Beto!

Today, Jan and Pam and I braved the heat and went to what was my first Town Hall meeting--in support of Beto, candidate for Senate.  We were very impressed--he's an articulate, charismatic and smart man, not taking big money, but doing what Bernie did in that regard, relying totally on contributions to the campaign.

There was no vitriol, no name calling, not a thread of mean-spiritedness as we're getting too accustomed to hearing in this administration.

Had a lovely swim with Nathan and Elena today.  While Freda swam 16 laps, we three paddled around, Nathan diving under water to retrieve whatever we tossed out for him.

I came through with a bag of little gifts for them both, but the best gifts in the bag were, as usual, the balloons--oh, and Elena's swimming tube that looked like an iced donut.

After the swim, they played with Makken and Sebastien.  Elena used to be so shy when she walked over and knocked on their door, but now Miss Independence loves going alone, waving good-bye, saying, "I'm going to see my friends now."

She did come home to water color for a bit.  Intent on painting, she said, "I think parents should stay together with their first husbands so that one of the siblings doesn't have to go spend time with his other dad."

Ugh oh, I thought--we're getting into some weeds here!

"But if your mother had stayed with Nathan's dad, we wouldn't have you," I said.

"Oh yeah!" she said.  "That's why me and my daddy have the same DNA."

"Well do you know why my mother broke up with Nathan's dad?"

I tried to sound like Mr. Rogers and said something like, "Sometimes people get married too young and they outgrow each other.  Or maybe they aren't happy together like your parents are."

"What about you and Abuelo?  You got broken up too, didn't you?"

"Yes, we did, a long time ago."

"Well, is he still my grandpa?"

"Yes, grandparents are always your grandparents.  He's just not my husband."

(Thank you, Jesus!  I said, just to myself.)

I decided to celebrate tonight by making a cup of vanilla ice cream in the Vitamix.  First time.  Quite scrumptious!

Thursday

When I told Carlene the story about Elena saying, "Don't encourage me!" she laughed so hard.

That impish comment sounded exactly like something she, Carlene, would say.

Turns out, Will affirmed the similarity: "That's where she got her mischievous sense of humor--from Nana!"

Indeed!

Nathan and Elena are coming back today for a swim and a play with their friends next door, Makken and Sebastien.

I expect more stories and photos of joy today.

Magical Makken

Jan and Makken awakened me from a nap with dinner--beet soup and blue cornbread--which is yummy even though I usually don't like beets.  Jan's kitchen magic turns every food she touches into delicious.

Another magic is that we have the same taste in books, and I'm now on the waiting list to read her copy of Anna Quindlen's Still Life With.Bread Crumbs.  (Jan said it reminded her of me--about a photographer who's our age.)

She's also loving, and I'm ordering, The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin.

But the best magic of the day, I have to say, is Makken!  This adorable child is a wonder to behold on any day! He entertained Jan and me with this totally-new-to-me trick:

He spotted two small balloons on the table (Elena and Nathan had drawn faces on them last night) and he proceeded to rub them on his hair and make them stick! Did you know that with a bit of static electricity and cheap balloons you can make Mickey Mouse ears?

Magical Makken had an appreciative audience of two grandmother as he he showed us how to stick balloons onto hair, nose, lamp, walls, and mirror.

I'm calling this my Magical Makken series:

Ticking things off the list before nap time:

A dinosaur T-shirt and art pens for Nathan--whose drawings are wonderful.

A "Together We Shine" T-shirt and a watercolor book for Elena.  Last week we said "Shine shine shine!" exactly in unison, never having said it before!

Getting my $180 at the Apple Store--a refund for recycling my old broken computer

An hour in Michaels looking at art supplies.

This is what Julia Cameron calls "an artist date"--and she recommends doing one every week.  I try to do it six days a week, however.

Anyway, here's the story I came here to share, thanks to Will just now.

At lunch, he was telling the kids to please be quiet for the blessing.  They kept giggling.  So he said it again, and with a look on his face that got Elena's attention.

She got up out of her chair and folded her hands in the prayer position and said "Amen!"

Will said her expression and the gesture were so hilarious that he and Veronica couldn't stifle their laughter.

"Y'all don't encourage me!" she said.  I can just see the twinkle in her eye, even though I wasn't there.

Nathan is more serious, but Elena would do anything for a laugh--and she keeps us all in a jovial mood.

I love being a grandmother!

Making Sunday Lunch

Since I am fully occupied with movies, books, camera buttons and outings, cooking is a rarity in my house.

