My computer is doing one of those Lorenzo stomp gigs. It's a day to stay outside and wear a raincoat, goulashes, and take a walk in the rain once, that's if, the sun rises ever again, rain or sunshine?

There is much to 'digest' here. A one of those non-cuss gentleman, still alive, an agrarian essayist, who is a joy to read and think with is, Wendell Berry. "the art of the commonplace," edited and introduced by Norman Wirzba...has a chapter titled, 'from Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community.'

I'm not a retreat person, those who go off with a overnight bag to attend some guru's event, but, I'll get moved once in a bleacher's moon-expertise and do a rare thing. I spent three days at a small 'gathering' with other 'cool' folks in the Commonwealth of Pensiveness-Pa.. It was in the '80's when Mr. Berry was working on a manuscript about the Kentucky boat, Louisiana 'guy,' named Harlan Hubbard. Whatever happened to the book, lardy none-one knows?

The title Wendell Berry was considering was, "More With Less." O, how about...the title, "The Life and Times of Harlan Hubbard." It was three days of getting read to and talking about the manuscript's draft. Great fun.

Harlan was a recluse. He waited till his forty's until he met a librarian. Years before he met Anna, Harlan Hubbard bought a ladies straw hat, Harlan was thinking, "If ever I was to be loved by someone, I'd think she'd look cute, and may love a hat like this." He stored the hat away for many years. To become acquainted with Wendell Berry, it can't hurt. Berry's older brother is a 'cotton picking' lawyer.

In a chapter of the same book mentioned above, a chapter on 'Health and Membership' tells about when his lawyer brother had a massive heart attack moving a water trough on his homestead place...the hospital experience, Berry tells readers, "after a double bypass, and staying hospitalized...it was like being in a unhealthy hospital factory."

I agree. And No reasonable person would wish to know a person who cultivated sick dispositions, either, would we inside or outside in the greater world we parcel and share? What happens to one person we love (or dare choose to hate, I say) happens to all of us.

And John Donne had in mind (thomas paine had me thinking about this 'glorious' "surge" too- the dead in April) a sort of equation and not a mere metaphor when he wrote, "If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a premonitory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or thine own were. Any man's (women) death diminishment me."

The Introduction tells about the Challenge of Berry's Agrarian Vision. Novalis, the German romantic poet and philosopher, once remarked that all proper philosophizing is driven instinctively by the longing to be at home in the world, and the desire to bring to peace the restlessness that pervades much of human life....

O, and William Wordsworth described it, a wedding between the human mind and "this goodly universe." That's beautiful said, and wow. It's said, in various other way, clearly at times, here. thanks for a rainy day, and the field rejoice.

Our failure to learn, and see, is when we choose to be cruel and lost on land, as the proverbial flopping sea stinky- flounder?

I'll cool off by takeing a walk to the lake. O, it's not a "go fly a kite day.' "Hey, dems trout baiting?" Nope. "You use worms, flies, or pink salmon eggs?" White Ping Pong Balls.

O, just some Phung Nam? And some mat Ong Nghe. huh? hush, you may scare the fish off?

The neocons out at the lake are lame. A few out at the lake, use a red and white baby Bobbi-Boopsie Barbi-Doll. gads.

Can't some people catch a fish by the finny-chin-chin with beer in one hand and a Camel dangling from the lip?

"Chew Red Man tobaccy too?" Yea, and then swallow! yikes...

It's just a good day to walk in the rain without no clothes and get clean? 'shad-up.' okay. use doll soap. okay, we all should?