Delights: September 6 to 12

September 6: I’m still daydreaming about becoming a docent at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. During my interview, we discussed my aptitude (and appetite) for leading tours of elementary school-aged children. To make my case, I recounted a story from my stint last year as a fourth grade substitute teacher.

One morning, the lead teacher told the kids that she’d miss the first two hours of class. She assured them, however, that things will be quite normal. “But,” piped up one boy who I swear reminds me of Jeremiah at that age, “I like weird.” I met his eye; I’ve got you covered.

That morning in the Teachers Lounge, I’d stumbled upon educational materials someone had shared from the National Gallery of Art. Instead of “Simon Says” as our Morning Meeting activity, we would study the American painter George Bellows. I displayed Bellows’ painting of a somewhat chaotic winter street scene in New York City, circa 1911, and invited the kids to start noticing. They called out horses, wagons, hay bales, smokey skies, words written on buildings, women wearing long dresses, and no one walking around carrying cell phones. We talked about immigration, transportation, and urban sanitation (my favorite subject). Finally, after one boy laughed to see the word “clean” painted on the wall of a building, we discussed irony.

Weird enough? It all seemed perfectly normal to me.

September 7: Assateague Island, with its beaches and its horses, is right there. But clouds congregated overhead and the wind whipped. Definitely not a beach day. So my friend Kathy and I drove toward the 19^th century. We landed in front of the massive Nassawango Iron Furnace, which from 1828 to 1850 produced pig iron from locally available bog ore, oyster shells, and charcoal. The oldest surviving hot-blast furnace in the United States, the structure had been hidden by forest and vines until the 1960s when the tower was excavated and its history explained.  

And so we learned that, through a series of chemical and biological reactions occurring in bogs and swamps, iron-rich groundwater produces chunks of ore. (That rich, rusty shimmer on standing swamp water is bog ore’s calling card; at twenty-year intervals, a single swamp can produce bog ore indefinitely.) From the Iron Age until its eclipse by iron ore mining in the late 1800s, the world’s innumerable iron products came from bog ore.

We walked up a rebuilt “charging ramp” to the top opening of the furnace, which received cartloads of bog ore, oyster shells, and charcoal. We then looked down on the grassed-over mill race that powered the water wheel that generated the necessary “hot blast” of air. And we hiked along the swamp and the canal that took the smelted iron out into the world. The whole thing was amazing. 

September 8: Again declining to lounge at the beach (sunny, but chilly and breezy), Kathy and I instead hiked over a pedestrian bridge to Assateague Island. While horses grazed in the nearby salt marshes, we followed the trail over the sand dunes to the ocean. The sun was delightful. The sand was warm. The surfers were busy. “I just want to plop down here,” one of us said. And so we did.

September 9: I had ignored the network of cracks and feeble battery long enough. At last I yielded to Kevin’s pleas and traded up for an iPhone 15. How do I ——?! Where is my ——?! Does it even fit in my hand? As Kevin mused during the awkward first days with his own new phone, “It’s a brave new world.” Brave indeed. But am I?

September 10: “Hey, Daddy, do you want this pancake?” The little boy offered his dad a buckwheat-colored disc of sand. “No thanks, buddy,” his dad said. A bit later, his big brother proffered a handful of large clam shells. His dad accepted one. Then the big brother turned to the lady sitting a few yards away. “Would you like one?” Sure! He selected a good one and handed it to her. His little brother, observing this, scampered to the water’s edge to grab his own small fistful of shells. He ran directly to the lady and practically flung them into her lap. The lady smiled and thanked the little boy. The mom thanked her.

Much later, after the lady folded her umbrella, shouldered her chair and left the beach, I glanced over to her spot. She had taken the gifts with her.

September 10: Again this year, I’m leading an Adult Retreat in Bethany Beach, Delaware. For our discussions, we watched the Hallmark film “Five People You Meet in Heaven.” Here are some of our takeaways: 

• Hate is a curved blade; if we can forgive, we are the ones healed. 
• Our acts of kindness, large and small, matter in ways we may never know. 
• Live your life as though it has meaning, because it actually does. 

Unlike the main character, we didn’t need to wait for heaven in order to get the message.

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If you’d like to browse my past delights, please consult the “word cloud” featured at the very bottom of this post. Find a theme or two that interests you and sift through the sands. Or learn a bit more about my Blog by visiting my Welcome page. You’ll also see links to four essays that were published in print magazines. I’m glad you’re here!