One day I stumbled upon a video class promising to teach me twenty ways to cook an egg.  I didn't buy the class--heavens no, it would have put a dent in my photography and travel budget!  But I did watch one sample video which I'll share with you below.

To make this Faro Italian Torta, one needs a spring form pan.  I believed myself to be in possession of such a pan, so I climbed on a chair and searched every cranny of my upper cabinets.  Nothing!  I tried to recall the last time I'd made a cheese cake, and it turns out it was back when I lived in Helotes, married with children.

About the time I was starting to search the storage room, Day called, and I shared with her my dilemma.  I didn't want to go out and buy a new one, given the fact that somewhere in my closets or storage room I was sure there was a spring form pan.

"Oh," Day said.  "You gave me yours."

"I did?" I replied.  "When?"

"Oh, maybe twenty years ago," she said.

I found my 40% off coupon from Michaels and ran right over and purchased a shiny new one, then went to the nursery to buy parsley and basil plants, then to Trader Joe's to get ricotta, faro, and parmesan, and I was all set to go.  At this moment, the made and cooling on a wire rack and lunch will be, based on the smells coming from the kitchen, late and good.  And since it is said to serve 8 and I am traveling solo through Rake, the series, I should have enough leftovers this week to move on to season 3.

farro italian torta

Alphabet of Pleasure, Alphabet of Anything

A really fun way to explore facets of anything is writing a vertical alphabet and listing things that start with that letter.

For example,  I made an alphabet of pleasure and so far I have three to six things beside each letter--with new things added every day.

Setting up the alphabet is like a magnet for noticing--so that some letters wind up having five or six items beside them and Z may only have zebras and zoos.

If you take a trip, to Castroville or London or a local book shop, you could make an alphabetical list of whatever catches your eye or taste buds, people you meet, places you photograph....

I'm devoting one of my journals to an alphabet of photographic skills I want to master and potential places to spend a morning making pictures--from aperture controls to zydeco musicians.

If you're writing fiction, you could make a list of character traits, quirks, tastes, and aspirations of your character,

If you choose to do this and share your list, I'd be most grateful!

Saturday in WImberley

Today, Pam and I went for a road trip--starting about noon, with a baggie of cherries and cheese--for Pam to show me a place she thought I'd like for picture-taking. We drove out 281, then east on 290, and wound up in Dripping Springs, but we never found the place we set out to find.  Isn't that the way these things go?

We had a really fun day.  We wound up at the In Style Shoe Store in Wimberley and each bought ourselves a pair of sandals.   Neither of us can abide shoe-shopping at the mall, but we both needed a new pair of sandals, and that's the best place to find all the "health food shoes"--(as Barbel calls them)--all the good European shoes that are SO comfy.

Then we discovered--thanks to the women at the shoe store--another favorite place.  Linda's Fine Foods was even better than Leaning Pear, we thought.  The food was delicious , the service excellent, and it was quiet and cozy.  We  highly recommend a drive to Wimberley for Linda's, but it's not open on Sundays.  They have live music on the deck on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

Rake

Betty suggested I watch this Australian series, Rake--and here it is almost two in the morning and I am coming to an end of Season 1.  I watched the first episode a couple of weeks ago and thought, no way, but today, since Betty liked it, I watched episode two.

It's on Netflix--four seasons I think.

So when Season 1 ends, I'm back to picture-taking and yoga.  Never mind that Rake is irreverently funny and oddball and endearing and handsome, that the cast is great, and the court cases quirky and weird.  Never mind that it makes me laugh every single episode. I will not watch season 2....

Yeah right.  That reminds me of the promises I wrote in school:

I will not talk.
I will not talk.
I will not talk.
I will not talk.

What's in your frame?

The lesson I'm working on today--mostly black and white photography--poses the question, "What's in your frame?"

The teacher makes the point that every detail in a photograph should matter.  Of course, when we take quick snapshots of children playing, we just get what we get.  But when we're taking a photograph of the beach with people on it, or  an old barn against the sunset, or a child sitting in a room not moving about too fast, we should, my teacher says, take the time to frame the shots better.  Or we can crop out or edit out some of the extraneous elements later in Lightroom.

He says that the photograph's subject should be clear and simple or the viewer's eye will be distracted by things that really don't matter in the story your photo is telling.

