yourpassions.tk

Hettie Stein never dreamed hundreds or thousands of people would learn about her life when she hand-wrote her lifestory on forty pages of notebook paper sometime around 1975. She wrote separate, personalized copies for each of her three grandchildren, my husband being one. We have not seen either of the other two copies, but I scanned in ours, saving the images in a PDF file and also transcribing them into a Word document for easier reading by later generations. Now the world can read about Hettie’s life on Amy Cohen’s blog, Brotmanblog: A Family Journey , beginning with Part 1  and share our delight in these accounts of a long-gone way of life in simpler times.I thank distant cousin Amy for finding our family and pulling so many resources together into a compelling story. As you can see from the graphic below, excerpted from Hettie’s story (which I gratefully borrowed back from Amy’s blog), the writing is as primitive as a Grandma Moses canvas in both form and message. As Hettie expl...

Creative people in any field share the goal of continuous skill development. Bear with me as I loop into photography to make a point about writing. This photo of gulls perched on the southern shore of Lake Pukaki with Mt. Cook in the distance looks great to most people. It looked great to me when I took it in 2005 en route from Christchurch to Queenstown on New Zealand's South Island. It's got most of the elements of a great picture: item of interest in foreground, sweeping vistas afar, sharp focus, clear color, contrasting tones, life contrasting with barren expanse, level horizon. When I look at this picture, I’m brought back to the moment of crystal-clear air, vast silence broken only by screeching gulls, whispering breeze, shoes on gravel, clicking shutters, and awed murmurs from tour group friends. It looked good when I took it, and it serves the purpose of preserving and evoking memories. But something has always bothered me about this picture. It has never seemed quite r...

To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven …  Eccl. 4:1 The past few months have been my season to pack, unpack, explore, and settle into my new Texas home. Beyond email and sporadic journal entries, they have not been a time to write. That’s okay. Boxes are unpacked, guestroom warmed, new dining table christened, and I’m once more thinking beyond shopping for rugs and bedspreads. For several weeks I hardly thought about writing at all. Then thoughts of writing bubbled up. I began gently pondering what I really want to write and how to best go about it. I’ve finally realized that I do enjoy sharing my thoughts about writing, online and in person. I’ve missed involvement with writing community. Now the write season is bursting forth. It’s time to reboot the blog and begin its eleventh year. A metaphor just came to mind. Our ten knock-out rose bushes bloomed bravely through the entire Austin version of winter. Last week we pruned them, barely making the prescr...

Many thanks to Helder Silva of Lisbon for making these 3D models in Sketchup. Life on board is much too hard! Full pilot house in the front, dodger version in the back View from starboard quarter Centerboards down Meanwhile, down below Centerboard pivot Starboard water tank