We have not wings we cannot soar; but, we have feet to scale and climb, by slow degrees, by more and more, the cloudy summits of our time.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~
It all started with a shoe. A woman’s stiletto-heeled pump, camel-colored leather with a bronzy leather lining, sharp-toed with some sort of intricate weaving across the top. It looked little-worn – the heel was perfect, what I could see of the sole looked unscuffed, and the toe was not marred with use. It sat, a single in a world of pairs, in the window of the train station. Who lost it? Was it wrenched off her foot by one of the gaps between the old boards that make up the platform? Did she – against all good sense and WARNINGS IN REALLY BIG LETTERS – try to cross the tracks rather than walking under the train tracks down a rickety set of steps, passing within inches of speeding cards, and back up another set of improbably steep stairs? To be continued…

It ended with sore feet (two of them, mine). I spent my first day of almost-employment (more on that another day) walking the streets of Philadelphia from one end of center city to other. On a day when the wind chills dipped into the single digits, although the sky was winter-clear and we weren’t suffering from the burden of an ice coating that Oklahoma has experienced. I had lunch at the Union League, bastion of Old Philadelphia (at least they admit women and people whose skin is a shade other than blue-tinged white these days). It’s hard to understand how I can feel behind when I haven’t even really completely officially started this job.

Time to go soak my barking dogs. Ruff ruff.