Share Four Somethings – August

Something Loved

We spent a big chunk of the month of August traveling to Colorado, Oregon, and Cape Cod to visit family. I loved spending time with two of our sons and their families who live thousands of miles away from where we live in Pennsylvania. We also had a bonus visit with my sister and her husband when we stopped at their house on the Cape on our way home from a trip to Boston with friends.

We did a lot of hiking, visited many good restaurants, had tons of wonderful home-cooked meals, talked until late at night, and played until we were exhausted.

Now I am ready to go home and see this guy, who misses us terribly when we are gone.

Something Said

“Intentions always look better on paper than in reality.” – Angie Thomas

The end of August is Back-to-School time for my grandsons. Maybe it is because for so many years I also went back to school, this season seems like a time of new beginnings, resolutions, and making plans.

To say that I sometimes bite off more than I can chew is an understatement. I am an inveterate organizer and planner.

When I hear cicadas droning and the days begin to shorten, I tend to sign up for ambitious races, embark on outlandish projects, and peruse travel websites with a passion.

This year, I have vowed (to myself) I will follow the wise advice of Angie Thomas and temper my enthusiasm for overcommitment. I will report on the success (or lack thereof) of adhering to my vow.

Something Learned

Look closely at this photo of the double rainbow I posted here earlier this summer. Something I never noticed (until my niece pointed it out to me) is that the colors are inverted in the two rainbows.

On the inner rainbow, beginning at the inside of the curve, the order of the colors is violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, then red. On the outer rainbow, the order of the colors is reversed. Red is on the inside and violet is on the outside.

After doing a little bit of research, I learned that when sunlight enters a water droplet, the white light from the sun is refracted (broken apart into its component colors), then reflected off the back of the drop, just like light is reflected by a mirror. This causes a normal (primary) rainbow.

When a secondary rainbow forms, the light is reflected on the inside of the droplet twice before leaving it. Just like an image is reversed in a mirror, the order of colors is reversed when the light is reflected a second time. This is what causes the primary and secondary rainbows to have their colors arranged in the opposite order.

Something Read

I was horrified to discover I had run out of books to read after the Colorado leg of our trip. When we arrived in Oregon, one of the first orders of business was to stop at a book store and replenish my supply.

I hit the jackpot; all of the books I selected were ones I enjoyed. Probably my favorite book, however, was not bought at the bookstore, but given to me by my daughter-in-law.

“Barracoon” by Zora Neale Hurston was written over 80 years ago, but never published until last year.

Hurston was an African-American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. “Barracoon” is the life story of the last known survivor of the Middle Passage, Cudjo Lewis, whom Hurston interviewed over a series of months in 1927. Lewis was born and lived his first years in Africa. At age 19, he was captured, illegally transported, and sold into slavery in the United States.

After working as a slave in Alabama for five years, he was freed after the Civil War, married, and fathered six children.

The reason the book languished for years before publication was partly because it was written in the vernacular. Hurston wrote the words spoken by Lewis exactly as they sounded to her. Another reason no publisher would touch the book was because it described the involvement of other Africans in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The description of Lewis’ life of capture and slavery and his post-Civil War life in the Jim Crow-era South was poignant and heartbreaking. It is a book that I believe is a must-read.

 

I am linking up with Heather Gerwing for her “Four Somethings”. Thanks, Heather, for giving the opportunity to think and write about four such compelling topics.

Also linking up with Shank You Very Much for Global Blogging, Random-osity for The Good, The Random, The Fun and Communal Global, Abounding Grace for Gracefull Tuesday, Mary Geisen Tell His Story, Bethere2day for Wordless Wednesday, InstaEncouragements, and Esme Salon for Senior Salon.