So glad you have signed up to receive the For Random Learning Comes Newsletter! This is the ninety-second 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.) *** Just one poem in my offering this week, but I hope to be sending newsletters a bit more often soon. The summer has been long and hot and full of distractions. My poem this week is called God's Own, and it's an attempt to answer a child's question about the origin of pain, especially if we are to believe that God is good. A pretty profound question for a small child. I was alerted to the question when a writer on Threads asked for opinions on the topic. My answer turned out rather "stock" religious (as in stock photo.) I guess my imagination somehow did not want to stretch to the size of the question. It seems to me that St Augustine handled it better, but I can't begin to remember exactly how. It's probably one of those questions you can only answer through evasion anyway. By asking, "But is that really the question?" or like God to Job, "Who are you, to ask that question?" I hope all is well with you. There is little to report in terms of publications etc., although I did reach 20,000 words on my story set in an estate garden, which I hope to eventually expand to novel length (100k!!). I'm afraid I'm a bit of a meanderer when it comes to concocting stories and plotlines, so it may take a while. My older daughter finally came back from England after a year, and promptly went off for a much shorter internship at a public garden up North. Having her gone made me feel unsettled and having her back made me feel unsettled, and now I feel unsettled again. I'm looking forward to having a long stretch, where we don't have quite as many comings and goings. The picture, by the way, that goes with the poem gives you a taste for my next travelogue, when I get to it, which will be about Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Have a great week! Andrea

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