Hope you are having a great mid-summer, and are enjoying the great outdoors. Thank you, Dick Jessen, for the beautiful photograph of Lake Superior at sunrise!

Summer is a great time to enjoy poetry (so is fall, Spring and winter), but in the summer you can sit on the porch swing or a lawn chair and read Emily Dickinson--or Athena Kildegaard. Toward that end we have a marvelous poem by Athena, with a long title beginning "To the Elephant"—The Crown Prince of Denmark also has the honor of belonging to the Order which inspired her poem. Niels Kjær, a retired Lutheran pastor from Denmark is a poet, who has translated a selection of Emily Dickinson’s poems into Danish. (Elysium, 1984.) From 1925-1933 his father, Thorvald Kjær, served as a minister in the Danish lutheran church in Diamond Lake, MN and in Manistee, MI. From 1981 to 2002 Niels published more than 100 articles in Church and Life, most in Danish but some in English. We are pleased to have his fascinating article comparing "the moment" (living in the present) as expressed in the works of Søren Kierkegaard, Emily Dickinson and Haiku poetry.

Kari Brady from New Haven, CT treats us with excellent advice in her essay which refers to the special moments in life—Enjoy! Enjoy those precious "first time" moments. In reality, each moment is a "first time." So—Enjoy!

Dorothea Larsen Adaskin brings us a sixth installment of her adventures and education attending a Danish Folk School as a full time student (at age 84.)—complete with many unusual moments for us to experience vicariously. We have a new writer from Denmark this issue—Beverly Rasmussen who tells the story of her emigration from Minnesota to Denmark. Beverly’s grandparents are from Askov, MN.

Roy Christensen provides us with thoughtful reports on the recent Danish Canadian Conference on Human Rights and the Danish Heritage Seminar that was held on the Reformation. Y will want to attend next year.

Also included is a report on the press release and an editorial (Post Script) on the closing of Dana College. We are deeply saddened by the closing of Dana, a Danish college that has contributed so much to Danish American culture, and educated so many wonderful people.