I am delighted to see that my friend, Tom Carten, has taken off into the blogosphere with a tiny prompt from me. He has been one of the many angels in my life, and I am sure he has been an angel to many more people than I have.

I was talking with a class the other day about "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's a short story that's been much anthologized, but that doesn't decrease its power. I questioned the young'uns under my charge (I wanted to say "wing" here, but that would be too punny...groan)how the reader would know that this old man was an angel. They replied that he had wings (duh)....but when I prompted them further, I got a good discussion going. We decided that this old man with enormous wings was NOT an angel of death, but a deliverer...an empath in a way. He took on the illness and sickness of the family's child in order that the child would have a healthy life. The people he was trying to help treated him poorly, throwing him into a chicken coop. (Have you ever really smelled a chicken coop? Take it from me ...it's not pleasant.) Still, this old man helped the child anyhow. When the child became old enough to go to school, the angel took off for parts unknown. This empath idea is an excellent one.

How many times have you acted in the capacity of an angel?

One of my "office mates" at school keeps asking me why I'm always smiling. I don't always smile...but I do smile often because I am blessed with many things. I try not to focus on what I don't have, but what I do have...which is abundant. This kind of thinking isn't easy to do, but try it sometime. It's an attitude of gratitude.

I saw a cento in the NY Times Book Review this past Sunday, and it intrigued me. A cento is a poem, 100 lines long, that takes lines from other poems and mixes them all up to create a new one. I'm going to put that on my summer list of fun stuff to do. Speaking of fun stuff to do, I am going to sign off and head to my pilates session.