Archive for June 2008


Mt. Shasta

June 29th, 2008 — 11:07am

I just got back from four days camping at Lake Siskayou, near the base of Mt. Shasta.

Six families from my boys’ school went. My family and I slept in a tent. I was dreading it.

Instead, I loved it. One dad, Greg, made fresh olive bread baked over coals — a technique he learned from the Bedouins in the Sinai. (This is the person who also brought an Olivetti typewriter for the kids to play with. You would have thought it the most magnificent video game ever created, the way the kids gathered round it).

What I loved most was swimming in the cold lake, looking up at Mt. Shasta. I felt so small in the very best possible way — part of something much bigger than I — a perspective often lost in the grind of daily life.

I loved sleeping in our tent (with a very plush air mattress), looking up at the big trees and stars. Big trees are healing.

Did I mention how great the food tasted, even when it wasn’t great food?

And when I came home, I loved our home even more. Our sometimes chaotic, always messy home now seems very beautiful to me.  And I am more appreciative of this wonderful, strange foursome that is our family.

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White House Black Market

June 21st, 2008 — 1:01pm

What comes to mind when you read those words?

So I wonder what Michelle Obama was thinking when she wore a lovely, moderately priced dress made by a company of that name.

That she’s not a snob? ($128.00 isn’t much for a dress). That she’s destined for the White House? That she is, obviously, black?

I’m not sure — but she seems far too savvy and insightful not to have had something in mind.

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Waltzing without a Pareo

June 12th, 2008 — 2:32pm

I just came back from CT where we celebrated my niece Lindsey’s wedding to the fine young Doug Robertson.  She was a vision — beautiful, sweet, with the kindest smile you’ve ever seen.

Two days after the wedding, I took my sister and her other wonderful daughter Kyra, and my two sons to a local beach. I did not last long — the weather hit 103 degrees that day. But I did take off my beach wrap, and stroll leisurely into the water, which is nothing to write about, except that I didn’t wrap myself up as I usually do, mummy like in my pareo. Doing whatever I can to tastefully hide my body.

Nope. Life’s too short to not feel the warmth (okay, scorch) of the sun on my bare shoulders, arms and legs. What is most interesting, to me anyway, is that the less I care about how I appear to others, the more comfortable I am in my own skin.

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