I'm melting!

Jenn Rice shot some photos of me while Mom, Dad and I were at the house in Brown County today. This is one of the sillier shots. I was melting at the time, possibly from the effects of sunlight. 

I don't suppose this should be used as an author shot. Unless I decide to write a vampire story.

Best of Summer

Inspired by “10 Most Fun Things to Do in Summer,” a post by Georgia Miller, young daughter of Karen Maezen Miller, on Karen’s blog, Cheerio Road, July 13, 2011. I chose to list summer bests.

• My gardens: the colors, the scents, the wind moving through. Waves of purple petunias. Orange and golden and multi-color marigolds. Impatiens. Old-fashioned pink roses. Coneflower. Cosmos. Daisies and yarrow. Velvety orange tithonia. Lilies. Zinnias.
• Morning walks in the shade on the Monon or elsewhere
• Green. All kinds of green: light, dark, greeny-yellow, piney-blue-green. All sorts of textures.
• The play of light and shadow as the light changes throughout the day
• Spotting fireflies in the gloaming
• Sitting outside in the dark around a fire with favorite people, telling stories
• Driving in the country at dusk
• Sleeping in on the morning of a rare thunderstorm. Hearing rain on the roof of the skylight (or a tent).
• A concert or theatre outdoors, with a picnic. Or  an old-fashioned melodrama.
• Festivals and fairs and lemonade
• The cool interior of a library on a hot day. Library reading programs.
• Viewing the movie “Independence Day” on the Fourth of July, every year. And a parade. And sparklers.
• Real tomatoes, especially on a BLT
• Road trips: Michigan, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming. To be visited: Maine, Montreal, Prince Edward Is. 

What's on your list?

Reading a map

I wanted a map for my cousin, Beth, who is planning a visit to our home. So I went online. I happened to use Google maps, but there are other free services. I spent most of the next hour wandering Indiana, not because I needed to—I had already sent Beth the maps I thought she would need—but because I like to explore.

I followed the White River east until I drew near to my hometown, then retraced the flow, heading downriver (southwest) to the Wabash and on down, visiting New Harmony, Posey County, Evansville, Henderson, KY, and places where only a few people live in tiny settlements cut off from the nearest similar burg or farm by the loops and whorls of the Wabash and Ohio rivers as they cut dividing lines between Indiana and Illinois, between Illinois and Kentucky, and between Kentucky and Indiana. The map reveals places where a section of Indiana is farther west than a section of Illinois at the same latitude, and other places where a section of Indiana is south of a neighboring section of Kentucky. Intriguing.

 Who are the people who live there? How do they make a living? What do they do for fun? What are their hopes? What are their stories?

Could I read them on the map?

(Map of southwestern Indiana from Google maps online)

Running the gamete?

Spotted today (July 6, 2011) on Fandango’s website:

In addition to the transposition of two of the letters in “Canadian,” the clip includes this blooper: “run the gamete.” I don’t believe the writer intended a reference to genetics, in which a gamete is a cell that fuses with another cell during fertilization (from the Ancient Greek word for husband, gametes, or wife, gamete): a sperm or egg cell. What was meant is “run the gamut,” an expression meaning to extend across a full range. Originally, the term was a musical reference to the notes of a scale. The lowest note in the G scale, ut, was represented by the Greek symbol gamma. That made the note gamma ut. Over time, it became gamut, and running the full range of the scale became running the gamut.

Flame on!

It’s that time of year when leaves turn vivid, seeming to push every last bit of red, orange, and gold out where we can see it. Putting it on display.

And then, almost overnight, that bright color transforms into autumnal crispness. Beauty done to a turn.

After the show, we get the olfactory and auditory encore: the rustling, crunching, unmistakable fragrance of fall with every footstep, with each bicycle tire turning over leather-brown and gold bits, with all the scrambling dashes of any-age children through piled-up leaves.

A quotation about wealth, from the first episode of the TV series Matt Houston (circa 1982), spoken by the title character (played by Lee Horsley):
A man can only wear one pair of boots at a time.

The right stuffing

I still have my first teddy bear, named Teddy (how original). He is older than I am. He was my older brother Scott's bear, so the story goes. Scott gave him to me when I was but a babe. I, however, did not pass him along to the next sibling. Teddy and I suited each other admirably, so he stayed with me.

Teddy has long been a creature of comfort and company, but he’s not much of an eater or drinker. When I was a little girl, I shoved the red buds from springtime trees into a crack in Teddy's hard shell of a mouth. I figured he must be hungry, and wouldn't a bear like berries? Such were my thoughts. Then, thinking he might be thirsty, I poured in some milk. I was sharing. Over time, the resulting mess turned unfriendly inside my bear, and my mother had to perform surgery, a tree-berry-and-ruined-fluff-ectomy. He stills bears the stitches. The bear survived, but his voice box stopped working. Eventually, the silent voice box migrated downward, along with much of the remaining stuffing. Eventually, it had to be removed as a nonfunctioning body part.

Gravity and wear have a way of causing padding and parts to shift, making us lumpy or saggy or both, even as we become and remain lovable and, if we’re fortunate, wise enough to know that the downward trend isn’t all the important.

The years have not dimmed Teddy’s shiny-black eyes nor his ability to radiate acceptance and understanding, though they have done damage to his two-tone fuzz and the tilt of his head. May the years be no less kind to you and me.