Fiddlin' Around...

" Oh this learning, what a thing it is!"

~ William Shakespeare

Life has picked up speed these last few months.  Good thing, because it makes it easier to ignore the long dark of winter.  No sun rise here until almost 8 AM.  The evenings have improved though as it is not dark until nearly 5:15 PM.   A renewed interest in learning something new has been spurred by a desire to look just past the darkness that is  this very long winter.  This January finds me studying the Celtic fiddle.  What a challenge it is but exciting when something other nerve killing scratching issues forth from my student violin.  My Grandfather's family was from Edinburgh, Scotland.  So part of this feels a nod to part of my genetic code and family history.  Decided to take the course offered for adult learners at a local college's evening division.  There are 11 of us who meet one night a week with a wonderful and talented instructor who happens to know how to work well with adult learners.  The age of the group span from 50 to 70.  I sit comfortably in the middle range.  We learn by ear rather than reading music.  One challenge at a time seems to be about right.  

"That knowledge is great riches, which is not plundered by kinsman, nor carried off by thieves nor decreased by giving"

~ Bhavabhuti

Attended a day long Photoshop Elements class this week-end.  Ah, just what the doctor ordered ~ finally I can make use of this program.  It has reignited my passion for photography.  The instructor was wonderful.   He managed to be so funny for the entire 8 hours of class time and still meet all the course objectives.  No one was left in the cyber-dust as he seemed to know exactly who was lagging and gave each person some individual tutoring as it was needed.  Of course it helps to have 10 in the class.  I can hear a collective sigh of the cyber village  teachers who have been trying to make just that point for years.

"To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within out reach, is the great art of life."

~ Johnson

This past Autumn some friends asked if I would join them for an afternoon at the Opera.  The day has arrived!  How very exciting as I have not been to listen to live Opera since leaving Boston back in what...2000.  Today we will drive to Seattle for a matinee performance of the Barber of Seville.   What a joy this is.  Wrapping oneself in a celebration of site and sound is a delight. 


Back to a work-a-day life in the morning.  But for now I can continue to celebrate the week-end and pretend as though I had the luxury of being retired.  :-)

Sunday Rain

"Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light.  Life is the wing and the rain and the thunder is the sky.  Life is matter and is the earth, what is and what is not and what beyond is in eternity"   

 ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

There is a dim gray light just beyond the window, peeping around the wooden blinds.  I can not hear the rain abut I know she is there.   It is nearly 8:40 A.M. and for the past 40 minutes the sun has been hinting that she sits just on the other side of the clouds.  Another sunrise that almost isn't.  This is not a complaint.  The rain here in the Northwest serves as a reminder of some other primordial time.  A time when forests were abundant every where.

"You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That's part of it."  

 ~ Denzel Washington

Daily there is winter rain.  She is our constant companion.  The lawn remains green  ~ 1000 miles north of the California's Central Valley, the gardener continues to show up for work on Thursdays to mow the lawns.  Frost, Rain's significant Other, shows up now  and then as well but seems to toy only with the flowers.  The icy pansies that flourished on the Island in Puget Sound were transferred to this more in land home.  Although I thought they were destroyed beyond help ... severely frost bitten, somehow they regenerated.  Little purple and white pansy lion faces greeted me when I let the dogs out this morning.  The roses perished - lost.  Pots did not meet their needs nor offer sufficient protection from Frost's icy fingers.  But then that is the stuff that is composted and will serve other roses in some future Spring.  

"Let the rain kiss you.  Let the rain beat down upon your head with silver drops.  Let the rain sing a lullaby"

~ Langston Hughes

This slow motion, rainy day is underway.  Wet me, wet camera, wet dogs.  So be it.  The price of life here in the Northwest.