The man with the new camera learned where the switches were that turned it on or off; he learned how to focus the subject inside instead of outside the frame; he learned how to load and unload the images card that held all the photos. It all took time and...
(Gum-boots is the Australian name for knee-high, waterproof boots.) We have a little barometer that keeps on saying rain is coming but the rain does not come. We are still inside a huge drought and the barometer is telling us what we badly want to hear and we consult...
We had long ago cleared the area for a garden bed and now I was planting a new shrub in it. A strong feature of the bed was its stability. In spite of being on a steep slope and having all the rubbish cleared from the topsoil, it had not shifted or been washed away in...
Have you ever pondered that commonly used phrase, 'I need to find out who I am'? Well, so do I and I feel like an insignificant brown wren on a feeding table for parrots. All the food is aimed at parrots. There are big pieces of corn and sunflower seeds and other big...
Queen Vashti is the woman of today, the woman we all admire, the woman we want to be. She had it all, success, status, admiration and beauty. She also knew the social norms of her time and she kept to them with the greatest integrity. It is said that she had her own...
When you come out of the darkness into a strongly lighted room, nothing comes clearly into focus because the light itself fills your eyes. The same thing was illustrated to us recently when my husband took a snapshot of sunrise breaking over a figurine standing on a...
If you read her story, Esther is presented as hesitant, as hiding her faith and her cultural identity for fear of personal backlash, and then as a self-centred coward.She pretended not to have a Jewish faith-culture because she would be disadvantaged in Babylon and...
The Train Driver told me, "All heads were turned facing down the railway track as a large freight train loaded with wheat slowly came to a stop in the railway yard for a driver change." With a fresh crew aboard, the incoming crew stood and watched the trucks slowly...
Any good book sets the scene so imagine picking up a book and reading this: late at night the phone rings. I have waited up for this call and answer quickly. ‘We’re home, Mother,’ says the voice on the other end. My whole body sighs with relief and I exclaim, ‘Oh,...
Mordecai came with history. He was a Jew, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, so you couldn’t mistake who he was. He adopted the daughter of his uncle Abihail, a little Jewish orphan girl called Hadassah, or Esther as she was...