Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Wednesday, May 11, 2005 THE CASSANDRA PAGES HAVE MOVED
Tired of the unreliability and slow loading times at Blogger, and wanting to make some changes and add some new functionality, I'm jumping ship to TypePad. The new address is:
I'm not entirely happy with the TypePad solution, because ultimately I want to incorporate my blog into a larger website and to have complete control over all of it. In the next few months I'm going to be investigating WordPress as another option, but the new address will stay the same. Please update your blogrolls, and please let me know how the new site works for you. I'm also anxious to hear of other readers' experiences with WordPress and other open source solutions.
A link to all the CassandraPages archives will also remain available via the new site.
Thank you to all my wonderful readers! I look forward to welcoming you at my new home.
7:44 PM
|
Monday, May 09, 2005
It's almost hot in Vermont this evening, after days and days of raw rainy weather. This afternoon I took a break from computer work to go outside and work in the garden, raking leaves off the perennials, inspecting plants, and then standing, hands on hips, considering possibilites for the coming growing season. Compared to last year, when we were a week into that fateful month of renting a Montreal apartment, I haven't abandoned my garden, nor do I have the same illusions about what I can handle. This current week here/week there schedule does allow for some maintenance, but I'm much more realistic now, and I know I can't keep up the way I used to with perennials, a few roses, a vegetable and herb garden, planters full of foliage and flowering annuals, and a couple of shrub borders. So today I made a decision - most of the vegetable garden is going to get mown. And that's surprisingly OK with me.
Like the decision to get rid of a lot of our books, I find the relinquishment of this once-important part of my life to be something long in coming, but fine once it actually happens. And of course it's not necessarily permanent. I've always grown some of our food, as much out of principle as pleasure. But if it's too much - and it is right now - then it's time to let go.
Tonight we had some friends over for dinner, a couple who are twelve or fourteen years younger than we are. They're recently married, and they're nesting: working hard on their old house, making a garden, making plans. It was fun to listen to their excitement - I remember feeling exactly the same way - and it was also interesting to note how much I don't feel like that now.
We've been replacing the bathroom floor during this stay in Vermont, and it's the second time around - we're taking up a floor we ourselves installed a long time ago. When we paint, it will be the second time over the surfaces. We like doing this kind of work, but it's lost the excitement it once had. At this point in my life I'm simply not into settling down, putting my imprint on things and tucking the corners around me. I'm after lightness of being, freedom of movement, a loosening of weighty responsibility so that the things that are the real priorities have more space.
Flowers, though...flowers need to stay.
10:06 PM
|
