Tomorrow's Gospel reading is Luke 8 about the Gadarene swine. My job over the past two days has been to draw, cut and decorate little pink pigs. This Sunday School lesson could end up being as popular as the Father Mark paper dolls Nell put together last year. The end product is going to be a collage of bewildered-looking looking pigs jumping off a hill in whatever position the children choose to stick them. I can't wait.I've seen an icon by a Melkite iconographer that had the pigs being ridden by joyful black demons with tails and ears. I'm not sure what to think of that. It's quite humorous--and definitely memorable.
Yesterday and today I took the children to the West Columbia/Cayce Riverwalk. It was totally different from the Richland County side which runs along the canal. While the ride wasn't entirely flat or easy for our novice bikers, the landscape was magical. The walkway followed the landscape of the river which meant there were plenty of bridges, boardwalks, and covered bridges curving this way and that. We all loved it. We were even under a bridge as a long two-engine train ran overhead. It couldn't have been better timing for two train-or-loud-and-large-vehicle-obsessed boys.
Friday, as we were passing the airport en route to the WCC Riverwalk, I noticed that the FedEx plane was moved out of it's usual position. Seven days a week we can pass our airport at any hour of the day or night, and see a FedEx plane parked in the same place. I've never seen one take off--always parked. Funny, though, as we were driving past yesterday, I looked over and said, "Hey, where's the FedEx plane? That looks like Airforce One------Hey!! That's Airforce ONE!!" We were all excited, even though four out of the five didn't know what they were supposed to be so excited about. The president was in town giving the graduation address at Ft Jackson.
