Chapter 1

I woke up to rain this morning. A warm NE fall Saturday morning, the heavy drops doing their best to take the leaves off the trees in the yard as the world slowly fills with gray light. I've already brewed my morning pot of coffee and I'm sitting here wondering about the cycles of nature.

There is something special about the flow of the seasons during the year. There is comfort to be found in change; sounds odd, doesn't it? Most people hate change, fight tooth and nail against it, and set in their ways. I embrace change like a child does a new toy. I hold it aloft and stare at it in ten different directions, twisting and turning it, finding joy in its newness.

I dunno, sometimes I just feel like I am in this rut, and that if things don't change I will drown in a sea of wasteful stagnation. Change. Things change, it is inevitable. It seems counter productive to me to rail against it or despise it, but I guess that is just me. I guess that is just what keeps me going on some level, something new, a new toy.

The rain today reminds me of when I was in Germany. One rainy morning we went to visit Dachau. Our family fled Germany for America in the 1800's, although; there were those of us who were left there. Our branch of the family converted from Judaism, though those who remained there did not convert. Stories, that we were unable to confirm, told us that we lost more than a few members to the conditions at Dachau, and I wanted to see it with my own eyes.