Catching up at the end of a hectic week

This part of California is still putting out flames.  The Yosemite fire to the northeast is now 80% contained while the Mt. Diablo one is pretty much out.  How strange to hear reports that at this moment, Colorado appears to be on the verge of being washed away in torrential rains.  What I wouldn't give for the sound of pattering raindrops... Instead, everything is coated with a summer's worth of dust -- a grey-brown film is layered on everything.  We are choked on the stuff.  When I pet Murphy on the rump, clouds billow out.  When I squirt the hose against the sides of the chicken coop, brown water sheets off.  When I take off my shoes at the door, powdery dust shakes off and leaves an outline around each shoe.  Give me mud, green slime, mold and dampness...that all sounds so very nice.

The Yosemite ranger who helped me organize last year's 4th grade field trip has written to me again.  It looks like she will Skype with the class to discuss and answer questions about forest ecology, regeneration and wildfires.  So it looks like this trip may indeed be taking place.  I'm still reluctant to drive through this destruction, but it should be a powerful learning experience for the students, so who am I to shrink from it?

Tonight is Friday night, but the weekend still isn't quite here as I'll be going to a writing workshop tomorrow morning down in Stockton.  The presenters will be some of the finest from the Great Valley Writing Project, and I want to see them again.  I'm also happy that three teachers from our school will also be there.  Getting home again at the end of it will be nice though.

I've been terrible about blogging lately and miss this outlet very much.  On top of everything else, I seem to have lost my little blue camera -- I haven't seen it in about a week.  I've been hunting in all the usual places and have realized that it must be in an unusual place.  I just haven't figured out which one. The worst of it is that I hauled out my old silver camera to fill in the void and now have managed to mislay it too.  Perhaps it's hanging out with the little blue camera, underneath some dust-laden tree in the middle of a dry field under a smokey sky...