'The View' 23x21, oil pastel; Kathleen Faulkner
It's mushroom season and the last day of summer. Now everything is changing. Soon, the nights will be as long as the days, grayer and grayer, colder and colder. So it goes, like old age, the beginning is not so bad: things start to make sense and life is still doable; deep into it everything becomes aches and memories.
It is spitting rain as I hike around looking for those golden beauties. I'm wet and hungry and find myself distracted, lost in thought, thinking about a friend I used to know. He was a farrier who lived in the woods. His uncle was Robert Heinlein so, then I think about the book. It always happens.
'Stranger in a Strange Land' has become somewhat of a cult classic: popular during the sixties and an influence on that generation. It's basically a story about a different perspective. I read it years and years ago and bits of it have always stuck with me.
More than once I've found myself wishing for a Fair Witness.
The Fair Witness is trained to observe events and report the truth of the matter. One requirement of the job is a photographic memory and the
Fair Witness is prohibited from drawing conclusions.
This would be a very useful asset in our world today. Imagine hiring a
Fair Witness to review the week on the 6 o'clock news. We could count on the
Fair Witness to know and/or expose the truth. It would curb the lying and cheating that abounds..
Maybe it could change the world.
then suddenly, there they are: the little chanterelles in all their beauty!
Chanterelle; photo: Chevalier
