Sweet Maiden, Q. Cassetti, 2010, pen and inkYesterday was quiet. I was wiped out. I guess it all added up with the passage of visitors, kid parties, and visiting family. I just needed to shut down. I knew it when the uber petty was forefront in my head and I kept cycling on the trite. So, I slept the afternoon away. And the trite went away, and in that vast vacuum, ideas of bees, of Kama (the indian cupid) and the world as a hive filled that space. I dive into my Lubok book on a regular basis now…enjoying the odd russian tales melding Russian Orthodoxy with folklore, legends and myths. Human headed birds, bear armies, midgets and dwarves, and strife between husband and wife. Of course there are heaven and hell infusions as well. Dreamy.

This hazy state is a nice one from last year this time with the frantic rush to the thesis finale, multiple guests in tow and flat out from June 1 to September 1. The summer stretches ahead of us in a long green ribbon with work and play interrupted by swimming , music and the daily vacationing we have here on the plateau and on the lake. Bliss.

I just finished another bee book: Letters from the Hive: An Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind, a wonderful journey through the history of gathering, growing and living with bees with chapters on food, medicine, religious rites, mythology and science by an entomologist . This is a wonderful second to Holley Bishop’s Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey—The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World. Wonderful summer reading. Sweet in its depth, in it’s topic and gives more meaning to the bees buzzing in your large trumpet vines and roses. These books put nature squarely in your lap and makes the lovely agricultural lands that surround you more poignant and the cities more approachable (tales of a beekeeper, Jean Paucton at the Paris Opera who has kept five hives on the roof for a decade and sells his honey through very exclusive concerns such as the opera gift shop and Fauchon in his home town). I think another bee book is in the lineup. Just need to choose.

More later.