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| Here is a photo of my three son from left to right, Aaron, Abe, and Adam. (Aaron and Adam are twins!) This photo was taken in my garden last summer. |
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| Happy Valentine's Day
Dear Readers,
Happy Valentine's Day! This photo was taken when I was in college. (Cameras were a little blurry then, I guess!) I received a bouquet of flowers from someone although the card was missing. I searched all over for the card and even called the florist. Hmmmm...they said it was a secret.
At the time I was dating a couple of young men, and I wasn't sure what to do. I called the first one just to chat, he said nothing of the flowers. Aha...it wasn't him.
I called the second young man who immediately said, "Did you get the flowers?"
"Oh, indeed I did, and thank you for them."
So on this day we celebrate love and lovers. Hopefully you are with yours and are living happily ever after. (I am referring to this week's column, be sure you read it on this day as well!)
I started the day with Elizabeth Barrett Browning as my breakfast read, how can you not on Valentine's Day?
Enjoy this day with your sweetheart...simply count the ways.
Lou Ann
P.S. I don't look much like a hippie in this photo, I have a Baptist upbringing! However, by the second year I had the long hair, gogo boots and was singing "Where Have all the Flowers Gone" in coffee houses.
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| The view from my classroom window.
The other day I went to class early to get set up. We had snow during the night, but the roads were clear. By the time I was upstairs in my classroom darkness hovered over the town as if nightfall were coming early. It was just another quick storm passing through.
I had my camera with me so I took this photo from my classroom window. I didn't think much of the photo until I downloaded it later. It caught me by surprise how stunningly beautiful my town is in the winter. Quiet. As you can see no one is out, children are in school, folks are working or staying inside writing letters or watching reruns of "Matlock." Surreal.
How do we choose a town, a village, a city, an island to live in? Or does it choose us? Do our roots tangle up with others in our hometowns or do we make our hometowns by pushing down those roots to feel at home?
As the students came to class I was still standing at the window just watching. Most came to window to see what I was out the window. "What are you looking at?" they asked as they peered through the glass. I said to them, "Everything, I am looking at everything."
They nodded or shook their heads as they took their seats.
What do we see from the upstairs window?
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| I took this photo of the Trine campus a few hours before the show. |
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| These flowers were from my friend Malinda who was at the roundtable. |
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| The view from my front window on this snowy February morning.
Monday morning and the snow falls. My world is a salt shaker or a slow sifting mound of confectionary sugar today. This is what the northern folks wait for, well some of us anyway. These cold snowy mornings where the world is quiet and we just wait.
If it were days of old we would hibernate with the harvest stashed away, the wood cut, the candles made. For me these days are mixed with Tasha Tudor, Donald Hall, and poems from Norbert Krapf. Norbert was our Indiana poet laureate. He has a new book "Songs in Sepia and Black and White." This is a collaboration with photographs by Richard Fields. I have an autographed copy of his book and well as his words of encouragement to keep writing. This book is available through Indiana University Press.
Here is a sample of his work, enjoy.
A Blank Piece of Paper
Between dark hills
somewhere in this land
a boy sits at a table
next to a dim light.
He stares at a blank piece of paper,
holding a pen
filled with enough ink
to tell a good story.
What the boy can't yet
tell is where he began
and where he will end....
Norbert Krapf
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