The frame (the edges of the photo)  should be clear and sharp.  If you're taking a picture of a couple, say at a wedding, you want the edges not to contain half-people who happen to be standing right on the edge or a garbage can or the fender of a parked truck, for example.

Since I always have a tendency to extrapolate photographic principles to real life, here's what I'm taking from this lesson for life:

Too many activities and commitments can be wearying.  Let each day be simple and elegant in the story that day is telling.

We get to create our days just as we create  photographs--let them say what we want them to say.  I want my days and weeks to be simple and uncluttered so that I can enjoy the beautiful surprises that show up, which every single day they do.

❤️

Even in a language as rich as English, we often lack the precise word to describe particular feelings.  Words like "love," for example.

A friend mentioned recently that we Americans over-use the word, and we do.  We might say we "love" pizza or  pie, yet we use that same word to describe our feelings for the people closest to us.

Is the ❤️ we feel for our friends the same as the ❤️ we felt for former spouses or partners or the ❤️ we feel for our parents, our children?  Is what we feel for a certain food really ❤️?

Robert Earle Keene's song comes to mind:  "Love's a word I never throw around--and when I say I love you--I mean I love you til they throw me in the ground."

When a man says "I love you,'" the whole sentence, often adding phrases like "more than anything," it's tempting to believe it because who doesn't want to be loved like that?

In Elizabeth Strout's book, My Name is Lucy Barton, three words keep surfacing throughout the novel: love, desperation, and ruthlessness.

This unforgettable short novel grapples with the meanings of these words.  Strout--through the voice of Lucy--brilliantly captures the subtexts and layers of feelings. By the end of the book, I felt like I'd been entirely inside the psyche and naked heart of Lucy Barton.

It's a universal dilemma: how to describe a particular love?  is ruthlessness ever justified? what causes despair and desperation?

Lucy grew up in poverty.  Things happened in her house that tinged the rest of her life with shame.  She remembers being locked in a truck, crying desperately, feeling abandoned.  Her brother dressed in girl's clothes, her father did something shameful that she never actually named, her mother was unable to show real affection.

As an adult, with children of her own, Lucy writes (not in a writerly way but more like she's telling this to someone in person) about the blurry and crooked lines of love and desperation and ruthlessness. She writes about her love for her mother and the happiness she feels when her mother gives her the tiniest scraps of affection.  Like a woman talking perhaps to a friend or therapist, she often questions what she actually remembers and what she might have imagined.

While  reading the book, I heard on the news the voice of a Central American child crying  desperately in that way that children can cry when everything and everyone they know is taken from them.  I feel, hearing this voice, what Lucy felt when she  heard a child on a subway train crying like that--as if she could hear the sound of her own heart breaking.

We don't know the name of that child on the news, we don't even see her face, but her plaintive cry goes to the core of me every time I hear it.  She could be my granddaughter, or yours.  She is somebody's beloved child and what is happening to her at our border is a trauma that will impact her forever.

Lucy Barton's name I know.  She could be me, or you, or any woman you know--struggling forever to understand the lines where certain loves went wrong, or desperate to make a quilt out of the thin, threadbare scraps she was given.

Page 190

"Do I understand that hurt my children feel?  I think I do, though they might claim otherwise.  But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can't even weep.  We hold it tight, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine."

Flowering Blue Agave, Five Hummingbirds, Hope for Rain

Thanks so much to Joy Hein for this amazing photograph!

There's an entire story here--in the image itself and in Joy's words of description:

Flowering Blue Agave, five Hummingbirds and the hope for rain!

Taking and Making

Back in the day, pictures cost more--what with film and developing--than they do in the digital age.  Amateur photographers had to be very careful to get it as right as they could on the first shot--no eyes closed, no shadows on the faces.  Besides, we had to choose a certain film speed and use it for the whole roll, not going back and forth from one ISO to another.

Few people owned professional-quality cameras.  My daddy took lots of pictures with his borrowed-from-work camera, and from time to time, one of us had a little Brownie point-and-shoot.  Many  times he'd line us up for a picture and say, "Stop being silly, Bob" or "Stand up straight" and then, "I'm fixing to mash the button."   Once the button was "mashed," the deed was done.

He never said "take" a picture; he always said "make" a picture.  He was right.  Ansel Adams, no less, said exactly the same thing.  "You don't take a photograph, you make it."

I've always loved taking pictures, but now--after hours and hours of online classes--it finally clicked how true that is!

