So glad you have signed up to receive the For Random Learning Comes Newsletter! This is the eighty-seventh edition. Previous editions can be found on the blog's Newsletter page. I send it out weekly, so if you don't get my email on Saturday morning, please let me know! (Check your junk and spam folders too.) *** This week I got a bit of a late start and am publishing on Sunday instead of Saturday. I have two pieces for you. One is a travel piece on the lovely garden of Sissinghurst in South England which I visited a month or two ago. Lots of pictures, so feast your eyes, even if you are tired of hearing my voice! The second is a poem for Pride month. Today is the day a lot of parades are happening and I, like many my age and older, have been through quite a period of re-education in my adult years, as society changes about me. In some things, our children do know better. This poem Ampersands is about the fate of inclusion movements, such as Pride, and how they cannot help but breed resistance. Florida is the unfortunate current example of this phenomenon. No matter how difficult it may be to justify, someone will take a contrary position and make lives difficult for those who are trying to struggle forward. I use the symbol of the ampersand, which connects this & that & the other thing (just as inclusion movements strive to do) and the symbol of the rainbow, which everyone recognizes as being associated with Pride and the LGBTQ etc. community. But spectrum analysis, so to speak, can apply to any community who strives for inclusion and equal treatment, such as those with autism. I just wish my message were more positive and not so clouded with cynicism and doubt in mankind. Hope you are surviving what is proving to be a pretty hot summer. 97 degrees is the high for the coming week around here. My eye is on the weather report and not just for the temperature. We are just finishing the first month of my least favorite time of year--hurricane season. Five more months to go. The worst storm last year was in November! Let's hope it's a quiet season. Stay safe and cool, wherever you are! Happy reading! Andrea

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