First day back at work felt good. I love what I do and the setting in which I do it. Tired though.

I've caught up on emails and feel connected to the people I love. I'm reading Jimmy Carter's book of poetry, Always a Reckoning, which is really a memoir in verse, capturing important people, places and memories in his life. He writes gently with an underlying sense of fairness and a touch of irony. He places himself in time and place. The issue isn't whether he is or is not a great poet but whether his gift of poems is worth receiving. For me it is. I'm glad this wise good man captured himself in verse and opens his pages to us.

The More Things Change

In a musty attic box I found letters of my family in the War-
-from places like Bull Run and Gettysburg
and places seldom mentioned in the books.
They said Jeb Stuart had praised some of them,
who served a cause and often gave their lives
not knowing how to tell the history they made, except a private's
point of view set down in a simple line or two:
"We have about a half enough to eat, green beef and flour,
but very little salt. Our company left Savannah heading north,
there was a hundred twenty-five of us, but since then
many of my friends have died so now they's only thirty-six left to fight.
I tell you, Mother, I am well but am not satisfied."

Jimmy Carter