Today is Memorial Day in the US, the equivalent of May 4 in Holland, celebrated with parades and speeches at cemeteries that are sprigged up for the occasion. The weather is nearly always perfect, as is today. It is one of those days that makes leaving home very hard but that is what I have to do. In the afternoon I will fly to Washington D.C. for the annual Global Health Conference. Most years I manage to miss this conference which always requires travel over the Memorial Day weekend. This time I got strong-armed onto program. With one of my young colleagues I will be doing a workshop that illustrates how we demystify leadership. I know that, once I am there, it will OK and may be even fun. But right now, looking out over a glassy Lobster Cove and a roto-tilled garden that is ready to plant, I am reluctant to leave home.
Yesterday was a day like this as well. In between Quaker Meeting and a cookout at Nancy and Ed’s, Axel’s cousins who live in West Gloucester, we managed to put in some yard work. I finished the window boxes; we bought the tomatoes and basil plants and emptied the compost bin. The compost had, against all expectations because of our negligence, produced some very rich soil out of a year of (organic) consumption debris. It was like an archeaologicial dig: there were the tea bags, the egg shells, the corn cobs and melon rind, mixed in with the occasional plastic bag, elastic bands, tie-ums, that spoke of a lazy composter or one who did not want to get her hands dirty. Yesterday we got our hands very dirty.
Sita called from the airport as she was heading out to Western Massachusetts for a concert, whisked away by Jim who went to pick her up. After a three day R&R at a most luxurious resort on the Red Sea Coast and flying business class home she had no (and made no) excuses about being tired. I was relieved to hear her voice, not being sure how the Mt. Sinai adventure had ended. She was proud to have made the 7 km long and 7000 ft up trip ‘Mount Moses’ albeit it with a multitude of other tourists. The trip could also me made by camel for those less fit. This made the experience of watching the sunrise a little different than they had expected; apparently it was a rather noisy and crowded gathering at the summit. We were glad to find out that there had been no sleeping with the bedouins.
Sylvia's Journal 
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