demographic clichés...

The other day, we received the US Census form and I filled it out.

After mailing it, we all had a good laugh at ourselves realizing that we had become a bit too prosaic in our make-up:  a family with one girl, one boy and one dog.

I wonder what their families will look like....

I wonder if their kids will also underdress on a chilly Spring afternoon and ask to borrow a parent's jacket.

yellow apple

I wanted a crispy red one, but had to settle for a mealy jaundiced alternative.  Before consuming the blemished orb, I sliced it in half and set it against the light.

microcosms...

When she walked in with the puzzle, I smirked. (But it wasn't just a puzzle, it was a Ravensburger puzzle ball.) I sheepishly grumbled, We don't have room to display it. Where are we going to put it? She calmly lashed out, Stop...it's a puzzle and they are fun. I can always take it back. The fragmented sphere-in-a-box nested on the dining room table for a few days, until she insisted that we all try our handiwork at reconstruction.

Guardedly, I sifted through the shards of oceans and nation-states. The kids mispronounced, and laughed. We all snorted and sorted away. Slowly, the plastic plate tectonics snapped into place, and we smiled.

Each week, I rumage through numerous photojournalism websites and glance at the world in images. Sometimes, often unsuccessfully, I try to separate the photographic content from the aesthetic craft and the technical competency of the photographer.  The world seems to unravel at its seams.

This week brought an opportunity to work against the grain of current events and for a moment pretend that we had a larger hand in rebuilding the planet. I don't know if we will display the globe in the house. More than likely, we will gingerly take it apart and tuck the pieces back in the box.  This way the kids will learn that it takes more than one attempt to rebuild the world, and that it can be fun too.

whirlybird...

Walking along under clear skies, I heard the blades thumping, louder and louder...approaching. When I glanced up, I smiled. It was about to pass directly over me.  I waited peaking through the viewfinder. Click. Lucky shot.

Slacking is in the Eye of the Beholder...

Today she woke up and worried about her hair...and the outfit, inter alia.  As she pondered the fashionable boundaries of that Bonfire of the Vanities called Middle School...her mother and I offered some heavy-handed criticisms of the recurring morning routine.

She politely absorbed our alternate versions of efficiency with a simple smile and a few nods.  Later, as she and her mother walked together to the bus stop, she politely offered her counter-argument:  Mama, I'm just not a morning person.  You have to cut me some slack.

voiceless labiodental [f]ricatives...

The word truck begins with a simple sound...[tr].  My two-year old nephew has yet to master this linguistic harmony.  He is also working on the sound [cr], another similar phonetic puzzle. 

Yesterday, as he played with a little yellow truck, and later described a wooden crocodile I bit my lips and smiled.  In an effort to master those sounds, [tr] and [cr]...it seems that he has settled on the [f] sound.  

(You will work it out and perhaps bite your lips...and smile.)