This morning, puppy Shadow and I walked through a swirl of children and their mothers at a school bus stop. The mothers were covered in veils and/or with brown faces, and looked somewhat startled and shy to see us. The kids, however, climbed all over Shadow, exclaiming “He’s so cute!” over and over again, these little ones from what appear to be immigrant and/or “study abroad” families, living in IU married student housing.

Meanwhile, last night, we at the Green Acres Ecovillage held our first Community Dinner of the Fall Semester. This year we are inviting folks from the other two co-operative living communities in town to join us: Middle Earth and Dandelion. As a side benefit, some of the best folk musicians in Bloomington found their way to our little eco-pod back yard. Here’s a much-lightened photo from after dark, last night.

Podmate Rebecca, this morning: “How did they find out we were doing this?” She was thrilled to be in the presence of music from such extraordinary musicians.

Of course, 72-year-old me went to bed early. (And they — mostly young ones — did tone it down by 10:30 p.m.)

Here’s a heartwarming post from my dear sister Katherine.

Speer’s Daughter and the Syrian Refugees

While I’d like to go all warm and fuzzy while reading the above post, fellow InDiana blogger and friend Laura Bruno also points out the shadow side of this massive refuge influx from areas of the world where Sharia law is enforced. To wit, extraordinary violence against women from some of the more belligerent fundamentalist Muslim immigrants who may refuse to be assimilated. This entire post from Laura is a good read, including her inclusion of David Icke’s parsing of how the crisis is proceeding as designed, engineered to foment chaos; and best of all, Laura’s quest to find out how magic woman and arch crone Z Budapest may be responding.

Compassion, Refugees, Rape and Magic