More weather gloom. The lights of the day turn out not surprisingly to be the email messages from people I have never met. It's amazing how much talent is around, more or less undiscovered. One of my correspondents is a lady I met (on line) when I reviewed her first book. Her talents are broader than her incomparable charm at telling a story. Now I want to meet her whole family! We had lost touch for a few years, and now I have her back (and vice-versa, of course).
Another is someone who is as much a writer as she is a painter, though I suspect the latter feels more comfortable to her. Among her other talents, she is a therapist. Without going into qualifications, let me just say that her presence on my computer has turned into a true blessing for me, along with one or two others I speak with in the same way.
I've never been able to subscribe to the view that whenever a door closes another opens, or that all "is for the best in this best of all possible worlds." (Alexander Pope?) Yet some hurdles seem to show if not ways over them, then paths around them we haven't sought. Now we all have to hope the rest of the world can make that the case for those in such desperate straits in so many places in the world, most lately Haiti. It just seems a shame that it takes someone else's greater misfortune to make us appreciate our own happy circumstances.
