Last week we had another run through our favourite agricultural vistas dodging horse drawn buggies. At Stratford we saw Moliere’s The Miser. The grasping figure of the miser is a great contrast to the wild generosity of the God of springtime and harvest.

Since early June Susan and I have made several trips along a country road west of our town for plays at Stratford. It’s lush countryside with highly mechanized farms cheek by jowl with the horse powered cultivating equipment of the Amish.

Pope Francis has flown back to Rome after several stops in our country meeting with Indigenous groups and addressing the recommendation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that the Pope apologize on Canadian soil for the sins of the residential school system. His church was one of the contractors for implementing the Canadian government’s program of what’s now defined as cultural genocide.

We would like to thank many of you for your continued support of Touchstone this year. As ever, we are grateful. We continue having meetings and conversations using Zoom but also many more in person, which is enriching after 2 years of little face to face interaction.

It’s been several decades since I experienced a last day of school in June, but there is something about this week that brings it all back – sweating out the last couple of days in a contest to see who’s most bored, the teacher or you and your mates. And then freedom for play, cottages, summer camps, jobs and whatever you could access from your socio-economic group.