home

Home > Dispatches >Daily Dispatches 2022 > Daily Dispatch #195

July 19, 2022: Light and Dark

I crave light, which is why I have such a hard time in the winter. Already, it’s starting to get dark earlier again – add to this the fact that because we are now in the midst of the monsoon season, there is little light to be had. As inconvenient as this is, the heavy rains are not life-threatening. Scary, to think about what’s going on in Europe – London with 104˚F temperatures. Pete said that they are wrapping bridges in aluminum foil so that they don’t warp. Gives a new meaning to “London Bridge is falling down.”


Light – sometimes the bright spots in the day are metaphorical. On Tuesdays I go the Palmer Senior Center with books and pass them on to those eating lunch. It’s a near feeding frenzy now, with people rushing up to the table where I am laying out the books and taking them quickly, so others don’t get them first.

Talked to one woman who took a big, heavy copy of the Mayo Clinic Health Guide. She said that she might have a barn available as a project site. We’ll see. I’ll bet a whole lot of options will materialize at the same time, making decision making difficult.

Pete worked on a cad drawing for the Meeting House annex, which he will take to city officials. He can talk the talk, so perhaps this will pan out. Can’t want a thing too badly, or you don’t get it.

My friend Timothy was at the Senior Center today. He was in good spirits, said that the radiation (which is its own form of light) was doing him good. Maybe, just maybe, this will knock out the cancer.

I am fond of him, and of the others who I eat lunch with on Tuesdays. This has got me to wondering – could it have been this way in college, when I ate the dorm cafeteria? Imagine then having a group of friends like this group, and actually looking forward to eating meals with them. I think that those of us who are fortunate enough to live long enough get to experience similar things a second time around. Life is not a circle, rather it’s a spiral. And we either go up or we go down.

I went down this past weekend. I seem to be going back up right now. More foreboding, Pete now talking about heading off on another trip, this time to pick blueberries in Fairbanks. We must find someone to tend to our animals so that I can get out of here every so often. Blueberries are good though. Maybe we can take a day or two and go pick berries here.

He is going to have to pick raspberries when I go away in mid-August.

That is if they don’t become so sodden that they are not worth picking.

I look to the side of the computer, out the window, see the rain landing on the woodshed roof. Dark and Light, like yin and yang, can’t have one without the other.

Horse Care Home About Us Dispatches Trips Alys's Articles