New Lego set

A recent visit from my Idaho grandchildren--here's the youngest after a trip to the mall. He stuck to this until it was completely finished. It came out GREAT! It made me think about the inventors of Lego and the people who design these sets. Way cool.
I have been reading Idaho pioneer memoirs from my husband's family. I think I'll have to type some of them and get them up here. It's a long way from Lego--they pretty much made everything for themselves!

Bloom of the day

It's a hybrid between a cactus and an epiphyllum. An odd color, I think, but I am always happy when it blooms. From a distance it seems like an off, or pallid orange, but when I get close I am always surprised by the pinky lavendar of the edges of each petal. The plant requires very little care. It needs a haiku, but I am too tired to write one. . .

Portrait in Sunlight

Portrait in Sunlight
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

Most of the day I was working on listing the rest of my poetry books on Librarything.com. I found many things I love and things I thought were lost and duplicate copies of things I forgot I already had. Now I have 16 five-foot shelves--with the poetry shelved alphabetically by author. And I have almost stopped buying it, until I integrate what I have into some sort of knowledge. And there's a little stack by the bed to start on tonight.
I have been thinking a lot about memory and about possessions, which are related for me, since my "things" often function as memory triggers. But they also function as clogging up the space you need to breathe and do other things except organizing possessions. Many years ago I read a book about people and their collections and personal museums. I have to say that my favorite was the woman who ran the Nut Museum (things made of nuts and nutshells) which showed her coming down a staircase in a long gown. I don't really want to open for business, but I am very glad that some of my favorite books are out of boxes.
For many years, Adam Zagajewski has been in the top handful of my favorite poets. I cannot read him in the original Polish, but only in the lovely English translations of Clare Cavanaugh. This is from his book, Mysticism for Beginners.

Long Afternoons

Those were the long afternoons when poetry left me.

The river flowed patiently, nudging lazy boats to sea.

Long afternoons, the coast of ivory.

Shadows lounged in the streets, haughty manikins in shopfronts

stared at me with bold and hostile eyes.

Professors left their schools with vacant faces,

as if the Iliad had finally done them in.

Evening papers brought disturbing news,

but nothing happened, no one hurried.

There was no one in the windows, you weren’t there;

even nuns seemed ashamed of their lives.

Those were the long afternoons when poetry vanished

and I was left with the city’s opaque demon,

like a poor traveler stranded outside the Gare du Nord

with his bulging suitcase wrapped in twine

and September’s black rain falling.

Oh, tell me how to cure myself of irony, the gaze

that sees but doesn’t penetrate; tell me how to cure myself

of silence.

This is a poem that works on several levels and repays re-reading. Good night,

I left my heart in Gilroy

But yesterday I got to drop by for a visit. This library building (we are at the back door) was new when I was young and we moved from the 1910 Carnegie Library in 1975. It will be torn down this fall and a superb new library and community center erected in its place. Lani (embroidered dress) is in charge of the Gilroy Library now and has been since I was transferred in 1983. We had just been to Carmel to lunch with two other library buddies. Go ahead, become a librarian! Your world will expand and you will meet the friends of your dreams!

Two=stripe Bee

He's right in the center and seems to be carrying pollen baskets of RED pollen. Does anyone know anything about bees? It was GLORIOUS by the Monterey Bay today!

The little red guys are just a few of the ladybugs that were swarming at the Monterey Dunes today. We had an excellent haiku writing session.

Yesterday's Boy in the chair is growing up!

This is my husband in the late 1940s. probably at a swimming party at Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, where they went for family outings. This is a picture I had never seen, so it was quite a find. His aunt died recently, just past her hundredth birthday, and it was in her box of photos which her daughter, and only child, shared with us on Monday. I was in scanning heaven!