Monday, July 30, 2007



Birth:
Tobin Robert Strong
9:54 am CST - Omaha, NE
July 8, 2007 - 7 lbs, 13 0z.
to Ariana and Jody Strong
brother to Noah

We are thrilled to welcome
our new grandson, Toby
Birth...and Death...

Lolly and Harley at the Valle Caldera, Jemez NM

First, death.
Washington Post - obituary
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/25/AR2007072502280.html

We were stunned to hear of the sudden passing of our dear friend, Harley Daniels.
He was an attorney and civil rights activist, author of a book on the true story of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, and was currently working on a collaborative screenplay for a movie about it. Harley was a counselor, a character, a philosopher and a friend.
He will be greatly missed.





HARLEY JAY DANIELS, 64, born in Detroit Michigan, lived in New Mexico, and Washington, D.C., died June 27, 2007.

He is survived by his daughters, Lauren Daniels of Annapolis, Md., Jessica Harrison of Plantation, Fla.; granddaughter, Rachel Harrison; mother, Lila Daniels of Las Vegas, Nev.; sister and brother-in-law, Marilyn and Larry David of Marlboro, N.J.; brother and sister-in-law, Bill and Laurel Daniels of Los Angeles, Calif.; mother-in-law, Yvonne Simpkins of Annapolis, Md.; companion, Sharon Patten of Washington, D.C.; several nieces and nephews and a host of friends. He was the husband of the late Lorilyn Simkins Daniels.

Services in his honor were held at New Bethel Baptist Church, 1739 9th Street NW, Washington, D.C., Saturday, July 21, at 11a.m. Contributions may be made to New Bethel Baptist Church on behalf of the Harley Jay Daniels Memorial Fund.



Saturday, July 28, 2007















On Being Fifty-Something



after Po Chu-i

From thirty to forty, you are distracted
by the five lusts, which I don't need to go into.
From seventy to eighty, you're prone
to a hundred diseases or more.

Who can remember their names,
or the ones of friends who've gone
and died on you? But, from fifty to sixty,
you're free of all that.

Grief doesn't know where you live yet,
only gravity, the body starting to sag
under the weight of memories that,
like extra pounds around the middle,

you can't seem to lose. At the theatre, you doze,
your eyelids curtains that refuse to stay raised.
Suddenly, you're the director of a play
about to begin. Time: no time like the present.

Place: a room you think you recognize.
On the desk, a typewriter squats like a toad,
waiting for a tasty word to devour.
The wall's the wrong color, too cheerful,

but its painted muslin quivers:
from backstage someone tries the door,
which refuses to give. How young you were
when such bright shabbiness was yours,

how like a desert full of dream.


--Debora Greger
The Atlantic Monthly, December 2006