Sightings of Summer

Dear Blogo personas,
We are not exactly back and yet not exactly gone.  For one offspring, school began ridiculously early, usurping the ritual framework of summer.  The Artist has not been sitting at her desk.

The sky seemed organized as the days sped along. The mother drove her car a lot. One child bounced an orange ball and tossed it up into a ring over and over again from all different angles. Another boy was concerned with wheels, steering wheels connected to combustion engines rolling over dirt.

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We went home on the range to celebrate the unlikely story of this ancestor surviving a crossing of the Oregon trail in 1862 and writing in a palm-sized leather journal about it. Otherwise we wouldn't know that he had to build himself a bridge before crossing with his oxen a tributary of the Snake River.  Children went fishing.

William Smedley, DDS settled in Denver, married Mary Ellen Vickers in 1872. They had three boys and two girls "and the rest is history".

Photo by cousin Lori Geisecke, offspring of the old man's daughter:  family cabin built around 1902.

Eighty eight years later on, the artist and the husband got married across the street.

Here are some things we saved for you, that we saw on a walk in Estes Park:
Meanwhile, a poetic novella by a Japanese author made the artist see potential math problems while living in the world.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa being read near Kirkwood, California

Their silhouettes can lengthen over a short sweet summer.

Curiosity landed. Our people are at once brilliant and stupid.

 So that now it is almost time to compose an ode to the apple (Goodbye peaches - until we meet again). What have been the apples of your eye?

The Art Ranger wants to know.  She will return to her regular post promptly the first Friday after Labor day. Yes, really.

Many of you have contributed to FAF@homelandinspiration.org over the summer and we will look forward to sorting and sharing your offerings soon.