Kathleen O, my successor as chair at the fellowship, called Wednesday night to solicit more talent for the second annual giving of the green -- a pledge dinner and talent show at the fellowship (Saturday night, 6 PM -- if you're going to sing with the choir, bring a bathrobe). I turned first to the Owen, our resident vocalist, who expressed coy reluctance ("Love to, Dad. Have your people contact my people.") until his younger brother volunteered his violin talents in the cause of religious humanism and free lasagne.

Hearing that Taylor had volunteered to perform, Owen at least agreed to consider performing a few songs on his trombone. I'd much prefer that he sing because his singing is beautiful, while his trombone is, well, flatulent at times, fine for the orchestra or band where missed notes might be drowned by the shrill screeching of clarinets, but not quite ready for an unaccompanied solo.

I am, however, a beggar and shameless, and the congregation is indulgent toward children, so we'll spend Saturday afternoon preparing.

Don and Libby have been our neighbors since December, renting the house next door while Jan, the owner of the house, visits her daughter in Texas, where Jan is interfering benignly and ever-amiably in the life of her newborn granddaughter so that her daughter, an ophthalmologist, can return to her practice.

Don, a semi-retired veterinarian from Colorado, taught a few sections at KSU's vet college this semester. His classroom duties having ended this week, he and his companion Libby the Lab returned this morning to Colorado.

For a long time, the boys have regarded Jan's backyard as their own territory, ignoring the fence that separates our yards, but respecting the wildness of her small woods. When Jan told us that she would be renting her home to someone with a dog, the ears of my feral boys flattened as Owen and Taylor faced the possibility that their roamings in her yard might be curtailed. That didn't happen, but Libby did make incursions into our yard, a new phenomenon for the boys.

Libby is as well trained and playful an animal as we have ever known. She loves nothing better than a game of fetch with a tennis ball. From a spot in Jan's yard, she would monitor both her own back door and ours. She would lie in wait at this spot, tennis ball at the ready, and whenever one of the younger boys would emerge from our back door, she would bound over the fence, her tennis ball slathered up for a good greasy game of fetch. Sometimes, if the kids were quick enough to reach the apparent safety of the trampoline and if her need for diversion was great enough, she would stand upright against the trampoline and roll her sodden ball across the tramp. As the ball rolled and bounced across the trampoline, Libby's prospective playmates would leap to avoid the viscous ball and its slug-like trail, a game in itself.

Don left parting gifts for the boys, gift certificates for all three, and for the younger two, digital watches he had received as promotional items. We reciprocated with a few new tubes of tennis balls for the pooch.

In the short time he has been here, Don and Libby have been great neighbors.

'Tis the season of Pollyannas. For a short time, that last sentence about Don and Libby was the concluding sentence. Then I reread this and realized just how much this entry sounded like something out of Pleasantville, the black-and-white portion.

But it is the season of Pollyannas -- bird songs, flower blossoms, the scent of red cedar and mown grass in the cool breeze on the drive home, a hint of the coming alfalfa, a colt I haven't seen before in the horse meadow, a sighting of a red 1953-57 ragtop Corvette, the time and the means to prepare fettuccine Alfredo with bacon and onions for lunch, my new summer crew cut (the first in many years), and a feeling, however brief, of well-being.

So bite me, evil twin of Bob.