Some good community art silliness for you...

Who ever makes up the best narrative for this sequence of photos wins! This is my co-director by the way, HM, and our two maca interns, J and N. Such good people!



Thankgoodness for silliness and laughter...!

Friends for what ails ya....

I headed out of raining Baltimore for a sunshine filled weekend in DC/Gaithersburg with friends...


... who made yummy pumpkin soup in its own shell with the fabulous local pumpkin from last weekends jaunt in the country...

This morning we got up-- despite having stayed up too late drinking hot apple toddies and smoking shisha-- and went for a crisp early morning, bright and beautiful 4-mile (..ish??) hike at nearby Seneca Lake State Park...

So, so lovely.



Ahh... to love and be loved is to feel the sun on both sides....

Raining in Baltimore

This circus is falling down on its knees
The big top is crumbling down
Its raining in Baltimore fifty miles east
Where you should be, no ones around

I need a phone call
I need a raincoat
I need a big love
I need a phone call

These train conversations are passing me by
And I don’t have nothing to say
You get what you pay for
But I just had no intention of living this way

I need a phone call
I need a plane ride
I need a sunburn
I need a raincoat

And I get no answers
And I don’t get no change
It’s raining in Baltimore, baby
But everything else is the same

There’s things I remember and things I forget
I miss you I guess that I should
Three thousand five hundred miles away
But what would you change if you could?

I need a phone call
Maybe I should buy a new car
I can always hear a freight train if I listen real hard
And I wish it was a small world
Because I’m lonely for the big towns
I’d like to hear a little guitar
I think its time to put the top down

I need a phone call
I need a raincoat

**ok so a tad melodramatic, but I'm feeling a tad melodramatic... and it IS raining in Baltimore right now, and this song came across my ipod this morning and it just seemed to fit...

Pumpkins pumpkins pumpkins! And apples!

Blue blue skies... warm-for-this-time-of-year weather... friends... apples a plenty... a pumpkin stand... impatient goats... the rolling hills of Mountgomery County... cameras... What more could one ask for on a Saturday afternoon in October? Except maybe Ethiopian for dinner afterwards... which, as it so happens, is easily arranged in this part of the world. Mmmmm!

belonging...

What is identity? Philosopher Charles Taylor describes identity as follows: "It is who we are, 'where we're coming from'. As such it is the background against which our tastes and desires and opinions and aspirations make sense... [M]y discovering my own identity doesn't mean that I work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through dialogue, partly overt, partly internal. with others." I like this understanding. It is simple and introduces the important rider that identity is shaped in ongoing dialogue with others. As I understand it, my is partially shaped by being in conversation with you. After all, you made me a grandmother! But I am also other things, shaped by other conversations. Is there also a part of me (and of you) that is wholly ours, perhaps mysterious, even to ourselves? However we answer this question, it is clear that we discover our identities through others. (pg. 11)
~ Denise Ackernann, After the Locusts

Oh my lucky stars!

...dearest of friends have recently moved to the area... From my doorstep to theirs is just ONE short little hour away... Oh the joy!

nubian scarves

mandalalalala

at long last... Luxor...

Some places are just special. I don't really think I knew Luxor was one of those places till we rolled in sometime between 11 and midnight. It was familiar and exciting. I wanted to see if I could find the hotel I stayed at six years ago without any help... and I ALMOST did. (Or I did with a wee little help...) It was a great little hotel and had only improved (without being too improved..) we stayed there... the Nefertiti... with its green walls and the loveliest roof top overlooking the Nile, the west bank, and the sphinxes of the Luxor temple.



We spent a long, good day at the Karnak Temple... where there were tons of tourists, tons and tons and tons... It was rather overwhelming but over the course of the day, they waxed and waned... and we were able to find the less traveled corners of the temple and enjoy just being there in that ancient space. I always wonder what life was like when places like that were in their hay day... Who was roaming around, what they were thinking and doing. Were the ins and outs of life all that different?




Oh that cute little kitty... into everything.



Such a good, beautiful time.

Two days, two nights... and a long day train ride back to Cairo... racing around like headless chickens to have a fun dinner... meet up with my homestay sister, Heidi, get packed up and fly out at 3:00 in the morning.

And then it was over. Two long flights, dinner with friends in DC and a car ride, and I'm back in Baltimore. Back to reality. With a horrid thud. But now its been about a month... well, a month since I got back I suppose... and Egypt all seems rather far away. But there is plenty of goodness and beauty to be found in these parts too....