Painted plein air in the garden, Palm Springs, CA. I've never spent this much time in the desert and it's really starting to grow on me. Daily I gaze at a lovely, full lemon tree. The looming mountains still have snow at the top, yet down below it's 70 degrees and sunny. Coyotes roam the neighborhood and follow my dog and me on walks. I've been so influenced by this lemon tree, I'm now dreaming about the lemons and this inspired this piece. And p
eace.
Having just moved a household, family and two dogs across the country to northern California, I am happy to be getting back to painting. There is nothing like finishing a new work that moves my goals one step closer.
Still Living Momentarily
Don't know quite why this is on my mind. Maybe since I just moved 3,000 miles, from Virginia to California.
When I was a tiny kid, I have vague memories of picking up the phone off the wall in our kitchen in Naperville, Illinois, knowing my mom was on the extension. I don't remember knowing how to turn the dial to get numbers; maybe that hadn't even been invented yet. I could hear multiple chattering, somewhat familiar voices, which suddenly stopped when my phone clicked on. A dark pause led to my mother admonishing me to hang up the phone, please. Of course I did.
Those were party lines; mid-fifties. And party those women did with that new fangled machine, able to gossip easily, locally and with many households all at once. Somewhere in an AT&T or Ma Bell building, another woman sat at a huge console, plugging-in and linking wires so the neighborhood could run rampant.
Here we are, 3,000 miles from where we were a month ago and half a century from that memory. My iPhone 5s made the journey too. It has so many magical things it can do, I've only learned to use a fraction. Maybe it too can party-line, but what women now sit around the house and have the time or energy to gossip?
I didn't even have to change the number to use it in my new-found paradise, though some people ask why I have a Wisconsin area code (from two moves ago).
Imagine.
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