Asakiyume mita

A few days ago I went in to the nearby supermarket. I went to one cashier whom I like--we always chat a little. She's maybe in her thirties? You won't be able to tell from my sketch, though I'm pleased because it does kind of look like her. She has pretty intense cheekbones.

Anyway, it had been a few days since I'd been in, and when she saw me, she smiled and said, "Good to see you! I haven't seen you in a while!"

This made me so very happy.

Which is just to say, little friendships, or whatever you want to call them--friendly acquaintanceships--can make a difference.



The other encounter was at a Dunkin Donuts. I was waiting in line, and at last it was my turn to order.

"You were the last, but now you're first," the manager said. (He was taking the orders.)

"Wow, like in the Bible," I said.

He gave me a look full of great skepticism. Not sure where the skepticism was aimed but .... anyway, the coffee was great.

Tune in next entry for a very cool poem I heard this morning.

If you live in Mermaid's Hands, sometimes you walk to the mainland across the mudflats, sometimes you take a dinghy, and sometimes you wade. On September 3, Em and her sister waded:

The water was not quite knee high as we waded over. We had our shoes tied together by their laces and slung around our necks so we didn’t have to try to fit them in our backpacks.

In some communities in the Philippines, kids weren't so lucky as to have dinghies for the days when the tide was high--they would swim-walk a half-mile of open water to get to school, with their books wrapped in plastic and balanced on their head:


Source: Peter Shadbolt, "Yellow boats bring hope and education in the Philippines where the school run can be a swim," CNN, May 20, 2014.

When a Filipino blogger found out about the situation, he established a foundation that provides schoolboats. Now the kids can go by boat to school:



Here, meanwhile, are Em and Tammy, setting out for school. The houses of the kids in the Philippines were on stilts; Em and Tammy's house sits on a raft.



I realize Tammy in this picture looks rather like Em in the icon, whereas Em looks different from how I've drawn her in the past--because her hair is different in this picture ... and because I have very limited ability to make a person recognizably the same from picture to picture if I change cues like hair. (Also, Em in the icon is by Kelsey Soderstrom, a professional artist, whereas I'm a rank amateur.)