Wednesday was National Walk to School Day. My neighborhood is in close proximity to four schools, so students ambulate nearly every day of the academic year. For this event, we gathered in the local park to head to school en masse.
Ancient cultures regarded rain as a blessing. There were exceptions; Noah comes to mind. But when a wise rabbi noted that the rain falls on the just and unjust alike (Matt. 5:45), he suggested that perspective matters.
I was walking the dog, and a boy passed by on the other side of the street riding his bicycle. As he cruised downhill, he lifted his hands from the handlebars and began to clap in time with the chant, “Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé.”
I learned from Amy Leach’s delightful “The Salt of the Universe” book that a baby groundhog is called a “chuckling.” That’s much cuter than the expletives I used to let fly when the coterie of chucklings devoured my garden like fuzzy lawnmowers.