legacies

It's 8pm and I just got home from La Guardia.  Very busy board meeting, very fun visits with Hannah.  I am posting these two pictures, because they tell a lot about Earlham.

The top picture is of a statue of Mary Dyer that sits in front of the Meetinghouse.  The inscription reads, "Mary Dyer Quaker, witness for religious freedom, hanged on Boston Common, 1660".  There is an exact copy of this statue which sits in front of the State House in Boston.  Mary Dyer's statue gazes out over the generations at Boston Common, where she was hanged almost three and a half centuries ago.

The inscription over the fireplace in the college's dining room is Earlham's motto, "They gathered sticks and kindled a fire and left it burning". 

Two distinctive legacies, eh?

Not to mention that I met my Valentine at Earlham College...

And tomorrow I am up and out the door at 6am, driving to VT to catch the keynote speaker at the NOFA-VT conference, Eliot Coleman, organic gardening guru.

Here's one of my favorite poems, by Edna St Vincent Millay, First Fig.

My candle burns at both ends;

 It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--

 It gives a lovely light!