Well-Swept Yard

Back when. OK? Back when. Back when I was in grade school I dutifully walked the five or so blocks from home to school, passing each day the house known to all students to be the residence of a man who was evil because that's just the way he looked. At school I settled into the routine. One room. One teacher. All day. We got marks of some sort. I'm sure of that. The marks might have been OK, Needs Improvement....I do not remember exactly. But I know that we got marks. I also know that we moved from first grade through sixth grade based I suppose on some computation from OKs and Needs Improvements. Somehow that never seemed to much matter. Now I find myself thinking of standardized tests because standardized test are all the rage today and I am trying to remember if I took standardized test when I was in grade school. Maybe we took standardized tests. Maybe I forgot. Maybe I was absent that day. Maybe standardized tests just were not all that important--no nearly so impo

Work of Tuscaloosa's first black architect shines in churches | TuscaloosaNews.com : "It's been 60 years since the death of Tuscaloosa's first — and Alabama's second — formally educated black architect, and only a few remember his name. Baptist minister Allen Durough was first introduced to Wallace Rayfield after he cut his leg on one of Rayfield's old printing plates while cleaning out his barn in McCalla in 1993. Durough, who had purchased the property from an antiques dealer, found several hundred of Rayfield's drawings, floor plans, business advertisements, portraits and graphic art pieces that were housed in the barn. He did some research and discovered Rayfield's range of accomplishments. “Wallace Rayfield is arguably one of the most important architects in Alabama,” said Amber Baker, a University of Alabama graduate assistant who helped write the introduction to Durough's book “The Rayfield Architectural Legacy.”"

Mazar-i-Sharif February 26, 1969 We've had a week of snow. I saw it snow every day of the week. It snows in the night and melts in the day. Snow and melt. Snow and melt. The snow melts and we have mud. The mud of Mazar fights at you. It is up to the calf of the leg in places now. Everywhere it is up to the ankle. Every day I hope for the plane. Never comes. Soon I will take land transportation through the tunnels to Kabul. I have to get a shot. When a plane comes I ought to get lots of mail.

Two black kittens, small but getting about, took residence a couple of doors away. No mother came with the little furries. What did is a black male. Attentive, protective, he lies on his side the the small ones snuggle his tummy with their tiny lips. All sleep snuggled. A neighborhood conversation. So far the local rag and tube have not been told. Good. My childhood always had a dog or cat or both who came home to our place. They had wonderful stories; some we knew and some we surmised. This story of my adulthood will join those of special relationships of long ago. If only such kindness were common in the adult world.