Not What I Expected to Say Today

Annamaria on Monday

I started out today thinking that  this blog would entreat you to join me as a warrior against plastic.  I have been telling anyone who would listen my little spiel on that subject, which I intended to enhance here with current scientific data to convince you to take up the cause.

I collected a few articles as research, but then only three pages into the first one, from National Geographic, I was stopped in my tracks.  Between 2004 and now, the article said "...scientists  have located micro plastics all over the globe, from the floor of the Mariana Trench to the summit of Mount Everest."

STUNNING!  And very depressing.  I thought today to invite you to become a warrior in a war that has already been lost.

One of the greatest artifacts of human kind,
seen from the angle here that shows David's fear
of the giant.  This is how I feel right now.

I don't get depressed easily, but after reading the above, it took me a few minutes to recover my dropped jaw.  And when I looked up, my desktop computer was doing what it does just before it goes to sleep.  It was showing me random selections from the 20K+ photos in my file.  The images I saw helped me recover a modicum of sanity, reminding me of my great good fortune: that I have had the privilege of leading an extraordinarily interesting life.  What flashed before my eyes were photos of life-long friends, cute dogs, babies I have known and held in my arms, Christmases past, and many many trips to splendid places.  And best of all, NASA pictures of the cosmos - like the one at the top, which remind me that I am just a speck on a tiny planet, in an ordinary solar system, in an average galaxy, in a vast universe.  

 

So, mostly to cheer myself up, here is a selection from my gargantuan photo collection, with bits of commentary, in pretty much chronological order. 

Is there anything cuter than a baby elephant?

Egypt

Iceland

   

The Okavango Delta

I first went to Cambridge, England in 1977.

What I remembered best from that visit 

was how very beautiful was the ceiling of 

Kings College Chapel.  When I went back last year,

I found it was more beautiful than I remembered! 

Painting by Jane Peterson, here to represent

the hundreds, thousands of great works that

I have had the privilege of viewing.

I have been staring at this view  for twenty-five

 years.  It never fails to thrill me!

These two photos represent all the beauty of

Japan, and the day I spent in Koyasan

with Susan Spann, one of the most

wondrous days of my life.

These peonies to represent all the flowers

that bring me joy.

These two are of Siracusa in Sicily,

my gorgeous ancestral city.

Lake Manyara, Tanzania

My favorite of the many gorgeous birds of Africa

Ravenna, Italian birds in mosaic

Table set for Christmas Eve,

a ghost of Christmas past

The coast of California.  I didn't know how deeply

I would fall in love with it.

In closing, symbols of the future: Two places where I have the enormous privilege and pleasure of contributing now to efforts that will glow and blossom into the future - my idea of immortality.

The view from a ridge overlooking the majestic 

Hudson.  In the next few years, a beautiful open-air

theater will be built here.  Young people will be making

theater in it for generations to come.

Some of the girls of the Sidai Resource Centre, who

are escaping their traditional fate as chattel, who

will learn and grow into women who will change 

their world to insure freedom for all the girls to come.

A souvenir of an exhibition about Woody Guthrie.

Woody's sentiments are exactly the same as mine.