This week’s Photo Challenge wants to see fresh, which it defines as a state (new, recent, previously unknown) and a taste or sensation (cool, sweet, invigorating, refreshing). There is an additional state of fresh and when the dictionarists adds it, they are welcome to illustrate the concept with a photo of my son.
New guitar picks have many applications.
Exerting self-control during a visit to Grandma and Grandpa.
A friend sends me a link to the sweetest video ever, a baby elephant enjoying the ocean.
Who could not love watching this? It induces unadulterated joy! Until I learn that this elephant – and others – have been exploited by Thailand resorts. I hate that. I want to stop that. I certainly don’t want to do anything that might promote those resorts.
So do I share the video or not? I decide that the elephant’s pleasure is pure and true, and although the back story is unhappy, I still love this video, just as this elephant loves the ocean.
Not somewhere I’ve stayed nor want to, but it might be affordable. (Photo credit: UrbanPhotos on Flickr.)
My favorite kind of traveling is to plant myself somewhere new and stay for a while, to get a sense of what it would be like to live there. I’m not drawn to monuments or tourist meccas, even though I know those places get famous for a reason. I’d rather wander neighborhoods, sample restaurants, find hole in the wall stores. I’ve been to Manhattan maybe 8 times, and I can’t tell you what the Statue of Liberty is like but I can give you a carefully assessed ranking of my favorite bagel joints.
A whirlwind tour of ten countries in ten days sounds awful to me, while ten days in one spot sounds like a good start.
There can be two problems with this approach. First, when you tally all the places you’ve been, the list does not grow very quickly. Second, if you plant yourself in the wrong place, you get to know a place you, well, don’t want to get to know.
I can’t be the only one who travels like this – am I?
P.S. In Manhattan, my favorite bagel joints are:
(This post responds to this Daily Prompt.)
One of the great treats about being alive and on this planet is getting to see the ocean at sunrise and sunset. I am always staggered by the number of different colors in the water. I’ve yet to get a photo that comes close to capturing it, but maybe that’s okay. Because I don’t have a photo I need to keep going back to see the real thing.
The full moon sets and the sun rises at Carlsbad Beach, San Diego County, California
(Posted for the latest Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Last year I got to take my kids to New York for a few days. Our return flight was early one morning. I love this shot of my son – up way before his body clock would usually allow – taking in his last views of Manhattan before we departed. We were almost the only ones up…
Goodbye, New York.
Another crack-o’-dawn morning on the trip, my daughter and I walked out to the East River to watch the sun rise. That’s my daughter huddled on the side of the photo – it was colder than we had anticipated.
OK, we saw the sunrise, now let’s go back to bed.
(Posted for the latest Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Today’s Daily Prompt requests a post opposite to what I usually make. Thus and voila, a cartoon.
(I don’t manage to imagine that I look like Garbo, however.)Garbo photograph by Cecil Beaton.
Just after sunrise on the trails at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California, the sunlight added a sepia tint to this trail and a grove of eucalyptus trees.
An empty trail just after sunrise.
Eucalyptus trees at dawn.
(Posted for the latest Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Elaine Morgan, dead at age 92.
Recently, an internet pal’s grandmother passed away – a woman I had never met nor heard of. In reading her obituary, I discovered that she had been an extraordinary individual, and learning about her life filled me with optimism.
Our world is full of wonderful people, some famous, some well-known, and most invisible except to those whose lives they directly enrich and improve. I won’t ever know about most of them, but they are out there, and it bolsters me to know that.
A decrepit retaining wall along the shore becomes magic as sunset approaches.
Pilings on East Beach, Santa Barbara, California
(Posted for the latest Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Until the end of July, 2013, you can download free and discounted ebooks from Smashwords, an indie publishing distribution site. I hope you will start with mine!
Get free ebook versions of my novels Scar Jewelry or C.R.I.M.E. Science.
Here’s how: click on the title, which will take you to each book’s page at Smashwords, where you will find downloads that work with every common e-reader. Use the code SW100 to get each free book.
If you are an especially cautious individual, you may first want to read free excerpts, available under the Novels menu on this blog.
This giveaway is part of the annual Summer Promotion at Smashwords.
Please help spread the word about this giveaway.
And – remember to write a review! Readers’ reviews are incredibly important to indie authors.
Brief descriptions of each book follow.
Cover art by Lars Huston.
What do we really know about our parents or the ways they shape us? For twins Deirdre and Langston, 20, the answer is: not enough. With their father long dead, and their mother now in a coma, they realize they don’t even know whom to notify. In fact, they understand almost nothing about their mother. They delve into her life and uncover secrets that revise the past and transform the future.
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Cover art by Lars Huston.
A misfit group of scientists and tech whizzes form a detective agency in order to solve crimes and right wrongs. In this, the first book of a series, they investigate the death of a renowned volcano scientist. He dies in a volcanic eruption in what everyone considers a terrible accident. Everyone except his widow, who insists he was murdered.
Required Writing 
