September 2007 Before the month began, while descending Mt. Monadnock in concert with the Moses family, the kids (ages 12, 10 & 6) and I decided, to speed us through our climb down, to add to the traditional list of nouns of assemblage, such as “gaggle of geese,” with some nouns of human assemblage of our own composition. Here is a portion of our list:

giggle of girls
boisterousness of boys
cacophony of kids
tumult of teens
seemliness of students
stress of spouses
henpeck of husbands
wisdom of wives
seduction of maidens
cackle of crones
pollution of politicians
palette of painters
aggravation of Americans
atelier of artists
hodgepodge of Hindus
luxury of lovers

During September, more words: in Spain, an introduction to the products of Señor Prada A Tope (http://pradaatope.es/). In Spanish, a tope is 70’s slang for “completely, beyond limits, ‘up to the hat’; however it is that Señor Prada A Tope is “up to the hat,” I can testify that he makes a good castaña, and a good pimento.

Near Arromanches, the words “Easy Red” appear on the marker at that section of Omaha Beach that I visited in the company of the granddaughter of French journalist André Rabache. By serendipity André landed at that very Easy Red, with the American Army, on D-Day, where he got pinned down with the troops for several hours before heading inland, getting captured by the Germans & then escaping. He later wrote two fictionalized versions of his experiences, one in French, one in English.

In Bayeux, words appear on the famed tapestry (which is in fact not a tapestry, but rather embroidery on linen). Ancient chronicles inform us that one member of our party is descended from a prominent family in Glanville; that bloodline can be traced back to 1050AD. Glanville is near Mont-St. Michel, which was in September as worth visiting as ever.

Louisa M. R. Stead (1850 – 1917) composed the words to the hymn ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus. Here is an excerpt from the author’s story, as recounted in the Sept 11 offering from The One Year Book of Hymns (Tyndale House, 1995):

“Louisa Stead and her husband were relaxing with their four-year-old daughter on a Long Island beach when they heard a desperate child’s cry. A boy was drowning, and Louisa’s husband tried to rescue him. In the process, however, the boy pulled Mr. Stead under the water, and both drowned as Louisa and her daughter watched. Louisa Stead was left with no means of support except the Lord. She and her daughter experienced dire poverty. One morning, when she had neither funds nor food for the day, she opened the front door and found that someone had left food and money on her doorstep. That day she wrote this hymn.”

How refreshing it would be if we as Americans, six years after 9-11-01, were to become so serious about our claim to being a “Christian” nation that we actually began to trust in Jesus, instead of bullets, for our protection …

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