Looking back over my huge collection of photos, there are some I still like, but many many more I can now see were Takes, not Makes: a picture of a barn or a sunset or a person, sometimes snapped out of the car window or hurriedly snapped, hoping that what I saw with my eyes would come through.

The human eye can see a much higher range of colors and textures than a camera can see--which is why professionals use manual controls: to create a scene or a portrait that reflects what they see with their complex human eyes.

Even if a picture is not great quality, I rarely throw away photographs of people.  I do if the person doesn't like it or if his or her eyes are closed--or if the person is a former boyfriend, say.

But landscapes are different.  I've ditched lots of landscapes tonight now that I understand the ones I've taken so often are no more interesting than those of a point-and-shoot photo. Maybe I should keep a few--to remind myself later of how far I'll have moved from Then (taking) to Now (making) images.

For example: the photograph of the clothes hanging on the line.  I loved seeing those clothes on the line, but now that I look at the picture, I see that the landscape behind them--which was part of the beauty of the scene--is out of focus and blah.

To make a picture requires understanding certain principles of how we see, how light affects what we see, the impact of color, and how all the components in the picture relate to each other.

My goal is to learn to make pictures more like composing an essay than stopping in the gift shop and buying a souvenir or postcard.

Lightroom and Photoshop

A couple of people have asked me about these classes, so here you go:

If you want to edit on a Mac or Windows, Lightroom is the way to go.  For $9.99 a month, you can get Lightroom Classic, the newest Lightroom CC, and Photoshop.

Most of the Udemy classes on Lightroom are based on earlier Lightroom programs, so if you want to learn the newest ones, there are tutorials on Adobe (where you purchase them) and also Mark Hemmings teaches a class on the platform I mentioned earlier:  https://my.photographypro.com

There are also lots of free tutorials and tips on this platform.

Udemy is cheaper and just as good--with the exception of the highest rated Lightroom class which is based on Lightroom 5.

On Udemy you will find a huge number of classes--in photography and other subjects, usually priced at $9.99 or $10.99.  Here are my favorites:

Photography Composition--taught by Mark Timberlake (excellent!)
Classes by Bernie Raffe of the U.K--but not as crisp and artfully presented as Mark's

Beginner Nikon class--by a man who goes by JP, very nerdy and helpful
El Gale teaches a terrific class called Elevate Your Photography Skills--one I'll watch again
Dale McMannus teaches a really good and short class on iPhone photography: How to take professional pictures on your iPhone.

I'm putting my toe in the water of Lightroom tonight and it's really exciting to learn how to organize and edit photos there.  I haven't looked at Photoshop yet, but it's built in and I'll go there later.

What I particularly like about Mark Timberlake's class is that he focuses on seeing and capturing light and downplays the tendency to buy a lot of expensive equipment.  His class is brilliantly presented and I highly recommend this as a starter class if you're interested.

If you're mostly editing smart phone photography, you'll want to get Snapseed app--free or nearly free.  This app and Camera Plus are two apps that are nondestructive--while some apps do reduce the quality of your photos.

Apertures for Happiness

At Saturday yoga, I did a little experiment inspired by watching one six-and-a-half-year-old dancer maintain a genuine smile for two hours. I wanted to see if I (sixty-nine-and-three-fourths) could smile (sort of) for an entire 90-minute-class.

After about four minutes, the smile faded--not because I wasn't reasonably happy, which I was, but because there was a conflict between my facial muscles and my knee muscles, resulting in a furrowed unibrow.

When I finally made it to crooked tree position, I tried again, but smiling felt forced and distracting.  I needed to focus on posture and balance or my tree would come crashing down.

I keep in my mind's eye and ear memories of things the dancer said--always good fodder for pleasant facial moves.

Like this: Wiping something off my face after our swim, she'd said,  "I feel like I'M the grandmother right now!"  When summoning a memory of that comment, my face rearranged itself into a smile.

But how to keep up smiling for ninety minutes?  How does a child do it and I find it so hard? The more I focused on trying, the more impossible it became.  Children don't think so much, they simply respond to moments of joy as they come.

My mind found the track where I keep my to-do list and I began sorting the items to check off on the way home.  I noticed, that in my pondering mode,  I had missed the cue to lower myself into a bridge on the floor. Ugh!  When little girl dancers miss a cue, they just carry on.   In Bridge Pose, I realized I needed a pedicure and made a note to add that to the list, along with installing Lightroom for a class, along with going to Trader Joes, along with re-scheduling a dentist appointment I had missed.

I'm here to report, in short, my experiment didn't pan out.

