Today’s the Day to Complete Mission #3

It’s freezing this morning!  The newspaper says the low last night was well below freezing, well below, that is, for us sensitive folks in the Sacramento Valley who are impressed by four or five degrees below freezing.  I’m hoping the cold doesn’t keep people away from helping me pick up garbage in and around the Oak Grove this morning.  I love the place!  It has been a wonderful host for my American Transcendentalism class for years, now.  One of its more spectacular moments was when it conjured a spotted hawk just as I was reading out loud to a class the beginning of the last section of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” in which he writes:  “The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering….”  The hawk swooped low over our circle just as I mentioned it — of course, I stopped mid-sentence; we were all speechless for a long moment.  Thanks, Oak Grove!  We will try to keep our “gab” and our “loitering” to a minimum as we do our waste and vice elimination activities this morning.