Whether it is, or not, this blog is created to move the forum of my social media writing from the comments section of contentious posts to a place where greater space may be given to developing a thought or argument. People can choose whether or not to read it.
One of my joys in life is to sit in my English garden at any time on a Summer day, watching the play between light and shadow amongst the flowers and bushes as the sun runs its course. Many years ago, after living a year in England, I returned to my native Colorado and a Summer job in house construction. I can vividly recall one day, when looking up to a co-worker on the roof of the house we were working on, being amazed at the brilliant, dark blue of the sky above, in sharp-edged contrast to my colleague’s figure against that sky. It was so unlike the soft-focus, milky colours of an English sky. I love that stark-edginess of the Colorado sky. But, sitting in my English garden, I appreciate the subtleties of degrees of shadow and shade. Where things are revealed in sharp detail in the fullness of the mid-day sun, the oblique angles of the northern sun offer nuances of expression unnoticed in the glare of full light. As a sojourner in a land not of my birth, I remain an outsider-looking-in to the place of my adoption. As an expatriate of the land of my birth, I am an outsider-looking-in to my homeland. Fully invested in both of my countries of citizenship, I am never really an insider in either. This Blog comes from the oblique angle this position affords. Sitting aside from the direct glare of black-and-white certainties, this is a space to explore the subtleties and nuances of the shifting shades of the world around me.
