Recently I got a text from a middle school Humanities teacher asking if I could sub. The teacher also shared that the class would be reading The Outsiders and writing their own “fake news” articles based upon real world headlines. 🙋‍♂️yes please!

The tragic journey of Ponyboy and Johnny was a favorite of mine as a youth – but it had been a few years since I read the book. So I checked it out from the library onto my Kindle and got transported back in time to revisit the Greasers and the Socs. Because I wanted to be ready to talk about this classic with the students!

During my day in the Humanities class, we were reading the drama-filled chapter four from the book – but my favorite passage of the book comes after Pony and Johnny both were amazed by a sunrise.

  “The mist was what was pretty,” Johnny said, “All gold and silver.”
  “Uhmmmm,” I said, trying to blow a smoke ring.
  “Too bad it couldn’t stay like that all the time.”
  “Nothing gold can stay.”

And then Robert Frost’s poem Nothing Gold Can Stay is recited, which of course is where Ponyboy’s last line is from. Later in the book at a climactic moment, Johnny challenges the logic of the Frost’s poem.

I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it,he meant you are gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid everything is new, dawn. It's just. When just when you get used to everything it's day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That's gold. Keep it that way, it's a good way to be.

I concur with Johnny, I feel it. I too agree digging sunsets is gold. But I’ve been thinking lately that the real gold is noticing and being present for those little flakes of the shiny stuff among the sand and pebbles of life. I believe there is lots of those glimmering flakes around, but the routine daylight of life often prevents them from shining as they do in the dawn’s light.

So here are a few little bits of gold I’ve found lately. Shiny moments, dear friends, amazing vistas, last light.

Stay golden friends. 🌟