When you walk, it is bad to be fast or to be slow.

Another week of summer is gone, and the excitement has either begun without my notice or is still stuck in traffic. At least I can now wave to it if I see it on the road, for I finally went through the process of getting my driver’s license! I’ve put it off for years, and it hasn’t been a huge deal, but I finally went ahead and got it, blurry picture and all. It might be nice to have it around campus once classes start up again, but Delaware, despite its modest size city wise, still offered plenty for me to see on foot alone. This, of course, is coming from someone used to living ten minutes from the closest place that people can recall having ‘driven through’ at some point, and whose backyard is almost literally a cornfield, so anywhere with sidewalks and a handful of shops is a big step up in size, but I’m fully aware that a lot of people are coming from the total opposite experience; I have great friends from both Indianapolis and New York, for example. It is, however, easy enough to either drive or commandeer someone with a car to drive one off to Polaris, where shopping and things to do abound, so it is not as if there is absolutely nothing around, and that’s ignoring all of Delaware’s lovely little areas. (I highly suggest a good wander about Sandusky Street if time allows nowhere else to at least get a fast feel for some of Delaware’s shops. The antique shops are nice, the Global Village store is a must-stop, and a store called ‘Mantras’ [I think] carries the most amazing green tea with pineapple in it, but skip all of this and go straight to the Mean Bean if time is really tight. The Bean is a regular stop for almost every OWU student and is thankfully included in our off-campus ‘points’ for card use.)
With no sword club to attend every week, I’ve been left to my own devices in the study of the blade. Thusly I pulled out one of the books I have on swords and sword fighting, The Sword & the Mind, which is a translation of ‘the classical Japanese treatise on swordmanship and tactics,’ as the cover puts it. Although it only has a small section on actual sword moves, it’s a great read, and it’s interesting to see the similarities between this eastern school and the western techniques that MARRCA studies. The tradition of Zen thought being central in samurai sword technique also makes it fascinating as well, and the metaphors and similies the original author used to explain and express these thoughts are beautiful.

German Word: Bohne (bo-nuh). A Bohne is a bean, and when a German student heads for the Mean Bean, it’s the Boese Bohne, a.k.a. Professor Kremling’s second office. Again, I highly recommend a stop in, and if you happen to see Herr Kremling there, do give him a Guten Tag for me.

Pictures!
And now for our regular picture break! I have a few here that show just how ‘country’ the area I live in is. They specifically feature the cornfield in my backyard, a lovely sunset, the vegetable garden that has consumed my time, as well as the large oak tree that dominates our front yard, whose name is Daniello. He’s simply lovely.