Christine Bottaro's Blog
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Jan.15.2011
You would think, by the warm pleasant weather and my deeper-than-usual cleaning efforts for the day, that Spring has already arrived. California weather will often be coy at this time of year. After a streak of very cold mornings and then bursts of rain, it's sweet outside. Like a girl trying...
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Jan.14.2011
Things are damp out. And the world is rushing to darkness, readying for a downpour. The natural world has stilled, bracing for an oncoming wind or peppering rain. People, however, have not. While the dawn sky is a riot of shifting soft clouds ablaze with the colors of fire, men and women...
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Jan.13.2011
I wondered what to pay attention to this morning, going here and there, across town and home again. People? The radio? The weather? Ideas?
No. It was sunlight.
I noticed as I turned onto the main street traversing Monterey that the day's palette of colors was coolly silver with tones of blue and...
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Jan.11.2011
I looked at my salad and saw dirt-stained hands planting, tending, picking, sorting and selling lettuce and herbs. Dirt scuffed under heavy boots, along long dark rows of disked soil. The air was pungent with bruised plants and dampness.
I heard low murmured voices talking about the weather,...
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Jan.09.2011
If I sit still for long, my feet turn into Klondike bars or frozen turkey patties. One or the other, maybe a combination of a few frozen-food-section items. Cold. They're pretty unusable today; it has been cold and the wind chill has factored the air to colder yet. Winter is making itself known...
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Jan.09.2011
On a walk today on the Monterey Bay Recreation Trail ("Rec Trail"), the waves were big and sloshy, flopping and sliding up onto the shoreline. They chugged in to the rock and sand margins of land like an old car with its gears slipping.
Just as loose and lazy was a beach full of ...
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Jan.07.2011
The baby is sleeping, a little soft sandbag of warmth that smells tender and sweet, like milk warming. It is lost to the world, adrift in dreams, limp and warm. Its cheeks are flushed pink and the hair damp. It is exquisitely soft.
You hold this baby against your shoulder, its head lying like...
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Jan.06.2011
What is your purpose in life and how do you know if you've found it? Getting back to the clues the universe leaves around, the fingerprints of your talent and gifts, I believe you know early on what fascinates you, pulls you into its realm of possibility. Math? Dance? Texture? Words? Patterns...
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Jan.04.2011
I was looking into a new computer yesterday. The one I like has a terabyte of something on it. It sounds prehistorically glorious. Maybe it grows legs and screams and runs around with large menacing claws. Not likely, but with terminology invented by teenaged boys, capabilities are more likely...
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Jan.04.2011
It was a jiggedy day today whose middle was filled with errands and to-dos but it ended in a grand "tah dah!" It was made of many stepping-stone parts that formed a satisfying whole. Mondays are often like that; they seem to flop into big chairs and slump with a feeling of "whew,...
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Jan.03.2011
This morning glowered with heavy clouds that looked more beast than atmosphere. It had rained all night, and I kept the window cracked to hear the dripping and pattering wet out there, a pretty sound that belied the rumbling, shifting masses overhead. Sometimes clouds like those seem to be more...
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Dec.30.2010
I attended a funeral this morning for a woman who died on Christmas day. She was 80 and had lived a very full life. There were tears and a quiet solemnity that was facilitated warmly by a uniquely gifted priest. He found a graceful balance between warm loving kindness, respect for the grief and...
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Dec.30.2010
I have read about different writers who are considered a success, significant in some way, creative and ingenious. I was told I might be able to write and make some sense now and again, but the trouble was a lack of belief and resolve to jump into the fray and begin. I have a bookshelf next to...
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Dec.29.2010
Rain is descending in splattering waves from the darkness high overhead, and it seems the world is entirely wet. It reminds me of walking to school the few blocks uphill that we had to go when I was a kid. When it was as wet as it is right now, gullies and gutters coursed with streams of runoff...
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Dec.28.2010
Since November when I wandered off to Hawaii and back again, I have noticed Christmas colors gradually seep into the vistas and fine details of Honolulu and Hanalei and back again to San Juan Bautista, Monterey and Carmel. Reflections of ochre and forest greens shine in window panes, wet streets...
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About Christine
Resident of California's Central Coast where the natural environment serves as both anchor and sail for creative efforts in photography and writing. Registered nurse with interest in the science of positive psychology and motivation now pursuing parallel...
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Causes Christine Bottaro Supports
The Nature Conservancy, California State Parks, The United Way
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