Our college reunion is coming up this weekend

 

Here is half of the group photo of our class in our second year.  Can you find me?

It will be my 52nd. COVID closed us down for 1970 and 71, so all three of our classes are celebrating our 50th this year.  It makes sense, since all three of our classes lived and studied together on that campus all those years ago.

Here's a poem I wrote about this tree, and many other pink trees on campus:

The Pink Trees of Emmitsburg

 

 

It is the first of all mornings.

The curtain rises,

the mountains bow,

extend pointy fingers

to a huddle of pink trees,

tulle ballerinas

in a world of black tights.

The audience,

hitherto numb and slumped,

gasps.

 

The outlandish pink trees

shake their stiff crinolines

and the whole theater stirs.

The audience feels

loved like brides

in a world of divorces.

 

Too  frilly,

too old-fashioned,

the critics huffed.

The management closed the show,

closed the whole theater.

 

Only the caretaker

sees the pink trees dance.

They still dance,

so out of hand,

so outlandishly beautiful,

to the wind’s applause.

 

 

 

My friend Susan, who died in 2002 of breast cancer

I don't want to count the number of classmates who have died.

I just think about all of us back then, not knowing what our future lives would be like.

As the Simon and Garfunkel song says, it was

Time it was
And what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence
A time of confidences

Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They're all that's left you