Senator Kennedy

Rest In Peace Senator. Your battles for justice and equality are done. Whether or not we were in agreement - one must respect and honor your effort, commitment and endurance in working toward your liberal goals.

Cooler mornings

There is something in the air - hint of the autumn that is soon to be here. The morning air has a familiar brisk tingle to it as if it needs to remind that brisk can turn to cold in a heart beat. Black berries too are thickly lining the roads - that must make the birds and makers of jams and jellies ( those that prepare) happy. Time to get ready for the fall that is followed by winter - both are lurking out there somewhere. Later today the clouds with diminish and the sun will magically appear and thoughts of changing seasons will ease. Thoughts will turn to changing the work week turn into Friday instead of preparing for a change in seasons.

Mulling over another's blog

"What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature."

~ VOLTAIRE

A male academic recently blogged a bit about the number of blogs about scrap booking. At the time it struck me as an arrogant sexist rant. The thoughts he expressed have nagged at the back of my mind for awhile - since before my move, in fact. I think his sentiment still strikes me as sexist but now less of a rant and more simply expressing sexism and perhaps a touch of academic elitism. Ah, now even I delve into being judgemental...standing as I am on the proverbial slippery slope. Perhaps I am more annoyed by his comments than I realized. I am not a maker of scrap books but many women are and somehow I feel the need to speak up about the ways in which some women chose to document their lives. As well as the need to be heard/seen.

This male blogger seemed to making fun of scrap booking efforts and commented that some scrap bookers were staging events, photos and so forth. One of his followers commented that plain old blogging was a form of scrap booking. I think I agree. Blogging is a form of sharing life with words and / or photos and in some sense I think scrap booking is that as well. The cyber cloud is, for better or worse, public and the public aspect of it says something about the exquisitely human need to connect. I also see little difference in all these blogging efforts, whether about scrap books or acadeic life or politics etc. and the impulse/effort that drove a ancient human to draw animals on the walls of caves in a prehistoric France. I am reminded of something Heyward Carter wrote that I thought I would put here (I may have quoted this before in much earlier posting but it bares repeating:

"There is in each of us a need to be heard to speech. A need born in our souls, the place of real meeting in which every I-Thou and all unalienated erotic power is conceived. This need in each of us is not a pathology. It is not a weakness. It is not a sin. The need does not originate in abuse. Its roots are not shameful. It is not immature. This need is not something to be treated or healed, liberated or outgrown. It is something in each of us to be cultivated and cherished, experienced and shared, with respect and tenderness, awe and humor.

"There is in each of us a need to be heard to speech. It is a need to recognize, name and celebrate our connectedness, a need that can be met only through radical mutuality. This need is so strong and so seldom met that is becomes an obsession from which there is, finally, no escape: If we deny it, we fossilize and learn to live without living, If we accept it, we become more fully human -- and, in doing so , learn to suffer, because we cannot love one another without suffering with one another the sins of the world that gladly would extinguish this need of ours, to be heard to speech.

"There is in each of us a need to be heard to speech. This need is the root of all genuine healing and the source of all creative revolutionary movement. It is the wellspring of our redemption, and it the hope of the world."

Perhaps the 100s of blogs about scrap booking should be viewed with "respect and tenderness, awe and humor" ~the new antelope drawings on cyber-cave walls.

First day of a new job

Time to get ready for work. First day and after all these decades of being a worker bee I still get anxious about starting a new job. Still it also shifts me back into a routine. The house is unpacked and furniture arranged - so too it is time to get on with earning a living and not a moment too soon.

I enjoy pondering life's events and people as well as observing my little spaces in the world - but have been preoccupied with unpacking and organizing. This has been a brief interlude to a work life and now on with the rhythm of what I know to be my normal, average life.

Peace at last

"The sweetest type pf heaven is home"

~ J.G. Holland

What a happy relocation this has been! This Island in the Key Peninsula is a little piece of paradise for me. It takes less than a half hour to drive to work in the city. After work I am transported back to this quieter, greener place. The air is almost always moist and the temperatures are moderate. Flowers blooming in my garden. What a difference from life in the desert. This is likely to be the final move at long last. This feels like home.

Home Sweet Home!

Gradually a home is emerging out of cardboard boxes and wrapping paper. The rooms are small and cozy. The vaulted ceiling make the rooms seem more spacious than the actual square footage. The house has a wall of windows in the open kitchen - living room. That allows a stream of sunlight during most of the day.

Unpacking has been slow. Aside from there being much to do, I am distracted the trees , grass and flowers that lie just outside the front door. When did I last have roses in my garden?...perhaps while living in Boston.

Blackberry bushes line the stream bed that runs along the side of the house. It will be a battle to get any as there are hundreds of birds and more than a few squirrels here.
My sister has been by as has my niece and several friends. It feels like home - at long last!

Trees Every Where I look!

The move is over...well, at least the traveling part is over. Did the 1090 miles in a little over 24 hours (had to stop for naps). The unpacking is just beginning. It is a joy to be back in the land of trees and water! Will begin to take more photos once the house and all it's boxes are a bit under control. It's amazing to have found the computer and my camera!