Texture and Color in Everyday Ramblings

I just took a little journey through all the photos I have shared here since 2019 and I started using SmugMug to host. I wanted to check and make sure I hadn’t shared this early camelia before. I love the light and the painterly quality. And the color and the shape and the texture. Looking at the pictures in aggregate reinforced for me the thought of what a beautiful rich world I inhabit.

Even though it is stark and wet and wintry out there I was struck yesterday visiting the garden plot (to make sure there was no tree damage from the ice storm), how attractive the bare bones of the garden are, the Rose of Sharon, the blueberry bush, the raspberry canes. All the possibilities revealed.

It is raining of course. Ye old Atmospheric River is in place. We’ve had three times as much precipitation this month as this time last year and oh yeah, we have a flood warning for the next four days. La de da. Climate change.

I did meet with the guys on Thursday. Power outage for 61 hours, the benefits of wood stoves, how not to prepare the driveway for the son, granddaughter, daughter in law, dog and cat who are taking refuge, a blown east facing window from a tree branch making the unit unlivable, (and the front page of the local paper), the beneficial aspects of remembering how to crawl, and getting two large suitcases home from the airport on what basically was a block sized sheet of ice. Rope was involved.

Yesterday I participated in two long meetings on Zoom for the League. One was about our positions on good governance. You won’t be surprised that the reality is quite far from the ideal. There was a great deal of concern about the decimation of local journalism.

The second meeting was about our Parks Department. And, again, no surprise, the huge budget deficit. 50% of the revenue comes from users and well…Covid.

I love that the League has such great credibility that we can get the heads of these departments to come talk our small groups. We had the head and another person with a great slide show about the current situation.

The only downside was the woman who traumatized me last year by being my co-lead on a meeting about our financial positions was on the call and relentless. I got up and went into another room while she was going on and on about how bad civic bonds are and how we need a community bank. It is not that I disagree with her in principle, but her zealotry is unbearable. I thought the group, including the head of the Parks department handled her well.

This is why I am sticking to the numbers. I could never be a politician. Political yes, but a politician, a big giant no. No way.

I am on episode 29 of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. So far there are 173 episodes outside the paywall. I listen while I get my cardio. I love this project. I find it interesting that it is also a favorite of the board member I do not get along with. You would think he would enjoy the fact that I am sharing this cultural moment with him. I enjoy it so when other folks like the same things. But he is weirdly competitive with me.

This week he made another joke when I was telling my story about being locked out, that I ignored in the moment but won’t forget. Now I know that he is not happy about having me in the group, it explains the edge to his jokes in a way that I can at least understand a bit. Annoying, but oh well.

My sister Kes, who is a wonderful passionate knitter has been collecting yarn for projects for the last 15 years or so. She had a fair amount and with the prospect of them moving out of the house and into an apartment in a retirement community, she has been agonizing over what to do with it. Talk about color and texture. I can so see the appeal.

A lovely woman that specializes in helping folks make this transition showed up at her place a few days ago and took 8 boxes of yarn away to give to various nonprofits that encourage knitting related activities. How cool is that?

We all need help at various times in our lives. This is something that has come up in my classes a couple of times this last week, I read them a poem on Kindness that got us started. Learning how to accept help is such a challenge for so many of us, but what a huge relief to find that we do not need to do every darn thing ourselves.

Something for me to contemplate here with the gloom and the rain and the bare bones of so much laid out ahead in our rich complicated heart breaking world.

Last updated January 28, 2024