A child doesn't bother with lists and clocks and plans; someone else will take care of the logistics.  Therefore, she is free to inhabit the minutes she's in without jumping forward or backward in time.

For a moment on Thursday, I thought it was Friday.  "Do you ever get the days of the week mixed up?" I asked Elena.

"No," she said. "I never know what day it is in the first place."

In photography terms, we adjust the camera's aperture to let in more or less light.  Most secure children have wide open apertures, light streaming in from everywhere.

As we grow older, we inevitably encounter experiences that close the aperture, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.  We have things to do, memories to come to terms with, decisions to make.  If the experiences are traumatic, humans may even get into the habit of averting their eyes altogether in the presence of potential danger.

We can never have again the total Happiness Buttons that children do, but we can tune our own by hanging out with them more, observing them, and doing the best we can to let the light in.

My brilliant neighbor

Makken and Jan were home alone yesterday, and Makken decided he wanted to sew.  So Jan--being the excellent and brilliant grandmother she is--asked him what he wanted to make.

A cat, of course!

So then she asked him to draw the cat--which being the artist he is, he did.

Then he chose the fabric, a gold silk--the most difficult of fabrics to sew upon.  He didn't want the velvet or any of the other of her quilting scraps, just gold silk!

So while Jan made cherry clafoutis out of cherries given to us by other neighbors,  Makken drew his pattern and voila!  He has a stuffed silk cat and cherry clafoutis--and I now know what clafoutis is: something like a German pancake batter poured over pitted cherries!

The Dogs Buried Over the Bridge

Yesterday a book came in the mail--and not from Amazon....

After loving all Rheta Grimsley Johnson's other books, I wrote her a letter, and she wrote me back, promising an autographed copy of her most recent one,  The Dogs Buried Over the Bridge.

She writes in the first chapter about growing up in Georgia, as I did, with an unquestioned understanding that dogs were never allowed inside--which was crystal clear in my house as well.  I can't remember dogs being in anybody's houses in those days and certainly no one ever bought store-bought dog food.  Dogs were dogs, outside, and usually went along with men hunting.  No one I knew of ever trained a dog, took one along on a trip, or required the services of a veterinarian.

Soon after I was married, we sold enough wedding silver to rustle up $65 to buy a dog--and it felt strange at first to have a dog inside, under foot, often sleeping in our bed.  Tony, our German Shepherd, followed me everywhere in those days, even waited in the car for me, windows cracked, as I took college classes at St. Mary's.  When he heard thunder in the night--the only thing he feared--he would sleep between us, dog-trembling until it stopped.

I knew how to cook very few things, but Tony loved brownies so much he'd start salivating when I cracked the first egg and turned on the mixer.  (This was before we heard that dogs can't eat chocolate--and he thrived on it for a dozen years.)

This wonderful book is reminding me of all my dogs from Tony to Pollo to Ivan and all the mutts and drop-offs that came to live with us in the three decades of living in the country.

"Dogs never interrupt us, contradict us, scold us.  They don't gossip.  They communicate quietly, with their eyes, which is what more humans should do.  They don't text us, email us, phone us at awkward moments....They are mysterious and open all at once, a dichotomous blend of need and indifference."

"On the days when yet another newspaper closes its doors forever, when the branch floods, floors rot, human friends feud, and bills come due, a dog or two have been here to commiserate, to put paw to thigh in a gesture more protective and loving than perhaps any other.  While I cherish my human friendships, I believe I've learned more about life, how to lead a good one, from the dogs that have populated mine."

Since Linda Kot, who loves dogs more than anybody I know, has a birthday in two days, I just stopped on chapter two to order her a copy of this book--and off it goes, from Amazon to Cape Cod, just in time for candles!

All kinds of joys!

The world at large, far as I can tell, doesn't really need any more images--at least in the way it needs potatoes.  With millions of pictures taken every day, in almost every patch of land known to man--and woman--not counting the boxes of family photos stored in attics and scrapbooks, we have, I'd say, plenty of images to last seventeen lifetimes.

But what I need, personally, is mastery in making them--for my own pleasure.

Yesterday, Joy came for lunch--a beautiful subject in any light and with any camera--and she agreed to let me try out my new expertise on my Nikon.  Suddenly, most of what I'd learned about camera dials disappeared--though I did get a good shot on my iPhone. The ones I did take on the Nikon weren't transportable to my new computer to show you because I had forgotten to buy the little cable that reads memory cards.

