels. Did I mention how I got excited when I opened the essay section of my AP Literature and Composition test?

Alabama

I went to Alabama yesterday to help clean up the mess created by the tornadoes the past few weeks. It was humbling, devastating, and very eye-opening. I grossly underestimated the amount of damage a tornado does. It was crazy. We saw porches standing alone with no houses or trailers--the tornadoes had swept them away. So many trees had fallen; I spent the majority of the day clearing away wood and branches and leaves. Leah found a doll amidst the remains of a house that was demolished by a huge tree which fallen on it. The neighbor of this family we were helping had a daughter who had just bought a new trailer with her husband--both were killed in the tornado and their new trailer destroyed.

There was so much damage done, my gosh. It will probably take months to recover and you can't even fully recover from something like that.

I wonder how that tree stays standing at such a sharp angle...and the picture on the right looks like an earthquake went through and the tree was sitting right on the fault line.