The Friday Chronicle: 07.10

7.25.2010

I welcome you with open arms.

117 degrees is the predicted temperature in Phoenix tomorrow, and I'm expected to go on living.

I sure do love you, and I'm so blessed to have shared all these years of friendship with you. I look forward to many, many more. Happy Birthday!!

There's no one I'd rather "Perkisize" with than you, my dear friend. Happy Birthday!!

And so are Her people.

A poem by one of my favorites: Langston Hughes

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow

of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went

down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn

all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

(1922)