Sweet duty

 

I'll be up here in the country with Charlie for a week. Since school started for him early in August, the district set a Fall break in October. Sensible. Year-round school would be really sensible, but goddess forgive the American school system should make any sense.

I pulled over to chat and take pictures of some of the neighbors. They were uninterested. The field they are in looks parched but the green grass has actually just been harvested. They are snacking on the leftovers. I'm fascinated with the gray cows and the herd of donkeys that run with this bunch. I'll try to get a better picture. Grace, I'm jealous of your Click to enlarge. 

   
  

 This took a bit of doing, but we figured it out.

I took him to the high school to ride his razor in a huge sloped parking lot and we did a little crime scene art before we left.

As I was finishing up a man pulled in to ask if we needed help. Nice of him!

Charlie needs math practice because there's no avoiding that math is everywhere. Especially when I'm driving.

Later, we played Scrabble. Keeping score is mathwork. 

In all my years of playing cards, I have never seen a hand like this and I was the dealer. Fortunately, he's not gotten a firm grip on raising. I told him in a cowboy saloon, this would be a dead man's hand!

On a serious note, he has a lot of questions about the conflict in the Middle East and I do not have enough answers. I have to do some reading. The situation is complicated and ugly on both sides.

What I do know is that Israel and I were born in the same year. 

In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, my husband Jim was an 18-year-old paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne. He said they were loaded onto a huge transport plane geared for battle. No one knew where they were going. They flew around in circles going nowhere for what seemed like days (they ate all their C rations) and then were brought back to base. Apparently, the US was poised to intercede in that war, most likely without any public notice.

 I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was happening right now.