Month: August 2006

A Very Enjoyable Blog

Ronni Bennett in her Time Goes By Blog had a great post today titled The Art of Blogging . It resonated with me. One part I especially liked was about why she enjoys blogging:-

"I write to figure out what I think about things and it is astonishing how many times I start a blog post and wind up in an entirely different place at the end than I thought I intended. Writing is a joy for me because it organizes my thoughts, forces me toward clarity and often leads to discovering what I didn’t know before."

I find that a lot of times when I speak I am frustratingly inarticulate but when I write or at least when I focus on what I am writing I can work out my thoughts and what I mean and then communicate it. I love the idea of doing research and then reporting it here.

I don’t know if I will ever have a focused blog like Time Goes By but I aspire to post daily and to have as interesting a blog as Ronni does.

Becoming a Grandmother

Any day now I will become a grandmother for the first time. My youngest daughter is expecting a baby boy literally any day now. Since I received the news last spring I have gone through an enormous range of emotions. Shannon will be a single mother. I know she will be a wonderful mother. Motherhood for me was more wonderful than I could ever have imagined and also more difficult than I could ever have imagined. I am worried for her. I am excited for her. I have confidence in her. And of course I am excited for me. My new grandson’s name will be Aiden and I can’t wait to meet him.

Stamps and the Largest plant

At the post office yesterday I bought a sheet of commemorative stamps titled "Wonders of America – Land of Superlatives". One of the stamps is of the Largest Plant, the Quaking Aspen. How is this possible? Lots of trees are bigger than the Aspen. It has been bugging me. So I just looked it up by doing a web search and I came up with this website. They say that "While it might look like a forest of aspens, they all share the same root system, so it is actually one plant! The largest such plant lives in Fish Lake National Forest, weighs an estimated 6,600 tons, and is the largest living organisms known to man."  Wow! I didn’t know that.

I love buying commemorative stamps. Alexandra Stoddard in her book Gift of a Letter  says that stamps are a poor man’s art collection. She talks about how much fun it is to go through her stamps and pick the right ones for a letter she is writing. It is true. I think about the person I am sending the card or letter to and I pick one I know they will enjoy. It is a very simple pleasure. I love the idea and have quite a collection of wonderful stamps.