Gulf Shores

Gulf Shores
Photographer Patricia Gulick

Monday, June 26, 2017

6/25/17 RMB Summer Whimsy

6/25/17 RMB Summer Whimsy


Dear Rita Mae Brown,

Saturday evening, I retired to my room early, around seven in the evening, thinking I would write. Instead I rested on my bed with Mythology  by Edith Hamilton. As the book lay beside me, I closed my eyes and I enjoyed the night’s cool breeze, offering relief from a hot summer day.

From my open window, I could hear mariachi music from a neighbor’s backyard party, accompanied by their laughter. I drifted off to sleep, lulled by the melody of my mother’s people. It was a most pleasant way to end a Saturday evening.

I woke after ten, rested and not quite ready to go back to sleep. I considered writing again, but childlike whimsy held sway. I searched for, and found, a small coloring book that I had last held months, if not a year or more, ago.

I gathered my colorful pens and continued where I had left off, as though not a moment had passed. One by one, objects on the page brightened, a blue boot, a green leaf, a red umbrella. I enjoyed coloring as a child. And now I sat as an adult, doing the same, as though not a moment had passed. Life is magical that way.


Enjoying summer whimsy,

Loraine

Thursday, June 8, 2017

6/8/17 RMB One Challenge

6/8/17 RMB One Challenge


Dear Rita Mae Brown,

Most nights of the week I watch one show, a one hour show trimmed to 40 minutes sans commercials. Our San Diego County Library system has a wide variety of movies and shows on DVD. That’s where vast majority of the videos I watch reside.

Work takes up many of my hours, commuting another one, and sleep, that gets squeezed in too.

Reading is allotted to an occasional lunch break, weekend or late-night indulgence. Audio books via my recently smarter phone accompany my meager work out. From Mythology by Edith Hamilton, to Hotspur by the one and only Rita Mae Brown, to America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims Fighting Women and Forgotten Founders that Shaped a Nation by Kenneth C. Davis, to Summer Knight by Jim Butcher… I absorb the written words, the television shows, an occasional movie, and the bits of media and news that creep through my buffer too.

It is apparent that we are a people who enjoy a challenge. When we are not busy taking one on in our lives, we create and share them in our stories. We have been doing this since before the first written words to today.  

I continue to wonder how we can steer our nature towards a kinder sort of human being. That is one challenge we have yet to master.


Onward we go,

Loraine