Sunday, February 24, 2013

Long Guns and Tall Tales


As I’ve said before, I tend to avoid political conversations in a public forum.  I don’t know if it is a product of my age, or a true change in the civility level of national discussion, but the nastiness and name-calling tends to leave me impotent with anger, hardly a productive frame of mind. 

However, as a writer, I do use writing as a means of organizing my thoughts, even when I don’t anticipate those thoughts launching forth into the world.  Sporadically, for around three decades, I've kept journals and ruminated on various topics, largely personal, but occasionally with political aromas.

The gun debate, particularly in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, left me, like everyone else, dismayed. I turned to writing to review my perspective, to see just how my opinions grew to be. 

The result, Long Guns & Tall Tales, somewhat meandering and definitely personalized, ended up being shared with a couple of friends, and then passed on to B2L2.  I wasn't the only writer turning to words to try to work out opinions on guns, so B2L2 put together a theme issue on the topic.


Here on Artful Mistakes, I'll continue on with my usual artier topics shortly.   

Monday, February 11, 2013

Spirals

Top of the spiral staircase
Dali Museum
St. Petersburg, FL

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Beach Walk

beach chairs, St. Pete Beach, FL
The modern miracle of travel means that I started the day in New Mexico, drove to Texas in pre-dawn dark under a blanket of stars to doze on a plane, and was walking on a beach in Florida by the time the breeze began to kick up in the late afternoon.

Toes in the sand, I watched the pelicans swoop over the water as they hunted for dinner and reveled in the wind currents.  Returning to the ocean, any ocean, with our bodies made of so much saltwater, is always a homecoming.

Pelican in flight