Fragments From Floyd

Partly it's my own procrastination and distraction; partly, it's the family company who have been sharing the house with us until yesterday morning. But regardless of reason or excuse, the time has come to dig down to the top of my desk again, and perform a pile-ectomy from over in the corner of the room. It is there that all the hidden stacks of someday magazines from the wardrobe rise now in irregular columns beside the woodstove. The wardrobe is finally in its place of honor and prominence out in the AnnEx, and I'm without storage space until we put in shelves here in "my" room, to hide all my flotsam. But there's too much of it.

It's come to this: I've had the painful revelation that much of what was hidden behind the oak doors of the wardrobe needs to take its last trip--to the dumpsters up on the hardtop: unopened copies of National Geographic; two years worth of Orion Magazine; an assortment of "possibility" magazines I collected back when "getting published" was a pressing concern. I'd like to think someday I'll read what I passed by when it was a current issue, but in all honestly, I won't.

As I heft the armloads of precious archives onto the flotsam that preceded it in the rusting dumpsters, I'll look around to see if anyone is watching as I perform the execution of a witness, as I put to a violent end the evidence of my sloth and lack of discipline, out of sight and mind, these trees that have fallen in the forest with no one to hear. It's a crime.

Meanwhile (a word that is such a cop-out segue...) a new day is dawning in the photographic realms along Goose Creek. I was taken aback this past week to come home one day and find that my wife--the most technology-averse person I have ever known, a neo-Luddite of the first stripe, was singing the praises of her visiting sister's digital camera. My wife, who shuns anything with buttons or dials, found that even she could point-and-shoot, and wanted me to investigate the possibility of getting HER her own camera. She never thinks I take enough of the right kind of picture (grab-shot people pictures regardless of photographic merit) and I'm sure is thinking about both our upcoming trip to South Dakota to see dau, grand dau and family AND her November highschool reunion.

So surprise: her dad, also visiting, very generously ordered the camera for her and it arrives tomorrow! And of course, SOMEBODY has to read the manuals and take it for a test run. And SOMEBODY has to check out the macro function that, along with the swivel LCD, will allow that someone to take close-to-the-ground shots of ferns, wildflowers and such that he hasn't been able to do since the Nikon CoolPix 950 bit the dust. The camera: Canon Powershot 620, a fine 7.1 MP piece of work. Yes, I think Ann is really going to enjoy the rich feature set of this camera, which for her purposes includes the on switch, the shutter switch and the carrying strap. Stay tuned this week for samples from the 620, while my Nikon is in surgery, getting a tummy tuck.