After Joy's visit, Elena came for a sleepover.  As I was making dinner, Jan came in and said I had to come right over and join the dance party in progress, Elena already there with her tap shoes on.  Even Jan with her knee brace was dancing!

"Wake me up early!" Elena said--and I did: 7:00.

"Let's make crafts!" she said the minute her eyes popped open--so we set about gluing rhinestones on paper.

Then we went outside, this being my day to water, and blew up about twenty balloons.  She finally figured out how to tie off her own balloon and was thrilled.  Woo-hoo! "Did you see that, Yenna?  I did it myself!"

I'd planned to drop her off at dance camp, then do a few errands and meet Jan for yoga.  But I couldn't leave!  Seeing her dance was so much fun that I had to stay and postpone yoga until tomorrow.

This child is the happiest human I've ever met.  For two hours, she danced, smiling every minute.  She smiles when she falls asleep and she smiles when she wakes up--and almost every second between the two.  Everything is a new adventure, every mastered skill a reason to celebrate!

Learning to take pictures is as engaging for me as learning a new dance step, mastering balloon-tying, meeting new friends, or inventing a new recipe (as Elena did last night with cherry popcorn salad).  Though I'm a few giant steps from mastery, I've learned from Elena that it's the attempts at mastery that make me smile, even here all by myself!

Cherry Popcorn Salad

Make popcorn
Melt a little butter and pour it over.
Then a little salt.
Then squeeze the juice from about ten cherries and pour it on top.

I picked up Elena from dance class--and we swam all afternoon with our neighbors and friends, then went for a walk and found a place for our happy swingers:

Happy Birthday, Kara!

Kara

We five were in writing group together for many years--and here we are, celebrating Kara's birthday last night--just as she's preparing to move to Oregon.

(Which we aren't celebrating but are reluctantly letting her go on to her next adventure.) 

Here she is trying on a shawl Janet made for her on their recent trip to Greece together. 

Kara, Becky, and me

Janet and Kara
who met in writing group 13 years ago

Kara and Mary Beth--
and fifty roses from Mary Beth

Marcus

Marcus was inducted into the Junior Honor Society last night--as he joins his big brother for one shared year in high school!

His daddy always sends texts to us faraway grandmothers and celebrates every rite of passage.

This creative funny wonderful kid is lucky to have landed in this house, with these parents, with this big brother, all of whom adore him.  And we're all lucky to have a Marcus in our orbit!

Tuesday Lunch

Just back from Luce Ristorante e Enoteca in Huebner Oaks--lunch with three remarkable San Antonio women, Marga Speicher, Bonnie Lyons, and Gerlinde Pyron.

I'd especially wanted to introduce Gerlinde and Marga, both originally from Germany--so here we are after two hours of stimulating conversation and good food.

Earlier this year, I'd introduced Bonnie and Gerlinde because Gerlinde had hoped to find resources through Bonnie for self-publishing.  Bonnie gave her the name of Margaret Pomeroy (who edits and knows the ins and outs of self-publishing)--and the two of them have worked together for about three months. Now--drumroll!--Gerlinde's book is almost ready to go, all but one final edit.

Next week, Gerlinde and Tim are leaving for a month of travel: England and Scotland for two weeks, then Germany for two more.

Bonnie, retired professor of English at UTSA, is widely published--and her most recent book was Wonderful Old Women--in which Marga, a Jungian therapist, was one of the featured wonderful women!

As always happens when interesting women get-together, I came home and made notes of places and books and movies mentioned.  Bonnie recommended a series of four books by by Elena Ferrante (called the Neapolitan novels)--and I've already downloaded the first book, My Brilliant Friend.

So here I go--from Italian lunch to Naples for afternoon summer reading!

New Babies

This morning, driving back from my coke run, no camera in hand of course, I saw the most remarkable thing--two adult ducks (or was it geese?), grey in color and not very large, with about sixteen yellow and black striped (it looked like) babies following them in a straight line, oblivious to cars.  I guess they were on a training mission for following their mamas and they had taken the route that led them right through the traffic light!  Everyone stopped and looked. Amazingly, they had chosen a green light on their side as if they knew.  I will now do some online searching to figure out exactly what they were--unless Joy reads this first and sends me an email.  She'll know.

Another new baby at my house is a brand new laptop which I purchased yesterday, a couple of years too early.  My "new" laptop (three years old) had suffered an unfortunate collision with the floor a few days ago and seemed to have been fine.  But yesterday, the screen started turning black and I took it to the Apple store, remembering I had Apple Care, thinking it would go in for tech surgery and come back just fine.

