The item for the day is the Carthage College Directory of 1961-1962.  This may be the 2nd one of these I have found, so I won't waste any time with it.  It prompts no memories today.  It has been some time since I have caught up on current events, so I will use my time here today to do just that. 

When last we spoke of these things, I believe I was birdwatching.  Spring migration is now long over.  In the meantime, my mother has died, I went to a Dead show at the Columbia Gorge where Robert Hunter sang a song for me, and spent a week at the Oregon Country Fair, where the highlight of my day was 6:30 a.m. when I came off my midnight to 6 security shift at the Dragon Gate.  I had a comfy bed in the woods, lots of Deep Woods Cutters, a great tent and a good book.  I thought about mom.

I don't know if I thought about this during OCF, but I think about it now.  My mother on a canoe trip into the Boundary Canoe Waters Wilderness in northern Minnesota, southern Canada, with Dad and the fambly - except me.  I have flown the nest.  I hear this story from a brother.  Mom has gone to pee or something in the woods.  She returns with a bear story.  She had settled herself on a handy stump, and was in the process of utilizing it when she heard a sound behind her.  Turning, she saw a large black bear at the edge of the small clearing which held the stump.  Needless to say, the bear left, because Mom walked out of the woods a survivor.  "Weren't you scared, Mom?" they all asked.  "Well, no, not really scared," my intrepid but staunchly modest Lutheran mother replied.  "I was just SO embarrassed."