Too busy!

I have been so busy composing and printing my 2008 calendar (Christmas gift for about 28 dear friends and relatives) that I have not had time for new posts. I missed Sunday Scribblings for the first time since I started writing for it. Now the calendars must be assembled and bound. Above is the 2008 calendar cover, starring my favorite breaking wave, caught in my camera during our Smith reunion at Asilomar.

And here is what the November pages will look like when hung. Well, actually they won't! I looked at my blog after publishing and found that, due to the peculiarities of Clairis Works and its alignments, many elements of the lower calendar part are slightly shifted. The printed page has all the small pictures neatly between the grid lines, and the printed parts are similarly symmetrical.
Otto and Kristin have been in Chiang Mai, Thailand since the first of November giving music classes, taking part in programs, sight-seeing the beautiful mountain girt city, and exercising their cameras. They won't be back until December 15, but have only posted (on Facebook) pictures from their first three days there. Since I wanted to include their trip on the calendar, I went ahead and used the few photos they posted.

The calendar dimensions are 11"x8.5" for each of the two halves - the top "big Picture" and the lower calendar, which has family birthdays, holidays etc. noted for relevant days.

Well, back to Santa's workshop!

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Friday's Flowers

All that is left

There are many meanings for "left" which is one of Sunday Scribblings prompts for today. One might be left behind or left over or left in the lurch. One might have left the party early. This post is about all that is left when everything else is gone. I didn't write this poem today, but it seemed appropriate.

,The Gift of Words

You say I have the gift of words.

Someday my words may fail me,
lost in a maze of neurons, wells of words
with no bucket to retrieve them,
or they may tangle on my tongue
like Hannah’s yarn after her stroke
when she worried helplessly
among the skeins and needles.

Gifts are for giving.

Thus I would bequeath to you
a shimmer of words when I no longer
can order them into their patterns.
They will glint like breeze-tossed aspen leaves
or glimmer like showers in sunshine
where each drop holds a rainbow.
They will be as numerous as stars
as facets of waves
as moments of our love
and fragrant like water touching parched earth.
They will hold bird song and wind song
but, alas, no Mozart, no sonnets, no meaning,
just their fragments.

I will scatter them at random on a fragile web
spangled with words and syllables like sequins
and toss it scarf-like over you.

This is my gift.

Wealth

Photo by grandson Byron Shock
several weeks after midsummer's
maximum light show.

MIRROR MIRROR (Sunday Scribbling prompt:"Money")

This morning I awoke with the rising sun just as it struck a building across the bay in such a way that it sent a blaze of reflection to my bedroom, almost like a bright message from a San Francisco window to my Berkeley one. For a few minutes it was a brilliant diamond.
My husband still slept peacefully . Knowing that the phenomenon would probably recur for several days, barring rain or fog, I didn’t waken him. Besides, bright as it was, it could not compete with our annual midsummer show.

Starting on about the fifteenth of June at about five minutes before eight o’clock in the evening, the setting sun hits the windows on one of the slanting sides of San Francisco’s Transamerica pyramid at an angle that shoots the light directly to us. The first night it is impressive but affects only a few of the pyramid’s windows, making them sparkle and glint. Then, night by night, it changes, light moving down from the spire to encompass more windows until, at the height of its brilliance, the pyramid becomes a molten pillar of fire, too bright to look at directly, brighter by far than any sight we have seen save for the sun itself. The triangular shape of the tower is lost in the swell of flame.

Each night the show lasts for about ten minutes from first gleam until the last window winks back to darkness, the peak of brightness being at eight o’clock. So too does the yearly spectacle arrange itself symetrically about midsummer. By July we no longer invite our friends to come see “our” Transamerica pyramid.

But by what stretch of the imagination can we call it “our” Transamerica pyramid? We own no part of this temple to wealth. Nor do we wish to. As former workers with homeless poeple, we are all too aware that, in the shadow of this impressive edifice, desperate folk seek a sheltered spot to sleep in doorways and alleys, their meager possessions heaped protectively beside them. We are reminded of what we consider to be one of America’s troubling problems, one that becomes constatly more acute. It is the growing disparity between the rich and the poor.

I would like to call to the attention of anyone visiting my blog the latest issue of National Geographic and the article(s) about the Mayan civilization. One of the main reasons for the collapse of this complex society was that it had become top-heavy, with the privileged demanding more and more.

Is that where America is heading?

Still, I shouldn't be too hard on the Transamerica pyramid. Not only is it a symbol of wealth: it is also the donor of a midsummer gift of pure molten gold.

Halloween Today!

The wooden candy plate, centered with a miniature pumpkin and Otto's artistic arrangement of assorted small packets of M&Ms, is waiting by the door for small goblins. Now, at 9:pm, we no longer expect to greet our first trick-0r-treater. No one came last year either. Our neighborhood seems devoid of small children. Where are they all?

This photo is of great-grandson Jon a few years ago. He is now in kindergarten. This is just my attempt to remember halloweens as they used to be...

photo by Cedric Shock

Enjoy your Hallowe'en!

Elnor

Elnor Ragan, 1914-2007
(This photo was at her 90th birthday celebration in 2004)

My beautiful sister-in-law died early this morning. Until a little over a year ago, when she fell and broke her hip, Elnor was super active. She taught violin, trained trios for competition, repaired stringed instruments for orchestras and schools, planted extensive gardens around her self-designed earth-sheltered house, went on Elder Hostel trips that involved long hikes, cared for her latest well-trained dog, etc.etc. I will miss her, although we didn't see each other often. She lived in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a long way from Berkeley, California. She was a lifelong peace activist and, as older sister, introduced Otto to her ideals, now his - and mine.

This week's Sunday Scribblings has the word "hospital" for its prompt. I don't need to stray from the subject of Elnor to find an amusing story. While Elnor was still in the hospital with her broken hip, her daughter Lenore asked her what she might want that would make her happier. What she wanted was her violin! Not flowers or pretty nightgowns or goodies to eat. She couldn't play it, but having it nearby gave her a sense of well-being.

Yes, that's the whole of my Sunday Scribbling. Do I get an award for brevity?