And here we are. For some reason this month felt shorter than the others.

First off I want to let you know that I have found the spell check feature and now know how to use it. So thanks for bearing with me on the last newsletter. It cracks me up that I enjoy reading these beautifully articulate and written works from such great authors but that I still can’t talk good. Speaking of which, the second and third books in the Dungeon Crawler series were just as entertaining and well written as the first. Super fun and a pleasure reading those ones.

One of the others, Babel by R.F Kuang is a fictional work about the power of language. It’s a book that builds up to an ending that doesn’t deliver. But it wasn’t bad. I did enjoy a lot of the concepts because of my personal love for learning and speaking other languages. I always wondered if there is a difference between thought patterns in individuals based on their first language. Sentence structure and the order of words, the conjugation of verbs to express time of occurrence and then the available vocabulary can be subtle to extreme from language to language.

When native Spanish and German speakers were asked to describe a bridge, El Puente (Spanish-masculine) and Die Brucke  (German-feminine), the descriptions they used were, interestingly enough, tied to the genders of the words in their native languages. For the Spanish speakers they described the bridge as being strong and sturdy, whereas  the German speakers describe it as being elegant and beautiful. At the same time other languages have access to vocabulary that English has no equivalent. Age-otori (Japanese) means to look worse after a haircut. And then we can discuss the arrangement of the words in a sentence, like how Spanish puts the descriptive word after the object being discussed. Teeny, tiny, short examples. I could spend the whole newsletter discussing this topic. To me, it re-emphasizes how complex communication can be. Babel confirmed that I wasn’t the only one to have this thought.

This past month was filled with work training and a trip to Saguaro National Park down in Arizona where I was able to get my first sunburn of the year 3 months early. It was also filled with the loss of my old fire crew’s (San Juan Interagency Hotshots) superintendent. Not lost lost, just lost him to retirement and a rocking chair.  The crew held a retirement party which doubled as a crew reunion. It’s always awesome seeing some of the maniacs and acting like we are in our late twenties again. Not so awesome when you wake up the next morning and realize that YOU ARE NOT in your twenties. The night was full of hugs, laughs, over exaggerated stories and reminders that I need to do a better job of staying in touch with all the people who are important to me. I am lucky to have a lot of those people in my life and I need to make sure they know I am grateful for them.

So what’s happening now?

Currently some of my works are on display at the Wines of the San Juan in the Leanor building (Sundressed, Mood,  Swing Shift, Graphix, Colored in and City colors).