Spring in the Laurel Mountains
Click on the picture below to read a beautiful poem about Spring

February 15, 2009, was the 100th anniversary of my mother's birth. She died August 4, 2007 at the age of 98. March 18, 2009, was the 100th Anniversary of my father's birth. He died September 13, 1965, at the age of 56. As of now, mom and dad have well over 100 offspring--12 children, 36 grandchildren, 50+ great-grandchildren, and half a dozen or so great-great-grandchildren. It's difficult to keep track. While driving through the Pennsylvania countryside the other day on my way to the university, I noticed that the trees in the woods on the slopes of the Laurel Mountains are flushing into spring. The bark on the slender, drooping branches of the weeping willows--perhaps the first harbingers of spring--stand out against the grey, leafless mountain landscape, as though some cosmic artist had dabbed a splash of yellow-ochre here and there to brighten things up. Twigs and smaller branches on other trees have turned burgundy red, their nascent blossoms eager to burst into new life. And now--not suddenly, if you watch from day to day--the Laurel Mountains, just east of my home in Ligonier, are eagerly greening. Soft, spring leaves are unfurling like butterflies from the cocoons of myriad buds. Have you ever reached out and sampled the softness of new leaves? If not, do it, and you'll feel what I mean. Spring is nature's season of rebirth, "when weeds in wheels shoot long, and lovely, and lush," as Gerard Manley-Hopkins put it. It's a pregnant season, the season of my parent's birthdays, and it perhaps encouraged them to be fruitful and multiply. Some might say they overdid it (12 kids!), but I'm glad they gave me a chance to be around.

A Summer's Day at UPJ
A Fall Day at UPJ
A Winter's Day at UPJ