Mongoose Days

I read "Rikki Tikki Tavi" with my students. He is a very brave mongoose that Rudyard Kipling created. He kills the cobras. I was thinking about the story from the perspective of the cobras, and it comes out very differently. They were just trying to protect their babies. Funny how life has two sides. I have a hard time seeing two sides of the events in Syria, but maybe it's not so unlike the mongoose and the cobras. They each want to protect what is theirs. I speak to my love each day because his picture is on my desk. He was a really fierce mongoose himself. Yet, he could be as gentle and playful as Rikki Tikki. It's hot here and the weather tires me out. I can't complain because it's nothing like Colorado. Those floods just washed away the life that so many people knew. In the beginning of "Rikki Tikki" it's a flood that washes Rikki away from his parents and his old life into his knew life and his adulthood. He learned well from his childhood/mongoose youth, and he carries his knowledge with him with no chance to go back. I guess that's how life is. Sometimes we get washed out of the past and we go on.