absentee...

there's absolutely no excuse. but here are some pictures.

piratenous

Venice

Venice on February 28th, Carnivale
better known as Fat Tuesday in the States

Florence

disclaimer: the madonna statue with the duomo picture in the back is a picture idea i borrowed from nick

Florence

Salo, Italy

italy (again)

turin: olympic ice hockey game
USA vs RUSSIA

far too long

haven't been connected to the internet at home for some months now, and it's just too hard to update from elsewhere. anyway.
here are some pictures from italy. i was there for 2.3 weeks at the end of feb, beginning of march.
went with my friend jon coble. some of you know him.

santa fe is starting to reveal signs of spring. interesting to see the resiliency of earth at this climate.

these pictures include milan and turin in no particular order

a nice thought:

"The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose."
Hada Bejar

an interesting thought:

Gasoline is RED
Hydrogen gas is BLUE

any comments?

birthday

Completely ridiculous.

birthday

Federica (keeping me in line), Jill hamming it up, and a blurry picture of Justin.

rainbows

there's something going on around here, too...

Writing Contest

The Santa Fe Reporter is the local independent newspaper. Every year, they have a writing contest. I chose to submit some entries. Below are the prompts and accompanying responses. All of YOUR responses to this are also welcome here.

Prompt 1:
"Fiction:
Category: Wild Card
Word length: Max 2000, no min

The Wild Card category means we aren’t assigning a particular topic for the fiction genre. However, ALL stories must contain the following words or phrases somewhere in the text: “Whole Foods Parking Lot,” “Zozobra” and “Living Wage”"

[sidenote to blog viewers: zozobra is an annual festival in Santa Fe, a miniature burning man, though of different roots, where a large statue made up of paper which resembles a human, is burned in celebration to ring in the end of the year and symbolize the burning of the year's 'bads']

Both of my responses:
1) Zozobra whispered in my ear:
“Go, my love, go to
the Whole Foods Parking Lot--
And there you will find
The Way to Living Wage”


2) I bought a few canvas bags full of groceries this afternoon--mostly vegetables for soup. I’ve never made soup before. It’s always freaked me out. I don’t eat much of it, anyway, but the leaves starting to fall off the trees all over town and the increasingly frequent morning frosts made lentil soup sound just right.
It’s simmering now, all eight cups of warm, healthy liquid and I look forward to this evening when we can enjoy a bowl with whatever else I manage to scour from the shelves of the refrigerator.

My mother owns a small catering company in Denver. My sister and I grew up eating delicious and wholesome food our whole lives. Somehow, even though we knew we ate healthfully, we never figured out how to make it ourselves, at least until recently.
I just graduated from college. I didn’t make time to cook much those four years, although once in a while my roommates and I would get motivated. But the fury wouldn’t last long--we’d run out of appropriate groceries, or the recipe would be too daunting, or the ingredients too expensive. Sometimes we had to forget it because none of us had time during the day to stir constantly or chop vegetables.
Fortunately, time has slowed the last few months and there are hours of time and interest for such things. I moved here in early August to live with (and cook for) my grandfather. It has turned out to be much more an adventure than a chore, and The Joy of Cooking I received from my mother two years ago has adopted a whole new meaning. When the late summer festivities of the Bandstand and Zozobra and the Wine and Food Festival were taking place, I was poring over recipes, tweaking them to fit our palates and budget. I resolved this afternoon, while chopping onions with tears streaming down my face, to make one new ‘thing’ each week--follow a recipe or not, create something new and simple, but perhaps difficult. Fortunately, the availability of fresh produce and hard-to-find ingredients is bountiful in this town, and my beloved job at a local bakery provides a comfortable living wage with which I can afford most of the ingredients. And as the seasons pass and recipes evolve, I will inevitably venture back to the nightmare that is Whole Foods parking lot to stock up on groceries.



Prompt2:
"Poetry:
Category: “The Bush Administration”
Word length: no epics please!

Yep, we’re the liberal media alright. C’mon, give us some limericks here. Make us laugh or cry. Seriously: all political viewpoints and styles welcome."

My response:

Candidate

You will force a man
Onto a pedestal of power
Where priorities are muddy and
Values are backwards.
Galvanizing your agenda,
We will stumble and balk
At this unfortunate lack
Of sense.
We must breathe and wait,
for your time will come
We must breathe and wait and know
Our time will come.

“The history of our species could be written from the perspective that males have spent the last 150,000 years trying to regain the power they so emphatically lost to females when we differentiated away from Homo Erectus.”
Sex, Time and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution, Leonard Shlain, 2003.