mornin'

It is today, and the season of competing to-do lists begins. The holidayscape looms, challenging one's ability to express love of family in delightful ways, more creatively, less frenetically than before, and as always, incorporating daily duty with grace. Quietude and grace can leak out and disappear, I remind myself. Tranquility is a project too, dang it. And yet the importance of these seasons of familial reunions, these lovefests we make for one another are worth the trouble, the anxiety, the money, all of it.

I attended a high school play last evening, the theme of which is the end of the world as we know it. A dark and timely topic, lightly and beautifully staged by the School of the Arts in San Francisco, it was The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder. My teen played Mrs. Antrobus to the bloomin' hilt. She was magnificent! I say that objectively of course, but my daughter-in-law agreed, as did numerous audience members who came up and congratulated Lena, post performance. (Sada Thompson, eat your heart out!) The actress playing Sabina was equally fine, and Mr. Antrobus too, but what a tight, fine show about climate change, flood, war...and written in 1941, you know, and if you don't know, it is also a comedy. Helps to put catastophe in its place, doesn't it? Let's laugh.

Initiation into the "sphere"

Well, I make myself lol. Here I am with a teenager who spends hours online, quipping, posting, viewing, chatting with her friends, collecting an entire society around her. But me, I am nervous. When it came to "profile" information, my first and very strong reaction to writing my interests, etc. is: "none of your business!" I can see myself as a New Yorker cartoon in that setting. LOL (little old lady, not the other one) that I seem to be, I feel a real reticence about talking to strangers, and yet, and yet...what a wonderful world it could be, for me and others to get in there and "work the room" that is our beloved planet. My imagination explodes with the possibilities, many of which the rest of the blogosphere has already discovered, but more still to be harvested and distilled.

Harvesting. Distilling. Reminds me of the European hops shortage and the forthcoming price hike on microbrews ( Reference an NPR report of yesterday, I think, probably BBC origin.)Maybe I can coax my son into brewing his own again. I'll grow the hops in my back yard. Heck yeah.