Say it with flowers

People are always so happy to see me when I arrive with flowers.

Or if not happy, exactly, relieved, then, because they know that I've come with a gesture of politesse, of enough goodwill to finesse perhaps an awkward evening of unfriendship or downright disagreement.

That said, bearing flowers offers me a fragrant scrim of etiquette when I'm up against the raw fact that I've been invited because they had to.

Ah well, although I'm very well aware that life holds greater terrors, I appreciate flowers for their willingness to be the sacrifice in the bloody wars of petty genteelity.

When the weather turned warmer -- again -- I put my long-suffering cyclamen from Christmas, and the two Christmas cactuses from Thanksgiving, out on the table on my balcony.

Was that a nice thing to do to my trusting house-plants? After all, I did it with a fair degree of "It's time you became truly one with your own mother, Nature." Unfair of me, really, because these are tropical plants whose DNA was not meant to thrive in zenBoulder's high dry up-and-down temperatures, even if the thermometer does say April.

Hey, I try to bloom where I've been planted, too.

Two plants I won't dare put out quite yet are The Girls, my landlord's especial pets.

Andrew's now in law school in Florida, but whenever he shows up and visits to tend to things, he always checks in with them first. He croons and strokes their green fronds. I mean really.

Um ... I think I'm just jealous, the guy is a young Frank Sinatra type, all sinew and young swagger. But he certainly trusts me with his stuff, so grateful to be renting to a responsible adult-type than a pair of CU undergrads.

My lease renewal is a sure thing.

In the spirit of May Day, then, the one for dancing around the May Pole and celebrating spring's flowers, I'm going to give my neighbors some blossoms.

Nothing big, mind you, just a posy of gorgeously patterned-paper origami lilies wrapped around their doorknobs early in the morning before they're up to work or out to take those last final exams.

Beautiful Daughter and I discovered how to make these perfect paper blooms when we started her Brownie Scout Troop in Sofia, and have relished making them, and remembering the memories, ever since.

Say it with a sneak attack of flowers!

a late April afternoon

The light green of the pre-leaves on the trees outside my window is wistful against the spring gustiness of the Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps it's because I want it to be warmer and sunnier, more forceful weather, which is when I emerge after a winter's worth of browns and blossom into my own.

Yes, the light green is lovelier than the park bench paint of summer's suburban grassiness, but it is far more fragile. And the pastel petal pinks of small trees and shrubs is exquisite up close, but not lasting.

Where is the bold chrome yellow of Long Island's forsythia?

Boulder spring is but a melting ache between rough seasons.

Pomegranate Dreams

A rusty wheelbarrow full of yellow-red pomegranates sits on the cracked sidewalk; beside it, a scruffy farmer tipped back in his chair, waiting to sell his fruit by the kilo to evening passersby. Not the stuff of dreams to Turkish villagers in harvest-time. But an astonishing sight to this American who pays in gold for three perfect globes for her coffee table display each Thanksgiving. Yet that same farmer, nor his wife, couldn't, wouldn't dream of placing such ordinary items in a decorative category. To marvel, surely -- how shall we agree that these are a dream, or the everyday?

A picture is worth ...

When all else fails, read the instructions.

After months of owning a brand-new Canon PowerShot SD890 IS, carrying it around with me to Turkey and Manhattan and Colorado but regarding it with a nervous "I'll try it out tomorrow" declaration, I finally got down to business this afternoon and did it!

I took pictures out my bedroom window, and then from my front balcony, and in a totally roundabout fashion managed to post them to my Facebook page and BLOG. YAY!!!

Did the instruction booklet help? Kinda sorta. The downloading steps didn't connect with my uploading desires.

To be cont ...

Hug a tree today!

The trees in Boulder are casting their first shade today!

Although the trees are yet in bud and the fully formed leaves are not yet out, the sidewalk and lawn beneath the cottonwood tree across the street from me are dappled in the spring sunshine.

It's really part of childhood's springtime memories package, isn't it? When we used to play outside every chance we could, each day revealed its subtle progress into or away from the season.

