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Yesterday evening, instead of getting started on my grading or raging entirely impotently and ineffectively against the events going on in Baltimore (because, let us be honest, not a damned thing I say or do is going to matter there), or commenting without certain knowledge about the happenings at Texas A&M at Galveston, I worked on sharpening several knives and a hatchet. That they needed attention was brought to mind by a little project my wife and I conducted a week and a half or so ago; when my parents were visiting, the Mrs. and I took advantage of the extra child-care and consolidated our toolboxes, reducing our holdings down to one solid set and setting aside duplicates for donations. For the most part; as we went through my wife's tools, we came across a number of pocketknives that had been sitting in less than ideal conditions despite being actually quite nice. Yesterday evening, with a bit of time that I could have spent otherwise, I began to attend to them.

Doing so put me in mind of my father, actually. I remember seeing him many times sitting in his recliner, an old t-shirt draped over one knee, oiled whetstone atop it, honing the edges of his pocketknife. I said as much to my wife as she sat across the table from me, watching me sharpen the steel we share. It was a remarkably homey moment, a connection to what may well be a tradition--although I do not know if my father similarly watched his father, or his father his. I am and remain somewhat disconnected from that history for reasons that do not bear explication here. In some ways, it does not matter; what I have is more than many, and it should be enough.

As this April at Sherwood Cottage continues to follow the pattern laid out by the greatest of Geoffreys in two lines of verse (it is still National Poetry Writing Month, is it not?), and as I make ready to assess student work amid taking care of Ms. 8 while her mother is at work, I find myself considering other disconnections in my life, other removals from communities that I may or may not have some right or duty to engage with. I have noted more than once a desire to put down roots in a place where the soil is rich and deep and I need not expect to be repotted soon. (Sherwood Cottage is not such a place.) When I have had the experience before, and I have, I do not know that I appreciated it; lacking a frame of reference is doubtlessly the cause. Sometimes I did. Now, though, I feel myself about to face a new Dust Bowl, a lyric in one band's two cents' worth coming to mind, and I do not know which way the wind will send me and mine. Wherever we end up, though, having a sharp knife ready is likely to be of some benefit.