Well, as it happens, Apple Care doesn't cover that kind of damage.

I could either spend half the cost of a new computer to have it fixed (and they might call to say they found other issues) or buy a new one, two years earlier than planned.  So now I have in my lap a brand new baby.

New Apple Care, for those of you who are shopping, does cover accidents, but it's more expensive than the care of three years ago.

I spent most of yesterday on the phone with Apple people--geniuses all--who helped me transfer data from the old computer to the new one, three phone calls in all, each lasting about an hour.  "Just don't let it go to sleep," one genius advised--making me think about the advice one gets when one's human baby is at risk of a concussion.

So I sat on my bed, phone in hand, following the circuitous routes of the motherboard with instructions from those who know computer mamas and woke up this morning to a healthy happy baby Mac.

Nights and Days

Since the weather continues to be sultry and averaging about 100 degrees a day, I have become a nocturnal being--taking long naps during the day and studying and watching movies at night.

Last night, while watching several episodes of my British TV, I assembled all the handouts and notes that came with my photography classes (probably used up a whole cartridge of printer ink to print them all out) and made a book.  At 3:00 in the morning I  was at the all-night print shop getting a coil binding made by the grouchy attendant there.

It took me about two minutes to make a cover and chapter title pages, and voila!  I now have a book to take around with me when the weather cools enough to take actual daytime photos.

British TV and Other Movies

English Lady Mary from Downton Abbey plays a pioneer Colorado woman in Godless--a good Western.  I usually don't choose shoot-em-ups, but Jan and Kate loved it, so I watched it and really liked it.  Four stars, great characters.

Now I'm working on a list Betty gave me--from Acorn TV on Amazon:

No Offence (yeah, spelled with a C) **** a quirky detective show, really good.

Loves, Lies and Records (the one that kept me awake until nearly four this morning!) ****

Acceptable Risk: Same main character as in No Offence. ****

These I haven't watched yet but will start on when I finish Love and Lies:

Striking Out

Rake

Keeping Faith

Ladies of Letters

Delicious

Deep Water

And at the Bijou--recommended by Marga: First Reformed--which I would like to see this weekend if anyone is inclined to see a movie on Sunday

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Nathan's Last Day as A Bulldog

Today Nathan was promoted from 5th grade to middle school.  Four classes of fifth graders and their teachers and parents gathered in the Helotes Elementary cafeteria for what felt more like a casual graduation ceremony than a promotion, complete with the marching in music of all formal graduation ceremonies.

The kids were dressed in yellow t-shirts and tied in several of the Bulldog themes in songs and speeches.  The principal cried at one point and I saw tears in the eyes of some of the girls and boys.  The names of the kids were on the backs of their T-shirts as "Storytellers"--which went along with the theme: "This is where our story begins."

Nathan had a row of cheerers--three sets of grandparents, two aunts, three cousins, and Elena from down the hall at kindergarten.

Elena borrowed my camera and took this shot of her mom
and her cousin Audrey.

Nathan and Papi

Thirty years ago, I was in the same cafeteria on the first row with a camera.  Will was the star of the play that year in which all the characters were celestial beings and Will was literally a "star."  Here's Will--thirty years ago.

Both my children began their school years at Helotes Elementary--as have both my Texas grandchildren.

Well, summer school is perking along!  I just brought in a wet leaf from my garden, and looked it through my macro lens.

I hope my family and friends won't find me a nuisance, but I've been watching videos I can't wait to try out with my favorite human subjects.  In July, I'll have my children and their families for four days in Texas--where, in early celebration of my 70th, they are renting a lake house in Marble Falls.  I can hardly wait!

In all my years of schooling, right up there with  graduate school years of reading and writing about literature and writing with friends in writing groups, I've never had such a completely absorbing project than these online photography classes.

A couple of nights ago, I dreamed I was in elementary school again, and it was truly a nightmare.  I hadn't written my papers, hadn't shown up for tests, and the principal said I would fail the grade.  In the dream, I begged my parents to let me quit school.

Real school wasn't that bad actually--I always liked school--but maybe the dream showed up to remind me that this free-style studying is what it's all about for me, a woman of a certain age.

The teachers at Udemy vary in teaching styles, but I'm watching one now that is particularly charming as well as informative, taught by a man in the UK named Bernie.  I love his British humor and the ways he poses people for natural-looking portraits.  For $10--I still can't believe this!--you get about five hours of instruction with handouts.

