Rain in the summertime.

Rainy days in July are wonderful things. What makes them wonderful for me is I don't mow my own yard. Today being a holiday, I didn't have to go out into the rain to get to work or run errands.

Our nation is in its 232nd year.

All the chatter around about here is of "What are you doing for the 4th?" Americans traditionally eat hot dogs and watch fireworks. This year especially, with everyone adjusting to the shock of gas and food prices, we're staying around home.

At the grocery Tuesday bags of 8 hot dog buns were on sale for 77 cents and a package of hot dogs was $1. Coke products were on sale at three 12 packs for $9 and you could buy just one. Potatoes were $3.29 for a ten pound bag. Looks like for about $8 you could do the traditional 4th of July picnic for a family for 4.

You don't need fireworks either. There's to be a concert with local talent and a major fireworks show downtown on the river. All Free! If you were to walk to Bardstown Road from here, a bus would take you right down there for $1.50. Going back home is another $1.50.

For that fantasy family of 4, the 4th of July would cost $5 each.

A point of view changes what you see.

I was reading blogs from college students on a dig in Israel yesterday afternoon and one described how they saw eagles. If you see the elevation of the site where they were digging, you can imagine the birds below.

These people saw the birds as eagles, though you can see it would be hard to tell the kind of bird with the haze and distance. Another at the same place believed them to be vultures. They saw the huge wingspan as they came in low.

A number of eagles were circling over
The valley below where we worked today.
Ancestors of birds who circled above
The heads of those who walked the
Stone paved streets we have revealed,
With pick axes to loosen earth, not open
To the sky for two thousand years, and
Hauling huge stones with our strong backs,
As we perch on this mountain high above,
Eagles or maybe it was hawks circle.

July 2, 2008

A new poem for a July day.

A morning of dusty digging
Came to a close near noon, and
Our leader came around with
A bag of fresh peaches.

Israeli-grown, so fresh and ripe,
No effort was needed to bite
Into the soft wet flesh, and
Juice ran down her hands.

You stood nearby in that
Dusty t-shirt and brown hat
Hand on blue jean hip,
Watching as she licked her fingers.

July 1, 2008

The impetus for writing this poem was a friend describing his eating a peach.

Peaches now days are something I find at the local grocery. This year they are the size of a billiard ball and nearly as hard, for they never seem to be ripe in the store. I will buy two or three and put them in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator. The morning before I want to eat one, I take it out and set it on the table. By afternoon it has softened and then late at night when I sit down to read, I will eat it. It's soft and the juice will invariably drip on my chest, but it sure isn't as the peach described in the poem.

That peach could start a rain storm.

The Salome No One Knows

It takes me quite a while to read the magazines I get. This morning I got around to reading the aforementioned article, published in the June/July 2008 issue of BAR [Biblical Archeology Review]. When I saw the title I thought it would be about the Salome I learned about in Mrs. Berna’s Sunday School Class. She was the girl who did such a seductive dance for King Herod, he offered her anything she wanted, up to half his kingdom. She took the advice of her mother and asked for the head of John the Baptist. What an image that was to a nine year old child! I recall there being a drawing of a bearded long haired head on a platter held up by a slave.

This article isn’t about that Salome. This Salome was Salome Alexandra and ruled Judea for nine years (76–67 B.C.E.). She married King Alexander Jannaeus when she was 29 and he was 14 or 16. Upon his death he named her ruler over his two grown sons. She was 73 when she died.

Politics among the historians of the time labeled her a prostitute and her short, amazingly peaceful rein was pretty much obscured by time. Isn’t it just like women who are successful and powerful to be slimed? I think it’s funny how this kind of thing is not just a modern way of handling a powerful woman.

Here’s a link to the article. Take a bit to read it and tell me what you think about Salome Alexandra and how her memory was handled.
http://bib-arch.org/bar/article.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=34&Issue=4&ArticleID=13%20

In the beginning here, take one step back.

There was a time when I had a blog. I posted poems I had written. I published the link to that blog to those who subscribed to my newsletter. I think there were regular readers, as I often got comments to my private e.mail.

I was going to publish that poetry again and delete the old blog. Discouraging me is required reformatting! It seems I cannot copy the work with the line breaks and form. Publishing here would require my manually adding line breaks and putting in all the formatting. So for now I will say, "Never mind!" If anyone would like to see all that old stuff, let me know. I've got it all on my hard drive and back-ups. The old blog exists in a diminished form at this web address: http://rachelpoemfriends.blogspot.com/ .

Comments are appreciated on all my writing, though if you do not request privately to be put on the list of members, you won't be able to leave comments here!

Diabolical isn't it?