JOSEPH PERRY, LLC
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA

When we are ashamed we often do things that don’t look like love. Meanwhile I kept making contact by email with one and another of my old friends. I swapped letters with Becky Turner, Nanette Dice, Martin Scotland. I confessed to Lynn Rooney that I had had a mighty big crush on her. Finally connected with Letha Jo Wheeless (wish I hadn't been immune to her warmth and vivaciousness back in school days). And Jim Schwartz, we got in touch and stayed in touch. Then Jim began to turn into a real reunion promoter. He was living in Maryland and he got it into his head that he should host a mini-reunion at his place. I was being tugged but I resisted. After all we were too broke (a good excuse), it was too far, and besides I had to work. So, once again, I found myself wistfully viewing the online album of reunion photos and staying in touch by email. That was less than a year ago. In the meantime Jim Schwartz is saying he's going to move to Nashville. Hey, he takes his job with him; he's not tied down to a location. And first thing you know he has bought a house and announced that, after closing on the house and doing some fixing up, he's going to sure enough host a reunion here. He's just thirty minutes away and there is no way I can avoid this one. I'm beginning to fear my unresolved teen angst is going to hunt me down like one of those predator thingies on Star Trek. I'm coming clean now . . . we're not as poor as we look . . . also some people (besides my mother) think I'm no slouch in certain obscure fields of endeavor. But coming even cleaner . . . I gotta tell ya. It's true I don't have anything but love and I'm not embarrassed about it, even in front of myself, because love, giving and receiving it shamelessly, pouring it out like communion wine, letting it flow like the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee, stirring it up and sloshing it around like . . . [insert simile here] . . . Meanwhile I kept making contact by email with one and another of my old friends. I swapped letters with Becky Turner, Nanette Dice, Martin Scotland. I confessed to Lynn Rooney that I had had a mighty big crush on her. Finally connected with Letha Jo Wheeless (wish I hadn't been immune to her warmth and vivaciousness back in school days). And Jim Schwartz, we got in touch and stayed in touch. Then Jim began to turn into a real reunion promoter. He was living in Maryland and he got it into his head that he should host a mini-reunion at his place. I was being tugged but I resisted. After all we were too broke (a good excuse), it was too far, and besides I had to work. So, once again, I found myself wistfully viewing the online album of reunion photos and staying in touch by email. That was less than a year ago. In the meantime Jim Schwartz is saying he's going to move to Nashville. Hey, he takes his job with him; he's not tied down to a location. And first thing you know he has bought a house and announced that, after closing on the house and doing some fixing up, he's going to sure enough host a reunion here. He's just thirty minutes away and there is no way I can avoid this one. I'm beginning to fear my unresolved teen angst is going to hunt me down like one of those predator thingies on Star Trek. I'm coming clean now . . . we're not as poor as we look . . . also some people (besides my mother) think I'm no slouch in certain obscure fields of endeavor. But coming even cleaner . . . I gotta tell ya. It's true I don't have anything but love and I'm not embarrassed about it, even in front of myself, because love, giving and receiving it shamelessly, pouring it out like communion wine, letting it flow like the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee, stirring it up and sloshing it around like . . . [insert simile here] . . . : Yesterday I saw a notice posted on the bulletin board at work announcing a lecture in Flynn Auditorium at Vanderbilt. It was to be about consciousness. "The Problem of Consciousness in Philosophy, Religion and Science." A Templeton Lecture by Christof Koch