Each course varies in length--some are about an hour, but most are five or more.

I should probably cook up that leaf right now, but taking pictures is ever so much more fun than cooking!

Elvis the Elephant

"A lot of anxiety and depression disorders we see in the world today are actually an undiagnosed homesickness for a sense of belonging."

                       Boyd Varty


On this morning's Ted Radio Hour, (link below), I heard one of the most amazing stories and artfully told stories by a young man who grew up on a nature preserve in South Africa.

He tells about a female elephant named Elvis the Pelvis, so named by humans because she was born with a deformity that made her walk in erratic ways that reminded them of Elvis.

One of the things Boyd Varty discovered in observing nature for hours and hours every day is that animals are capable of caring for each other in profound ways.  Elvis' herd actually slowed down to accommodate the slow movements and difficulties of Elvis and when she fell trying to climb a difficult bank, one of the teenaged elephants in the herd would prop his trunk beneath her and help her up the bank!

This segment of today's program (the middle segment) is a powerful one, a reminder--as Boyd Varty says--that all sentient beings on the planet are connected and that it is in the "cathedral of the wild" that we learn more about and experience our deepest humanity.

Cooking New Stuff

I found these containers at Dollar Tree--two for a dollar--large enough to hold bulk nuts, seeds, and fruits that I bought at Trader Joes and Natural Grocery.

Here's the recipe for  Raw Chocolate Hazelnut Oat Brownies

The coffee and chocolate make these brownies an indulgent but healthy treat. Change nuts if you want a different flavour, Enjoy!  (I don't like coffee, so I used a strong black tea)

250grams dried figs
85grams oats
85grams roasted hazelnuts
2 Tbsp coconut oil
3 Tbsp cocoa powder
2­ to 3 Tbsp cold coffee
100grams dark chocolate
Whole roasted hazelnuts

Remove stems from figs and chop into small pieces. Put oats into food processor and grind into a flour. Do the same with your roasted hazelnuts grind in food processor into a coarse flour. Then add oat flour, hazelnut flour, cocoa powder, unmelted coconut oil, and chopped figs in food processor. Blend till fully combined. Then add your coffee or water if you prefer 1 Tbsp at a time till mixture comes together. Then push mixture into 9inch pan or dish evenly. Melt your chocolate and pour on top evenly. Then add whole roasted hazelnuts to eat square and pop in the fridge for approx. half an hour slice and enjoy!

Learning New Stuff

I've always liked fig newtons, but until today I had never tasted a dried fig.  Dried figs, as the teacher explained on my Udemy course in superfoods, are filled with good nutrients and if we eat three a day we get, for example, 100 grams of calcium.  Who knew?  Not me.  Also--the fiber in dried fruits balances the sugar in the fruit.

I just made a delicious batch of Raw Chocolate Hazelnut Oat Brownies. To make this recipe, I bought a few things for the first time, including figs and hazelnuts and I learned that you can grind up oats to make a flour.  No wheat in this recipe, no eggs, no butter, just nuts and dried fruit and coconut oil.

We all know that learning keeps our minds alive.  Vibrant older people are always learners, usually readers, and curious about the world.  Today's Ted Radio Hour has an excellent discussion, by the way, on wisdom:

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510298/ted-radio-hour

My learning gears are working overtime in a happy hum.  I've watched countless hours of photography classes, and even if my photos don't show a marked improvement, it's fascinating to learn how a camera works and how you can manipulate all those buttons and dials to achieve different results.  One class led me to Lightroom, an editing program that does amazing things.  Another led me to the app called Snapseed, which works similarly for iPhone photography.  I was awake until 3:00 this morning studying and taking notes.

I'm calling it summer school.  I agree with Carlene who said the other day, "We have so much to learn!"

Three Sunday Morning Recommendations

1. Ted Talks--as Always.  This video comes from Brainpickings--and Emily Levine:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/05/24/emily-levine-ted-reality/

2. Udemy.com: This site has over 65,000 courses on just about any topic you can think of--from cooking to travel to photography to writing....Each class today is still $10.99, fully refundable within 30 days.  I have taken four so far and they are excellent--solid content and effective teaching styles.  (I've had two refunds on classes I didn't love so much.)

3. This wonderful book of short stories by Andrew Porter: The Theory of Light and Matter.   I read the first one last night and can't stop thinking about it: "The Hole."