Crafts, leisure and happiness

The Maker Faire (for those who don't know) is exactly that. A fair where "Makers" showcase their work. There were makers of all kinds, crafters, artists, engineers, inventors. My favorite "Maked things" (as my son would probably have said) were the  amazing mechanical contraptions which seemed to have jumped out of movies. Unfortunately I could not capture them on my camera for one reason or another. Over all the Maker Faire was very overwhelming. I think it's a great way to get Makers together but the way the stalls were organized or the place or the crowd was just too overwhelming.  My other favorite was this Lego city, an entire city made of Lego blocks! I could have spent days just looking at all the details, I can't imagine how long it must've taken to build it.

Today, it's 1 yr and a few days since my son has been going to a day care and he, my husband and me have come a long way since then. We're planning to move him to a different day care and we were trying to list out everything we wanted in a different day care. And it got us thinking about a lot of things. We have learnt a lot of the American ways of bringing up a child and there are so many things we just refuse to learn. And I was trying to think and logically reason out why we refuse to learn certain things. In India we coddle our children for many many years and sometimes forever. It's just our culture to do everything for our child and love them and give give give to them. Out here (in the western world) the focus from the time the baby is born is on making them independent. We realized, being independent and being attached are not really mutually exclusive of each other. If a child is attached to his parents, it does not mean he's not going to grow up to be indepen...

Trail Originally uploaded by vin E Who would have guessed that on Thanks Giving day, the Bailey Cove trail near Redding, CA would be deserted. It was mere luck that led my husband and me there when we were looking for something to do. The changing coldth (I refuse to use the spell check suggested word here) and warmth of the trail gave us a perspective of the sun's hide and seek with the sides of the mountains. The silence interrupted only by the tread of our shoes on the thick carpet of leaves and our controlled whispers of awe. The smells were green and brown. The colors, damp and dry. A chirp, here, a glimpse of a deer sprinting away, there. The afternoon sun reflecting against the now reduced waters of the gigantic lake Shasta. The fallen acorns, some of which now adorn the petri dish in my living room. It was indeed a thankful Thanksgiving.