Elinor Nauen

I was visiting my friend Willis in Spartanburg one summer, many years ago. He looked up. Not a cloud in the sky. "We should go down to the lake & swim now," he said. "We just have time before it rains."

We went down to the lake & swam, and just as we got back to the house, the heavens opened up.

"How'd you do that?" I demanded.  Read More 

Actually, I don't remember much of what I did today. Worked on a project. Visited my neighbor & her cat, Chester. Did my laundry. Ran on the treadmill. Waited. Ate a salad a minute ahead of the lettuce melting into mold. Read some of Barbara Tuchman's Proud Tower, about the decades before World War I. Tried to renew Wide Sargasso Sea; on hold so I have to finish it today rather than savoring it a few pages at a time. Turned the calendar to its last page of 2014. Oh, what am I going to do for 2015 (hint, hint)? Read More 

OK, the snow is out in western South Dakota, but it means my favorite weather is on its way here too. They had 2' in Rapid City, almost 4' up in Lead, in the Black Hills.

And I'm happy to be still in touch with so many of my friends from high school (and junior high and grade school). There’s so much that feels rootless in my life, but one thing that can’t be taken away is my past.

Although that's not true if you've been lied to, according to an op-ed in the Times: "Insidiously, the new information disrupts their sense of their own past, undermining the veracity of their personal history. Like a computer file corrupted by a virus, their life narrative has been invaded. Memories are now suspect: what was really going on that day? Compulsively going over past events in light of their recently acquired (and unwelcome) knowledge, such patients struggle to integrate the new version of reality. For many people, this discrediting of their experience is hard to accept."

Hey wait, I'm simply happy to think about the beautiful snowfall: I remember sitting on the porch of the Franklin Hotel in Deadwood, watching a thick but not serious snow falling on the spruce hills across the way, so warm that sitting outdoors was a delight.

It is what it was. Read More