Tag Archives: Postaweek2012

Weekly photo challenge: Escape!

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This is the early morning view from the home of my friend, Paula Krauss, which is on a small cove on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. She and her family have been spending their summers  here for many years, and she graciously invites me up for a bit of heaven every year. In June, she will retire from teaching, and then return to her summer home and the call of the loons. I wish her well as she prepares to turn down this new path.

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Weekly photo challenge: From above

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This photo was taken by my Dad in the Badlands of South Dakota in the late 1960s. I was standing near the edge of the platform, looking down into the abyss, and he was above us. We went camping with our cousins who lived in South Dakota on this trip. I remember that it was pretty cold, and we were freezing  in the tent.  I wish I could remember more about it, but I’m sure it was fun.  I’m sure it wasn’t as much fun for my mother, who still had to cook for six kids and a husband on a little camp stove.

I don’t have many photos that work for this week’s photo challenge. It will be interesting to see what others have selected.

Climbing into Blue

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Along the Cliff Walk in Newport

Along the Cliff Walk in Newport

Climbing into Blue

Once, while sitting high among dunes

on a lonely stretch of unnamed sand,

she fell asleep despite relentless roar.

 

Atlantic winds pulled and twisted

long strands of hair, pummeled

her bones with metrical blows.

 

Soon, bellows of crashing waves

circled back to a small Iowa grove

bound by cordoned green fields.

 

Here, in this isolated belt of trees,

she climbed high into the blue,

shouted back at the roaring wind.

 

Later, she awoke, surprised to be

sitting at ease on the edge of a sea,

the scent of pine on her hands.

 

2012 in review: Thank you!

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 6,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 11 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

 

In search of balance

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How to make sense of this mixed bag of a life we lead?

When I read blogs or essays by people from the gun lobby or the Tea Party, to try to see the world from their perspective, I wonder why they see red and I see green. How does experience take us to such different places? What colors our experiences in such different ways?

How does something like the Newtown school shootings cause one person to run to Cabella’s to buy a gun and another to support laws to ban automatic weapons.

I read a 10,000-word essay a few days ago that worked very hard to support the arming of America, to explain how loaded guns equal safety, and to justify why teachers should be trained to shoot intruders. Very reasoned. Very logical. Very convincing.

I just don’t want to live in the world the writer is painting.

And he would say I already do.

I have no answers. But I don’t trust the voices that so loudly assert they do. It’s hard to find balance in all things when these voices at either end are so determined to be right.

I’ve never held extreme views on anything — but I say that from my own biased perspective.

After all, even voting seems to be an extreme act nowadays.

Enough.

My mood, my beliefs, my views on life remain as gray as this day.

Or maybe just open-minded.

It’s all in how you look at it.

 

Lost Children of the Prairie

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Some of the grandchildren of Ed and Amanda Meylor in the late 1960s.

 

Lost Children of the Prairie

 

Some rise like wheat,

hover between land and sky

despite drought and hail.

 

Some, like ripe seed heads,

are severed.

They float off to red stars on maps

like chaff

or bull thistles

or yellow mustard

that try to make do

in mud

or sand

or rocky places.

 

Like drifters,

who left sea villages

and mountain valleys

to settle here,

to uproot ancient prairie,

to grow children and grain

from need and desire.

 

And then watch it all blow away

with one mad

whirlwind of fire.

 

I wrote this for a writing class at a Brown evening course a few years ago and just found it. For some reason I can’t get the indents to work. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

Weekly photo challenge: Greeeeeennn!

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Clusters of grapes on Long Island

 

Incredibly huge blown glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

 

Weekly photo challenge: Geometry

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The pattern of  tracks from  a pay loader on Galilee Beach in Rhode Island as it works to repair the beach sand eroded by Hurricane Sandy. 

The beaches of Rhode Island were blown away by Hurricane Sandy. The worst areas are still blocked off, but we saw a bit of Sandy’s power today as we drove through South County. I know the communities along the Jersey Shore took the worst beating, so we are lucky. But it is sad to see these beautiful beaches turned to rubble and all the dunes strewn about the parking lots.

Work continues to repair the sea wall at the Coast Guard House on Narragansett Beach. It will be some time before this historic restaurant is open again.

 

 

 

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