The locusts are buzzing, the tobacco fields are harvested and the queen anne's lace is curling up. My son started Kindergarten on the 1st. We moved to a new home at the end of July, and I am looking forward to the earth slowing down a bit. It's a bittersweet time of year as we all brace ourselves for the long Wisconsin winter. But I need some quiet and winter is good for that.

I'm as nostalgic as they come and lately I've really been missing life without all the electronics. I'm happy to have lived during a time when we didn't have Netflix and "smart" phones. I hear myself saying to my son "when I was a kid, we didn't have cell phones that could play movies, music and games." My child, much to my dismay, has seen SO MANY MOVIES in his FIVE years on this planet. Five years. I can hardly pick up a chapter book without him saying he has seen the movie.

I am overwhelmed at how much there is to *know* about our earth, and how very little time we sit and listen to it and learn from it. Our world, a meadow at sunset...if we stop and pay attention, is very entertaining. But that's a hard sell to a five year old who is mesmerized by the screen. 

15 years ago, in another life, my ex and I spent time on an organic farm/ apple orchard in Vermont, as apprentices. We lived in their barn for 6 months. No running water. An outhouse. (They are dear friends and our son is named after them) I look back to that time and compare it to now. No cell phones. No internet. I had a stack of books I read that summer and I filled up a few journals. I used the landline to call my family. I took photos with film. I think about how different my experience would be now. With my cell phone camera and my instagram. I just think about how it has all changed me. I think it's more difficult now to truly be alone.

Anyway. I'm thinking out loud. Just sitting in my studio, listening to the locusts, the whirring of the ceiling fan, the sound of my fingers on the keyboard. I just finished a new painting and I'm thinking about where I want to be in the next 5 years and how I can be the best influence possible on my son's life.

That's a good place to be.

"The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there." - Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek