I miss blogging when I don’t do it. Since I seem to have blogs for all seasons and reasons—travel, books, my New Mexico environment and even documenting each ordinary day, it should be very easy to post something of some minor interest often. But then life happens and writing get pushed into its back corner and attention focuses on the stuff of renewing auto tags and carrying out the garbage and stopping at the store for milk and driving down the hill to work! There’s the more worthy competition for my time too—studying poetry or Buddhism or the Islamic or Arctic worlds, and hanging out with friends, and netflixing and the gym and….

Blogging stands out among good things though because it is first of all writing and secondly the perfect opportunity for each and every one of us to become brilliant amateur photographers. Instead of scribbling away at my back-bedroom desk and dreaming of a future book, I can, by clicking ‘post’ hurl my deathless prose and ever so brilliant photos into cyberspace for the pleasure and edification of Everyone in the Whole Wide World…or at least my FB Friends and the relatives I’ve coerced into subscribing.

Each of my blogs has its place in my personal blogosphere; sometimes appearing dead, only to spring to life again. Now seems like a good time to revive Today—a good time because ‘if taken correctly’ Today can perk up flagging spirits. Here’s how that happens. If I set out to capture a highlight of my day, I have to find that highlight first and it must be picturesque in some odd or interesting or scenic way. To do that, I must look at the upside, the bright side, the pluses of my ordinary days. In other words, it requires at least a modicum of optimism and a lot of Paying Attention to the hours and minutes as they approach and then pass. And, in those hours and minutes, finding an okay image of a better-than-okay moment in time.

Maybe Today is one of my prescriptions for finding ageing a not-unpleasant process—it makes me Pay Attention. Ignored hours can’t be snatched back and repaired. Childhood, youth, middle age, done, checked off. So, invoking Pollyanna and Frank Sinatra… You see, when you’re hunting for the glad things, you sort of forget about the sad things, Pollyanna said. (Much as I loathed Pollyanna when my mother used her as an example, I’m now seeing the value of her philosophy—otherwise in this election year I would go mad). And can’t you hear Frank singing, “…Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few/September, November/And these few precious days I’ll spend—Paying Attention to my World. Anyone referencing Pollyanna and Frank Sinatra in the same paragraph is obviously old old old. Such a nice hour I’ve spent writing this though. Paying attention.

Sorry for all these words in what is basically a Photo Blog…it’s Saturday morning…a glorious Saturday morning because I have 48 hours ahead to write and think and read and do a little Ancestry detective work and have a lemon garlic pasta and red wine lunch and take a nap and possibly work in an episode or two of the five I have to go of The Good Wife (but that’s not allowed until Sunday night).