December 30th. Embers.

We're coming up to the end of 2006. Various memes are working their way around the blogosphere; listing the first lines of the first post of each month, tallying up the numbers, comparing "top tens", making predictions.

Me, I'm a newbie. Not to the web; I've been here forever and a couple of days. To the blogs. I started May 1st of last year, on Delphi. A bit of Mayday madness that has become a meme all by itself: a post a day. Or thereabouts.

So: waving goodbye to 2006 in my own way, I will post bits and pieces of those early blog posts, bits that tell who I am, where I'm going and why.

May 5, 2006: About Names

Why "Weeta"?
I answer to a whole slew of names. The one my parents gave me; Susannah; the one they called me, and my brother still uses (nobody else, please); Susie. To casual acquaintances, often Sue.
...
And to my grandkids, I have been, according to the age and favourite language of the kids, Grandma, Jaba, Jabasoo (his spelling, not mine. And Canada Post actually delivered a letter sent to that name, and with a wrong street address. Pretty good, eh?) and recently, Weeta. Which is a 3-year-old's pronunciation of "abuelita".
I like it.

Same Day: Immortal Words

The internet is clogged with trillions of words. Stashed in hard drives all over the planet, pixels appearing on screens on laps, on desks, on beds even, then disappearing a moment later, vibrating energies coating this old planet like slime on a pond; here today, gone tomorrow.
Even more ephemeral than paper, barely more permanent than the brief hellos we interchange with the neighbour in his driveway. ...
So: words into the void. But so what? I will still say hello to the neighbour; I may as well still keep on pouring words onto the screen.

May 10th, Mexican Mother's Day: Unappreciated Beauties A photo of dandelions. And, I think, the unifying principle in most of this blog; to wit:

We mow them down. Roundup them. Tear them out by the roots. Swear at them.
And what do they do to us? Smile at the sunshine. Brighten dingy days. Give little children something to blow away.
My granddaughter, 3, carefully searched out the dandelions that had already lost their little parachuting seeds, and harvested a fistful to take home to Mommy. Arranging them in a glass for her, I realized that they are beautiful, too, with their silky round stems, a neat little creamy cap on the top and a lacy fringe; how long is it since I had really looked at them?

It's a sad time of year, especially this year, maybe because this year has been difficult and fraught with loss, maybe because the future looks dark. There are health issues as we grow older, financial worries, the closing of doors. The weather no longer is a trusted cycle, "seedtime and harvest"; whether to expect ice and wind or baking drought is not something the almanac can tell us any more. And the world seems populated by insane ideologues hell-bent on suicide and willing to take any number of people with them, some by the dozens, others by the millions.

And the sun comes out only long enough for us to get our coats on.

But the world still manages to produce its beauty. Sunrise, sunset. Unassuming beetles, moss-covered logs, fruit flies with brilliant red eyes. Blue lakes mirroring a bluer sky. Eleventy-one tints of green in the bush. The ceaseless whispering of waves against the pier.

I can't do anything about the weather, my age, the news or the sanity of my neighbours, far and near. I can't do much about the beauty around me, except treasure it, cultivate it. Celebrate it.

Call it my act of defiance against the closing dark.