I opened the patio door this morning, stepped outside and breathed in the cool, moist air. Sheer happiness. Later today the clouds will disperse and the heat will return. I hear that next week it will come back in force, like 100°+. It’s the price we Angelenos pay for having no wind chill factor to speak of. Remember that on New Year’s Day during the Rose Bowl, when sportscasters annually tempt viewers with our cloudless blue sky. To everything there is a season. I drive to the market without sunglasses, knowing I can squint away the glare once again. I think about baking and buy yeast and fresh cinnamon. The oven needs cleaning but I’ll wait till just before Halloween to turn on the self cleaner which will heat up the kitchen. The few peaches and plums left in the produce aisle make way for red, green and yellow apples. Turn, turn, turn.
I opened the patio door this morning, stepped outside and breathed in the cool, moist air. Sheer happiness. Later today the clouds will disperse and the heat will return. I hear that next week it will come back in force, like 100°+. It’s the price we Angelenos pay for having no wind chill factor to speak of. Remember that on New Year’s Day during the Rose Bowl, when sportscasters annually tempt viewers with our cloudless blue sky. To everything there is a season. I drive to the market without sunglasses, knowing I can squint away the glare once again. I think about baking and buy yeast and fresh cinnamon. The oven needs cleaning but I’ll wait till just before Halloween to turn on the self cleaner which will heat up the kitchen. The few peaches and plums left in the produce aisle make way for red, green and yellow apples. Turn, turn, turn.
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The Jewish High Holidays– Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – come every fall, moving around the months of September and October depending on the lunar calendar. It’s a chance to start over, to review your life in excruciating detail, find the areas that need extra effort and promise to work harder in the coming year. But unlike my other ‘do-over opportunities’, my March birthday and the raucous end of December’s New Year’s Eve, Jews around the world admit their faults in community in the synagogue. Somehow it's less painful with friends and family around you. On Rosh Hashanah you wish everyone a sweet year and dip apples in honey. On Yom Kippur you ask God and your fellow humans for forgiveness. You ask to be inscribed for another year in the Book of Life. Who shall live and who shall die…not exactly a happy, frivolous moment but in a city that doesn’t know intense seasons, it’s good to have a smack upside the head to remember the passing of time. Fall is my favorite season. It’s hard to have seasons in Los Angeles but I work at it.
In September I turn up the air conditioning in the car. I wear dark colored jersey skirts with sheer black nylons and retire the white linen skirt. I stop drinking iced tea even when the temperature gets over 100°. I troll the notebook aisle at Staples and buy a binder to fill with college ruled paper and colored dividers so I can organize subjects like photography, travel and technology. I no longer fill my calendar with my daughters’ tests dates and school holidays. I barely notice the marquis sign at the high school that alerts parents to back-to-school night. It only catches my attention when I get caught behind the lines of cars waiting to get into the school lot. My calendar now holds political lectures at art museums like the Hammer and Zocalo Public Square lectures at Grand Park, the Petersen Automobile Museum and the Getty. My personal syllabus includes historical spy fiction, American electoral politics, French grammar and travel memoirs. When the leaves turn color– and some of them actually do in LA – I start over. Summer is a down time for me. The heat puts me into low gear and I wonder if too much sun can make you just as depressed as not enough. Even though we’ll still have short-sleeve shirt weather till November, I count the days till the end of daylight savings time, and the return of energy. La Rentrée the French call it. What better time to start a blog and launch a website. While this blog will be a showcase for my photography, I’ve always had a surfeit of hobbies. So the photos will be a means to comment on history, art, media, politics, books and travel. Your basic well rounded liberal arts major and damn well proud of it. Also a firm believer in evolution, I’m going to jump in and see what happens. Or like E. L Doctorow said, “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” |
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January 2023
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