Moon v Mars, and Bel Canto

Friday night, the education consultant who is helping us find a placement for the Boy gave us recommendations for wilderness programs.

Both choices seem fine and reasonable, but the idea is so foreign it feels like we are choosing between Mars and the Moon.

"The moon has no atmosphere and a dry climate with extremely cold temperatures. Mars also has no atmosphere and a dry climate with extremely cold temperatures. Mars has violent windstorms, but a lovely red color. The moon has no wind, but is a very bleak shade of gray. The moon is a few days travel, whereas the Mars is a few years."

Yeah.

How to choose between the two? This is so hard, or so easy? Eeny, meeny, miny, moe? If we can't tell them apart, is there really a difference? I am sure there is but how can I discern? Unless I see a major red flag in either program (which I don't), I'll trust the recommendation of the consultant, I suppose.

Right now, I am re-reading Bel Canto by Ann Patchett which I read years ago. It is a beautifully written story about an opera singer who gives a concert in the home of the Vice President of an unnamed South/Central American country for the president of a major Japanese electronics corporation. A group of insurgents take over the party and hold two hundred guests hostage.

This book seems peaceful and simple compared to the rest of my life.

Sure, this is a conceit for the author to throw together a bunch of not-so-random people together in a life or death situation. But that I find relaxation in a story about how a group of elites were taken over by a bunch terrorists?

I am looking forward to my life settling down sometime.