Shadows

I’m fascinated by shadows. Sometimes shadows are more interesting that the solid object that creates them. These shadows in an Italian church caught my eye, as shadows often do.

I live in a land of strong shadows in the Southwest, where the light is powerful and clear and the shadows are often strong and distinct. Today we are having a cloudy day and there are no shadows. A rare event here. I always thought I didn’t like cloudy days because I missed the light. But today, I’ve decided I miss the shadows. Shadows provide . . .

The roses

She rounded the corner to Louise’s house. The roses around the corner house were stunning. She stopped the car, even though she was already late picking up Louise.

She rolled down the window in hopes of smelling the array of roses stretching from one side of the large yard to another. Red, yellow, pink, a melony orange, white: the colors spread like a rainbow across her view.

She took a deep breath and suddenly felt calmer and . . .

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I know somebody

The people you know go everywhere, right? Nobody is restricted to a geographical area these days. So when something happens half way around the world—an earthquake, a cyclone—we are struck immediately by the thought, I know somebody who’s there. I thought that we kept track of distant disasters because we had instant communication, but that’s not it. It’s because we know somebody.

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Extreme Makeover

It seems we’ve managed to give the planet an extreme makeover. The weather is nuts–tornadoes at unheard of times, cyclones destroying lives, forest fires fanned beyond control, bees nowhere to be found, and now we learn that flowers are 90% less fragrant than they used to be. The line about being fruitful and multiplying should have come with a caveat: but not too much. Or maybe it . . .

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I love that

I love that she uses her GPS system to mark the location of wild flowers she wants to return to later to see if they’ve bloomed. I love that she actually stops the car and gets out and wanders off into the desert a bit when she sees spots of color that might be wildflowers. I love that she’s learning how to use photos in RAW format rather than as JPGs because she thinks she can do more with them if she learns about it. I love that we share the same first name and maybe someone will mistake me for her.

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I never dreamed

I never dreamed I’d be a teacher. I didn’t want to do it, didn’t know anything about kids, and wasn’t sure I could even figure out things like which direction the Columbia River flowed for the basic geography lessons. But I started teaching anyway. I found I loved the kids, loved the teaching. Sometimes, I was even good at it. So I . . .

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Wolves

There will be wolves. Today as part of Earth Day, there will be wolves on display at Whole Foods. Wolves are huge, awesome and powerful. We could learn a lot from the wild predators. We are predators ourselves, a fact we manage to ignore very successfully most of the time. But when you look at the state of the predator in nature, you realize that the survival of the ecosystem depends on the health of the predator. Predators are big and easier to see and all the little growing and furry things that they depend on. . . .

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Come back

Remember Shane from way back in ‘53? Sad woman begging handsome Alan Ladd to “come back, Shane.” Well, now I’m the sad woman, standing at the window watching the hummingbird feeder and crying “come back, hummers.”

The lore here in New Mexico is that the hummers arrive on Tax Day. Well April 15 came and went, birdy, and I haven’t seen a sign of you yet. Come back.

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Food

The food was on the table. People were crowded around it, seated before the good china, the good silver, the turkey, the cranberry sauce. No one was talking. No one was looking at the food.

Everyone’s eyes were on Jeremy, who had arrived with Aunt Rosie’s daughter Tina. He had a conductor’s baton in his hand, an iPod plugged into his ears. He leapt on the coffee table and conducted the music only he could hear. He wobbled a bit and stopped conducting to dissolve in huge sobs and tears. Tina grabbed . . .

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Favorite Fictional Character

My favorite fictional character probably should be given by decade. If I start with the current decade, it would be one of the female sleuths–maybe Kate Shugak or Dr. Temperance Brennan. This would be the Temperance in the books, not the TV show character: they are vastly different. I also get quite a laugh from Kinsey Millhone in all her sleuthing efforts.

Going back a decade, I should select one of the mythological archetypes from Women Who Run with the Wolves rather than a character from a novel. I think I read that book for 10 years straight, again and again.

The decade before that . . .

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