Not by name

For some reason, this Sunday's article cannot be pulled by searching on my name. Hmm. Not sure why. The title of the article is, "They trust me to do a good job," or you can search on garbage. If you search on garbage, you have to sift through several "garbage pickup days changed due to holidays" notices, but you can still find it.

Tomorrow I travel to Durham to cover the NCSSM. Photographer will come up later in the morning and, despite some differing opinions on how this all should be approached, I am confident it will all come out well.

In order to be there by 8:30 am, I am leaving at 5:45 (yikes!). I drove to this same location about 12 years ago, and I got lost then. So my trepidation at making a deadline tomorrow is understandable. Mapquest estimates the trip at 1:48. I am hoping that by giving myself 2:45, I can get lost and recover in plenty of time.

On another note, our dear friend, Kentucky Trumpet Man, has been in Morocco for several months now. He has changed his return ticket with the airlines so many times that his options ran out: fly back now or the return ticket is dead. He shared this with us on the phone last Thursday and when we hung up, I said, "He'll stay." DH said, "He'll come back."

We heard from KTM today via email. Here is a snippet:

As to my staying, it's funny Maggie, your tag line "Maius opus moveo. -- Accept the greater challenge!"
was a key motivator at that momentus decision time when the question was 'stay - or go?'
You are both such good role models for me in the sense that you do not duck the challenging
things in life, and I see how rich your lives are because of it. So, when I saw that line,
I knew I had to go through with staying even though the future is totally blind.

He goes on:

Although I knew it was going to be harder here, I knew that I needed to be and was needed here. Amazingly, I see that people are placed stragegically in my path here - just random people that I meet become v important players in my life, and me in theirs. It's as if I am a part of a giant, yet intricate clockworks, but a cog, but without me the clock would tick a radically different story of time. Maggie, it was/IS very scary being here with no material means of support and limited funds. but this is so great - look what I just THIS MOMENT got via email - a long lost client, a horse farm hopelessly in debt - I hung in there and did work even when they couldn't pay me. Just recently they started sending me payments on the debt owed...

We are so honored to have this man as our friend and even more honored that he finds some value in our friendship. Africa is fortunate to have him.