Panasonic GH3: Day 3

Pros
1/ so many options
2/ deliciously light and beautiful lenses

Cons
1/ LCD screen problem when manipulated (it goes blank); could be that this is a well used rental, could be a problem with the camera at large (will investigate)
2/ viewfinder still bugging the heck out of me

Best shot of the day
Not taken. Conversation with a Sewanee gentleman who has the camera, and our discovery that we know camp people in common. Green Cove meets Merrie-Woode and it was delightful!

New Times in an Old Place

Once, as my brother told his story of a summer camp summer hiking trip many years ago, an old man came wandering up to our campfire in the woods. He sat down and told us stories, played his guitar and sang songs with us.

He left as quietly as he came.

He was Carl Sandburg whose Flat Rock farm, Connemara, was famous for him and for his wife's goats. 

My brother's daughter and family visited the farm the day after Thanksgiving, where the children made friends with the chickens, goats, and cat.

 I don't think they even noticed the bluebirds.

I couldn't help feeling nostalgic for a place I myself knew many years ago from many camp summers nearby, for singing around a campfire, and for a meeting with a man I knew only through his words and voice.

One Aria to Sing

From a not very good book I finished today (others liked it, but not I so much), this rang true: "The past is so tenacious. . . . Everyone has one aria to sing over their life, . . ." (The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer).

So many times, I've taught students who've written about the same longing or sorrow or trauma or idea, revisiting and revising one thread from eighth through twelfth grades, sometimes well into college.

Tennessee Williams and Annie Dillard wrote their individual tales over and over again, in new form, picking at the same scab.

I, too, have done the same, never quite resolving or working out whatever the memory or feeling meant, might mean, could mean.

Tonight, as I ate summer fruit from a handmade bowl, whose family of North Carolina potters I first encountered at 17 -- the juices bursting, tingling, mixing tartness with syrupy sweetness, I thought of the place where I wish I were: at camp reunion with old friends, among my oldest, lying on the canoe dock, looking at stars, singing our mutual opera again.