Happy St. Patrick's Day. Next week my classes start and one of them is titled "Dystopian Works", we are reading books about the opposite of Utopia. And Japan is a good example of this right now. But let me tell you what I read last night. I was reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and this passage jumped out at me. "Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away." And a little further on "Grandfather's been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint." Now Maria left a million things, kind letters, an "invisiblity cloth" for Timmy to wear to family functions, a book for me titled "How to be a Guest at the Bird's Nest B&B", a collage of Mothers- Grandma Burky holding Bucky, Bucky, holding me, and me holding Maria.... I could go on and on, you probably could add something to the list if you knew Maria, because that was just the way she was. Three years is a long time, and it is a blink of an eye. Today is a beautiful day and I am going to wish everyone I see Happy St. Patrick's Day. God Bless. Rest in peace Maria.