When Boulder's star-petal magnolia trees blossomed a month ago, the sight took me right back to Manhattan and those same magnolias blooming in front of the New York Public Library, the harbingers of spring.

In Minsk I had a favorite tree along the city's main thoroughfare -- Lenin Boulevard? -- and walking by it almost every day I caught the magic of its opening up after winter into a shimmer of different leaf-planes, enchanting, a simple maple tree.

But it was when I first came to Ankara in the summer of 1984 that I really felt the refreshing beauty of tree-shade, on hot July Atatürk Boulevard, and I've been grateful to Ankara's trees ever since:

In Gaziosmanpaşa, at the northwest corner of the Presidential Palace on Çankaya Boulevard, is a huge old plane tree, clearly a witness to Atatürk's founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and earlier. A being so noble must be saluted at every opportunity, and so I did as I jogged around the Palas on my daily run in the morning.

The avenue that leads up to the Turkish Parliament in Kızılay is lined with handsome horse-chestnut trees, especially magnificent in May when they flower in white and pink candles. Every year I try to make my annual pilgrimage to the Parliament to enjoy lunch with a friend, to come closer to the trees and gardens.

And in Kızılay all along Ataturk Boulevard the old plane trees deserve all the recognition -- and TLC -- they can get. For what a tough job they have! putting up with constant traffic, especially the buses which scrape along the branches, belching out their fumes. But these trees are the indispensable piece of nature on the sidewalks for the humans shopping, working, commuting, walking.

This past week we saw International Earth Day -- Turkey's Children's Day -- and Arbor(Trees)Day in the USA. Hug a child and a tree and celebrate the season!!!

"Ağac dikmek bir evlat yetiştirmek kadar uğurludur."

"Planting trees is as blessed an act as raising children."

Too much of a good thing

I didn't think it could happen to me:

My friend B said that it was when she got too fat to fit into her shoes that she decided to lose weight. I may not be fat, merely handsomely stout, but my shoes no longer fit and I've got to do something about it.

B lost 30 pounds and looks like a girl.

R lost 30 pounds and is now a buff young fella.

And E lost 30 pounds and has emerged as the truly beautiful women she clearly once was.

The "Times London" -- or was it that tittilating "Daily Mail" -- claimed that women with a goodly bit of avoir dupois look younger than their skinnier sisters, and used a side-by-side photo comparison of some frumpily plump English woman with uber-sculpted Madonna.

Well, I'll never be Madonna's water-carrier but I must say that had I ever to choose between the two I'd opt for the gym-toned American look anyday.

Turkish friends, male and female alike, will always remark upon their friend's (perceived) weight gain when they meet them after an absence.

Which means I've got to lose those 30 pounds plus do some serious mat time.

To look younger than springtime by Ankara-summer.

in the dark

The lights just went out! for only 60 seconds.

Flashback! to unexpected electricity cuts in 2009 Ankara -- you don't know how long it's going to take to go back on.

You worry about using the refrigerator, computer; you miss the radio; you light a candle in the bathroom. And you calculate the cost of walking down those 12 flights of stairs.

It was easier back in 1994 Sofia; the electricity cuts were planned, rolling across the city. Although it's really too difficult to read by candlelight. And the kids hated going to bed in the darker dark.

Can't say any different in 2009 Boulder.

... and it was just right.

http://www.100words.com/about.php
http://www.wordcounttool.com/

Most of my blog posts have been written in the 100Words format -- exactly 100 words, no more and no less.

Why? when most of the blog posts out there can run into the tens of 100s.

Because:
1. 100 words is not threatening, you can write about anything in only 100 words without feeling overwhelmed at the idea of putting pen to paper;
2. 100 words is focusing, you put your ideas down with economy and elegance and cannot be betrayed by rambling off-point.
3. Word Count Tool makes it easy to dance with the format.

Leaving you free to dance with your reader.

