Three Beautiful Things 06/26/15: Tranquility, Family Fun in Indiana, *Invisibilia* and Instability

1. I got a couple of lenses together, loaded up my backpack, pried myself into the Sube, and hightailed it over to the Brookside Gardens, located in the spacious Wheaton Regional Park. I set out to complete Sibling Photo Assignment #2 by taking pictures that would express jollity because, when I used to grow flowers, I often thought they had jolly expressions, especially when I watered them. But, after I returned home, I looked at the pictures I took and decided that many of them expressed tranquility more than jollity and so I built my blog post, here, around the idea of tranquility.  If you don't really want to read my blog post, but would like to see the pictures, scroll to the bottom of this entry.

2. It saddened and disappointed me that I couldn't go to Battle Ground, IN this weekend and be a part of the Deke's family reunion nor go listen to the relaxing and invigorating strains of string music at the Indiana Fiddle Gathering nor enjoy the food at breakfast heaven, the Eye Opener Cafe. But, thanks to the wonders of Facebook, today I got to see some great pictures that Nini posted of family members enjoying themselves and each other and a picture of the plate of food Molly ordered at the cafe -- I had a brief bout of sausage gravy envy --  and the Deke sent me a couple of text messages telling me that she and the Diazes arrived safely at Brian's lake house in Long Beach, IN and that she was enjoying an awesome mango double IPA brewed by those restless innovators at Burn 'Em Brewing in Michigan City, IN.

3. On my return trip to Brookside Gardens, I listened, for the first time, to the NPR show, Invisibilia and today's episode challenged the idea that we humans have a fixed personality. As I listened to the stories being told about reformed (and unreformed) prisoners and to experts discuss the entirely mutable nature of human life and biology and neurology, I kept thinking about all those years I tried to help my students dig into the philosophical underpinnings of Shakespeare's plays and how Shakespeare assumed flux, mutability, and constant change and how his plays dramatize possible ramifications of this fundamental instability in all areas of life:  love, politics, morality, war, friendship, and on and on.


Here are the pictures I posted, attempting to illustrate the concept of tranquility: