About My 50th High School Reunion :: Essays On Attention Paid

What I realize as I think and write about this, is that all my life I have been arriving at places, doing the work of being me, making friends, having coworkers, and then, moving on, mostly without looking back. I left over bridges that were sometimes burned, but mostly just not maintained. They fell into disrepair then crumbled from neglect. This is habit from a lifetime of moving on. I did not live anywhere for more than five years until we moved into our current home in 2006.

Closing in on 14K words with two days left to go. Should make it and then some. And I didn’t start until day 2!

About My 50th High School Reunion :: Essays On Attention Paid

Years later, Facebook became a thing and people were discovering long lost friends and acquaintances and reconnecting with them. My wife did. I did not. I never went looking for anybody and nobody came looking for me. Throughout my life, wherever I have gone, whatever I did, when I moved on I left people behind and didn’t look back. Still, I am mildly sad thinking that nobody out of my past wanted to find me.

From today’s walk…

Closeup of oak leaf hydrangea blossom.

Tree branch on edge of sidewalk, dirt patch beyond edge of sidewalk.

Food service clear plastic glove on sidewalk.

Clouds above the tops of buildings and a streetlamp on Main Street.

Dented chrome fender of an old red Chevrolet pickup truck.

Queen Anne’s Lace blossom.

Woman’s bathing suit on a translucent mannequin form with tree branches reflected in the background.

Reason cannot be the creative principle, unlike intuition: it is the quality control department only.

— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist a.co/g2pdlCa

Thus in creativity there are bound to be at least, and at the very simplest, two phases, that may often nonetheless overlap: a phase of exploration guided by the imagination; followed, at a distance of anything from seconds to months, but in any case followed, by a critical sifting and evaluation of the results.

– Poincaré

— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist a.co/7e95PqU

After some trials and tribulations, I have all my prints ready for frame insertion. This will happen tomorrow and delivery of the work will happen on Tuesday.

Having a frustrating day… need to make some large prints but Lightroom is not cooperating… it keeps crashing!

From this morning’s walk…

Water droplets on an off white background.

Lock chain on a chain link fence.

Colorful stickers on a utility pole.

Graffiti abstract expressionist art.

Steel sign supports cut off flush with the concrete sidewalk.

The exotic meat section of our local supermarket…

One pound packages of ground exotic meats in a freezer. Bison, elk, venison, yak are among the offerings.

It’s raining so no walk today… a couple from the other day…

Stair railing shadow cascading down the stairs.

Shadow of railing and small circular tables on posts. Concrete terrace.

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/june-23-2023-friday?r=3lmw0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

There’s something happening in Russia, but as of midnight tonight EDT, what is going on is not clear.

www.wholesomeyum.com/recipes/c…

We were introduced to this mock potato salad by friends pursuing a keto diet. It’s become a regular in the evening meal lineup. It’s a surprisingly satisfying substitute for potato salad.

Is there a 12 step program for half sour pickle addiction?

For creativity to succeed, then, there needs to be breadth of vision; the capacity to forge distant links; flexibility rather than rigidity; a willingness to respond to a changed or changing context; as well as tolerance of ambiguity and of knowledge that is, at least at the outset, inherently imprecise.

— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist a.co/ingE4o6

Talent hits a target no-one else can hit, wrote Schopenhauer; genius hits a target no-one else can see.

— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist a.co/fGdTWh9

The weather app keeps promising rain… the skies keep disappointing…

From this morning’s walk…

Sunrise behind a tree across a street. Fence shadows on the street.

Houses in the early morning sun from the opposite side of the street.

The shadow of the letters DA on the leg of a female mannequin in a shop window.

The arched recess and window of an old bank building from below looking up towards the sky.

White paper detritus on the sidewalk crumpled in an interesting shape.

Day 7 of the 1000 words of summer challenge and I am almost at 7k words… catching up after having missed the first day. Having fun with this!

All five accordion books for an upcoming show now completed. Now for the slipcases…

New addition to the everyday mandala series…

June 21, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson

Owen Tucker-Smith of the Los Angeles Times noted that in the past 40 years, the House has censured just five people: Paul Gosar (R-AZ) in 2021 for tweeting a video showing a character with his face killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and attacking President Biden, Charles Rangel (D-NY) in 2010 for finance violations, Gerry Studds (D-MA) and Dan Crane (R-IL) in 1983 for sexual misconduct with House pages, and now Schiff.

June 21, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson

Last night’s story got weirder, though, because Alito waded into it to attack ProPublica for their reporting. The reporters had reached out to the justice last week to get his side of the story. Yesterday, Alito’s office told the authors he had no comment and then several hours later–before the ProPublica story dropped–Alito published in the Wall Street Journal an op-ed “prebuttal” of what was to come. It was titled: “ProPublica Misleads Its Readers.”

From this morning’s walk…

Morning partly cloudy sky over brick building.

Catalpa tree in a cemetery.

Closeup of catalpa tree leaves and blooms.

Stone grave marker in shape of obelisk.

Closeup of smoke tree blooms.

Closeup of smoke tree branch and blooms.

Closeup of smoke tree blooms.

A Tale of Three Songwriters

The consequence was that the more complex her (Joni Mitchel) albums became, the more they were loved by jazz nerds like myself, but not by the general public. It was a curious paradox: the better her music became, the less popular it was.