July Review

It's been a quiet month for comments. But any lack of quantity has been made up by the amazing quality of your thoughts.

Zeppelin playground outside the museum

Thank you Jim for explaining the differences between a zeppelin and a blimp.

Even after spending more than two hours at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, I'm not sure I understood the distinction.



Trying to figure out a new title for the blog that will come after this one brought out the most comments, both on the blog and by email. 

tRa likes "Roving Hedgehog" as a blog title and wonders if I have a totem animal. Ironically, the hedgehog has always been my totem animal, so that won't work. Her point that the word write does not need to be in the title is a good one.


Jim, Shirley and Michael offer up a variety of new names. Jim, in particular, was impressive in both number and range. Some of my favorites include wordsmithy, popupmeercat, and rosetta stone. Unfortunately, some names are already taken.

In any case, I'm still pondering that name choice. Hopefully, I'll figure it out before August 25th.

Gardening

Growing up, every Saturday I was supposed to weed for an hour. It did not make me fond of gardening. I'm still not excited by the thought of grubbing around in the dirt.

However, plants grow and need to be managed. Weeds grow very fast (like weeds, in fact) and need to be pulled out. And if you don't want cranky neighbors, you should really police your borders. Unfortunately, we have been traveling a lot this spring and summer, and when we've been home, I've been pretending I don't have a front garden.

So, of course, it looks like this:

Flowers, weeds, and more weeds, all intertwined and overgrown. But last Sunday morning before it got too hot, my honey and I went out and started working in the garden. I was determined to pull out my least favorite weeds and work on the plants threaten to overtake my neighbors' newly landscaped yard.

We already had a brick barrier, but I discovered that their landscape engineer had put in a second brick barrier on their own property. Smart man.

After working for an hour or two, I am very proud to say I had created a nice no-man's-land for weeds.

The dark chips are my neighbor's yard and the light chips were put in by me. I feel that I can successfully keep weeds out of that thin strip of land, at the very least.

It's true that my front yard is still totally overgrown and needs a lot more attention. It's also true that it probably isn't going to get attention from me any time soon.


Too bad that proud feeling isn't quite enough to make me want to do it some more.

Vacation Day

I'm taking the day off today. Everyone have a sunny beach day and you can catch my writing tomorrow . . .

Camera? No!

The lack of a camera is starting to interfere with my ability to write this blog. I know that the words are the primary way I tell stories about my life, leave and the pursuit of authorness. However, a photo or two breaks up the paragraphs, adds a little visual spice and generally improves my writing.

So, what are the options? I can use pictures that I took before my camera broke, but I'm pretty much done writing about all the topics that those pictures illustrate.

At times I use images from the internet, but I'm not sure how ethical it is and besides, generic photos aren't always the best at illuminating my personal story.

For example, I had originally planned on writing about the work my honey and I did on our front garden yesterday. But I wanted to have some photos to highlight my main points. I tried to take a photo with the photo booth function on my computer, but it's not really designed for outdoor shots.

Then I hunted up my old camera, because I thought it might still have some functionality, although I couldn't really remember what was wrong with it. I don't need a memory, though because I have this blog. And all I need to do is find the post where I wrote about the camera's problems!

It needed new batteries, which I installed and went out and got the photos of my garden in the evening light. Now all I have to do is find the cord that attaches the old camera to the computer in order to download the photos so I can upload the photos onto the blogosphere.

I'm planning on that happening today, so look for a garden blog tomorrow. And here's hoping that soon the new camera comes back fixed, or they send me a replacement. That way, my words and photographs will continue to complement one another on these pages.

Sunday Photo

It's been hot here and last night we went to the lake and had a picnic. I swam to cool off and I was reminded of this picture I caught of a kid jumping off a pylon into Lake Neuchâtel. It looked like he and his buddies were having fun.

A Recurring Theme

There are a number of topics that I know I have written quite a bit about. Pain — from broken toes, strained backs, and water polo. Life goals — how I'm not very good at setting them, or following through on them, or even remembering them. Writing — of course, 'cause that's what I do every day, and what I'm trying to figure out how to do for life.

But the subject I want to touch on today is the value of friends, especially old. Often when I am thinking about something to write about, I search old posts to make sure I'm not repeating myself. Today, though, I know that I am most definitely repeating myself. I searched the blog for posts that contained the word "friends". I got to fifty before I gave up and stopped counting. That's more than 10% of my writing!

I have a lot of friends, from the many different stages of my life and it's hard to keep in touch with them all. (That must be why facebook is so popular. As my niece said, "It's a way to communicate without actually interacting." When I repeated that to my sister, she replied, "Isn't that the same as your blog?" Which it is, I guess.)

That being said, however, in our latest trip to Europe, my honey and I had the excellent fortune to connect with some really good friends. We've known all of them for over twenty years. Two of them from International House, one I played water polo with at Berkeley, and one friend was someone my mother and stepdad met backpacking through Mexico twenty-nine years ago this summer.

Although I've written before about the special joy of hanging with old friends, I feel like I need to write about it one more time. (After all, it's been more than six months since I wrote on that topic.) I want all my friends, old and new, to know how much I appreciate their presence in my life.

Just some of the activities we enjoyed with our friends on our recent trip: eating dinner, drinking a beer, enjoying summer pie, playing croquet, meeting their children, touring museums and towns, seeing their workplaces, learning new games, marvelling at their different customs (Danish graduation rituals, I'm talking about you!), and generally just hanging out together.

I am in awe at just how comfortable these relationships continue to be. And how wonderful and welcoming our friends were. They picked us up at airports and train stations, cooked for us, welcomed us into their homes, and saw us off after our visit was over.

Our conversations ranged wide and far. We talked about our shared experiences in the past, the World Cup, Danish history, economics, American politics, the Gruffalo books, Swiss taxes, scuba diving, and the future. And I want to continue the conversations that we started, but were unable to finish due to the lack of time.

It's hard not to gush about how brilliant my friends are. But what I have realized as I have struggled with trying to express what I feel about my friends, is that the genius of all friends is how amazing they are. And that thought helps me to understand why I feel so upbeat in my life.

Yes, life can be a struggle, and my life hasn't always happened the way I wanted it to, but my wonderful family and friends have always been there for me. Sometimes right beside me, often in the background, and at times so far away I could barely see them. But no matter where they are, my friends support me in being me and figuring out life positively.

So thanks to all my friends and family for all that you do and all that you are. I love all of you!

Creative Scaffolding

Scaffolding is a term used in education to describe a method of supporting students' learning. Af first, the teacher provides strong support. Then as time goes by and students' abilities grow, the scaffolding is slowly "dismantled" or lessened until the student becomes proficient.

But today I want to discuss actual scaffolding. Here in the United States, scaffolding is usually completely utilitarian, covering up construction on large buildings. It is often quite ugly. In my recent travels in Europe, I had the interesting experience of being very impressed with the creativity builders use for their scaffolding.

In Italy, a building on the Grand Canal was being redone. That doesn't mean, however, that the tourists have to gaze on frightful scaffolding.


No, much better for the scaffolding to have the image of what will be when all the building is complete.

Germany, on the other hand, promotes a version of "green scaffolding". Plants and flowers crawl all over the tubing.



The fragrance as well as the beauty must make a more pleasant work site.

This is not to say that all the scaffolding in Europe was beautiful or unique. There were plenty of ugly construction sites. Still, any time I saw one of these different ways to dress up the ugly business of progress, it made me smile. Hope it does you too.