Grandpa's Calendar
The rains have come after a few summery days. When I first started this journal I held an intention that I would not regularly record the weather. My thinking is changing about this. We all mark our lives by the clouds, the color of the sky, how hot, how cold, how wet, how dry and when it snows, oh when it snows... It's pretty much the one thing you can talk (or complain) about with anyone and everyone. Sometimes this disappoints and bores me when I am working with the public and all day we say "hot one isn't it?" or "will Spring ever come?" to connect with each other-- but mostly I've come to find comfort in these daily interactions-- in a universal way. We are all connected by the planet, the seasons. Why not talk about it? So, "the weather" is a very deep subject, I've concluded. It's so powerful that I am going to Las Vegas for ten days as my brother Jimbo and his wife Katherine mostly moved there -- you guessed it-- for the weather!
When my maternal grandfather William Robert Hendrickson was alive, he filled in one calendar square each day with the exact time (usually very early in the a.m.), the outside temperature, and a mini weather report. He wrote very small and legibly in cursive. Someday when I find some of his papers in my storage, I will show you a picture of his calendar, each day busy with the basics: time and space! He also wrote journals, stories, poems, love letters -- all sorts of stuff. I miss him very much at this moment. When he wrote the name of a color such as red or blue or green he changed pens and used that color of ink.
I can see this journal as a way I mark the squares of time.
When my maternal grandfather William Robert Hendrickson was alive, he filled in one calendar square each day with the exact time (usually very early in the a.m.), the outside temperature, and a mini weather report. He wrote very small and legibly in cursive. Someday when I find some of his papers in my storage, I will show you a picture of his calendar, each day busy with the basics: time and space! He also wrote journals, stories, poems, love letters -- all sorts of stuff. I miss him very much at this moment. When he wrote the name of a color such as red or blue or green he changed pens and used that color of ink.
I can see this journal as a way I mark the squares of time.