Turned away at the gate
When his Hello came through truck’s speakers I said, “I saw a sign!”
“Okay…..”
“There’s a pop-up beer garden at Fox River Park from 4-9 tonight. We can take Henri? I can show you the yellow-orange mushrooms and ramps? We can get a beer?”
“Sure!”
There was a line of cars waiting to get into the park. A few minutes passed before a brewery representative appeared at our window and handed us a voucher for a free beer at their permanent location.
“Sorry….The park is at capacity. Our event is closed.”
Grrrr…..we could see the lot we usually park in was completely empty.
Plan B?
We parked in a neighborhood that abuts the park and walked in from the back side. On the trails we crossed paths with a couple of joggers, we picked and sniffed what we believe was a ramp or a wild onion, and checked out a colorful chicken-of-the-woods mushroom growing at the base of a tree.
Then we got a beer, sat in the grass, and held Henrietta back from socializing. She was quite disappointed with the situation—there were so many dogs she wanted to wrestle with!
The adults looked happy.
The children looked happy.
The dogs looked happy.
This morning I came across this note I took from Becoming Wise by Krista Tippett:
In America, many features of national public life are also better suited to adolescence than to adulthood. We don’t do things adults learn to do, like calm ourselves, and become less narcissistic. Much of politics and media sends us in the opposite, infantilizing direction. We reduce great questions of meaning and morality to “issues” and simplify them to two sides, allowing pundits and partisans to frame them in irreconcilable extremes. But most of us don’t see the world this way, and it’s not the way the world actually works.
Who is responsible for shaping our culture?
Do you play a role?