BumFest 2009

While walking downtown after lunch, my husband and I passed a large man bellowing words from the gospel at passersby. He wore a black suit, had a large white cross standing beside him. A worn bible was in one hand while the other was in a fist being shaken at downtown employees scurrying for grub on their too-short lunch break.
He was unstoppable, passionate and very loud.
His booming shouts were echoing off of downtown's skyscrapers.
Eric kept glancing his way as we neared and I noticed how he made other folks a bit uncomfortable.

"I kind of like it," I said gesturing toward the corner preacher.

"Really?" Eric was a bit surprised.

"Yeah," I said. "I like to hear stuff like that on the street. I think it's cool. It's like America. It's like I live in a big city."

Eric paused and took a sip of his soda while considering my reasoning.
I continued.

"It's like one time I walked back from lunch and passed one guy playing a guitar, then one guy playing a sax and another playing the flute," I offered. "All within a three-block radius and it wasn't even Mayfest!"

"No," he replied. "It was BumFest."

Comments

Sylvie said…
Um, not sure but I think I just rented a dump truck. Weird people advertise on your blog!
August 31, 2009 at 6:22 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Grace

The boys say the best graces before dinner.  Yes, the boys. We have multiple graces at our mealtimes. Everyone wants a turn. Sometimes they are sing song, sometimes they are short and silly and sometimes they will melt your heart. The other day, Jackson was mid-grace and thankful for food and family and force fields. Yes, he ended his grace by asking if God could put a force field around our loved ones. I'm hope God is a Star Wars fan.
Read more

Eli Fletcher Copley

Things can change in an instant. Our baby boy was born Nov 9 at 10:35. He weighed 7 pounds and 13 ounces. He arrived three weeks early. But appeared to have enough poundage for a safe delivery. He arrived with quite a healthy cry. His healthy cry gave everyone a sigh of relief. We were thrilled to hear those healthy sounds. Eric stayed with him while the doctor finished my surgery. We would all meet up in the recovery room. When I was wheeled in to the recovery room, no one was there. I was told Eli had to be taken to the special care nursery because he had started grunting to get the fluid out of his lungs. Everyone remained positive. After an hour the nurses came back to explain he was not absorbing the oxygen he was receiving and they bumped his intake. Eventually they would put him on a cpap. He was taken to the NICU. By the end of the night he was put on a ventilator. Things can change in an instant. That night he was monitored and it appeared he was going to be able to be weaned ...
Read more

Saturday

Eli's numbers, machines, blood gases, pulse ox and oxygen rate have had no change. We have been told this is a good thing. While there have been no major improvements...there have been no further deteriorations. This is how we get closer to stable. The long term goal is to get him stable and then eventually wean him off his numerous medications and machines. But for now, we focus on the fact that his information stayed the same throughout the night. It is difficult to see him like this. Every time we visit him we want to scoop him up into our arms. It is impossible to believe that I have yet to hold my baby. But I know he is where he needs to be. Those machines are tiny miracles. The nitric oxide is our miracle. We have even heard the NICU nurses refer to Eli as The Nitric Baby. So far it appears as though the nitric is working to relax his artery. Our happiest moment came early this morning when we learned they had decided to start giving him small feeds of breast milk. We would ...
Read more