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.