Snow ready

From my Boulder window I can see the private snow-plow clearing our parking lot; I'm peering out to check that he's not even near my rear fender.

But where are the municipal plows? From my perch I can also see Route 36, and whenever a town snowplow barrels through, I know it.

Ain't happening this 6:10 morning.

Reminds me of the blizzards of Washington D.C. 1996. Ward 3 wasn't getting plowed, and to its protesting citizens Mayor Barry said: Get over it.

Yet in wintry Minsk 2000, President Lukashenko had 5 snowplows lined up outside my 4.m. window.

That's when I knew "the totalitarian temptation."

So what is it I've been missing?

Long past a certain age, I wondered if there were anything I didn't know. And that I should find out. If not now, when?

Into the shoppe I ducked, heralded by the blare of a She's Here alarum. Where to put my eyes? So much to satisfy someone's hopes and fears of satisfying someone else's hopes and fears.

Slicks, oblongs, balls and chains: how can they put a price on this stuff?

The piece de resistance? An anatomically correct model of some tootsie's private parts.

And the oldsters lament that the younger generation can only be sated by the faux.

RKBA

Larry's words, "The Second Amendment gives me the right to protect my wife and my family," hit the target, and my what-it-means-to-be-an-American-citizen paradigm shifted.

Up until that moment, I had had a school-child's relationship with the Constitution of the United States; it was a document I had learned about in class and taken for granted.

Living overseas had given me an in-your-face education in citizenship rights and realities elsewhere. What can the Rule of Law mean in those countries?

What does the Rule of Law mean in my own country? Among others, that there may be no infringement of my right to keep and bear arms.

Yes.

Let's move on to the First Amendment, which forbids the infringement of my right to freedom of speech and expression. Even when in Boulder?

Right.

Full Metal Pashmina

I broke a nail loading my clip, my hair caught on the ear-protection hardware. I donned my pashmina against the prairie breeze and walked onto the firing range.

Larry of the God's country voice was patient; I didn't know a revolver from a semi-automatic handgun, and I came from Boulder -- the other trainees sniggered sympathetically.

Yet when I took my power stance and gripped my weapon -- a .22 revolver/9-40-45 calibre semi/12 gauge shotgun -- and fired off my six bullets per and hit my 5-spot target paper within the kill zone, Larry shouted :

"Boulder Girl's got stones!"

Too much hot air

Today I failed Boulder's Emissions Test; rather, my Subaru Legacy 2000 did. And I was shocked at the in-my-face reality when it came to revealing all at the inspection.

The last time I took an emissions test was in Baltimore in the early '70s. My boyfriend was a fishing buddy of the guy who did the tests and so my rust-bucket 1969 Saab station wagon got its decal of approval.

But in today's Inspection Station? when they put your wheels on those rollers and hook you up to the gasometer it's all right there in the computo-charts.

Re-check that cat converter.

True Confessions

Actually I'm not a westerner at all, I'm an east-coaster through and through. So Boulder is as new to me as any foreign outpost.

I've been living in Turkey, Bulgaria and Belarus for the past several years, as an on-the-street anthropologist, seat-of-my-pants diplomat -- and teacher, student, writer, mother, wife of.

Coming back to the States a year ago I expected to pick right up where I left off 25 years before -- a banker in the heart of '80s Manhattan, newly married, no kids.

But I've grown up, my old neighborhood's gone, America's changed, the world's a different place.

Coming ... home?

Repatriate: To restore or return to the country of birth, citizenship or origin/One who has been repatriated/To return to one's country. ( from the American Heritage Dictionary)

After a generation of wandering, through countries cultures friendships (mis)adventures loves and family dynamics, I've come back ... here, to Boulder.

Back home to the States ... but where exactly am I?

"Here" feels like Planet X, where even my 5 senses can't be relied upon, that all communication has been rewired.

What happened to the future of my life-time ago? Just who are these people I should know, because I knew them before?

But then, who am I? I didn't count on being a Rip van Winkle, a Diogenes searching for the promised fruits of my generation.

I don't recognize "home."