Tired

I am exhausted tonight. Why I am blogging I have no idea. I worked really hard today. Really hard all week actually. At work we are collecting images of various neighborhoods in and around the city that are worth visiting. My place has been Jamaica Plain and it's been really fun exploring it and seeing places I've never seen. There's a lot of great restaurants there it would seem. At least they seem to have a cool atmosphere. Or they would. If I was there when they were actually open. (If JP didn't seem like such a bitch to get to I would consider moving there).

I do wish I had more time on these assignments. A few hours to shoot twenty different locations hardly makes it possible to really explore. But I am grateful for these full, busy days because I get to the end of them and feel I've done something, even when I am stuck in traffic for an hour and my car's air conditioning is broken. My body is tired from the lugging and the heat and my neck is killing me from the driving and the computer work, and I am disappointed to not find my new home yet (today my offer was turned down), but I am grateful to be busy and doing something I enjoy doing.

The other thing on my mind is my cousin and her cancer. It is not going away despite various efforts. I've never really had to think about cancer before. I have been fortunate that way. It befuddles me though; how can something deadly come from nothing? I understand a germ. I get that. My pancreas, for example, no longer works because my body thought it was fighting infection and instead attacked my pancreas. I get nature getting confused. I get the concept of coming down with something because your body took it in from the outside (and I guess in some cases that can be the cause of cancer). But something from nothing? And the something is so unspeakably nasty?  I cannot wrap my brain around it any more than I can wrap my brain around the idea of my life without Susan in it.

So I don't try to.

Pinterest.com

There's this neat thing called Pinterest.com and it's basically an online pin board where you can put stuff you think is fun, inspirational. It can be an object you want, art you admire. You can put anything there really because you can make your own categories. I'm not sure what the ultimate goal is but it reminds me a bit of an amazon wish list. I like making lists. I always have. Listing things I want on amazon is like getting them. I almost don't need to even get the actual object if I make a list of thing I think are nice or pretty or fun somewhere.

So, pinterest is an extension of that. I added these two phrases recently...

Like a Turtle!

So, it's funny and cute, but I actually got frustrated that he struggled for so long and no one helped him! : ( Poor little guy

Little Things. And (literally) Big Ones.

It's funny how something small can make me very depressed. Someone passing on my right to make a left hand turn at the end of my street during rush hour because wherever he needs to be is clearly far more important than where I need to be. It bent my nose out-of-shape for a while, because I was simply offended at the rudeness of the act.
The same thing can happen to me going the other way too. Something small can uplift me. This photo was posted on Facebook and when I clicked on it, it lead to a collection of images, including the one below. The photo is amazing. Dynamic. Breathtaking even. But then when you read the cutline (which I copy and pasted below), it just gives me a little more faith in people and the universe too.

Source: None via Jena on Pinterest

The Whale… If you read a recent front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth. A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as she was thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

What...

on Earth is wrong with people?!
MAN KILLS TWO YEAR OLD WHILE WRESTLING

Best Sewing job EVER!

A recent text discussion with Christina...

Christina (out of nowhere, I will add); I know. I'm sewing the stupid thing now. It's Friday, I'll take video and send it to everyone.
Me (maybe she meant to text another friend who was in the recital's-coming-up-loop):  LOL Sewing what?
C: The costume.
M: For a dance, I assume?
C: Did you see the picture?
M: Nope. Send it!
C: I sent it twice, I'll try again.

(This is followed by about twenty minutes of us going back and forth about how I haven't received it yet even though she's tried multiple times through multiple channels including text, email, time travel machine and Morse code device. I finally get to see it, which is good because the suspense of it all was K-I-L-L-I-N-G me!)

M: FANTASTIC!  Did you sew that?!
C: Just the straps.
M: The straps are the best part! I was gonna say "look at those STRAPS!"
C: LOL

Radio

This is a really lovely story. How I love sound and radio!
http://www.radiolab.org/2011/jan/25/finding-emilie/

DC

I recently returned from a trip to DC to see my friend Nirvi and I must say I really enjoyed our Nation's Capital!  I've never been there if you can believe it. I'm not sure there are many Americans who made it past eighth grade who haven't been there, but alas, I didn't have the right teacher in my eighth grade year at Galvin Junior high school and as such, I didn't get to go (I did put up with French for two years so I could go to Quebec, but I digress). And since I was never a Boy Scout, I never had the opportunity through that lovely organization either.

Poor me.

Better at age 35 than never, I always say! It was so much fun seeing Nirvi and wandering up and down the mall. We went to the American History Museum, which displayed Michelle Obama's gown from Election night (as well as a bunch of other foofoo-y dresses from past first ladies), Julia Child's kitchen, Kermit the frog, and an entire room of pop-up books. I was in heaven, really. As I entered the cafeteria with Nirvi, a friend of Nirvi's, and a friend and colleague, Amanda who had just arrived in town in order to start her internship at The Washington Post, we saw a line-up of old lunch pails on display, including one with the Night Rider, "You gotta respect a museum that includes the Hoff somewhere in it" noted Amanda.

Indeed.  American Museums, and Germans, love David Hasselhoff.

One of my favorite monuments, I think, was the Lincoln Memorial. I just loved how massive it was, and how Lincoln just towers over you and stares down at you. On one of the interior walls of the monument (but you probably know this already because you've made it through eighth grade and probably had the right teacher and got to go to DC when you were 12. Either that or you were a Boy Scout at one time) is the Gettysburg Address.

If you made it to fourth grade, you probably needed to memorize the Gettysburg Address. This I do remember. What I found fascinating is the fact that now I actually understand what the words, gracefully chiseled into that grande wall, mean. As a kid, it's just a bunch of words that mean nothing to you. In fact, considering all those prose we needed to memorize were rarely actually understood by it's reciters, I'm amazed we could ever remember it at all (ah, where the fear of Ms. McLaughlin will get you).

It was beautiful and moving, that speech.

For a photographer, I sure am bad at aiming these photos. It took us many tries to get one without Abe's head cut off!

The other thing I found moving was walking through the World War II Memorial and seeing all the older adults walking through with their canes or being wheeled through in their chairs, and wearing their "WWII Veteran" caps. I was particularly struck by an elderly woman who was sporting one of these hats. I wondered what the elderly woman I saw did during the war. I wondered in what way these people contributed, and I felt proud for them.

The other thing I wondered is if they are just posers who dodged the draft and bought the hat at the gift shop. I prefer to think not though.

Back to Patriotism. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall? It leaves you speechless. It is a beautiful structure to begin with, with reflection like nothing I've ever seen; it's like you can look through it and see your reflection all at once. And then when you step back and you see the names?  All. Those. Names. So many of them. When you stop and actually register that each one was a person? It's unreal.

I immediately thought of this painting when we arrived at the wall.

I did not anticipate the emotional effect that place would have on me. The Wall, the statue near the wall, the Vets wearing their hats (earned or purchased). It was a very interesting experience.  And nice for Nirvi and I to take a break from talking on and on about our lives and how we wish they were this way or that way, and stopping to really appreciate how very lucky we were to be born where we were born.