I am in the best spirits I've been in for, oh, eight years. It's a confluence of goodness. I remember learning that word--really learning that word--when I went on a tree-planting volunteer trip to the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. I had gotten rip-roarin' drunk the night before, and had a hangover the size of which is usually reserved for a teenager's first experience with vodka. I wanted to bail out, but I had volunteered to drive three other tree-planters, and so, heavy with my burden, I hauled my sorry ass out of bed at 8 am and drove to the meeting place to pick up my cargo.
As it turned out, only those who had volunteered to drive others had bothered to haul their asses out of bed...But I digress.

I want to share my favorite poem with all of you--a poem which lingers on my mind these lazy summer days...

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Carl Sandburg's "Happiness"
published 1916 in Chicago Poems